Fencing system: crunchier extended constests?

[Web_Weaver]

P.S. to above,
My HQ game is ship based with an occasional Swashbuckling style, and the game system has always produced the appropriate flavour.

[Mike Holmes]

Yep, simply augmenting as appropriate from very detailed school keywords, now that I can say will work extremely well. Good stuff.

Mike

[Barna]

In the flavour text for 7th Sea swordsman schools, each style is given a supposed weakness, although this is never explicitly addressed in play (that is, there are no mechanics for it). Besides the 4 maneuvers and 3 style abilities, I intent to give each school a weakness ability which can be triggered by the GM (ot the player, if the knows the opposing style) as an augment to the attacker. However, I´m not sure how I can combine this with the notion of players becoming more experienced in fighting against one style or the other.

One idea if to have the style´s flaw ability start at 13. If a character buys the "Know XXX school weakness" ability, whenever he fights an opponent of that school, his score in this ability replaces the opponent´s score in his flaw. For example, if my character has "Know Aldana school flaw" 5M, all my Aldana opponents count as if they had their flaw ability at level 5M instead of 13.

[soviet]

In the flavour text for 7th Sea swordsman schools, each style is given a supposed weakness, although this is never explicitly addressed in play (that is, there are no mechanics for it). Besides the 4 maneuvers and 3 style abilities, I intent to give each school a weakness ability which can be triggered by the GM (ot the player, if the knows the opposing style) as an augment to the attacker. However, I´m not sure how I can combine this with the notion of players becoming more experienced in fighting against one style or the other.

One idea if to have the style´s flaw ability start at 13. If a character buys the "Know XXX school weakness" ability, whenever he fights an opponent of that school, his score in this ability replaces the opponent´s score in his flaw. For example, if my character has "Know Aldana school flaw" 5M, all my Aldana opponents count as if they had their flaw ability at level 5M instead of 13.

You don't need to include any special rules to do this, the tools are already there in the system. Just give each style a distinctive flaw as an ability and a 'take advantage of opposing school's flaw' as an ability, and use them as positive or negative augments (or primary abilities, whatever). If a player manages to engineer a situation that really exploits his opponents School Flaw then give him an appropriately large modifier. Similarly, if players want to counter opponents being able to exploit their own flaw, or counter their counter, they should just buy a new ability eg. Falstaffian Backhand Guard or whatever.

Mark