Hi everybody, I wanted (as DM) give more weight to fatigue in fight but I was not able to come with unified solution.
I wanted to do somethink like “your forte is 4? Okey, after your forte x 2 (8) volleys of fighting you have to make health check for fatigue.”
But I have trouble to come with math here. I wanted test trigger to be depended on forte as to benefit characters with higher forte.
But I’m not sure how, not sure how big Ob for health test for fatigue should be
I was thinking maybe using health check there same way as steel (make it open ended for this test, hesitation for it would be 10-Forte) or something like this?
Adds an interesting “let my opponent exhaust himself” choice for robust characters.
My immediate thought (so in no way scoped for balance &c) is to make Fatigue a light wound.
Regarding duration, almost all the fights I remember were over in two rounds with the majority of the remainder being over at the start of the third. Based on that, double Forte would mean a character of Forte 3 would be fine in most fights but risk becoming tired if a fight went a little longer than usual and one with Forte 4 endures a little longer, which doesn’t immediately feel wrong.
Ob feels like it should depend on weight of penalty and whether passing the test resets the clock or just grants some grace.
However, you’d also have to be wary of double benefits: in addition to someone of higher Forte not triggering the test until later in a fight, they are more likely to pass the test. So, an alternative to basing fatigue on Forte is to just have a fatigue test at the end of each round (two rounds?) that starts at Ob1 and increases by one until failed.
I had a Fight once that went on for 4 or 5 exchanges before anyone got seriously hurt, which was like 2 hours of game. So, I totally think BW would benefit from a fatigue mechanic similar to how Mythras does it. Also, it would add an interesting way to play around heavily armored opponents: avoid them until they get tired! Like Brown vs. Vardis in A Song of Fire and Ice / Game of Thrones.
How’s this? At the end of the third exchange, each combatant makes an Ob 2 Forte test or take a +1Ob penalty due to fatigue. At the end of each additional exchange make another Forte test with a cumulative +1Ob penalty or your penalty goes up by one. You can spend two actions taking a breath to tests Health against your current penalty to eliminate it, or spend up to two more actions to get +1D per action for the test.