>From: Light Castle <light_castle_at_...>
>I have also allowed instead of the AP trade, an unrelated action that is
>purely an attack to wound kind of thing. (I use this sparingly.) I usually
>reserve this for something like magic, but you can try to reduce down an
>ability or power by targeting it in an unrelated action.
I think this is totally valid for ECs. Let's take the burning house example again (thanks, Jane). The character's goal is to get the victim out. That means the fire as the opposition can be thought of as having as it's goal stopping the character. Wounding the character, then, is "unrelated" to that goal (but likely a good tactic). So the fire can take a simple contest to drop some embers on the foe and wound him.
In fact, you might allow a lot of leeway with this. In a contest between two character intent on killing each other, you might allow one to attack to wound as an unrelated action as it's a slightly different goal. Realize that in many cases a player can make the remainder of a contest into a simple contest anyhow by betting the farm. So this really doesn't "shortcut" anything, in fact, the player is acknowledging that in the case of a Complete Victory that the opponent will only be wounded. Perhaps for life in that case, but as the goal wasn't to kill, it can't mean that the goal of the overall EC is achieved.
That's the simple rule you can use. As long as the outcome of some contest will not substitute for the overall goal of the current Extended Contest, then it can be inserted as an "unrelated action."
Now, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't just use the AP rules for this in most cases. But occasionally it can be fun to insert such contests. And this does give the result that's sought here. You can argue that certain sorts of actions "should" be AP bids, and other "unrelated," but really all actions in a contest are "related" to it (or they wouldn't be taken), so it's always a judgement call.
BTW, this method is significantly different from the "chaining simple contests" concept in a very significant way. Players in an EC are still committed to the outcome of the entire original goal (though they can change it) as the form of the overall contest. Which mostly means that the result will still have to adhere to the overall AP result. With chaining you get players using the "I attack more!" concept until foes are dead, and then you're back to "task resolution" rather than "conflict resolution."
Mike
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