Re: First round initiative order in group extended contests

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 20:16:39 -0000

My reading of the rules disagrees here. Your AP are based on the skill you use for your action, not what you use to defend with--and these could be very different. For example (skipping your second question for a second), a healer is attacked by a warrior, and the warrior goes first, and attacks with a sword. The Healer defends with her dodge skill of 14. On her turn she uses her "flee combat" skill of 3W to try and run away. Her AP are 23, not 14.

I'm wondering, how do I determine in what order people go to
> start on the 1st round, thus, in effect, who's going to be
determining what the
> scope of the contest is.

There was a discussion of this on the list some time ago. I don't know how much luck you'd have searching the archives but you can try. I seem to recall nobody had a clear cut rule. I think it was more or less "sometimes it is obvious (a succesful ambush), sometimes there is no disagreement (you both draw your swords and start whacking at each other), and sometimes it is a problem (you come around a corner and bump into each other, and one wants to start talking peace and the other wants to start whacking and thwacking)"

In that third case I seem to recall two options.

One option is to let everyone choose their first skill, and use that for initial AP. This is basically OK, but can result in abuse. A Lankhor My lawspeaker bumps into storm bull in the dark. The lawspeaker might be sure that combat will result, but chooses to make "recite precedent" his first action ("you should give way to me because I am older and wiser.") since he has it at 7W2, and close combat of 17. Unless the narator decides *immediately, before the contest starts* to assign a big penalty to the recite president skill, the lawspeaker will soon be in combat with a huge pool of AP to draw on.

The other is to run a simple contest using 'some relevant ability' to see who gets to start first.

Both of these options could be extended to group contests.

--Bryan

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