This comes from a slightly stale thread, so I'll reopen rather than continuing...

Brian raised a point about the simultaneous block/strike, and indeed IMO about all use of attacks in place of defenses, which never did get properly addressed in his thread (it got distracted by other issues and left hanging).

The trigger situation is pretty straightforward. It's the first Exchange of any round, and the aggressor launches a smallish attack, wishing to save the bulk of his dice for a probable need to defend. Perfectly reasonable strategy from an overall-defensive style.

The defender answers not with a defense, but with the simultaneous block/strike maneuver. Enough dice for a solid defense, plus an attack the aggressor - even if he, too, has a shield and access to SimB/S - can do nothing whatsoever about. Either a small attack (minimum of 1/2 the defense, so maybe 2-3 dice), or a huge one (up to twice the dice of his defense), either is trouble.

The problem is that the aggressor is given no opportunity to see this attack coming and respond, even though he in theory has the upper hand and control of the tempo. The defender's strike will land second, but it will (barring a totally failed roll) land, and we all know how important the first hit is to a fight. If he went for "all but empty my pool" then it's almost certain to end it. And this situation can trigger anytime you make a probing attack vs. a shield. Period. (Feinting goes a very limited way toward fixing this, but the return is very poor.)

Compare this to, for example, blocking with the same number of dice as in this problem situation, and then striking on the next exchange with the same number of dice that would have gone into the strike portion of the SimB/S. Your opponent launched a small attack, meaning that if you're even close to evenly matched, he's got plenty of capacity left to defend with, rather than absolutely none (despite that mostly-full pool).

IMO the problem is similar with the use of any attack in place of defense. The aggressor ought to have control of the tempo, but for little cost, the defender can completely flat-foot him. Your opponent throws a Toss, a Stop Short, anything that doesn't actually threaten to damage you? Empty your pool, use that option to hit "hard" (1 die lost for +1 dmg), and gut him like a fish. Even if we take the dice from his maneuver away from your strike (common house rule), you still end up with a smaller but probably still viable attack, against which he has no defense whatsoever.

Unless I missed a thread, Brian never did get a satisfactory answer.

However, in reading through that section trying to figure out why Jake didn't think this was broken, I hit upon one possible interpretation of what's written which, while it contradicts stuff written elsewhere and hasn't been raised here, might do the trick.

Remove the (apparent) option to respond to an already-declared attack, with an attack of your own. Note the words already-declared. If you want to become an aggressor instead of a defender, even though you've lost the initiative, you say so at the very beginning of the exchange, before the owner of the initiative says anything at all. Then you declare your offensive maneuver and commitment first, after which he responds with an attack of his own (which will still land before yours) or, if he chooses, a defense. In essence, you're creating a red-red, where the Reflex roll has already been made - and you lost - and you were considered to have a lower Reflex to boot.

If you wait until after he has declared his attack, then you're relegated to the ranks of the nonaggressors... you may defend or do nothing, but not attack, because aggressors (esp. ones who have "lower Reflex") don't get to declare after seeing the faster guy's move.

It's pretty consistent and, I think, relegates the "respond with an attack" trick to the status it deserves - possible, but risky - instead of making it the universal solvent. And it means that it's the owner of the initiative, not the loser of it, who can go "Hmm, okay, no defense, then I'll hit you hard enough that you just won't get up again," and makes it less than purely fatal to use probing attacks and tosses.

Comments?

- Eric

I no expert on combat, but it seems to me that I'm missing part of the analysis here. If I do an attack against your attack, aren't I likely to have already been wounded when mine lands? In which case, I'm likely to not have the dice I'd like to do anything to my opponent?

Sure, if I make a probing attack that's unlikely to do damage, then I leave myself open to this. So, I'd say that tactically this means that one shouldn't make such attacks if one wants to stay alive. Put another way, if I attack fairly large, is the problem still there? And, yes, then the opponent can counter or something, but isn't that the advantage of defending first against someone dropping red? Hence why you often need to taunt to get people to attack?

