Since participants rarely suffer permanent results from an extended contest until it ends, the problem of "making the earlier part pretty much irrelevant" applies to anytime a change of tactics helps the losing party come back from a deficit to victory. Seesawing advantage is what extended contests are all about, though. I don't see that this is a problem.
Ability
> switches are fine provided they make sense within the context of the
> narrative. I don't think that this particular switch does because of
> the nature of the contest
The contest is defined by the objectives chosen, not by the initial course of action. If one party suddenly lost interest in crossing the bridge, then there might be a problem determining whether and how to assess penalties since he didn't wait around to lose the bridgecrossing contest. However, simply changing from "insult the guy 'til he backs down" to "charge through and knock him down" is not a change of objective.
> and because the narrative must take into
> account the weak position of the cavalry officer
The narrative should be taking that into effect, but since the contest is not yet over, the narrative should not be reflecting a weak position that cannot be recovered from. What seems to be happening here is that the cavalryman is acknowledging his weak position in the insult contest and so is taking advantage of his not-yet-weak physical position. ("I'm still on a big freaking horse; why am I letting this guy insult my mama?") Deciding to stop bandying words and just charge across seems a perfectly reasonable and predictable narrative development to me.
Mechanically, it's the AP that reflect the cavalryman's weak position. Those don't change no matter what ability he starts using; he just has a much better chance of coming back from behind with his new tactic.
(invoking "free
> will" as a reason for ignoring that is equivalent to - say -
> insisting that a merchant who is losing a bargaining contest can call
> on his guards to expel his opponent without any justification).
Now, that seems to me to be an actual change of objective (from "get the best deal from this guy" to "throw the bum out"), and thus falls into the fuzzy realm of starting a new and contradictory contest while another is still in progress. I'd like to see official word on that (or a reminder of what's in HQ, if I'm forgetting) myself. What the cavalryman is doing above, to me, is more like the merchant nodding meaningfully to his guards and letting them show off their scariness as he reiterates his best offer. That way he's continuing the original contest, but by other means.
Stacy Forsythe
deadstop_at_...
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