HELP! First, Pulling a punch. Second an index to this forum.

[Dain]

Hey Guys,

How does one pull a punch (decided pre-emptively...not a "whoops, can I take that back" upon noticing your successes are so great you're going to gut someone)? I browsed through the forum and the only topic I found that seems to kindof address this is back on page 32 or so and is called "Overdamage", and I'm not sure I quite followed it or that it exactly applies.

What prompted this is the lethality of the system versus the duels historically fought. While some actually were actually the bloody death battles normally envisioned, the vast majority (or so I have come to believe based on books I've read thus far) were to first blood only...and that first blood was normally somewhere between a scratch and a bad cut...not a skewered, disembodied heart waving wildly on the end of the opponent's blade while he merrilly dances and cavorts around the dueling grounds laughing and pointing at the expired corpse.

Under the assumption that two highly moral individuals have found themselves in a duel they could not avoid, and they are using rapier's (for which the valid target area...for proper gentlemen anyhow...is upper and lower torso and groin...no arms, no legs, no head), how does one avoid killing your opponent? Using less dice is obviously not the answer as pulling a punch is TOUGHER than going all out and requires MORE skill, not less.

Also please consider the case where a kind hearted master is insulted by some hapless pion, and wants to give him the chance to appologize rather than just kill him outright. As a master he should be able to coupe, double, disengage, and otherwise parry repost his opponent into a tizzy, stopping his point short of contact by an inch or so each time, without so much as scratching him (unless the opponent runs into the blade by trying to ballustra lunge forward during the attack or something and impales himself on the point that would have otherwise fallen safely short).

I had given thought to a house rule that basically said the attacker gets to decide HOW the net successes affect his damage (if 3 net successes, then he would have the choice of whether those 3 successes increase or decrease weapon damage when it came time to apply damage) but I'm not sure that is the way to go or not. The forum article mentioned above seems like it is hinting the attacker should just throw away extra CP dice above and beyond those he used in the attack...which makes no sense to me as it would take so many (given typical weapon damage) that doing so would leave him defenseless for the second exchange, so a one die attack by the pion would basically gut the master because he exhausted his entire pool trying not to gut the pion...which makes no sense because a master should have no problem staying safely out of reach barring a fumble and should only have minimal problems putting his point as close as possible to a desired target while still avoiding actually touching his opponent (most of which of these problems are probably a result of the opponent's incompetance and exuberance in wanting to jump forward when it is not safe to do so).

While I'm open to all comments from anyone, I'm not really looking for a new house rule here so much as hoping for input from the actual system designers.

thanks much!

[murazor]

Good thing you're not asking for a house rule, since I can't really think of one. (And it's a bit early for me to supply house rules anyway, seing that I've barely tried the system yet) However, a few things come to mind;
First of all, why not use a feint to make sure that you use just enough dice to hit your opponent? Sounds like a fine display of superior skill to me. And if you're worried about skewering him with your rapier (as well you should be), how about cutting/slashing with it? Like Archibald Cunningham toying with Rob Roy McGregor before running him through (at least, that was the idea).
For controlled cuts, on the other hand - forcefully swung, but stopped before hitting - I suppose you do need special rules, so I'll refrain from commenting on those situations.

[Deacon Blues]

pulling punches

Use fewer dice on the attack.

[Brian Leybourne]

How about something like this (off the top of my head).

Get the player to roll his attack as normal, and at the same timwe roll his wit (TN based on proficiency somehow, it's harder to pull attacks when you really don't know what you're doing, so maybe 10-proficiency with a minimum of 3, something like that). Use different colored dice for the Wit roll or just roll in a different area so you don't mix them up.

Each success on the Wit roll is one success you can choose to reduce your (MOS+Str+Damage) by, before it's compared to the opponents TO+AR.

How's that? Refinements please...

[Dain]

That's exactly the response that in the original posting was declared to be not correct, especially since a net success of one by a strong person still inflicts a mortal wound on an average toughness non-armored opponent...which is the case of two dweebs dueling or the case of one master versus one dweeb dueling that I am attempting to find a resolution for.

Whoops...Brian snuck in a response before I hit submit. Brian, this is not talking about your response (which I have not read yet).

Got to be quicker on the post I see <grin>

[Brian Leybourne]

PS: You never asked your second question, but yes, there is an index to this forum (of sorts, it's a month or two out of date again). Look at the Sticky "Forum Directory" at the top of the topic listing.

Brian.

[Dain]

Thanks Brian! Yes the second question was "where's the index." As for the first, I like the concept of the 10 - proficiency, minimum 3 thing, but I do have a question though. If wit is being used, and you are average wit (4), then at most you are probably going to get 4 successes....with damage being str (4) + weapon (2 for rapier) + net successes (at least one but possibly lots more if you are that good and your opponent sucks that much) that leads to incoming damage of no less than seven, reduced by no more than 4 for wit and 4 more for toughness (barring armor). Granted that's negative one so far, but pump str up by 2 and toughness down by one (let alone one or two more net successes) and you're already well on your way to a mortal wound as your BEST hope (level 2 wound plus net successes beyond one) and that's on a PERFECT wit roll. Just a thought. No need to hurry in response...I'm kindof looking for a rock solid rule that might show up in a supplement some day, so if you don't mind, please kick it around for a while if you have the time and let me know what you come up with.

thanks again for the lightning response!

[Caz]

Here's my house rule for pulling blows.  First of all use fewer dice to attack.
   But anyhow, here it is.  After you roll to see if the blow hits or not, roll either ST or AG, whichever you see as most appropriate, I'd go with AG for bare hands, vs the ATN of the weapon (or fist I guess).  Subtract the successes from the damage dealt.
            Pretty simple.