Basically, nothing I've heard so far sounds unrealisitc. But, again, I may be missing the problem entirely.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: If I do an attack against your attack, aren't I likely to have already been wounded when mine lands?

Wolfen wrote: But is this unrealistic? Not really. You don't probe a shieldman. You push him so hard that he can't do anything but defend, and you kill him as soon as you're able.

K this is my understanding of the Sim B/S.
It is an offensive maneovre so is only useful if you both throw red?
Would you still need to roll reflexes? i imagine you would so that you still need to win so that your opponent declares first.
Can he defend against it at all? the text says your opponents defence if any

This maneovre in my opinion is one of the benefits of fighting with a shield.
If you fight 2 handed you get half-swording, cut and thrust you get 2 weapons, rapiers...well you get rapiers coz they are so cool :)

and so sword and shield as sim block strike.

Edge wrote: K this is my understanding of the Sim B/S.
It is an offensive maneovre so is only useful if you both throw red?

Would you still need to roll reflexes? i imagine you would so that you still need to win so that your opponent declares first.

Can he defend against it at all? the text says your opponents defence if any

This maneovre in my opinion is one of the benefits of fighting with a shield.

If you fight 2 handed you get half-swording, cut and thrust you get 2 weapons, rapiers...well you get rapiers coz they are so cool :)

The basic problem as I see it is that a small, probing, conservative attack should not leave you open the way it does. The whole point of the fairly conservative 'probing' attack is to not open yourself up particularly, just get a feel for how he'll defend himself preparatory to further strikes (or to try and draw him off-balance with the threat of a feint).

I don't see why this would not be true against a shield just as much as against anything else. In fact, trying to make him move that shield around a lot is a perfectly valid tactic.

So I don't see why the decision to save a lot of dice for defense ends up leaving you defenseless against this relatively straightforward tactic.

(And none of the above addresses the issue that Toss, Stop Short, et al end up being invitations to slaughter if used first exchange, without even bothering to use SimB/S on the other side - just a big enough offense to take the dice loss, because ignoring a Toss usually costs the toss-er more than twice as many dice as the toss-ee. Same basic problem: the defender gets to declare second even if he chooses to be aggressive, which is a much bigger advantage than striking first in many cases.)

IMO, it needs a fix. Probing attacks, and non-damaging attacks, should not equal suicide.

- Eric

Jake Norwood wrote:

Edge wrote: K this is my understanding of the Sim B/S.
It is an offensive maneovre so is only useful if you both throw red?

Or any time you're the agressor.

Jake

Edge wrote: K i think i might be missing something here. How can you block/strike unless the opponent is also attacking?

Harlequin wrote: The basic problem as I see it is that a small, probing, conservative attack should not leave you open the way it does. The whole point of the fairly conservative 'probing' attack is to not open yourself up particularly, just get a feel for how he'll defend himself preparatory to further strikes (or to try and draw him off-balance with the threat of a feint).

I'm with Brian on this one, due to real-life training experience. If I have a shield (even if it's "only" a buckler), the best thing you can do is a probing attack. Why? Because in that instant I know
a) where your weapon is (location, vector, kinetic energy) in that instant
and
b) that your attack is not going to breach my defense.
Thus, as Ben said, I am able to control your weapon and focus all I have on hitting. If you had been doing a more comitted attack, I'd have to spend more of my "ressources" defending. On the other hand, if I don't take care of your weapon properly, you can always feint, i.e. change the angle of attack, avoid my defense and nail me. It really is all there in the rules.

Fair enough. I'm a swishy-poke (rapier & dagger) man, my sword 'n board training is nonexistent, so I'll happily yield on this one.

My experience in rapier work is that a targe doesn't change things much over either a hat or a main gauche, defensively, but that's a pretty tiny shield and is definitely an extreme of the spectrum, so no big deal. (One could even consider it covered in the system - Rapier lets you use a whatever in your off hand, but doesn't include SimB/S. Tidy.)

I yield the floor, to those with more practical experience.

- Eric

Though as one last note: "Doesn't work on a guy with two swords, natch."

