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Mike Broster
Mike Broster's picture
Need help with a ruling on combat damage!
2nd edition, combat, sorcery

Ok so a played our first game and we had a situation.

One of our players was an Avalonian Knight Brawn Major trait thing

He pushed a villian through a wall by slamming him against it with a wooden table and just pushing him through with brute force. Now according to the rules thats 1 wound. Wtf?

How would you have ruled that? It seem sa little unfair that a dulest can say "i slash him with my sword" and do way more for 1 raise when this guy comes up with this dramatic way of doign things but has to use every raise he has to do anything and the villain can jsut negate it all with his. 

So what would you have done?

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Harliquinn Whit...
Harliquinn Whiteshadow's picture

Well technically it's "1 Wound / Raise spent" so he could have done more damage by spending additional Raises. If he only spent 1 Raise, that's only 1 Wound.

John

BluSponge blusp...
BluSponge blusponge@verizon.net's picture

Ok, so rulings not rules.

On the face of it, Harley is exactly right.  If your Avalon Knight dropped 1 raise to knock the villain through a wall with a heavy table, that's 1 wound.  And if you let him do that well...I'd say you are low balling things.  But I digress.  I don't know what Advantages the hero has, but under certain circumstances, I might let him do his Brawn in Wounds.  But that's a big if.  Because IF you do that too often then the player is just going to rinse and repeat and be annoyed when he doesn't get that effect every time.  Plus suddenly the joke at your table becomes tables are more potent than swords.  So yea, I'd probably hedge very close to the 1 wound per raise.  Maybe award the hero a HP for style and flair.

Tom

Mike Broster
Mike Broster's picture

Yeah I missed the important part. He'd already spent 2 hero points on "Legendary" and "Stronger than you" so i figure the extra 8 dice he got from that made his Brawn effectively 10! So yeah after all that I reckon he was ok push the dude through a wall with a raise O.o

He had 8 raises to spend on damage but that's his turn over and it seemed a little unfair that the dueslist wasn't spending any hero points and completly out damaging the magically imbued Knight who'd blown all of his for one maneauver :(

It just seems silly to us that a guy with brawn 5 punches as hard as a guy with brawn 2 but a duelist with finesse 2 hits way harder than a non dueslist with finesse 5 O.o

Are we doing something wrong? 
 

Harliquinn Whit...
Harliquinn Whiteshadow's picture

The 'damage' mechanism in this game is all related to Raises spent or in the case of Duelists, in your Weaponry skill. There's really no way around it by the rules. Another option is to have your hero get a signature pair of "Gauntlets" or "Bracers" that enhance his Brawn. It costs HP to use but you get extra Wounds or can negate Wounds closer to a Duelist.

That said, with Brawn Glamour, have your player take Strongest There Is. That will give him extra raises equal to the Rank that could be spent on Damage. It's not sustainable, but it's a way to have some 'big punches' 

Basically the raw Brawn isn't what's doing the damage, it's the skill and force that he puts behind the attack. If he's only spending 1 Raise for damage, he's not putting much into the attack, regadless of how naturally strong he is.

John

BluSponge blusp...
BluSponge blusponge@verizon.net's picture

You aren't doing it wrong.  But you aren't really thinking outside the box either.  ;)

Consider this. The duelist is highly trained in personal combat and knows where to put the pointy end where it will hurt the worst.  He bought a 5 point advantage to prove it.  Your big brawny hero right now is looking at a handful of 3-point advantages (Bar Fighter, Boxer, and Bruiser) to up his game.  But you can do more than that.

IIRC, the 1st edition Avalon book included a Pugilism fighting style.  Let's see...there it is.  The Finnigan School.  Pugilism and Wrestling.  Translated literally, the school doesn't really do anything that isn't offered already.  However, you could turn around an offer up a 5-point Advantage, let's call it the Finnegan Solution just to be cute.  Once per round, the brawler can deal a number of wounds equal to his brawling skill rank.  I realize it doesn't seem quite as flexible on its face as a duelist academy, so as a nod to the original, let's make this a 3-point advantage if you are Inish.

Now go dangle that out there in front of the player as a story reward.

Doctor
Doctor's picture

This is, in my opinion, one of the places where the system fails, or at least fails to give us enough. That said, here are my issues:

As any pro wrestling fan can tell you, putting someone through a table is one act, throwing him through a wall is another. I think letting the character do all this with one Raise might have been letting him off easy.

Yes, it's 1 Wound, but there is absolutely no reason you could not impose Consequences/Conditions on the Villian like dazed, staggered, encased in rubble.

If he had 8 Raises to spend on damage, then it was his choice to do one wound. The issue here is that you're comparing a non-Duelist to a Duelist and Duelists are mind-numbingly broken.

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
- H.L. Mencken

Allan Dill
Allan Dill's picture

A duelist has a sword and knows how to actually cut with it, as opposed to just mindlessly hacking. There actually is a big difference between knowing how to use the edge of a blade and not. That being said, your player could have done 8 damage by using all of his raises. Hell, he could have used 4 raises for damage and another 4 to hold the guy down after he was thrown through a door. Something which would have been much more dramatic and helpful in the scene because the villian now has to spend 5 raises if he wants to do anything. 

If you want to know the difference between a good learned sword strike and a bad one, here is a great little video. This is the difference between a proper slash and a bad one.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLmzeGV1sQo
 

Jeff Szusz
Jeff Szusz's picture

I would suggest that the extra dice he got from boosting his Brawn to roll for all those raises are 100% the mechanism through which he'd apply more damage, by applying 1 Raise per 1 Wound. You don't get extra dice PLUS extra combat damage, you get extra dice you can USE to generate extra damage.

Donovan Morningfire
Donovan Morningfire's picture

Yeah, if the player wanted to deal more damage, he should have spent more Raises on the effect.  At one Raise, his action pretty much amounted to a light shove into the wall; maybe enough to take out a Brute, but hardly a concern to a Villain (or to a Hero if the roles were switched).  That he chose not to spend additional Raises, either for damage or to Pressure the Villain (such as forcing the Villain to stay on the ground after being slammed about) suggests the action wasn't that important to the player.

Dono's Gaming & Etc Blog
http://jedimorningfire.blogspot.com/

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