Here's a sample joust to be sure I understand the ins and outs of combat, especially as it relates to Baldwin, the character I posted here.  Please kibitz.

For all the scenarios, assume Baldwin is in good standing with his demon sword Huingol.  He has entered a tourney for his own purposes, but victory in the tourney is compatible with Huingol's Desire for increasing their power and standing.

Baldwin challenges Adham, a prominent local knight of impious tendencies.  He hopes to show up the ruffian in the joust and demonstrate the power of the true believer.  They mount up and approach the lists.  As the list marshall exhorts them to do honor to those whom they represent, Adham raises his lance to the lady whose favor he seeks, and Baldwin raises Huingol to the sky and praises Larani.  He then sheathes the sword and couches his lance.

Scenario 1 - no demonic assistance

Baldwin has a Cover of 5 and a Stamina of 4. Adham's Cover is 3 and his Stamina is 5.

Since jousting is well within the Cover capabilities of a knight, Adham and Baldwin are both allowed to roll their Cover, applying victories as a bonus to the Stamina to actually resolve the joust.  Following Ron's advice on this topic, the GM decides that the horses are reasonably well behaved, and lets the combatants roll their Covers against two dice.

Cover rolls.
Adham rolls 1, 1, 3 versus 1, 2 for one victory.
Baldwin rolls 5, 6, 7, 12 versus 1, 6 for two victories.

Stamina rolls
Adham rolls 6 dice (5+1): 3, 5, 7, 10, 10, 12
Baldwin rolls 6 dice (4+2): 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12

Note that because of the simultaneous nature of a joust, I chose to just evaluate one roll against the other rather than letting anyone abort and defend.  If I'm misapplying the rules, please let me know.  (Also see my puzzlement for how to apply Fast to this approach in scenario 2 below).

Baldwin succeeds with one victory.  The GM adjudicates that as a broken jousting pole, but no humiliating unhorsing, and gives Adham one point of lasting damage (since the joust isn't fast and furious, short term penalties go away before the next joust).  Combat proceeds to another round.

Round two:
Cover rolls: Adham gets 2, 7  versus 6, 8 for zero victories.  Baldwin rolls 1, 8, 12, 12, 12 versus 7, 12 for three victories.
Stamina rolls: Adham (4) rolls 1, 9, 10, 11 and Baldwin (4+3) rolls 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 9, 12.  Again, Baldwin breaks a pole on Adham, who now has two points of lasting damage.

Round three:
Cover rolls: Adham rolls 2 versus 7, 8 (zero victories) and Baldwin rolls 6, 8, 9, 11, 12  versus 1, 8 (three victories).
Stamina rolls: Adham (3) rolls 8, 9, 12 and Baldwin rolls 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10, 12.  One more broken pole, and by the rules of the joust Baldwin is the victor.

No humiliating defeat of the opponent, but Baldwin didn't use any of Huingol's abilities either.  Let's rerun a few scenarios, exploring some options.

Scenario 2 - Fast
Things proceed as before, but Huingol uses Fast on Baldwin when he displays the sword and invokes Larani's name.  The sword's power is 7, so Baldwin will use 7 dice for his Stamina roll, of which 3 will be only for Fast.  (But how does this interact with my simultaneous resolution approach from above?  Not sure how to play this one.  Thoughts?

Scenario 3 - Boost Stamina
This time Huingol goes for a straight-up Boost Stamina on the first tilt.  In general, unless Baldwin asks for more, Huingol goes for a straight-up doubling of Stamina.

Cover rolls: Adham rolls 3, 7, 12  vs 4, 6 for two victories.  Baldwin rolls 2, 4, 8, 9, 11 vs 4, 7 for three victories.
Stamina rolls: Adham rolls (5+2) for 1, 5, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9 and Baldwin rolls (4+3+4) 11 dice for 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12, 12. Baldwin wins with five victories, unhorsing Adham on the first tilt and wowing the crowds.

Scenario 4 - Armor
Huingol could invoke Armor on Baldwin, thus limiting the hurt if Baldwin should fail the joust.

Please advise.
-
Scott

Heh, I had to ask right before Gencon.  I'll wait patiently for a reply. <grin>

(Hope everyone's having fun there)

Re: Fast

When you get to the Stamina roll, roll 3 dice of a different color for your Fast dice along with Baldwin's regular 4 dice stamina roll. For example, use red for the Fast dice and green for Baldwin's stamina. Only count those red Fast dice toward determing order in that round. Use only the 4 dice rolled for Baldwin's stamina to resolve his action.

Baldwin & Adham swing on each other:
Baldwin rolls 4 Stamina dice & 3 Fast dice: Stamina 4, 6, 9, 7 Fast 12, 12, 4
Adham rolls 5 Stamina dice: 11, 10, 10, 9, 3

Baldwin gets the jump on Adham with those 2 12s but Adham's Stamina attack has more victories than Baldwin's. Normally, Adham would have to choose whether to defend with a one die Hail Mary and keep his action, or abort to full defense. Since you're not using defense, Adham wins with 3 victories.

-Chris

Thanks for the feedback, Chris.  If I read you correctly, you are recommending not going with my innovation of simultaneously resolving the rounds, but still giving the loser a chance to abort their action or else roll one die in defense.  That makes sense, actually, giving more of a chance for both jousters to strike each other than my approach did.

I would have used the normal initiative rules to resolve an important joust, which would have led to Fast working normally. If I had done it your way (which is OK too), and the player had wanted to use Fast, I probably would have just given him a bonus die on the single opposed roll for the power point, or maybe two if he found a clever way to describe how the speed was helping him land a strike.

Another thing I would have done differently, though I don't think your approach was wrong exactly, was determining the bonus dice for the pasts. Since they're both knights, I would have had them roll Past v. Past (Cover v. Cover in the base rules terminology) and have the winner only convert victory dice to his total. This saves time (one opposed roll).

If a player knight had been jousting, say, a hulking barbarian, I would have rolled the player's Past/Cover v. one die. On the other hand, if a hulking barbarian PC stuck on horseback with a lance had wanted to search for advantage against an NPC knight, I probably would have had the player roll Will to find an advantage and let the NPC just use the higher of Will or Past to suit on the other side.

Just food for thought. The Sorcerer mechanics are really flexible in terms of straight roll vs. staggered order (combat initiative, which is actually just complex conflict resolution) and how you let different rolls flow into each other; thinking of it in terms of what in-game entities are in conflict with each other and in terms of what the players are trying to do (which stems from how they see their characters and the situation) tends to streamline play and work better overall, in my limited experience.

Calithena wrote: Another thing I would have done differently, though I don't think your approach was wrong exactly, was determining the bonus dice for the pasts. Since they're both knights, I would have had them roll Past v. Past (Cover v. Cover in the base rules terminology) and have the winner only convert victory dice to his total. This saves time (one opposed roll).