[Edge]

This came up in my game last night but not in the case of dueling but rather punching.
One of my players wanted to pull his punch to knock someone out rather than killing him.
We rolled it all normally and he got a level 5 wound and killed the poor kid so we decided on the spot that he could take 2 dmg off the end dmg before attacking in the future.

The reasoning behind this is that before you attack you are already thinking that you are going to pull the punch though when it comes down to it it still might not be enough or it may be a little to much which is probably pretty realistic in my view

[kenjib]

Maybe the simplest way to handle it would be to just allow people to use less than their total strength in the attack, so damage can range anywhere from MOS + weapon damage up to MOS + str + weapon damage completely at the attacker's discretion.  This must be declared before the dice are rolled.  You still run the risk of killing someone from excessive MOS, but you don't have to make any extra die rolls this way.  This method also makes it more difficult to pull punches with more deadly weapons, since you can't compensate for the weapon modifier, which makes a lot of sense to me.

[Richard_Strey]

I'm with kenjib on this one. Actually, he stole my thoughts. ;)
"Pulling a punch" is just hitting with less strength, right? So leave the rules alone and do just that! It is all there in the book, you just have to look for it.

[Edge]

Yeah that sounds better than a flat 2 point reduction.

So a punch would be MOS -2 dmg with as much or as little STR added as you wanted (obviously decided before the roll.

Yep that sounds good :)

[Jake Norwood]

What prompted this is the lethality of the system versus the duels historically fought. While some actually were actually the bloody death battles normally envisioned, the vast majority (or so I have come to believe based on books I've read thus far) were to first blood only...and that first blood was normally somewhere between a scratch and a bad cut...not a skewered, disembodied heart waving wildly on the end of the opponent's blade while he merrilly dances and cavorts around the dueling grounds laughing and pointing at the expired corpse.

Under the assumption that two highly moral individuals have found themselves in a duel they could not avoid, and they are using rapier's (for which the valid target area...for proper gentlemen anyhow...is upper and lower torso and groin...no arms, no legs, no head), how does one avoid killing your opponent? Using less dice is obviously not the answer as pulling a punch is TOUGHER than going all out and requires MORE skill, not less.

Well, part of the problem with the rapier is that once "friendly" duels began to end in death constantly, bringing in all kinds of new laws into England and Italy, for example, about rapier lengths, etc, not to mention the hatred of the military, as the rapier was a weapon used for killing one's countrymen, not the enemy. "First blood" duels, as I understand it, were usually strikes to the arms and wrists, or non-lethal cuts to the body. Also, it takes skill not to injure someone, so I would either be for using less dice on the attack, reducing ST, or for making a pulled blow a "terrain roll" based on the weapon's DTN.  That last one's my favorite.

Also please consider the case where a kind hearted master is insulted by some hapless pion, and wants to give him the chance to appologize rather than just kill him outright. As a master he should be able to coupe, double, disengage, and otherwise parry repost his opponent into a tizzy, stopping his point short of contact by an inch or so each time, without so much as scratching him (unless the opponent runs into the blade by trying to ballustra lunge forward during the attack or something and impales himself on the point that would have otherwise fallen safely short).

Use the counter maneuver, mixed with the above ideas.

Does that help?

[Bankuei]

Hi Dain,

From my experience, it does take significant skill to not "overly" hurt someone if you are serious about fighting, especially with weapons.  Any attacks need to inflict enough force to cause stun/shock, but not enough to be a serious injury.  

That's why I advocate that spending a cp/injury level as an option.  If you spend about 2 or 3, you can preclude folks getting their spinal cords juggled while still having the option to inflict a level 2 or 3 wound as appropriate.  Note that after you spend the CP, you don't HAVE to reduce the wound, you just have the OPTION of doing so.  I would suspect that most masters have an extra 2 or 3 CP to spare for the average meat monkey about to be schooled.

Chris

[Dain]

Thanks to all. Special thanks to Jake and Brian as I'm sure you're swamped all day long with these things. Lots of good ideas all around here. It will be interesting to see what the final ruling ends up being in future printings or supplements.

Some ideas I personally think especially noteworthy included the following:
1. pulling a punch has to be declared prior to rolling any dice...too bad for you if the other guy is better than you think or if he gets lucky on a counter of some nature...you don't get to change your mind when you see the results. It's pretty rare you change your mind on whether or not to gut your opponent in mid thrust....usually that decision is made before the attack begins...now if he gets lucky and hits you back, then emotions may make one reconsider being so kind on the NEXT attack.
2.  leaving off the strength (which is really what you do when you are just "playing with" someone...you just maneuver the blade into a lethal position without completing the lunge that would actually deliver the lethal wound. Leaving off the strength reduces the damage by tons in this system, especially if one's strength is considerably greater than 4 and one is fighting an unarmored opponent).
3. while reducing dice used is not an answer in itself, it does make sense to not waste your pool unnecessarily and reserve some for defense, so I acknowledge several posters suggesting that tactic.

Jake, could you please expound upon your favorite?...the terrain method? Maybe with an off the cuff example? Who's DTN, attacker or defender? Terrain based on actual terrain conditions? What number of dice would be rolled (sorry if that's an obvious value based on move statistic or something that is clearly listed in the terrain maneuver section of the book...I've only read it a couple of times so far and not all of it has stuck yet, so I'm not recalling the mechanic).

Thanks again to all!