Help with Disengage Option and Great Strike

Hello Mates,

I’m new to Burning Wheel, and we are playing the Twilight in the Duchy Verdoben adventure as a tutorial for all of us to learn the system.

As we played, we had two doubts:

Context:

The group did not set a watch at night at Marten’s house, so they were gently awakened with knives at their throats. Daniel failed the Steel test and was kidnapped. Gunter and Theoden won a couple of Bloody Bersus and captured a cultist (Daniel had set a belief about liking a girl in the village, and this cultist was her father). After interrogation, they went after Daniel in the icy field. There, the cultists, tying Daniel to the stake, rebelled against the knight and the priest. But after the fight began, the bear appeared. The cultists fled, though some were mauled to death by the bear as Gunter released Daniel. Then, the players engaged the bear.

First doubt: In the fight with the bear, after the first exchange, the bear was injured. I then tried to Disengage from him, but the rules, as it says on page 437 of BWG, “Test Speed at…” were not clear to me. Is this test a Versus test?
How we proceeded: I tested versus Speed from the bear, winning against Gunter but losing against Daniel (Theoden was in the Eye of the Storm). Based on this, I considered that the bear could not disengage and let the fight continue. Was this correct?

Second doubt: In the second exchange, Gunter made an Avoid/Great Strike/Block against the bear’s Push (then) Strike/Avoid/Counter Strike. My doubt is about the Great Strike part, as it is a two-action maneuver. The only way to “avoid” it in this volley was to script two avoids, right? Like, one avoid has to match with the second part of the Great Strike (not just the first).
How we proceeded: Since the Avoid was the first action in Volley 2, the bear avoided only Daniel’s knife (instead of both Daniel’s and Gunter’s), and then Gunter landed the Sword Great Strike for free on the bear (changing the tides in their favor and eventually leading to the bear’s death). Was this correct?

Oh, taking this opportunity, can someone post an invite to the Discord server? (All the other links I found were expired.)

Between exchanges, combatants either Vie for Positioning (to take or keep advantage with their weapon), Disengage (if they want to get out of the fight), or (if everyone wants to keep fighting and has the same length weapon) simply continue as is.

In the case of the former two options, folks on each side test their Speed (+ any Advantages) and compare results. Combatants have the positioning advantage over any opponent’s they beat in the Speed test or Disengage from anyone they rolled more successes than. If combatants on both sides want to Disengage, they are automatically Disengaged from each other.

In your case, it sounds the bear got more successss than Gunter but fewer than Daniel (and that Theoden was also Disengaging). So, Daniel would hold the Positioning Advantage over the bear, while Gunter would not be able to effect the bear – The bear runs away, but Daniel was able to keep up well enough that the bear couldn’t get away from him: Gunter was left in the dust by both of them. (Theoden wasn’t even trying to prursue.)

Yup. You nailed it.

Hopefully: Burning Wheel HQ

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Thanks a lot for your clarifications Gnosego! :grinning:

Regarding the Disengage part, I now figured exactly why I was in doubt.
It’s because we’re not using positioning (yet) in our fights, as we’re gradually deepening our understanding and implementing of the rules.

In this case, the correct way, was the Bear disengage and fight only against Daniel, but as he stayed, we’ve explored the fight mechanics more and witnessed the devastating power of a Great Strike.

Despite the mistake (rules-wise), it was a good result.

Yeah, bud. Happy to help!

And welcome to the forums!

  • Quincy

Hi @Kaval, welcome to the forums! I look forward to seeing you in the Discord!

No matter your doubts, the fight sounds like it was a lot of fun, and a great intro to the system. I just want to clear up a misunderstanding:

Only the second action of a Great Strike needs to be Avoided. Here’s the text regarding how the Great Strike functions:

“On the first action, you take a breath to set up your attack. You are effectively defenseless on this action; you count as performing a Physical Action.” - BWGR, 442

“Physical Action”, not a Strike. This means that the first half of a Great Strike doesn’t have to be Avoided. It’s actually an opening for the target to get a neat little Strike in before you, if they can. It’s also enough time for your target to invoke the “Oh, F&¢k!” optional rule on page 457 to change their next action to Avoid.

Essentially, Great Strikes are slow and obvious - they leave you open and are easy to dodge, best used when you know your target is hesitating, off their feet, or in a lock. How this would have played out, as best I understand:

Volley 1, Action 1: Gunter tests Avoid against the Bear’s Push (phew!).
Volley 1, Action 2: As Gunter winds up his Great Strike (leaving himself open), the Bear STRIKES! The Bear would test as if Gunter had scripted a Physical Action for this action in the fight, making it Ob 1 to hit Gunter (yikes!).

Volley 2, Action 1: Gunter and Daniel test their attacks simultaneously. Because “Avoid tests against all incoming attacks” (BWGR, 443), the Bear’s speed would reduce successes from both Daniel’s Strike and Gunter’s Great Strike. This means Gunter’s Great Strike is not a free hit.

Volley 3, Action 1: As both Counterstrike and Block are Defensive actions, neither character makes a move on the other - they circle each other, each waiting for the other to make a move.

As it was scripted, this exchange would actually have played out very poorly for Daniel and Gunter. But this wouldn’t matter because, as @Gnosego pointed out, Gunter would have been left in the dust during the Bear’s attempt to flee, and would therefore be all the safer for it.

It’s really cool to see how you navigated these nuances in the system. It sounds like it all played out really well and that the players had fun.

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The way I interpreted the script was:

V1 A1: Avoid
V2 A1: Great Strike 1, V2 A2: Great Strike 2
V3 A1: Block

In which case, yeah. Gunter caught the bear flat-footed.

