All dice on offence!

[Lyrax]

You have to tell the defender *roughly* how intensely the attacker is attacking.  Otherwise, it sucks to defend.

[Mike Holmes]

Like I said. Just give a hint. Or have a roll for it Ala the above discussion). That's extensive, but would be cool, IMO. Sucking to defend means, generally, rolling more dice, just to be sure. Which is fine with me. It means more parrying, and feeling the opponent out before someone gets bold, and goes deep.

I really think it might be cool. Again, it means that the player's tactics in determining his enemy's tactics become just that much more important (normally part of dice rolls, but can be extracted here if we like). Anyhow, just something to toy with.

Mike

[Jake Norwood]

I'm sure that works if the character survives. But not using all your dice could be fatal. Still, if one were to play very defensively, one could survive until the opponent got complacent....

Still, I'd like to see what would happen with all rolls hidden. Anyone willing to try out a test of this? I think it would have a cool feel.

Mike

While I'll be the last person to object to further testing, our experience with this very mechanic in original playtesting was, well, really bloody and quite clumsy.

Jake

[Vanguard]

Though some good points have been raised in this thread, I basically agree with Jaeger.  

I've had DMs, Refs, Seneschals, Storytellers, etc..., come up to groups in the past with a kind of 'fuck up one tiny aspect of my plot and you're sandwich, mate' attitude.  And it's very frustrating.  

Out of the window goes all effort at roleplaying.  You're purely intent on surviving the maniac's adventure.  Not fun, and not heroic.  Heroes survive cos they're fighting with conviction, not cos they've made astronomically fluky dice roles over the last half-hour.

Take care

[Michael Tree]

I hate to resurrect an months-old threat, but I had to respond to this.

I'll agree with Mike, except to re-emphasise that all CP rolls (attack, defense) are made "on the table" for all to see. That way an observant player would konw an opponent's CP by the end fo the first round, assuming his opponent is using them all. It's fun sometimes to not use them for 2 or 3 rounds and let the players get comfy and start planning around it, then "YIKES! The bad guy's got 4 more dice!?! Where'd those come from???"

This sort of thing is the essence of good strategy, to me.  Among skilled fighters, a lot of the fight consists of trying to measure up the skill of your opponent, and trying to trick your opponent into making a mistake that you can explot.  Not using your full skill is a good way of tricking your opponent into overextending himself, a potentially fatal mistake.

I don't have the book yet (being a poor student and all).  Are there any maneuvers in the book that amount to "purposefully leaving an opening in your defense, hoping your opponent will fall for it and attack that opening, so you can execute a planned counter move against that specific attack"?

[Mokkurkalfe]

I imagine that the maneuver described is a counter of some kind, although a counter doesn't involve opening your defence, as far as game mechanics are involved. It could, of course, involve an opening when the story is told, so to speak.

[Jake Norwood]

It is in there, but it has to be "figured out." I do it all the time, and it works amazingly well. It's a combination of things, one of which is the counter manevuer. If this "move" was allready in there, how much fun would there be in figuring out what the Riddle is?

Jake

[Valamir]

Would that be the same move you used to beat my burly Savraxen berserker with a boy armed with a stick Master Norwood?

[Jake Norwood]

Would that be the same move you used to beat my burly Savraxen berserker with a boy armed with a stick Master Norwood?

Ah, GenCon Memories...

It might have been. I know so many...he he he...

The thing is that I thought that move was unbreakable until someone here pointed out a maneuver that would counter it rather well (they didn't know that when they said it, but I saw it). It made me proud to know that the game had so many more layers than I myself saw initially.

Jake

[Jim DelRosso]

Would that be the same move you used to beat my burly Savraxen berserker with a boy armed with a stick Master Norwood?

Reminds me of a scene from GRRM's Game of Thrones. :-)

[Brian Leybourne]

Yeah, except the "boy" with the stick lost. It just took a while. :-)

Brian.

[Jim DelRosso]

Yeah, except the "boy" with the stick lost. It just took a while. :-)

Brian.

Yup.  So'd the guy in GoT.  It's the while that it takes that's interesting. :-)

[Brian Leybourne]

Yeah, except the "boy" with the stick lost. It just took a while. :-)

Brian.

Yup.  So'd the guy in GoT.  It's the while that it takes that's interesting. :-)

I was talking about the guy in GOT :-) (I've never had the fortune to rpg with Jake, so I don't know what happened in their game).

[Jim DelRosso]

Ah.  My mistake.  :-)

[Valamir]

I like to think the boy with the stick would have lost in our game too, but since he was only 13 and the son of the chief whose tribe had us surrounded I chose not to press the issue ;-)