OK Jane, just for you!
Optional Rule: Pyrrhic Victories
In extended contests, instead of just keeping a tally of current AP, also tally how many each participant loses in the course of the contest. At the end, resolve the contest usually but also assume that the victor suffers a level of 'damage' based on final AP minus total AP lost, using the Contest Consequences table as usual (so that if the winner had 25 AP, but in total had lost of 40, even if subsequent successes had brought him up to positive levels, nonetheless he is Injured, as indicated for -15 AP).
This means that long back-and-forth contests can be very bruising, and raises what may seem the paradoxical situation of a hero winning a contest, but ending up in a worst shape than his enemy. This is, however, intentional: first of all, the contest may not simply have been about who kills whom; the hero might have been holding the bridge while his friends escaped, for example, which he did successfully at terrible cost to himself. It also raises the question of just how badly a player wants to win: is the hero going to give up as things begin to look dangerous, or hang in there in the hope of eventual victory, even as bones break and blood drips…?
Needless to say, this does make extended contests rather more gritty!
All the best
Mark
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