Sorcerer: Small Rules Questions

[jburneko]

Hello,

In the last session of my current Sorcerer game an interesting thing happened and I want to clearify if my adjudication was within the scope of the rules.  We were in the middle of an extremely complicated and multifacited combat/conflict.  Part of that involved a Passer demon (Drew) and an NPC (Wallace Lasser)  tusseling on the ground.  For a given round of action one of the players announced, "I strike out at the tusseling characters with my cane."  Initially, I tried to get the player to be more specific but she didn't want to.  She seemed generally interested in beating at the dirt cloud and striking anyone with in it at random.

So this is what I did.  I had everyone roll as normal with this being the relevant ordering:

Annie (The PC with the cane)
Wallace Lasser
Drew

So Annie's cane comes smashing down first.  And the way I read this was that Wallace at the moment clearly has the upper hand so I had the cane strike him.  It was sort of like those moments where the camera is focused on two people fighting and then just as one of them is about to deliver the killer blow when something comes sailing in from off camera to whack him.  This felt sort of like an application of the dice diagram stuff from Sex & Sorcery, but I wasn't sure.

Also, the last session very much felt like the "hump" of the game.  A lot of stuff got resolved and now it's about tie-ing up the loose threads.  So, I have a question about the "rewrite the character" part of Kicker resolution.  Does that include shuffling the actual score values around or is it limited only to rewriting descriptors?

Thanks.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jesse,

As far as the cane "striking into the tussle" is concerned, there are three ways to deal with it.

1. "No, you have to choose your target." I wouldn't recommend this, in this case. The image of someone striking wildly but determinedly into a confused, close-quarter fight works so well for me, and I think for everyone, that it clears my "is that an action" threshold easily.

2. "Target is the person [in the tussle] whose turn comes after the cane strikes." Yes, this is an excellent application of the dice diagram concept and serves as a solid, advanced usage of the Sorcerer rules. Good work.

3. "Hit'em both!" This is another viable option, that the cane-striking could be treated as an area attack. It'd be like laying down suppressing fire over an area - the attacker makes one roll, but everyone in the area of effect has a separate defense against that roll.

Best, R ...

Oh wait. You slipped in another question at the end. Sneaky!

So, I have a question about the "rewrite the character" part of Kicker resolution.  Does that include shuffling the actual score values around or is it limited only to rewriting descriptors?

I have no idea what you're really asking, so I'll just repeat the rules.

1. Roll Humanity against any score of the player's choice. If Humanity wins, increase the score by 1. If it fails, then you (the player) can move on to another score of your choice and try that one. If you try once for each score and fail each time, too bad.

3. Rewrite any and all descriptors as desired.

Was something not clear about those, or am I missing your question? There is no "shuffling" of scores in any sense.

Best, Ron

[jburneko]

Thanks.  That's all clear.

However, with the shuffling scores thing, I think I was mainly thinking about the stuff in Socerer & Sword about playing scenarios out of order where I might want to actually change the numbers of my character around to reflect more of what I think of him at that time.

Consider that in scenario A I imagine my character to be this masterful sorcerer with scores like this:

Stamina: 2
Will: 3
Lore: 5

But then in scenario B, which is supposed to take place years before scenario A, I imagine him being a well established sorcerer but a much young and heartier man.  Thus this feels more appropriate:

Stamina: 4
Will: 3
Lore: 3

I was wondering if such manipulation fell under the "rewrite the character" rule.

Jesse

[Ron Edwards]

Whoa!

That's not the rule, for Sorcerer & Sword. You should leave those attribute scores exactly the way they are.

I know it makes no sense for in-game chronological causality, but such causality between adventures is totally not the point in this genre especially.

Leave the scores where they are. Change the descriptors all you want - in fact, you could be playing an adept with Lore 4 in your first adventure and increase his already-high Lore by 1, then jump back twenty years before he became an adept. Fine. Change the descriptor to "naive." But keep the Lore at its new value of 5.

It's a big deal. Trust me on this one.

Best, Ron