From: Peter Metcalfe
>At 09:50 11/04/02 +0000, you wrote:
>>Sometimes an action has more than one effect, this does not make it
>>more than one action. If my Humakti makes a particularly impressive
>>attack in a duel he may not just defeat his opponent he may also
>>impress the clan Chief with his skill and simultaneously intimidate
>>other watching glory seekers from trying their luck.
>And is he impressing the chief in an extended contest? No.
>Hence the point of this is what?
It is simply a narrative consequence of the victory, just as a broken scimitar and/or shield might be a narrative consequence of a Humakti victory in the example we started off with.
>>If its a
>>killing duel he may have split his opponents helm in half. Does that
>>make his attack 3 or 4 separate actions by your measure?
>Well if you had been paying attention to what I said, then
>you would have noticed that I was referring to narratively
>significant events. I'll give you the benefit of doubt, assume
>that you have normal intellect and can puzzle it out for
>yourself.
So basically its all in the narrator's head and the players have no way of knowing how many actions they will require? Is splitting a helm an action or just a narrative consequence of killing the opponent? How is the player to know or guess when all they have is a first person perspective? Therefore the reasonableness of their declared actions must be measured against that first person perspective even if the consequences are not always what they expected.
>>So the ropes are in identical positions, the sword swing is identical
>>but the number of actions you believe it to take changes because of
>>what is on the other end of the ropes.
>Yup. It's what's called storytelling. If you can't handle that
>then I suggest you return to playing a simulationist game and quit
>wasting people's time with increasingly contrived examples.
>>What happens if the hero does not know what is on the ends of the
>>ropes?
>Why does that matter? The Narrator knows and that's all there
>is to it.
Because the *player* needs to be able to describe their action and if it seems perfectly reasonable to them (from the described positions of the ropes) then forbidding attempting it as a single action because of something unrelated and unknown to them would quite rightly be considered arbitrary meddling.
>>I think that deciding ahead of time that it requires
>>multiple actions has second-guessed how well the hero might perform
>>the action and limited their possible success.
>What rubbish. By that ludicrous argument, any increased
>difficulty onto any task has "second-guessed how well the
>hero might perform the action and limited their possible
>success".
The difference between "that's a really tricky one, the difficulty will be higher" and "no, you cannot do all of that this action" is vast, its a gulf.
>>by that logic firing the Harpoon takes two actions against a
>>man with a shield but only one against an unshielded man.
>Wrong. I simply gave the answer for the case of a spear. I
>would handle it differently if it were a harpoon.
That was the Harpoon. The damn great spear-thrower in Sun County. Of course why a harpoon should be SO different to a spear and so much better at punching through shields is a mystery to me anyway, perhaps because I don't have your Big Book of House Rules to hand.
>Your
>limpid attempts at a reductio ad absurdum are just pathetic.
So just what is the fundamental difference between a harpoon and a spear that means the exact same attack with one would require two separate actions with the other? Care to give me a page reference from the rules?
> > >I can hear the laughter now
>>Interpretations of game mechanics which appear ridiculous to the
>>players are not playable.
>And this has what to do with what I said? Very little.
It is why mockery matters, the interpretations you have been expounding on this list would meet derision in my group and hence would not form the basis for a playable game. This in not necessarily a problem for you or your group but it does matter if you are claiming your interpretation to be universally correct and the One True Hero Wars ruling.
>But then considering that you were wanting us to believe that you
>had once cut someone's head off with a weapon, it's no surprise
>that you stoop to rewriting history.
Really, you should learn to read footnotes - or even just the word "like". It so happens I have attempted "disarm/remove shield/attack" manouvres in the past generally with no success at all because I am simply not that good. The character in the example was in the W3 range of skill and we can presume that such a character would be able to pull off close combat manouvres I could barely dream of.
>>It is a single action
>>regardless of the fact that (dice rolls depending) it might have
>>multiple consequences.
>I am sorry to disappoint you immensely, but I still count three
>actions.
Yes but you seem to be running some house rule that allows multiple "actions" to be resolved per declared action within an extended combat. I see a single action description, a single bid and a single resolution, if you wish to have multiple resolutions for a single bid (or multiple bids vs a single opponent bid) then that's your choice and your house rule but I think the overlapping terminology has caused more than a little of our talking at cross-purposes.
>>If in our example the hero does not get a
>>complete success then some elements of what they are attempting do
>>not happen.
>No such thing as complete successes.
Technically its reducing your opponent to -31 AP; not that unlikely on a good roll when berserk at these skill levels.
-- Nic
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