Last session, one of our players jumped up on a stone pedestal as a clawing, biting skeleton came towards him. He proceeded to kick the thing in the head with a +1 CP height advantage (awarded by the Seneschal).

This was that player's reasoning: his sole proficiency is Cut & Thrust with a rating of 6. This gives him a default in Pugalism of 4 (6 - 2 = 4). His reflex is 4, so his Pugalism combat pool is 8 (4 + 4 = 8). The Kick maneuver costs 1 CP to activate, so that washes with the height advantage, leaving him his full pool to allocate across the round.

And this was my take: a leg is a leg, I don't care if your only proficiency is chopping vegatables.

Actually, in writing this, some things occur to me. I infer the following design intent:



• Every combat action must be a proficiency maneuver.
• There is an assumed layer of matching weapon to maneuver (whose detail exceeds my topic). With respect to unarmed combat, action is restricted to the list for Pugalism.
• Furthermore, with the exception of parry, Pugalism maneuvers that are listed under other proficiencies are assumed to employ natural weapons (e.g. Declaring a kick with a Dagger proficiency), requiring their ATN's/DTN's and doing their damage.

(In the case of a parry with a natural weapon, the effect is to deflect the damage to that location.)



Accurate?

As a general rule that I'm working with for TFOB, maneuvers that "make sense," but that aren't neccessarily on this list, can be used at a "default" of -1 if it's pretty obvious (like kicking). Using this rule he would have had 9 dice to attack with.

Your design notes appear right on.

Jake

Cool. Thx:)

Jake Norwood wrote: As a general rule that I'm working with for TFOB, maneuvers that "make sense," but that aren't neccessarily on this list, can be used at a "default" of -1 if it's pretty obvious (like kicking). Using this rule he would have had 9 dice to attack with.

TFOB: Short for The Flower of Battle, which is an upcoming combat (mostly) supplement for The Riddle of Steel.

TRoS: The Riddle of Steel. Sometimes RoS.
TFoB: The Flower of Battle, the combat supplement
OBaM: Of Beasts and Men, the beastiary/NPC/non-humanoid combat rules supplement
SatF: Sorcery and the Fey, the supplement dealing with.. well, sorcery, and the fey.

Not to forget...

WLFLA: We Love Four-Letter Acronyms.

D'oh! That's five.

Brian. :-)

Wolfen wrote: SatF: Sorcery and the Fey, the supplement dealing with.. well, sorcery, and the fey.

It's the most-looked-forward-to TRoS supplement. Which means, if I remember right, it's the last planned release. After Flower of Battle.

Don't listen to Lx. He's one of the rare few that isn't eagerly awaiting TFoB.

And yes, I believe it's still on the website. I.. think there was a news tidbit about the cover of the book.