>> Anyway, our stout-hearted heroes find themselves once again in combat
>> against the accursed Lunars. One of the members of the party is a
>> Chalana Arroy priestess, who decides to use her sleep feat to put
>> some
>> of the Lunars out of commission. Would this use of Sleep be considered
>> a
>> normal AP test (resulting in the loss and potential gain of AP's), or
>> would it be a simple contest, within the extended contest.
The real question here is not "Is it a normal or Unrelated action in an Extended Contest", but "What happens if I use it as an Unrelated action, and fail"? Now, as a normal action, if you fail, you lose the AP bid. But, as an Unrelated action, what's the penalty? None as far as I remember (excepting any house rules). If the C-A is already a part of the Extended Contest, it's unfair to the opponent that she gets no penalty for failure. If she isn't as is just 'sniping' into the contest from outside, a Simple/Unrelated Contest sounds far better to me - Dazed=lose next action, Hurt=-1 to all subsequent actions, Injured = 1/2 TN to all subsequent actions, Dying = ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
The same applies to all Unrelated actions, there should be more to failure than just "Oops... didn't work. Oh, well, I'll have another go in a minute...".
>The only time it has happened in our game the healer put all her AP's
>behind the spell [1W] against the Broo that was about to slice her and
>won. Result one sleeping Broo.
It should be noted the C-A was an NPC and we never actually saw the dice :)
>Well treat them as an unrelated action and use a simple contest to
>resolve it. The main thing about this system is its flexibility.
But what happens on failure? I agree fully, I can only see shield/weapon destroyers, disarming, and all such stuff as Simple Contests. Having your shield destroyed means losing it from that moment on (not that it makes much difference, having a Rank of only 1... oops, wrong thread...), not just losing a few AP you could regain next action. But as the rules stand, it's a one-way minimum risk transaction.
Besides, it's not, by definition, Unrelated - defeating the Lunar scum is the whole point of the Contest. So there should be some more Extended-Contest related method. My initial thought was to use the Trading AP for Penalties rule. Reduce the opponent's AP loss by 7, and you get the effect desired (instead of inflicting a Hurt). In similar vein, you could require a Grievous Wound - a minimum of 15 AP loss must be inflicted, if it is, the opponent loses the AP AND you get the effect desired. This is possibly better - losing a shield would be violent enough to stun as well as the problem of working shieldless thereafter - but a 15 AP loss is heavy, and hard to inflict.
Wulf
Powered by hypermail