Does in the system as it stands. Also works 100% effective on a guy with a shield as well. Still bugs me, but not worth fixing at this point, I think.

- Eric

Personally, I also have a big problem with the idea that the simo attack leaves the original attacker absolutely defenseless.

I'm absolutely certain that the simo block/strike should be a highly effective tactic, but as it exists leaving the attacker defenseless is not the best way to model this.

The situation goes way beyond the effectiveness of a shield

The ability of the defender to declare an attack instead of a defense is not just occasionally useful. Nor is it a "fool hardy maneuver" as the game text suggests. It is an overwhelmingly powerful, useful thing to do that completely ruins the balance between attacker and defender tactics and invalidates a whole range of attacker actions that should be useful.

Consider:

Attacker Binds
Attacker Tosses
Attacker Beats
Attacker does ANYTHING at all that doesn't translate to an immediate loss of MAJOR dice (i.e. defenders entire pool all at once)

...and the absolute, without a doubt, beyond compare BEST defense is to say "screw defense, I'm attacking".

This is just fundamentally wrong.

The only way for an attacker to protect himself against this is for every single attack the attacker makes to be full bore 100% hyper aggressive.

Sure, the best defense is a good offense. And yes, I understand that the attacker must be aggressive and not wishy washy. But I have to believe that to make it impossible for the attacker to do anything else except throw the majority of his dice into each and every attack is fundamentally wrong in a "model reality" sense.

But regardless of that, its fundamentally wrong from a game sense because it destroys 80% of the tactics of dice allocation in the game.


I am aware that ripostes and counters and taking advantage of the attacker's mistakes for an immediate and brutal response *IS* in fact, the way combat actually works.

But my point is...that is what is *already modeled* by the ability of the defender to win initiative because the attack wasn't successful, and begin attacking himself. If the attacker isn't aggressive enough in his attack, the defender will be able to defend with few dice, win initiative and then attack with plenty of dice on his own. The attacker is already being penalized for being wishy washy...but in a way that is interesting, entertaining, and plays to the strengths of the CP and exchange system.

For more aggressive counters, we have the counter maneuver.


To also allow the defender to just forgo defense and attack (with virtual immunity in too many cases) I think breaks the whole system. The fun of working out how many dice to defend with in order to win initiative and have enough left to attack effectively, is ruined.


There are a couple of easy fixes to this, that IMO don't change the fact that simo block strike is and should be an effective maneuver, and don't render the "attack instead of defending" choice to be completely useless...but does put that choice back to being usually a "fool hardy maneuver" the way the text suggests it should be.

1) is Eric's idea of making the defender declare the attack before dice are declared. I think this is really easy to implement, and highly effective, although it likely goes too far in making the "attack instead of defending" choice not just fool hardy but completely suicidal.

2) is allowing the attacker to abort his attack to a full evade (or perhaps partial evade would be more reasonable). This to me seems entirely reasonable from a non practitioners perspective...I view it as being an "oh shit" moment where the attacker is just suddenly forced to scramble for his life. Dice spent on attack are gone, but new dice from the CP can be used for an emergency dodge...a real practioner would have to judge how possible such a scramble actually is in practice.

3) is potentially my favorite (and could actually be combined with 2 also). The TN of any attack against a non defending target automatically becomes 2 (or perhaps 4). If the defender is doing NOTHING to prevent the attacker from landing a blow (i.e. spending no dice on parry, block, or evade) then the defender should be a sitting duck and have to eat the attackers attack full on. What this means is that the number of occassions where the defender can simply ignore the attack without repurcussion is diminished...because the repurcussion is alot more attacker successes in that first attacker roll.

This has the additional benefit of addressing another issue that I've found...the helpless opponent who just won't go down. His CP has been reduced to 0 repeatedly from shock and pain, but the attacker just can't do enough damage to actually put him away. This rule would seriously up the number of successes the attacker could expect against a helpless opponent and allow for a much more effective finishing move.

I probably wouldn't allow this TN adjustment in a buy Initiative situation, because that would make the buy Initiative option too effective.

