I don't think so, but see below.
>I've been having trouble recently with one of my players, who is
>playing a shaman and has worked out how to demolish enemies:
>Because he has a fetch (7W) I presume that he starts off any spirit
>related extended contest with 27 more APs than most of the rest of the
>group. He then unleashes a spirit (often lightning) armed with 40 APs
>and Hero Point. Generally this is enough to result in another 80 APs
>being transferred from the victim, after which he can pretty much do
>whatever he likes. Nothing can stand up to an opponent able to
>repeatedly stake 30APs.
First of all, a hero can't gain more points in a transfer than the loser of the exchange started the exchange with. If you sock a foe who has 20 AP with a 40 AP bid and have a critical vs. their success, you still only transfer 20 AP, though the foe is driven to -60 AP (HW:RiG p. 131).
Second, I don't think that I would let the fetch add AP to the shaman unless the fetch is able to affect the mundane world (HW:RiG p. 208). You may want to restrict fetches to spirit combat only rather than creating a new rule.
Third, major opponents can have their own HP (HW:NB p. 9). Let one of them spend 1 HP to provide a critical vs. critical result (narrator decides) and then come up with something weird, or maybe something mundane like both parties lose the bid of 40 AP. If the shaman is wasting "scrubs", then let him. They shouldn't have that many AP (see point one) and sooner or later one of them may get a critical success when the shaman gets a critical failure. Even with the HP, the shaman has just lost a lot of ground.
Fourth, how many HP are you letting the shaman spend? He is limited to one (HW:RiG p. 123). As above, sooner or later he will critically fail and lose AP even if bumping the result to a mere failure.
Five, if the shaman always has HP to burn on these tactics, are you maybe giving out too many HP at the end of the session?
>An idea would be that the stake is limited by the base skill or might
>involved in the primary action - so the Lightning Spirit, might 18
>means that he can only stake 18 APs, which an opponent might be able
>to survive loosing.
This sounds like a workable house rule, but I think that the points above should help you to limit your AP bid abuse problem without it.
Thanks,
Andy
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