For a friend...

[Ian Christiansen]

Hello again gang,

My friend posed this question and asked me to put it on this board for anyone to reply to:

Is it possible to have a special damage attack that cancels or reduces another type of special damage attack?

For ease of example: a ray of ice vs. a ray of fire cross paths. one is either more powerful and continues on with less affect then it would have had.

My simple answer would be no, and that only Protection could have the effect he is referring to.  However, I have been wrong about a good many things in Sorcerer it turns out (I just now learned that Fast only applies to determining order of actions, and not their pool for resolution), so I told him I'd ask the gang here at The Forge.

Thanks again,
Ian

[angelfromanotherpin]

It is entirely possible to use a Special Attack power for a defense action, so long as the description of the action both makes sense and is cool, which is mostly dictated by the setting and the play group.  It would be resolved like any other defense action.

If you wanted, and the scene called for it, rather than making it an attack vs defense situation, you could make it a Power vs Power situation, where the roll with the most victories causes damage, but with Power limited to the number of victories rolled.  I don't think this is 100% supported by the rules, and it strikes me as a little wimpy, but I can see situations where it could be cool.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Jules, I think you might be gumming things up a little. Hold off a bit, OK?

Ian, one thing you guys might not be seeing is that very few actions in Sorcerer are, at the time of announcement, defensive. Especially demon abilities in action.

Defenses are usually announced/described as the group proceeds down the sequence of actions, and characters who've been targeted choose how they'll defend. The relevant score is Stamina. Now, if you decided to utilize some effect of a demonic ability that is already in action, that would be OK, but it's just "color."

Say a demon has used its Special Damage ability on someone, but a couple actions later in the same round, an attack comes in at it. It can use full Stamina dice to defend and does so, and the GM narrates that its Special Damage effect is involved in that defense. No big deal. The GM could have said that or not said it, and the demon still uses Stamina either way. The ability-use as just sitting there as part of the already-existing scene, so why not grab it and use it, for fun.

So the ability was "used to defend" after all. But not using traditional gaming-logic which would have required some kind of official announcement of its use or activation for that purpose.

I can continue this discussion to the next level by talking about the full-defense option, but I'm not entirely confident that everyone participating so far is catching the point I just made. So let me know what you think about that, and we'll carry on from there.

Best,
Ron

[Ian Christiansen]

Hey Ron,

I think I'm diggin' it, man.  One thing I think I have been doing right all along is the rule on Defense in Combat, that if a character is attacked before his action goes off, he can choose to abandon his action for a Full Defense (using his entire dice pool, which I assume can use a descriptor for potential bonus, since it's now his entire action) or keep his original roll for that action and just roll one die (risky, but worth it sometimes) for defense instead.  I suppose also that if, as in his example above, he describes his Special Damage ability as working into the defense in an effective and colorful way, he should be awarded a bonus for role-playing and cool description. 

Mechanically, however, I understand that his original idea or intent was just over-complicating things.  I sometimes wish I could wipe away all the years of TSR and White Wolf gaming that have programmed (some of) our brains to use this "traditional", and overly complex, gaming logic.  Of course, we grew up on those games and had a lot of fun with them regardless of their effect on our thinking, so I wouldn't really erase it.

I understand the concept Jules was explaining, but I prefer to keep it simple and just use the rules as they are for now.  Jules is still awesome though, and I believe he has responded to every question I've ever posted on this board.  His efforts are greatly appreciated by myself and my players.

One thing that grabbed me about Sorcerer, and still hasn't let go, was it's simple conflict resolution system.  I don't want to complicate it by introducing new rules/exceptions right now.  Maybe someday I'll write a mini-supplement, but for now I just want to create awesome stories with some wicked forbidden magic in them.

Thanks,
Ian

[The_Tim]

I'd like to chime in with a related thing that helped me out.  Demon abilities are, mechanically speaking, one-trick ponies.  They are special exceptions to the rules.  They are not wide domains or power clusters.  If you want a demon to be able to defend you from other demon abilities you need to make up a new demonic ability, Cancel or some such, which cancels other demonic powers.  Undoing the effects of an ability with another one is perfectly kosher, as is using color as Ron described.  However attempting to get a new ability out of one on the sheet is not.