Over-damage!

[Mike Holmes]

Yes, more dice must, to an extent, indicate effort. This because a strong attack, one with a lot of effort, is a good attack by definition. One thing you get taught, even in sport fencing (my only practical experience) is that if you don't pose a credible threat, your attacks as well as your defense are for nought. So, making an attack that is less powerful than what you could have done, and making it well, is very difficult in actuality. Jake, does your experience back me up here?

There must be some penalty. Either the player must use less dice, representing a more tentative attack, or they should have to pay to pull the blow, as in Chris's rule. As always, a character can choose to mitigate the damage via attacking a limb, instead, especially hands and feet. It's dangerous, but not necessarily a death sentence.

And the overdamage rule should not always cause more damage. Is that how it works now? Only occasionally (as in the cool description by Lance) will there be body on the other side of an overdamaged limb. Sometimes the extra effort will just go away from the target. One could say that whatever roll determined whether overdamage can be avoided can have dice added to it from the pool (or vice versa, interestingly). Thus you go with a fairly powerful, non-pulled blow to a limb, but leave some dice to ensure that if you blow through, that the blow will not continue into the body (or into it as you prefer). Or you can just use Chris's rule to simulate this as well. Lots of ways to handle it.

Mike

[Jake Norwood]

Yes, more dice must, to an extent, indicate effort. This because a strong attack, one with a lot of effort, is a good attack by definition. One thing you get taught, even in sport fencing (my only practical experience) is that if you don't pose a credible threat, your attacks as well as your defense are for nought. So, making an attack that is less powerful than what you could have done, and making it well, is very difficult in actuality. Jake, does your experience back me up here?

In an actual full-speed exchange, yeah, I'd say it definitely takes a significant amount of extra effort to hit softer...maybe not tons, but enough that you really do notice. I personally like Chris' rule the most, although I would consider a revision along the lines of "spend 2 dice and lower it to whatever level you want," as if pulling your blow was a maneuver. I'd also make the 2 dice get spent before the attack is rolled, again, as a maneuver.

Jake

[Warboss Grock]

I actually play in a campaign where us players have this nasty habit of doing extreme amounts of damage because They never spend they're spiritual attribute points Therefore, they tend to have 25-30 die Combat pools when they pull in their spiritual attributes... How should that be handled? Should blows that were grossly enhanced by spiritual attribute points be able to be pulled as easily as blows that weren't?

[Brian Leybourne]

You know that there's a limit of 5 on all SA's right? So if you never spend them, you'll never earn any more after they max out at 5, which means your character never gets any better. Yawn.

And they can't all apply all the time, if they do you have SA's that are way too generic.

Brian.

[toli]

Okay, I Also, another one I've been considering that would slightly "nerf" the shield in a realistic way is a type of over-damage rule -vs- shields.

If a shield is used to successfully block, I think that a damage should be calculated anyhow, based on the attacker's successes before the block attempt. If the total damage goes over the AV of the shield, then it will leak over into the character.

So, whaddya think? Is this good stuff, or am I working it too hard? Good optional rules for Flower of Battle, perhaps? ::hopeful expression::

I like the idea of applying damage to shields to see if the damage pushes through the shield.   In the end, the shield is really functioning like armor.  I used to play a lot of Pendragon and Runequest where the shield does just block damage.

I wonder if it is worthwhile to make a distinction between the total damage (successes+ST+x) and the weapon's damage (ST+x).  Some of the damage from successes must relate to the placement of the blow, not just how hard it is.  Placement wouldn't necessarily affect the amount of damage that penetrates a shield.    
Perhaps the weapon would have to penetrate the shield first (ST+x) and then any remaining damage could be applied (success+ST+x-AVshield - TO - AVarmor).

Strong characters with big weapons will be more likely to punch through shields...which is probably realistic.

You might apply a similar rule to swinging attacks and parries.

[Brian Leybourne]

The problem, Toli, is that you're swinging too far on the pendulum.

You see, I have this theory that there's a pendulum in RPG design. On one side of the arc is realism, and on the other side is playability. What I mean is that the more realistic you want to be, the less playable you end up being because of all the complex rules you need to create that realism. Conversely, the most playable games tend not to have much realism in them (hit points, armor making you harder to hit at all instead of easier to hit but protecting you from damage etc).

TROS has a really good balance, IMO, it's quite realistic and nice and gritty, but not at the sacrifice of playability. Not to swell Jake's head or anything, but I believe it's the best fantasy RPG system I have ever come across (albiet some work needed on Magic, perhaps).

What you're proposing swings the pendulum more towards realism. It's a cool idea, but it sacrifices playability because you have a lot more computation to do every time someone lands a hit, and that slows down the game and is less fun. Again, IMO.

Brian.

[Irmo]

Yes, more dice must, to an extent, indicate effort. This because a strong attack, one with a lot of effort, is a good attack by definition. One thing you get taught, even in sport fencing (my only practical experience) is that if you don't pose a credible threat, your attacks as well as your defense are for nought. So, making an attack that is less powerful than what you could have done, and making it well, is very difficult in actuality. Jake, does your experience back me up here?

