The contest idea looks like it should work pretty well if it ever comes up. My players have some nifty flaws for their characters, but they tend to play them out on their own without any prompting.
I think the same principle could apply for when personality traits get in the way.
> One might consider applying a handicap to the rating of the power,
> incidentally, if one wished the effect that the heroes lost less
than
> the full effect of the APs bid, in order to a) make it somewhat
easier
> to rationalise the scale of the effect, and b) to make it more
drawn-out,
> so as to continue the agony... (i.e., rather than have them being
> defeated by the defence _alone_, which might otherwise happen if it
> has a higher rating than the vamp's other abilities.)
I'm not sure the scale of the effect is that hard to rationalize. If playing the demoralization route, the harder you try, the more demoralizing the failure is going to be (i.e. it's more demoralizing to pull your sword out of the vampire's chest and watch it seal up than to just watch a little cut heal). If playing the offbalance /counterblow route, the harder you try, the greater the effect you're expecting your blow to have, and the more out of position you're going to be when it has just no effect.
I do see the point about drawing it out, though. Some other ways to achieve this is to not have the vampire do anything big with his actions. Just taunt them a bit. The vampire's defense could've been the punch to the face, and it's action could be the stepping back so they can pick themselves up. If you really want to go the distance, the vampire could lend them AP instead of a parting shot when they're down. In short, I think you can really torture them without having to monkey with the bids.
Incidentally, you can mimic the boost in morale when one of the heros realizes how to defeat the vampire, tells the rest of the band, and they're heartened by this. Treat it as an AP lend from the person figuring it out to the the rest of the band using whatever ability allowed them to figure it out. If the player figured it out on their own, they could use some type of communication ability to tell the band what to do.
Mike Ryan
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