[&Sword] Trading Victories Question (split)

[LordEntropy]

Hi James,

Sorry 'bout the delay; the home wireless is acting funny. Let's see if I can stay on-line long enough for this to work.

OK! I'll focus on your second example.

Basically, the only way Conan can escape the effects of Total Victory is to have six saved victories.

a) Let's say he did. He uses them. The spider still "wins" in terms of narration, but Conan takes no mechanical consequences.

b) Let's say the rolls and situation stand as you described, so he doesn't. What he can do is buy off three of the existing six successes, so the Total Victory does remain, but with three victories, which is at least better than six from Conan's point of view.

Best,
Ron

I have recently picked up Sorcerer & Sword and have been doing some research of the trading victories rules. I have read many threads but this comment above from Ron is confusing me.

The rule states you can only trade off "non-Victory" dice, so i am confused how this reply seems to indicate that you can buy off Victory dice.

Incidentally, the Sorcerer rules really rock!!

[edited only to alter the title slightly]

[Ron Edwards]

Hello!

I split your post from the thread that inspired it ([&Sword] Trading victories question), because older threads should be left in their temporal context. No big deal.

That's a good question. I looked over the rules and was puzzled myself, which is weird, because I know they make sense, and so that means I am merely confused and vexed. I shall try to answer fairly.

... after looking them over again ...

Be back soon.

Best, Ron

[LordEntropy]

Hello!

I split your post from the thread that inspired it ([&Sword] Trading victories question), because older threads should be left in their temporal context. No big deal.

That's a good question. I looked over the rules and was puzzled myself, which is weird, because I know they make sense, and so that means I am merely confused and vexed. I shall try to answer fairly.

... after looking them over again ...

Be back soon.

Best, Ron

Cheers Ron, Sorry about using the old thread..Look forward to your reply.

Regards LE

[Ron Edwards]

Finally!

My apologies for the delay. This is the first afternoon I've really owned for about three months ...

Anyway, here's the flat truth: my explanation in that original thread is not actually correct. The character cannot get rid of a foe's victories by trading them out, although (in reflection) I wouldn't object if people played that way.

The rule as written in the book actually dates back to a time when the combat rules were a little more complicated (in fact, more like what you can find in The Apprentice version from 1999 or so). But adapting it to the modern/real rules, it is still applicable, if a little weaker than I'd like and less oriented toward the concept of avoiding Total Victory.

Here's how to apply it if you stick to the written rule: apply the saved victories to your own losing roll, effectively taking them out of play so they're not beaten by the victorious dice. You only have to remove as many of them as the victories the foe has over you. If the dice aren't there, they're not being beaten, and thus you take less damage, up to and including none.

Best, Ron

[LordEntropy]

Finally!

My apologies for the delay. This is the first afternoon I've really owned for about three months ...

Anyway, here's the flat truth: my explanation in that original thread is not actually correct. The character cannot get rid of a foe's victories by trading them out, although (in reflection) I wouldn't object if people played that way.

The rule as written in the book actually dates back to a time when the combat rules were a little more complicated (in fact, more like what you can find in The Apprentice version from 1999 or so). But adapting it to the modern/real rules, it is still applicable, if a little weaker than I'd like and less oriented toward the concept of avoiding Total Victory.

Here's how to apply it if you stick to the written rule: apply the saved victories to your own losing roll, effectively taking them out of play so they're not beaten by the victorious dice. You only have to remove as many of them as the victories the foe has over you. If the dice aren't there, they're not being beaten, and thus you take less damage, up to and including none.

Best, Ron

Ron, Thanks for taking the time to reply I appreciate it. I am reading this just before I go to work and I have a few questions on your reply but I want to think them through first, so I will post again later but wanted to acknowledge your reply. Thanks again

[Moreno R.]

The rule as written in the book actually dates back to a time when the combat rules were a little more complicated (in fact, more like what you can find in The Apprentice version from 1999 or so). But adapting it to the modern/real rules, it is still applicable, if a little weaker than I'd like and less oriented toward the concept of avoiding Total Victory.