I'd say it depends on what the actual attack looks like. A lot of real maneuvers are at the same time defensive and offensive, eliminating the opponent's weapon as a threat and bringing you into a position to harm him, similar to "counters". Depending on what school you follow, the emphasis can seriously be more on creating harm than creating serious harm. Ringeck insists on seizing and keeping the initiative at any cost, to make sure that you dictate the rules of the game. If that means that you hit him into the face with the pommel because you turned your blade around to let his glide off, then well, let the poor sucker eat soup for the rest of his life (how long that may be...). Due to the limited space, the attack is certainly not as strong as if you made a full turn of the arm and hit him with the blade from overhead, but the emphasis here is on speed, not on force. The main point is hitting him before he can recover, rather than hitting him hard. Likewise if he countered your attack, there are counter-counters. They're not always the most forceful attacks, but put the emphasis on cutting your losses and making sure you DO hit him.

So, it all depends on what your style is.

[Warboss Grock]

Ok, Here's an example. of how to get 25-30 Die Pools, with the SA's, with a limit of 5 on any one spiritual attribute,
Destiny: To return to your homeland in glory, 4
Drive: Recover your lost honor, 3
Faith: Bushido (Bushido teaches how to kill men and their ilk, But only in honorable combat, the player in question ABSOLUTELY CANNOT use this against Monsters. if you believe this is not faith, ask a samauri.) 4
Luck: 4
Concience: 3

So when fighting the Black Knight, (Human, Powerful, Dishonorable, Evil so in a pinch, concience applies, he may be able to pull in as many as 14 spiritual attribute dice.  combined with a combat pool of 12(14, -2 for armor penalties, yes he actually did spend some dice to beef up the character, however he keeps it riding high as often as possible.) equals an effectife combat pool of 26,

Now, if you pull all this crap into a single blow,let's say to zone III, would it be A desparate blow, or A guided blow to Disarm

Yes, this is an extremely specific situation, However you dodged answering my earlier question.

[Jake Norwood]

We talked about this earlier...I think that Bankuei or Mokkerkalfe had a good solution--one that could easily work in the case of SA "overkill." However, I really think it works like this: never draw a sword on a man you don't intend to kill. I assure you he isn't planning on just teaching you a "lesson."
Jake

[Valamir]

I happen to think that GMs are little too willing to allow easy interpretations of SAs which I think encourages the situation that Warboss describes.  I would require a lot more information before I'd allow all of those SAs to apply to the situation described in the example.

For instance:  How does defeating this black knight have anything to do with returning to the homeland with glory.  Is the opponent someone significant?  Is he famous?  Is killing him going to be sung about in songs and legends for generations to come...if not than ixnay on the Destiny in my book.  Julius Caesar returned to Rome covered in Glory.  To do it he had to spend many years waging war and conquering an entire people.  THAT was worthy of giving him a parade.  Simply killing some poor sod in single combat...unless this combat was somehow directly tied to something far bigger...I wouldn't buy it.  

Similiarly Drive: Recover lost honor.  How would fighting this black knight have anything to do with that.  Is this the knight who caused him to lose his honor in the first place?  Was his honor lost because he wet his pants and ran away in fear from a black knight and now he's facing that fear and proving he isn't a coward?  If not ixnay on the Drive.

Faith Bushido:  Maybe...depending on how you set up the campaign.  I'd have a hard time accepting an SA whose obvious function was just a free dice generator for combat...I'm not sure how believing in a code of honor and honor through combat would automatically feed into every combat (even with the honorable no monsters restriction).  Perhaps in a combat against an opponent who was a CHALLENGE to that code.  Someone who opposed the code who stood for a way of life diametrically opposed to bushido such that this particular combat pitted ideology against ideology...but as a rule every time you step into battle...I doubt it.

Concience:  that's kind of a funny one.  I don't think the description of conscience did a very thorough job of outlining just what value system is supposed to be challenged before it kicks in, but I don't see it being applicable in this combat without more information.  To me Concience comes into play when the character witnesses something that he knows is wrong that he should try to stop but which its in his best selfish interest not to get involved.  Concience is that little voice that forces him to get involved and if he follows it THEN the dice can be called upon.  But simply being a "good guy" faced with fighting a "bad guy"...no that isn't sufficient in and of itself to call upon those dice.


SAs are not Super Powers.  Ron has been enthusiastic about espousing using the SAs and giving dramatic examples of how the SAs can lead to tremendous dice pools...but that was in a very specific context that I think is being overlooked.

There should be as a rule only 1 or 2 scenes in an entire session where an SA or two is even applicable.  The combats that involve pulling in 4 or 5 SAs should be the climactic resolution of an entire campaign.

If you are routinely in every combat allowing characters to draw on 3 or 4 SAs IMO you are being WAY to liberal in permitting their use.  

I will note that I'd definitely apply this guidline different between a 1 shot session adventure vs. an ongoing campaign.

[Durgil]

Very good write-up, Valamir!  I couldn't agree more.