RE: Re: alternative wounding rules

From: Mike Holmes <homeydont_at_...>
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:54:28 -0600


>From: Julian Lord <jlord_at_...>

>Vader bids many APs, tries to inflict Wound to sword arm,
>Crit vs. Fail, apply Masteries, uses HP if necessary,
>Luke gets complete defeat, Wound gets x3 multiplier ...
>
>Should one convert all of the x3 multiplier into
>the Wound, or is the Wound accompanied by
>a x2 AP loss, or can the wounder or the wounded
>party decide what happens ?

Sounds to me like Vader has driven Luke to -31 AP or more. I mean that was definitely an extended contest. And it ended with Luke getting his hand cut off. So, to me, and given my recent discussion with Simon, this is just the "normal" permenant result of a Complete Victory on Vader's part. Instead of killing Luke, Vader instead changes Luke to "Handless Luke". Being defeated, Luke then cannot continue the combat, and decides to retreat the only way he can.

Now, what if somebody wants to attack a wrist to wound in combat? Well, first, I'm of the opinion that teh system should have some single person designated to decide what happens in terms of the disposition of the lost points. That is, either the GM, the attacking player, or the defending player, should make this decision. I'm very ambivalent at this point as to who this should be. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

  1. GM. If the GM does the split, then he can be as arbitrary as makes sense for the situation. OTOH, this can lead to a sense of bias being inserted, and adds to the GM's workload (something that I'm very against as a lazy GM).
  2. Attacker. This is how Hurts work right now (with GM approval, IIRC). This has the advantage that the player in question can tailor the outcome as he sees fit. As there are no simple advantages to either wounding or AP deducting, I think it's balanced. OTOH, it could lead to breakpointing - the player always choosing AP bids that end in 5 so that you get the rounding advantage on negative augments, etc. This can be ameliorated by having the GM set bids, and making wounding all or nothing, but I think that changes a lot of dynamics.
  3. Defender. This has the distinct advantage that it becomes an interesting tactical choice for the defender. They can prolong a conflic, but only by lessening their chances of winning (though not always) and, more importantly taking on sources of later conflict in terms of dealing with the wounds (or whatever Flaw is inflicted) in question. I'd definitely make this all or nothing. This will, again, lead to the attacker breakpointing, but in this case, that's fine as it makes for more overall strategy. The attacker has to decide on whether or not to optimize for AP loss, or for wounding gambling on what the defender decides. That seems pretty cool to me.

There's a fourth option, which is that the GM plays it by ear, retaining all rights, but giving them out to the players when it seems appropriate.

Note that, the current wounding system (7AP for Hurt) is a matter of fractional accounting in that you still have to do the math to figure out how many AP remain after that deduction. So I have no objections to allowing it players to put parts of the bid to wounding, and parts to AP loss. I only object to the fact that it would tend to limit strategy in some of the sitiuations above (I never object to complexity if it adds something neat).

On the subject of transfers, to extend the concept of "Building" as the opposite of wounding, I'd be tempted to allow players to take AP gains as temporary positive Abilites. For example, instead of gaining 17 AP, I gain a Elevation 17 advantage. The up side to this method is that it means that contests will end more quickly, and more interesingly, IMO. It also puts people who win big (in terms of success on bids) "on a roll" as it were. This gives the contest more of a see-saw effect, rather than the random back and forth that it currently has (something that John Kim mentioned was potentially problematic with HQ on the Forge). Not that I think there's a problem with long extended contests, but I think that preventing AP from actually increasing is in the spirit of the idea of them being finite in length. In any case, this is just an option to be used in appropriate places, and not neccessarliy a substitute for gaining AP.

In any case, if players would be allowed to gain abilities like this in a contest, then the same three options occur for that as the above ones for reductions. Which makes for several possible functional combinations.

Mike



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