You make a good argument, Ralph, but I'm still not sure that I agree.

First, yes, if you throw a really small Bind or something, that's going to get you into trouble. These things really do have to be done with some force behind them to work. Basically, don't tempt your opponent into not defending against your Beat or whatever. If you put enough dice into it, the player may have some dice left, but not neccessarily enough to do you in. And that may use up all his remaining dice to do so...

Player A (CP10) Beats, for 5 dice, and the Player B decides not to defend, but attack. Player A gets 6 dice knocked off the Player A's pool. He attacks with the remaining 4 against no defense. He'd better injure the opponent with this, because if he doesn't, he's facing 5 dice unopposed in the Player A's next attack. If Player A rolls better, he does eliminate player B's whole pool, and then B was very foolish not to defend against the beat. If I throw 7 dice into the beat, that can't be ignored, and I still have three dice for the following attack.

I think that the tactical options are still pretty sound even with the attacking back option. OTOH, I'm doing this analysis without a book, so maybe I've messed up in some assumption somehow.

But, yes, any attack that doesn't threaten to reduce the opponent to zero if it's not defended against is probably ill advised. But I think that only mandates half the pool or so.

What this does is open up the feint option. Because the player defending has to worry about whether any "probing attack," that is one less than half dice or so, is worth worrying about or not. I mean, in the example above, if I only throw two, and you decide not to defend, can't I then get in a hit potentially with 7 dice by feinting against no defense?

Note that this is all with relatively low dice pools. With 15 CP, your options increase (a matter of proportion of CP being larger with respect to armor and TO) - which seems sensible.

I've probably messed this up somewhere (no book with me), but I'm still seeing a range of viable options.

Mike

Hmm.. this is an interesting discussion.

I think Jake has said it many times. Not all maneuvers are equal. Some (like Toss?) are just bad. But even bad maneuvers can be useful at times, especially if they're the only thing available.. Mooks fall for Tosses, Binds and such; more experienced opponents may not.

Still, I'm with Valamir, somewhat. The above argument does not hold, IMO, since the players won't use the bad maneuvers, just because they're not as good as the others. I have some solutions:

1) Let's say you can feint from a Toss, Bind, etc., if the opponent does not choose a defensive maneuver. Perhaps in any case?

2) Improve the maneuvers a bit. Bind really takes the bound weapon out of the fight for the next exchange, effective right at the binding moment; so does Beat. This forces the opponent to buy initiative if he wishes to attack. Toss ATN depends on the material tossed (low if it gets into your eyes like sand).

3) Use these maneuvers only at the right opportunity (meaning, mostly on the second exchange).

I particularly like #1, very much use #2 in my games (which has been a while), and really advocate #3.

Overdrive wrote: 2) Improve the maneuvers a bit. Bind really takes the bound weapon out of the fight for the next exchange, effective right at the binding moment; so does Beat. This forces the opponent to buy initiative if he wishes to attack. Toss ATN depends on the material tossed (low if it gets into your eyes like sand).

Harlequin wrote: Fair enough. I'm a swishy-poke (rapier & dagger) man, my sword 'n board training is nonexistent, so I'll happily yield on this one.

Wolfen wrote: I also like the suggestion of allowing a feint from a Toss, Bind or Beat. I'm not sure of it's realism, but it sounds good in theory.

Just to point this out before Mike's example gets left behind, there's an important distinction between Beat and all the other "dice loss" maneuvers. Beat is the only one which has the potential to (realistically) use up X dice to cost the other guy X dice or even possibly more. Bind, Toss, and the like all use up X dice to cost the other guy about X/2 dice, and certainly no more than X. Beat is not underpowered - possibly the reverse. It's the ones which have the low efficiency that are a problem.

