Re: Rick's comments on the Defend Option

Hi Edward, everyone.

In my games a common reason to defend is: you know you

are about to die and are trying to delay the inevitable as much

as possible.

One of my NPC's (33 attributes), is facing a PC with 48 attributes

and it is obvious from the fate of his ex-friends that he stands no

chance. No chance at all. PC engages the NPC and the NPC

defends. Why not? His weapon if he rolls max damage will only

do a point or two to the PC, and any hit by the PC will likely kill

him. The NPC defends. Maybe the PC's magic sword will break.

Maybe the horse will learn to sing.

Sure Clive should be less skilled at defence than Glen. But let

us look at just Clive. If Clive is attacking, should he be easier to

hit than if he is 100% oriented on defending?

Under current rules, against high attribute figures there really is

no difference. Why not attack? He is going to die either way.

All the time in my game I come to situations where someone looks

at the tactical situation and says, "Defending would be smart here,

too bad that it is a trivial waste of time that won't really reduce my

chance of being hit."

You said that both people are treated equally, and then you say

my system gives Clive an unfair advantage. No, both are the same.

Clive is not penalized, and if you think he should be, and isn't, that is

like an advantage, right? No, it just means he is not penalized.

As for your parrying rules, sure. I have no great objection to them

since you give up your attack. (I think that every version of parrying

that I have seen, before yours, allows people to parry AND attack.)

Giving steep DX penalties to parrying multiple times per turn is fine.

And of course the DX negative generated with a parry would add to

any other DX modifiers.

If you parry 4 times are you at -16 DX? Or are you limiting people

to a maximum of 3 parries per turn?

However, the details of your suggested system elude me a bit.

You want the -4 DX from multiple parries to add to the DX penalties

of striking at specific body parts. I thought you had said, that if you

parry, you don't get to strike? I've bolded a portion of your argument

below.

Warm regards, Rick.

On 2018-01-31, at 5:39 PM, Edward Kroeten wrote:

Hi Rick,

I think you misunderstood me. Let me try to explain what I mean, with the Defend option there are 4 basic reasons to defend (there are others of course).

1 Recover from injury penalty
2 Things are going to improve Clumsiness spell or summoned beastie will disappear
3 Friends are coming to help
4 Hold the bridge ala Khazad Dum

If you think about any of these examples Glen the Graceful (DX 14) vs Clive the Klutz (DX 8), Glen should be better at all of the defend options assuming the same DX penalties.

With the current rules Glen and Clive would have exactly the same chance for success in defending against anyone. The same goes for your Defend option just upping the chance of success. This artificially gives Clive an advantage over Glen especially in regards to any adverse DX modifications when defending. So Glen would almost certainly not defend as where Clive might in the current rules.

Example Clive and Glen are both -2 DX from injuries Clive's adjDX is 6, he not likely to hit anything (under 10%) as where Glen adjDX 12 is still at 74% chance to hit.

My next question is how often is Defend used now?

From my own experience and your assessment not very much. Right now the PC will be better off most of the time to attack rather than defend.

If they are already rolling because they are attacking rather than defending, then having an active defense is not adding any die rolls.

I know you don't want to add parry, but I am not talking about parry and riposte just defensive parry or The Defend option. Now Clive and Glen are both -2 DX when an attack comes both would make a roll to parry (their only action) this would make Clive basically meat, as he would still have to roll a 6 or less. Glen on the other hand would be able to parry quite well at 74%.

I would propose a -4 DX penalty for a second parry attempt and a -8 for a third as it is really hard to parry 3 separate attacks.

An example might help here Glen is defending a bridge 1 megahex wide if he had one opponent attacking him he would us his normal DX of 14 to defend giving him 90% chance of parrying. Now a second person arrives the next round he now has the option of trying to parry that person as well. The first parry at normal DX (90%), the second at -4 DX (50%) and if there was a 3rd in his front hexes at -8 DX (9%).

I would also add that the Parry attempt would have to add in any -DX for a special attack. Like in the case of an aimed blow at the head which has -6 DX for the attacker, that would also be -6 DX on the parry roll as well. Thus a highly skilled attacker can still make parrying very difficult.

Edward Kroeten
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