You normally don't need to "psych yourself up" or "fix the problem first" to perform an action, or to put it another way, you can do that *as part of* your action - "His insults have made me mad, I'm going to charge my horse into him"; "I slip from his double nelson and do a reverse scissors leg-lock on him"; "My fear of the Crimson Bat is strong, but my comrades need help, I charge in".
As a Narrator I might inflict a penalty on the ability used, or might require a higher AP bid than "normal", basd on the preceeding actions, but I'd rarely say "you can't do that until you psych yourself up". And, of course, the action is not final until the dice are rolled and the AP moved around.
Just because someone has lost AP to a certain type of attack *doesn't* mean that the attack form did it's "normal damage". You mentioned fighting a tentacled thing a number of posts ago - no, losing AP to it doesn't necessarily mean that you are bound up in it's tentacles- unless someone specified that's what happened. Loss of AP in that contest could mean that you spent fruitless effort and fatigue and found no opening to thrust your sword into just as much as "it's got a hold of you". Even if the player/narrator running the Tentacle beast said "It's entangling you" and won a good bid (or did a Wound-for-AP transfer), I'd still let the other player say "I get out of the tentacles and run away (or dodge, or attack, or whatever), though perhaps with some sort of penalty/Bid restriction.
Your way seemingly pre-empts actions - "you have to psych yourself up first". I prefer to say "Yes, you can do that, but you have a penalty" and let the dice decide if he gets away/attacks/whatever.
RR
It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has
done what he has done.
- Richelieu
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