So, Mike, to use a variant of your example: A and B, both CP 10. A has initiative, and opts to Toss his slipper into the other guy's face. (Grin.) He does so with five dice. B responds by attacking, with the same five dice - he isn't willing to risk overextension. The Toss resolves first, and at TN 7, perhaps 8 for a slipper (Toss while wielding sword and shield! Cool! Because we all know that slippers are the apparel de guerre of choice), he'll soak up about two dice, maybe three, from B's pool. I use Wolfen's house rule that shock and all similar losses come from the attack in progress first, it makes a lot of sense, so B's attack is down to 2-3 dice. He then rolls it and gets a success or two against A's lack of defense. A bleeds moderately, and they go into the next exchange with even pools other than A's shock if any - and there wasn't a damn thing A could do about it.

The bigger the Toss (or Bind, etc), the worse it gets. If they were both CP 20 monsters, and used half their pool as above, then B got to get in a solid 4-6 die indefensible attack, and A is in a lot more trouble. Lack of commitment to the Bind etc. is not the issue; if the relative commitment is equal, then this defensive mode is, as Ralph pointed out, the only way to go.

(If the defender-turned-aggressor does go all out, it's a big problem of only slightly different nature. In the original example, B uses all ten in the attack, A's toss soaks up 2-3 dice. B gets to make a completely unopposed seven- or eight-dice strike. If that doesn't do five shock, then aye, he's in trouble... but how likely is that, if B is at all smart about the strike?)

I'm big on the idea of improving the maneuvers so that the too-late counterattack is not such a guarantee. But there are a lot of necessary targets for this (not all of which would 100% have to be "fixed up," but ones which didn't would have this hidden vulnerability built in)... Bind, Toss, Stop Short, Set-Up Grapple (IIRC), possibly others but I don't have the book on me right now.

Reducing the TN on Toss helps but does not fix the problem. I'd be inclined to give it Beat's "twice MOS" reduction instead, and make the default TN eight, seven for good choices like mud or sand. Letting Bind, as for Beat, tie up the weapon as well as inflicting the dice loss works fine, we've been using that house rule already.

(Although for reference, my 7th Sea/TROS hybrid character faced this situation with that ruling in place once, and used a fascinating variant on the "no defense" technique we've been discussing... both of us fighting rapier&dagger, my opponent called a solid Bind on my long blade, and I simply dropped it and went for the throat with my main gauche. We ruled that this made the Bind irrelevant - no dice lost - and I'd stand by that ruling given the risk. (Very relevant in that it cost me a sword instead of some dice.) If it weren't for appalling dice luck with the dagger blow... sigh.)

Grapple... that's one I'm happy to let sit where it stands. Trying to grapple a swordman is just silly unless you have a really strong situational advantage (current dice pool edge). Stop Short is an interesting case, but I think (given that Stop Short is essentially a form of intimidation) that if you lose dice to a Stop Short, you also lose your chance to attack during that same exchange - you're busy flinching/stepping back. Or, alternately, that if you're attacking during that exchange you lose not only the MOS in dice as normal, but the same again (bringing it to par with the "new" Toss, etc). Still not a bad choice for an all-out response, because few Stop Shorts will get an MOS of more than three or so regardless of relative CPs. That matches my experience... not flinching is valid, but it's "hit hard or get hit" time at that point. (I may have misunderstood the intent of Stop Short, incidentally... but I always think of it as including the balaestra from fencing, if you're familiar with that motion.)

Does that fix it? I'm not sure. Alternate fixes are possible, other than the one I originally advocated and the ones Overdrive lists (I'm big on #3, too, for Toss and its kin). Let the original attacker switch to something else by losing half the dice he had committed, for example; costly but worthwhile if the threat is too real.

- Eric

I'll buy that Toss and Bind aren't very good. And the solutions presented seem reasonable.

The question becomes a more philosophical one - is it more important to balance out the maneuvers to ensure that they get used, or to present them as realistically as possible (I assume that this is why they are where they are now?). An obvious answer is that, if the maneuvers didn't work at least in some cases, they wouldn't exist at all. Going with that argument, when do these things work, and why do they use then? Extrapolating from that, perhaps we can find the place where they are supposed to be useful, and find a way to model that.

