Re: Resisting Beffudle

From: Nick Hollingsworth <NickH_at_...>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 16:35:52 -0000

Richard Develyn (Sat 11th):
> if you want to play for time your best bet is to
> gamble 0 APs.

Can you do this? It doesn't seem reasonable. I would have expected a 1 AP min bid. A 0 bid sounds like failing to take any action.

Richard Develyn (Sat 11th):
> When he swings his pole-axe at me, I will have to answer with something
> suitable (probably not some 'talk' related skill).
> When I, in turn, try to 'befuddle-stupid-creature' (say it was a skill),
he
> will have to oppose this with something like 'orneriness'.

Hibbs, Philip (Sat 11th):
> But surely the great troll resisting your befuddle with his axe is going
to get
> a huge penalty for inappropriate skill use, if indeed it can use it at
all.

But surely a valid response to someone casting a spell at you is to hit them quick before they can finish casting the thing. The AP bid in the spell would relate in some way to the strength and hence (by the conventions of the genre) to the length of time spent chanting and waving your arms, which in turn relates to how huge a swing the troll with the pole axe gets to make.

Several examples of resisting a spell were given by various people. Leaving aside the issue of deciding how apt the abilities used are, there is another issue:
some (eg. resist beffudle with 'be obstinate') are inate resistances; others (eg. hit him quick before the buffudle goes off) imply a very fast reaction. The need to perceive the threat and then react instantly must be a modifier surely. Is there a standard for this?
I sort of expect resist-beffudle-with-poleaxe to be -5 due to being 'sort of right'
and then -50% for being an instant reaction.

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