Fine, but let me part with this bit of history. Scripted Combat came about because Luke and the rest of us were sick-and-tired of the way some game dealt with simultaneous actions. “I do this.” “Ok, then I do this!” “Well, in that case, I do this.” “Screw you! You can’t change what you said.” “Why not? Why do I have to declare first anyway?” ::throws table and leaps for the throat::
So that’s the spirit and intent of the mechanics. To get rid of any uncertainty. So even if the written word fails at that, go with the intent.
I’m not sure what bearing that has. Neither of us is proposing doing away with the “script a bunch of actions in advance and then play out the volleys and hope they’re right” system. Mine still doesn’t give choices of what you’re doing, or even what fires against which opposition. All actions act against all other actions to their maximum effect.
You think that gray reflexes should give some guaranteed unopposed actions while I don’t. Your version is definitely a bit simpler to adjudicate; I think mine would make for better gameplay—assuming you want to keep gray from being leaps and bounds beyond black, which I do and you don’t.
(One of my favorite systems was a misunderstanding of Shadowrun. You declare actions from slowest to fastest, then resolve from fastest to slowest. Slow reactions means you’re always a step behind the action. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, but it made for some very interesting gameplay.)
If I were to entertain a charitable rules drift (I generally don’t), I’d give a special dispensation to allow Avoid to defend against both Grey shade sub-actions. This is because you are physically twisting and moving out of the way. Any other action but Avoid would be at the mercy of sub-action B as is expected from a literal reading of the rules.
As I said, a charitable rules drift to allow for full-defense and run away style tactics while still not making any weird “who wins in simultaneous resolution” issues
If you’re looking for an out, another way you might charitably change Grey Reflexes is to simply double the exponents to get the number of actions and then have them distributed over the round exactly as you would Black exponent actions. G4 Reflexes would be an even match for B8 Reflexes. Who wants to fight the G8 guy? [Answer: The guy with W5 Reflexes]
Fixed that for you. The only difference between a wild doubling or tripling of the base reflexes and our interpretation of the rules is when the extra actions come up. With action doubling you will see the extra actions later in the volley, whereas with a strict reading of grey shade reflexes you’ll see the bonus actions interleaved between normal actions.
That’s what I said. It isn’t exactly the same—for the reason we’ve both pointed out. And now we’re doing semantic hairsplitting, and I’ve only got B2 in that.
From my original understanding of the RAW the difference comes down to when actions are placed in Volley 1, Volley 2, Volley 3.
A Ref G4 critter in the current interpretation would have two actions in two of the volleys and four in the other, Compared to a B8 character who would have three actions in two of the volleys and two in the last. Going up against each other you could have a situation like this…
I’ve marked the 3 Actions in each volley, since Black Shade Guy gets 3 actions, Grey Shade guys gets four actions and four “subactions” I’ve designated G for grey. Grey folks spurt out actions in short little bursts but the spacing of the actions is out of place and weird. It’s like Grey dude runs out of puff or something, whereas Black Shade guy is pacing himself.
I can see now how what original understanding might have been flawed. But then again, I don’t think we were ever likely to play a game where we faced a Grey Shade Ref monster.
Your scripting chart looks right on the money. A good way to think of the divide is that Reflexes is the overall “how much stuff can you get done” ability, the shade of Reflexes dictates “how much stuff you can get done right now.” While the person with the higher reflexes is better at doing lots of stuff, having Grey reflexes lets someone move blindingly fast within the limitations of their overall martial ability.So if we have:
V1A1B: Strike; Block
V1A1G: - ; Strike
Effectively what is happening is the Black shade guy is attacking, the Grey shade guy is blocking and than flowing into a strike before their opponent even sees it coming.
For a really good example of (temporary) Grey shade reflexes doing the above (with Avoid instead of Block), watch the final duel in Sanjuro (it’s up on youtube) and think about it in terms of scripting (as opposed to a Bloody Versus test). Sanjuro dumps a whole whack-ton of Artha to Minor Epiphany his reflexes to Grey (probably 2 deeds, 6 persona 10 fate, I’m assuming Sanjuro has one Grey shade stat in the Reflexes group already) then, knowing Hanbei will come out the gate aggressively scripts Avoid and Strike as his V1A1 actions. Predictably Hanbei scripted a Strike as well but Sanjuro was able to duck under his sword before it connected. I’m ignoring the draw action here since I’m making the assumption that, both being Iaijutsu masters, they both have a corresponding instinct that allows them to draw their sword at part of their first action.
Sanjuro has been on my re-watch list lately, I’ve a new housemate who hasn’t seen any Kurosawa at all.
I find it odd that the blindingly fast reflexes guy gets left open against his black shade opponent so often without an option to defend… I guess in the fiction Black Shade is a technically more competent fighter and the Grey Dude is simply blindingly fast but indecisive/clumsy/unable-to-see-an-opening.