Hi Ron!

If you could rewrite that rule now, how you would change it?

[Ron Edwards]

If I changed it, I'd only change it such that the cancelling of an opponent's victory dice is possible, just as in my example in the parent thread.

However, saved victories cannot transform one's own non-victory dice into victorious ones, nor can they reverse the actual outcome of the immediate conflict. No matter what, saved victories or not, the person who won the roll, won the roll. These features should stay the same.

Best, Ron

[LordEntropy]

Here's how to apply it if you stick to the written rule: apply the saved victories to your own losing roll, effectively taking them out of play so they're not beaten by the victorious dice. You only have to remove as many of them as the victories the foe has over you. If the dice aren't there, they're not being beaten, and thus you take less damage, up to and including none.

Best, Ron

Ron, Hi, Sorry for the delay in my reply. Life seems to be really busy these days.

I didn't really understand the quote above, I don't see how removing my dice from the table affects the amount of damage he/she has over me. Unless I have misunderstood wildly if I have 3 dice to roll in a conflict and my opponent has 7, the fact I have 4 less dice than him does not affect the amount of damage he can do to me, if he rolls 5 victories against my 4 dice me removing 2 of those dice with 2 saved victories still means he has 5 victories, or have I really messed up here?

Anyway, essentially what I need to do here is get some clarification from this post above and some of the stuff I have read in the parent thread so I can be clear in my mind how this should work.

So here goes..

Saved victories have to be used in the next action after they were saved?

I can use saved victories to remove non-victory dice from myself so that I achieve a total victory over an opponent if possible?

I can use saved victories to remove non-victory dice from myself to reduce the number of dice I have to 1 therefore negating someone's total victory as stated on page 18 of the Sorcerer rulebook.

I can used saved victories to reduce the number of victory dice my opponent has to reduce the number of victory dice my opponent has over me thus reducing the amount of damage he has inflicted?

I cannot use saved victories to convert non-victory dice to victory dice?

Look forward to your reply when convenient.

[LordEntropy]

Oh and one thing I forgot.

Total Victory does not give the victor any more "damage" but does allow for some cool improvement on a standard victory?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I can clear up your first question easily: in the example you've presented, unless you have four saved victories, you're out of luck. What you're effectively doing is retracting your entire roll, practically a "fold" or a "take-back" - it's a function which is utterly unique to saving victories, not represented by or paralleled by anything else in Sorcerer. The character still loses the immediate conflict (for example, the guy still hits him and the narration must proceed with that in its content), but by retracting your commitment in terms of dice, you avoid the mechanical consequences of losing.

Again, though, it won't work unless you can get all of your dice out of there.

Now for the string o'questions ...

Saved victories have to be used in the next action after they were saved?

Yes ... well, let me clarify that, because the rules are clear about it - they must be used in the next round, which is to say, they might not be applied to one's own action, but rather to the defensive roll against someone else in that round. You can split them up, too. You don't have to state how many you're using for what in the beginning, just as you go along until they're all used up. Basically, the way to look at it is this: if the next whole round has gone by, and you haven't used one or more of the saved victories, then it/they vanish.

Given my answer to your first question, you can probably see right away that when you get a big ol' humongous success with lots of victories early in a Sorcerer & Sword combat, you may do well to save them for later instead of applying them immediately.

I can use saved victories to remove non-victory dice from myself so that I achieve a total victory over an opponent if possible?

Yup! This is the classic use of the rule.

I can use saved victories to remove non-victory dice from myself to reduce the number of dice I have to 1 therefore negating someone's total victory as stated on page 18 of the Sorcerer rulebook.

Yup! Sneaky, huh? But it's not something you want to do blindly. Mechanically, you may be making things worse in terms of number of victories. Therefore you only want to do this in circumstances when degree of victory is irrelevant, i.e., consequential penalties; and/or in circumstances in which the nature of Total Victory is unacceptable to you for some reason. I can imagine many such circumstances as well as many without.

