Group Extended Contests and Ganging Up

[contracycle]

 2.)  It sounds like many of the various things people try in your example would count as Unreleated Actions calling for a simple contest.  Is that correct?  My thought was that Unrelated Actions don't change the AP totals because there's no bid (you're doing something else).  Lending APs is the Unrelated Action that sticks out most in my mind -- the APs change, but not as the result of a bid, you're just shifting them around.  Maybe I'm just being too stingy with what counts as "related".

Another option exists IIRC - you could use an ability different to the one from which you took your starting AP to carry out an action that affects AP.  That is, you may have entered combat with an AP = Sword & Shield, but actually have another ability - say, Speed - at a higher TN.  Although the first exchange is necessarily with Sword & Shield TN, the second exchange could use the Speed TN to achieve some specific effect "I dodge around and attack from behind".  This can be resolved for all normal AP consequences of an extended contest.