Mastery and wounding

From: Pete Nash <pete_at_pipistrel.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 13:21:47 +0100


Eric writes

> I'll admit that once, when a PC fought his way out of a lunar
> fortified camp, he managed
> to accumulate in excess of 1400 SPs as a result of his bumpup, and an
> amazing run of luck
> to counter huge negative modifiers for being heavily outnumbered. The
> odds said that he
> should have gone down bleeding and squealing. The lunars poured more
> and more soldiers
> into that confused meatgrinder of a melee, until they got an idea of
> what was happening.
> When they disengaged and regrouped, those accumulated SPs became
> irrelevant, because the
> break reset everyone's (the survivors, anyway) SP values to their
> normal levels (SPs
> represent a character's situation relative to the others he's
> fighting). After that,
> only spending Plot Points let Our Hero live to fight another day. I
> initially found the
> sheer number of SPs accumulated appalling, but there are solid rules
> that allow you to
> control the flow of action, and thus SPs can be periodically reset.
> Despite my
> misgivings, though, this action was a lot of FUN.

Eeek! I knew it could happen. Though if it was fun it doesn't really matter. ;-)

In this type of situation the player might have wished to follow up the retreating Lunars and so avoid the reset of SP values. Or what if he'd charged straight at the gates? From the PC's point of view he is still involved in a conflict - i.e. to fight his way clear of the garrison. Arbitary SP value resets during the conflict which the players see as unfinished could be viewed as being an unfair interuption.

Just a GMing point. ;-)

> This action in the lunar fortified camp of Totorum : ) also happened
> before the rule that
> allows a defender to reduce the SP bid of its attacker in exchange for
> a die roll
> penalty. Once Bollix' (yes, that's really the character's name) SPs
> started climbing,
> his player's bids did too, and things just spiralled out of control.
> If the same fight
> had happened with the Defender Response to SP bids rule in effect,
> the total would never
> have gotten so high.

What is this rule? I don't think I saw it in the demo rules.

Simon writes

> Suppose your character is beaten down to -10 SPs (or whatever) during
> a
> fight. She's wounded, but not out. If she wins the next contest she
> might be back to positive SPs, but she's still been wounded and still
> suffers whatever penalty the rules sugest. Of course if she loses
> again
> she'll be in even worse condition, but once you start losing you're in
> a
> very perilous situation.
>
> I think that's pretty realistic.

That sounds good. But I thought that once you were down to zero SPs or lower you were no longer able to continue? Again, was this in the playtest rules? I must of skimmed them too quickly and missed a lot of this stuff.

If an NPC is also allowed to fight/continue from negatives does this superceed the rule that they can only bid the SPs they still have?

One final question. If a player goes down to -30 and is dying, then gambles and luckily wins a couple of rounds and builds his SPs back up to positive and continues to route the enemy off the field. What happens to them then? Would healing work to restore your skill by removing the skill penalties suffered? Obviously it cannot affect SPs because at the end of the fight the mortally wounded character has hundreds spare. Or is there a rule which says that once injured the player's SPs cannot rise above the negative they are already at but can only get worse until they are healed.

Confused

Pete


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