I'm stuck on some of the wording...

After the free-and-clear stage, everyone rolls ability checks for their action. If this is the first action in Bringing Down the Pain, the winner at the roll that initiated Bringing Down the Pain gets bonus dice to her first action equal to the difference between her and her opponent's success levels.

Before BDTP:  Player A loses to player B in a combat situation by an SL of 1.  Player A declares BDTP.
First Round BDTP: Player B gets a +1 bonus die because Player A lost the conflict in the previous non-round. Is this correct?

If the actions are parallel, both sides take harm equal to their attacker's success level.

Does 'both sides' refer to both attacker and defender? If Player A is cooking yams and Player B is tuning her harp and both are in BDTP against each other in a conflict, does it mean that even if Player A wins, both he and Player B take the same amount of damage each time? If so, how can there be a winner if both are damaged at the same rate?

If one action is defensive, and that player wins, she gets bonus dice to her next action equal to the difference between the success levels.

So only in defensive situations, does the winner of the previous round get bonus dice equal to their victory in SL from the previous round? And the loser takes Harm damage in SL levels?

What if both players are attacking each other at once? It would be a perpendicular action, but not defensive, so is true that Player A gets no bonus dice on the next round if they win, but difference-in-SL-damage is still dealt? So it's more strategic to defend against your opponent until they either get 'broken' or give up?

Before BDTP:  Player A loses to player B in a combat situation by an SL of 1.  Player A declares BDTP.
First Round BDTP: Player B gets a +1 bonus die because Player A lost the conflict in the previous non-round. Is this correct?

If so, how can there be a winner if both are damaged at the same rate?

So only in defensive situations, does the winner of the previous round get bonus dice equal to their victory in SL from the previous round?

And the loser takes Harm damage in SL levels?

Just to clarify that last bit, what Rafial meant was:

rafial wrote:
So lets say Alice is trying to hit Bob with a sword, and Bob is dodging (defensive action).

If Alice rolls SL3 and Bob rolls SL2, Bob takes 1 Harm (SL3 - SL2).

If Bob rolls SL3 and Alice rolls SL1, Alice takes NO Harm (because Bob's action was defensive).  On the NEXT round of action, Bob will get 2 bonus dice.

Ah yes, thanks Darren.  The embarrassing thing is, I read over my post looking for that kind of mistake and STILL missed it :P

It's always easier to spot things like that in other people's posts, isn't it? (I know from painful experience!)

Thanks - I think I've got it now.