Hi,

to make the game even more cin­e­matic I was think­ing about a new maneu­ver: the major slash attack. The idea is that a fighter with a heavy (mostly two handed) weapon makes a hor­i­zon­tal slash against more than one oppo­nent. That is a sin­gle attack against two (maybe even three) oppo­nents.

The maneu­ver can only be exe­cuted when the fighter has ini­tia­tive over all his oppo­nents. The Acti­va­tion cost ist 2 for two ene­mies and 4 for three. The fighter must split his pool between his oppo­nents. He doesn’t get any bonus dice if the first attack is suc­cess­ful.

What do you think? Nonsense?

Hey

I’ve cer­tainly toyed with the idea of such maneu­ver although I sim­ply call it a cleave, but haven’t de facto imple­mented in my games yet.

I mean, sure it seems awfully sim­i­lar to a cer­tain fe-​asset of a cer­tain game, it also doesn’t seem like some­thing you’d see in a fenc­ing manual…but it cer­tainly fits the sword&sorcery theme, I think i’ve seen a fair share of a cer­tain cimer­ian butcher­ing foes in sim­i­lar fash­ion.

Per­son­ally i’ve been stuck with it being a new slash type maneu­ver or requir­ing some sort of asset. The lat­ter has the ben­e­fit of deal­ing in a sim­pler man­ner and allows for a more freely bad-​assness wihout wor­ry­ing at bal­anc­ing (since you payed an asset). The for­mer is more demo­c­ra­tic but runs the prob­lem of barely see­ing action.

As read, your exam­ple seems rather pro­hib­i­tive. I’d never use it as cost is too high and risky. You are engag­ing from 2 – 3 foes at once, which means you will prob­a­bly have to use eva­sive attack, so thats 3 – 6 dice only for acti­va­tion plus you have to divide dice for each foe?


I’ve never reached a good com­pro­mise (in my head) as to what would be the best way to deal with, but i’ve ranged from options such as

A ) use QoS of first attack for an ime­di­ate attack in a sec­ond adja­cent foe
a.1) foe that hasnt been avoided by ter­rain check
a.2) any close foe, avoided or not. Avoided foes get half their best pool?

A bit iffy if pos­si­ble to attack avoided ene­mies, but less risky and allows for a fair acti­va­tion cost. Then again, an avoided foe means the one win­ning the avoid­ance has some sort of [bet­ter] bat­tle­field con­trol (?)

B ) By declar­ing a cleave (and pay­ing the AC) and attack­ing a foe that uses eva­sion, and if eva­sion is suc­ces­full, you can “reuse” your total QoS of the strike (or half of it) as bonus dice on an ime­di­ate attack against a sec­ond, adja­cent foe

C) You automatically/​freely cleave when you use ALL your dice on a slash and you get to reuse — QoS /​QoS/​2 /​total QoS or what­ever num­ber is bet­ter — on an adja­cent foe.

Basi­cally these are the ques­tions I need to answer

1) how to deal and to afect (or not afect) avoided or unavoided foes

2) Up to how many can be tar­geted, 2 or 3?

3) How much of an acti­va­tion cost, if any

4) Maneu­ver or asset

5) is it a cleave through an enemy as you cut it open and cut what­ever is fol­low­ing (more cin­e­matic) or you sim­ply repur­pose the momen­tum of a failed/​avoided attack into a new foe? Maybe there’s these two sim­i­lar but dis­tinct maneuvers/​assets.

Many vari­ables, but i’m still up to add it into my games!

Anarak wrote:
What is a fe-​asset? And yes, this maneu­ver is noth­ing you see in a fenc­ing man­ual but in films. I thought it would appeal to some play­ers want­ing to play the big bad ass with a big axe.

Anarak wrote:
I wouldn’t make it an asset, rather a rare kind of maneu­ver. The cost is not that high if you’re fac­ing two oppo­nents (2). I think the maneu­ver could be use­ful in cases when the hero is sur­rounded by ene­mies and wants to end the fight quickly. It works well, when the hero has a big advan­tage in dice over his oppo­nents. Of course it makes no sense when the ene­mies are nearly as good as the lonely fighter.


Anarak wrote:
Hm, inter­est­ing thought. From your options I like that the most. I wouldn’t allow to attack avoided foes, because if you have avoided them suc­cess­fully with your Ter­rain check, they are out of reach.

Well, that is really some­thing quite cin­e­matic, and I doubt that it would work in real life, but as real life is bor­ing and you seem to like that kind of flavour, who cares?

Speak­ing not at all with an offi­cial designer, but merely a gamer hat I would say that:

I would limit it to just two, not three foes, as it would oth­er­wise strike me as too over the top.

I would make it an Maneu­ver option only if no Ter­rain Checks to avoid fac­ing mul­ti­ple foes in that Round were attempted, either suc­cess­fully or not. My rea­son for that would be that lin­ing up your two oppo­nents in such way as to be able to attack them both already requires very spe­cific maneu­ver­ing, which I see as clash­ing with maneu­ver­ing to at least partly avoid oppo­nents.

I would rule that a suc­cess­ful Parry or Block (but not Eva­sion) against the first attack would inval­i­date the sec­ond attack and mean that the dice are wasted, as the slash was obvi­ously knocked out of its planned arc or stopped out­right.

As to whether to go with a split dice­pool option or the car­ry­over Suc­cess option for the sec­ond test I guess that would need some math and test­ing to prop­erly bal­ance it.

Could this not also be accom­plished with a Ter­rain check with intent to do so, and if the Wound­ing suc­cesses exceed 6, those excess suc­cesses trans­fer to the next oppo­nent — per­haps adding suc­cesses from the Ter­rain check? Again, would need test­ing, but per­haps would have more of that sat­is­fy­ing feel of mow­ing down mooks. This mechanic could also apply to dri­ving a polearm through one oppo­nent and into another.

I like the polearm-​idea on prin­ci­ple, as an alter­na­tive to the Maneu­ver the mechanic you pro­pose strikes me as way too ben­e­fi­cial. But as the mechanic could in any case only ever be used suc­cess­fully against mooks the part about being too ben­e­fi­cial pos­si­bly isn’t what doesn’t sit easy with me, but it is pos­si­bly sim­ply the visual style of such moves becom­ing too com­mon­place. If such moves occur all the time the result would for my prefer­nces be way too cin­e­matic in a some­what silly way.

It could fall under the ban­ner of do it the first time, with only the basic acti­va­tion cost, but after that the sur­viv­ing nooks are wiser to the tac­tic and don’t stand in a line so much.

What I’m imag­in­ing would require a Ter­rain check to illus­trate intent, both oppo­nents attack­ing and there­fore unable to defend, and suc­cess­ful Reflex against both. And even if suc­cess­ful, most likely to cut down the first oppo­nent and only wound the sec­ond.

I see it as some­thing many a novice war­rior would try in place of a saner option in order to look cool, only to end up din­ner for daggers.

Com­pli­cated extra sys­tems aside (which I have no trou­ble with –some­times), i think i might go with the more fate-​inspired, cin­e­matic of “spend a drama point to imme­di­ately strike an adja­cent foe with the same dice you spent on the cur­rent round, com­mon sense abided“
–only works against henchemen
Actu­ally, i might even allow an instakill for mooks and you just color nar­rate it how you like, when spend­ing a drama. I guess it depends on how often they get their hands on drama.