I can used saved victories to reduce the number of victory dice my opponent has [typo snipped] over me thus reducing the amount of damage he has inflicted?

Given the recommendation in this thread, yes. But it's not supported by the book's text and should be considered a recommendation or addendum, not a rule.

I cannot use saved victories to convert non-victory dice to victory dice?

Absolutely not. No such conversion is ever available in Sorcerer.

Total Victory does not give the victor any more "damage" but does allow for some cool improvement on a standard victory?

That's correct, but please check out the discussion in [Sorcerer] Rules for Total Victory, because it really lays out what Total Victory means. It contains some internal links to previous discussions that may be interesting too, but that's the one with the actual "this is Total Victory" explanation. However, if you really want to see the concept in useful action relative to other aspects of the rules, check out the slightly-later discussion [Sorcerer] Orthogonal and oppositional conflicts.

Best, Ron

[Moreno R.]

Hi Ron!

Only Player characters can Trade Victories, or even npcs can? What about demons?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Moreno,

Well, let's see.

1. Player-characters can do it, certainly.

2. Important non-demon NPCs? I play that they can, usually (in my mind) associating the rule with some kind of relevant score descriptor. As you can see, this is quite loose, in terms of rules. If I had to write a formal rule for it, it'd read: "This rule is utilized by NPCs insofar as their score descriptors indicate that it should." The judgment should be left up to the GM. However, that judgment needs to be rock-solid and worthy of respect, not made-up or freely improvised during play itself.

3. Demons - no. This is something demons do not get to do. As a general principle, I think of demons as "cartoons" - very powerful, free from a variety of rules that everyone else follows, but also quite limited in terms of their perspectives and flexibility of action.

Best, Ron

P.S. I promise to use your name correctly from now on.

[Moreno R.]

Hi Ron!

Let's see if I have understood what you mean: you are talking about a npc with some specific score descriptor of the specific setting (like, for example, "Atlantean-trained" or "Honed on the Chryse Plains" in the Dictionary of Mu, but not "Grayblood" or "Child of the waste", because the first two define a focus on being very battle-trained, while the latter two define a focus on strenght), so that every npc important enough to be detailed, with these descriptors, could trade victories, right?

What about the player characters that don't have these descriptors? From other threads I got the impression that PC, too, should have these descriptors to be able to do trade victories (I get this is what you mean when you say "descriptors firing in unison", right?) but that "Player-characters can do it, certainly" make me want to have a confirmation on this.

[LordEntropy]

Ron, Hi, Thanks for the comprehensive reply. I initially thought I had some more questions but upon re-reading I think you have covered it all.

Certainly seems that Trading Victories is absolutely lethal if used correctly from the explanations given above.

Many thanks for all your help and I am sure I will be back with other questions on Sorcerer.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi LE,

Glad to help!

Hi Moreno,

All player-characters may make use of those rules.

No demon characters may make use of those rules.

Non-player non-demon characters make use of those rules as the GM/group sees fit. I clearly need to clarify this a bit better. This judgment should be assessed (1) by the interest in that NPC and (2) by the score descriptors as interpreted for that group and that particular application of Sorcerer.

What I'd like to avoid is the idea that any and every mook in play has the trading-victories ability just because his Stamina is described as battle-trained or savage-raised. One of the points of the rule is that mooks are made less difficult to kill (not "easy," because killing is never really easy in Sorcerer). So judgment of or interest in the NPC as a character should take priority.

Does that make sense?

Also, if you want to keep it simple, you can say, "Just player-characters and no one else." The textual rules refer to you, and that may be interpreted in this case to refer to the player of a sorcerer hero (i.e. PC). I'm tossing in the option to apply it to NPCs mainly because group-consensus during actual play has favored doing so on more than one occasion. If that option is causing confusion for you, then forget it and apply the option to PCs alone.

Best, Ron