A combat question...

[Trav]

I was running a game this weekend and am curious as to what should happen in this scenario.

There was combat between two people.  In the first part of the round the aggressor decided to try to finish his opponent off quickly and used all of his dice.  The defender parried with all except one.  The two combatants tied, so the aggressor was technically supposed to attack on the second part of the round.  At this point I wasn't sure what to do.  Since the aggressor didn't have any dice should he still be on the attack, or did he put everything into that attack and leave himself open so the defender should be attacking.

I ended up just saying that he was attacking with zero dice and the defender rolled his one die so that he became the aggressor at the first part of the next round.  

Anybody have any thoughts about this scenario?

[svenlein]

Attacker has no dice, so loses initiative.
old Defender get initiative, he attackes with 1 dice.
old attacker hopes he rolls below the ATN

[Thirsty Viking]

Attacker is never forced to attack..   if he commits no dice to it. then the other player takes initiative.  If he has no dice left then he is off balance and unable to defend against the counterattack.

[Trav]

Thanks

That was where my gut instinct was going, but I second guessed myself and went with the other decision.

[Lance D. Allen]

In this case, the former attacker would *technically* still have initiative, but he would be unable to do anything, so it wouldn't matter. Resolving "nothing" before "something" will still have "something" causing some sort of effect before "nothing" would.

Also, Remember that initiative does NOT decide who attacks and who defends, except on the very first round when the combatants drop dice. You are perfectly capable of choosing to attack when the other combatant has initiative. However, their action will resolve before yours does in this case, and if you did not defend, you very well may be dead or in too much shock or pain to act when it comes time to resolve your action.

[Trav]

Thanks, that cleared up all the confusion.