OTOH, have we just missed the odd places in which these maneuvers are the "right" thing to select? I'm tempted to argue that part of some of these maneuvers is their surprise value. That is, perhaps because they tend to be rare, they're used less - meaning that when they are, however, they're more useful than you might think because the character doesn't adjust to the proper defense being surprised to see it at all.

What I'm thinking is that maybe some sort of pool for surprise actions could be developed or something. Not much of an idea at this point, but can you see what I'm getting at? This would be good for derring do as well (think 7th Sea Drama Dice). Hmmm. Any good?

Mike

these types of moves are good with equal opponents... anything that can reduce the opponents cp a little just to give you that small advantage on the 2nd exchange is a good thing.
Moves like toss also make for good roleplaying :)

Toss isn't intended to be a "good" maneuver in most cases. Jake almost explicitly said so. The fact that he even bothered to use it in his bouts in Louisiana is probably only because it was all in fun, and perhaps for the surprise factor Mike mentions.

Also.. it does matter, methinks, what is tossed. A slipper, a hat or a glove.. no matter. A dagger.. Some matter, though likely it's not going to be a killing throw. Now, sand? Burning embers? A snake, or a scorpion? Acid?

Perhaps toss does have some uses, after all.

Wolfen wrote: A snake, or a scorpion? Acid?

Perhaps toss does have some uses, after all.

Toss and such seems to work best if the opponent is wearing armor and the toss is executed in the second exchange.

An unarmored person going up against an armored will probably have CP advantage but needs to get in a powerful attack to damage the armored person. If he has 4 dices to spare its better to use them on toss for the next exchange instead of doing a pointless attack.

In a fight between two unarmored people I cant see the advantage of the maneuvers that cost more dices to execute than the opponent loses.

Mike Holmes wrote: I'll buy that Toss and Bind aren't very good. And the solutions presented seem reasonable.

Last night at our SCA fighting practice this issue got tested: a guy who specializes in simultaneous block/strikes won most of his bouts. He was later kind enough to explain the details to me.

In TROS terms, when creating a character:
- Put Proficiencies in priority A (8 to sword and shield)
- Buy lighter body armor to reduce fatigue/CP loss, but buy a fine large shield (DTN gets reduced to 4!) and fine arming sword (ATN to 5)
- Put many of your MA bonus skills into Body Language

In combat, keep throwing white and allocating just enough dice to your blocks to make sure you take no damage. Then when your foe makes a mistake (e.g. is low on dice, does an attack that you know you can shrug off), pour your dice into a massive simultaneous block/strike attack (possibly spending CP for extra damage) and nail him. If the foe doesn't attack, let your shield "accidentally" sag/drift during some non-damaging exchanges (fake a higher fatigue loss) and be ready when he takes the bait.

Before I switch to this approach (I've been using TROS as a way to experiment with different tactics in an environment where failures don't lead to bruises), can any of you see a flaw with it or is it as effective as it sounds?

Thank you very much.

I think Mike has exactly the right of it - my concern is simply to make sure that the maneuvers are truly usable, in their proper niche.

Just as Feint only has meaning in the first exchange (barring my own house rule of Press), Toss (say) is welcome to have value only on the second exchange of a round. I'm cool with that; it's an implicit granularity which we can work around but might as well not fight. That's fine by me - it essentially functions as a way to "bank" a dice advantage into the next round, rather than trying to use it now.

However, the massive disparity against attack-as-defense makes it basically unsuitable in this role, with present rules. Or, at best, usable only to preserve a solid dice advantage, one that is large enough to remove all the attacker's remaining dice if he doesn't defend, yet at the same time not significant enough to be worth using for a strike immediately. I can think of a few such circumstances - three dice vs. one die on the second exchange, against armour - but it's awfully constrained. So I think at this point my chief interest is simply in narrowing the tactical space where "don't bother to defend" is the clearly prime response.

How's this for one way to handle it: Attacks made without the initiative have a +1 die activation cost. This does not apply to red-red, only to situations where the initiative has been defined before you attempt to strike. Successfully buying initiative would circumvent this cost, though I don't think I would be so mean as to assess it against the one who originally had the initiative (he had it when he declared, after all).

