RE: Question re: Extended Contests, Multiple Attacks, and APs

From: Nick Brooke <Nick_at_...>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 22:08:33 -0000


Epwissengruber asked:

> Question re: Extended Contests, Multiple Attacks, and APs

> Do I get AP from every attack I make, and then apply it to the
> subsequent attack, or do I resolve each and every attack using
> the initial AP stake?

Lots of ways you could handle this. I'll deal with it as one Hero vs. a group of individually uninteresting opponents ("mooks", in Feng Shui), but you could treat it using the rules for "attacking multiple targets" (HW p.140), if you wanted more complexity and IMO a bit less colour.

IMO, you're declaring one (complex) action, not three -- you describe what you want to do, stake APs, and make a roll. Try to make your opponents lose enough APs that one of them's knocked out of the fight; if you can do that, a generous Narrator (like me) might happily interpret the events as per your description (i.e. over the parapet he goes...).

But it's going to have to be a pretty big bet, unless those foes are trollkin... and against a group target there's no game-mechanical penalty imposed on those other opponents you notionally flung around.

That is -- let's say you're facing three 5w1 opponents, with a total of 75 APs. When the group loses 25 APs, one of them's out of the fight. So bet enough to take one of them down, and -- unless the Narrator really *cares* what happens to these cannon-fodder types -- there's no reason why you shouldn't achieve it in the way you wanted to.

("Attacking multiple targets" would allow you to split the AP loss you inflict between the opponents, but they'd get several die rolls against you, so frankly you're less likely to get an attractively cinematic resolution that way).

Cheers, Nick

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