> >Not at all. The cavalry officer is thill an independent characetr
> >with free will, if he wants to switch abilities and push past, or
> >even attack the soldier he's free to do so. However the current AP
> >situation remains, only the abilities the characters are using and
> >their notional goals have changed.
>
> My feeling is that in this case allowing a simple switch would
> invalidate the contest. It ignores the current position and allows
> the cavalry man to have a strong chance of winning the contest
simply
> through his horse's muscle making the earlier part pretty much
> irrelevant.
I don't think anything is beign ignored, remember the AP totals remain in place. Only the tactics and characetr goals have changed. The cavalry officer still suffers from the fact that he has been at least partialy humiliated, and this weakens his confidence, as represented by his low remaining AP total.
> My general philosophy for contests is that the narrative
description
> is primary - the rules are there to provide an mechanical system
> which supports and gives direction to the narrative.
I don't se how telling a player their characetr can't try to do something they plainly could try to do in that situation helps the narative.
> If the cavalry man had simply decided to ride across at the start
> then that would be fine - it's not the ability I object to, it's
just
> that I believe that the switch of ability IN THIS CASE does not
take
> adequate account of the state of the contest.
The state of the contest is the relative AP scores, which are not discarded. Everything that just happened still has an effect. Humiliation and lack of confidence can be serious probelms to overcome whether you're in an argument or starting a fight.
The classic example oif a change of goals and abilities in a figh is deciding to run away. Suppose Jim and Dave are fighting and Dave is losing. So long as he's stil got some positive APs, Dave is perfectly free to try to switch abilities from a combat ability to one appropriate to runnign away. Jim must counter this appropriately too. Dave's intent has changed from tryign to kill Jim to trying to get away from Jim, but the relative AP situation carries over. In your way of doing things it would be impossible for someone in a fight to try to run away due to nebulous 'narative' reasons. Yet such things happen in fictional and game naratives all the time.
Simon Hibbs
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