It does very little to address the vulnerability of those maneuvers against someone with a lot of pool remaining - which is just fine. Doesn't mean it'll be useless against any given opponent - two matched 20CP monsters can still end up with three dice each in the second exchange, easily enough. It just becomes situational; if they're really on top of things, then it's foolish - that's quite accurate to the real situation, IMO.

This cost would end up getting assessed against SimB/S for consistency - it is an offensive maneuver - which I think is just fine. [Well, I suppose it can in theory be declared by the holder of the initiative, you just never see it happen in remotely even fights.] It remains a powerful move, but it's made a little more costly, forcing you to focus more on it and risk more if it doesn't pay off. (SCA bouts seldom have "he's bleeding somewhat but still going to stick you" as a possible outcome of a strike... if they did, I suspect the above fighter would win slightly less bouts, because that risk is very real).

It widens the tactical space of Toss such that, with small but equal pools (say, about four dice or fewer, more if you're well-protected compared to his damage), it's a valid option. The counterstrike could still ruin your day - "No defense, and Hook for two dice" is worth a shot - but it's less guaranteed to do so.

I like that, like it rather a lot really. That, plus having Bind tie up the opponent's weapon during the followup exchange (and the latter half of this one!), would I think lay my discomforts to rest. I shall implement it straightaway.

- Eric

How about adding a new maneuver, "Toss and Parry/Block" that allows you to parry/block with one arm and toss with the other? I have no real world experience, but this seems entirely reasonable to me and could solve the problem. Of course you can't do it when you've got a two handed weapon.

The only thing I wonder is how effective it will be considering that the person tossing will now have to burn dice on parry/block whether or not the opponent goes offensive, since the tosser has to declare first. Would anyone use this new maneuver?

One could similarly add a "Stop Short and Partial Evade" maneuver.

Frankly, both too clunky and doesn't fit the sequence of declarations, as you noted. Also adds to the maneuvers list, without enough payback.

Better to have a flat rule. F'rex, "The original attacker may parry (with a weapon not currently committed to an attack), block, or evade, using dice from his remaining combat pool, if the defender opts to aggress" would handle your suggestion more cleanly with basically the same effect. (Possibly with dice discrepancy limits similar to SimB/S, etc.) However, I think that preserving some risk to the original attacker remains a good thing, that this version is too strong and not representative of the reality - the momentum of your commitment to a strike is very real, even with rapiers, even with a fistful of sand, never mind longswords and poleaxes. (Though why anyone would make a probing attack with a poleaxe...).

Any comments on the one-die activation cost thing?

- Eric

Harlequin wrote: Just as Feint only has meaning in the first exchange...

Harlequin wrote: Frankly, both too clunky and doesn't fit the sequence of declarations, as you noted. Also adds to the maneuvers list, without enough payback.

Better to have a flat rule. F'rex, "The original attacker may parry (with a weapon not currently committed to an attack), block, or evade, using dice from his remaining combat pool, if the defender opts to aggress" would handle your suggestion more cleanly with basically the same effect. (Possibly with dice discrepancy limits similar to SimB/S, etc.)

Harlequin wrote: However, I think that preserving some risk to the original attacker remains a good thing, that this version is too strong and not representative of the reality - the momentum of your commitment to a strike is very real, even with rapiers, even with a fistful of sand, never mind longswords and poleaxes. (Though why anyone would make a probing attack with a poleaxe...).

Harlequin wrote:
Any comments on the one-die activation cost thing?

- Eric

Mike Holmes wrote: What I'm thinking is that maybe some sort of pool for surprise actions could be developed or something. Not much of an idea at this point, but can you see what I'm getting at? This would be good for derring do as well (think 7th Sea Drama Dice). Hmmm. Any good?

Since TFOB seems to be talked of occasionally.. and given the date of mid-august for its official release at gencon(assuming the indy gencon due to the date)..when will we all be able to pre-order the thing?

-Ingenious