I was going to defend the transfers but the more I think about it, in this particular case they don't work.
I love transfers otherwise, but that's because I'm a fan of the dramatic story fight, which is obviously where they come from. Being able to regain AP, to surge back, to draw strength from suddenly gaining advantage and push that momentum is very much in the spirit of cinematic combat. (If you want an easy example, turn on professional wrestling and watch the ebb and flow of a fight. If it's a main event or other long match, you'll see an obvious extended contest with bids, parting shots, AP transfers, and final actions.)
On 30 Jun 2004 at 11:19, Mike Holmes wrote:
> Good question.
>
> Because if you gain AP from beating just one other character, you advance
> relative to everone else. What this means is that I can seem to get ahead of
> one character by doing well against another character. It gives a lot of
> incentive to just attack the weakest character. With no transfers, then no
> matter how well you beat the slowest guy you still have to compete directly
> with the fastest guy without any advantage from the other contest (except
> not having lost).
>
> It would work with transfers too. But I've never really seen the advantage
> to transfers. They only serve to make contest go for a potentially infinite
> length. Which is sorta interesting, but not really worth it, IMO. In any
> case, in this particular case I think that not using them makes the results
> somewhat more intuitive.
>
> Mike
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