Difficulty of tests and combat.

Burning Wheel Subsystem Advice and Guidance
1

So in my last session, one of the characters was involved in two combats; a Bloody Versus, and a Fight. Now my question is how to award tests in these combats.

First lets look at bloody versus. The character in question has a B5 Hammer skill. If i understand Bloody versus correctly, the character gets to split up his skill into “attack” and “defense” for a turn of combat. How would this effect what kind of tests he would be awarded. If the char split his dice so he had 3 for attack and 2 for defense, would he be using the the 3 dice level to see if he has accomplished a routine, difficult, or challenging test or would they base it off the 5 dice of his skill.

Now for Fight (which i guess also fits in Bloody versus, but hey, i like the format of dividing it into two this way). lets say char A and char b both have the same stats. In a volley A decides to strike and B decides to great strike and both are unwounded. A gets 4 successes and b gets 4 success. 1. Now A has an OB of 1 so so that would be awarded a routine test correct? Now B decides to use one of his extra successes to both move his hit location from torso to the head and two more successes to increase his VA by two. 2. But B would still only get a routine test because even though he spent extra successes to increase the effectiveness of the blow, his OB was still one, correct?

In another volley, lets say both are still uninjured, A decides to strike and B decides to avoid. A gets 4 successes on the strike and B gets 3 success on avoid. 3. A would still hit B, but A would get difficult test since B increased the OB from 1 to 4 because of his avoid correct?

Am i making any mistakes in regard to what kinds of tests the characters would be able to record? I know that a character is only about to record one test for each particular skill, such as hammer, for the entire Fight, I just want to make sure that I am correct on the levels of tests.

2

Bloody Versus:
Not sure about this one. The answer also has ramifications for: Counterstrike, Rebuttal, Block and Strike. My gut feeling is that you’d use the full dice of the skill and not the split pool.

Fight:
The Strike / Great Strike question, they both get routine tests because moving locations and adding damage are success allocations, not Ob increases. Also, success allocation lets you increase damage, not increase VA (unless something changed with Great Strike between Revised and Gold and I’m blanking on it). That said, Great Strike gives you either +1 Power or +2 VA just for doing it so you still get that VA boost.

Strike / Avoid: 5 Dice vs. Ob 4 is a Difficult test. A hits B but has zero successes to spend. The ramifications being: Incidental hit on the location offered by the defender.

So yeah, all your math looks good. Remember also that you generally take the hardest test type for each skill so there’s a bit more bookkeeping involved than just writing down the first test that comes along.

3

Use the most difficult test you generate. So if you roll 1D against 5s, you take the challenging test.

4

Bloody vs example: You have sword at B6, you stick 4 into attack and 2 into defense. The enemy has axe of B4. They put all 4 in attack and get 3 successes. Your attack counts as 4D vs ob 1, your defense is 2D vs 3s. You get a challenging test for 2 dice vs 3 successes (ob)?

5

Thanks, glad that my math was working.