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Yeah, that script sequence would play out exactly as you say. It’s only that Kaval mentioned that the Avoid was Action 1 of Volley 2, which changes the interactions.

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Could you explain this? I don’t understand.

Sure! Also, Kaval, please correct me if I’m getting something wrong. I think both the bear and Gunter had B4 reflexes and each of them chose to put 2 actions into Volley 1. If the above isn’t true, then nothing below is correct either, but here goes:

Fighter Volley 1 Volley 2 Volley 3
Gunter Avoid, Great Strike (part 1) Great Strike (part 2) Block
Bear Push, Strike Avoid Counterstrike
Daniel n/a Strike n/a
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Ah, I see.

I read the script as:

V1: Avoid; V2: GS1, GS2; V3: Block

against:

V1: Push, Strike; V2: Avoid; V3: Counterstrike

That seemed the most direct read with the notation used.

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Yeah, what’s cool about this is how the rules allow fighters to choose where they put their excess actions. The Bear could just as easily have put a second action in Volley 2, as above, or even in Volley 3.

@Kaval, I’m actually super curious: what informed your decision to divide the Bear’s actions the way you did? Did you choose to divide its actions that way in order to make it more predictable to the players, or to slip past their defenses? Or did it just feel like a natural choice?

Hi mates, I really appreciate your responses to my post.

Hehe, it sure was. We are really enjoying BW.

Thanks! Yes, we all had fun, hehe.

Yes, Quincy, that’s exactly how you interpreted it.

Gunter scripted a Great Strike as two actions on V2, and Quincy interpreted it correctly.

By the way, Joel, I have learned a lot from your considerations:

  1. I had not realized that we could break Great Strike between different volleys.
  2. We can “counter” Great Strike with the OW FK rule.

I agree, and this makes everything much more interesting as we can really ‘play’ the interaction. Unlike in DnD, where a fight move is always a dice against a flat number, here it is more like a ‘rock-paper-scissors’ effect, where you put your actions (or number of dice) into your strengths and try to predict the opponent’s move. Man, this is awesome!

Sure, sure, let me explain my line of thought (from the bear’s perspective): I opened with a Push, as the adventure notes that the bear favors this move. Then, if I were a bear, I would catch my prey off guard and strike right after. After that, I would rest in the next volley with an Avoid, and then, expecting something fishy on V3, I scripted a Counter-Strike, just to see how it works, hehe (and predicting a Daniel strike).

Before the engagement, Gunter lent a dagger to Daniel, as he scripted a belief about getting a squire and bet on Daniel’s performance to judge if he could be this squire. Right after the engagement, they approached the bear (who was chewing on Agar). The bear looked at the party and stood on its feet, howling loudly, so I made an intimidation check. There, little Daniel failed the steel test and hesitated (since he failed by two, he hesitated in v1 and v2 in the first exchange). Man, when he recovered, he went on a rampage and scripted strike, strike, strike, strike, strike until the end of the combat (I allowed it, as a knife have X on consecutive strikes).

If we had done it the right way, the scene would have been very cool too. The bear would have run with Daniel grabbing its pelt with one hand and stabbing a lot with the other. But thinking about it, how would it have played out? The bear’s intention was to flee. Would it have had to script avoid, avoid, avoid? Or push to get him off? And I didn’t really understand the push effect, does it remove the opponent from the exchange?

Hell, that was a lot fun! Even remembering and writing it here. Im super excited with BW.

Today we are going to Dinner for One, sure i will get out of there with a lot of doubts, you will know more of it very soon hahaha.

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Look at it this way, Daniel beating the bear means that the bear is stuck fighting Daniel for the duration of that exchange. So it could try to avoid throughout the exchange and test to disengage again at the ejd, yeah. Or it could try to kill Daniel or cause him to hesitate for a volley. And/or it could try to push him or otherwise hinder him so that Daniel has a dofficult time sticking with him when the bear tries to disengage again.

But Daniel won the test vs disengaging, so Daniel gets another exchange to take his shot at the bear.

No. So Pushing’s exact effect depends on how well the push goes off. The lowest level of effect just gives your opponent +1Ob to their next action from being staggered. Easy-peasy.

The next level of effect does the same thing and lets you take the advantage with a weapon of Long length or shorter. That means that if your weapon length is different from your opponent’s weapon length, you consult the chart on page 431 and apply the obstacle penalties to any of your opponent’s actions that aren’t defensive. You also get to check the positioning table on page 436 and get the corresponding dice to keeping the advantage between exchanges.

So, if you have the advantage fighting with a knife while I’m fighting with a longsword, I might push you. If I get the level of success noted above, you’re staggered, and I have either pushed you far enough that you’re going to have trouble closing in on me – hence I have the advantage – or staggered you well enough that I can fade back to for the same effect.

If you then push me (harder to do when I have the advantage with a sword), you might get that level of effect and stagger me enough that you can close in past my guard, and I’m in the bad position of trying to bring this long sword to bear against someone up in my face.

Then, when the exchange ends, we look at that positioning chart and see that you, still in my face woth your knife have an easier time staying in my face than I have trying to ward you off. Ergo, you get extra dice.

The third level of effect is pushing me on my butt. This is bad because… Well, you can see what being knocked down means on page 455.

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Note that Block doesn’t work against Great Strike unless you have a shield. And the base action changing rules (that only allow you to change unannounced actions) would help you just as well (or better!) in Joel’s example script: Seeing the Great Strike being set in Volley 1, you could still ditch an action to change an action in Volley 2 to Avoid (or to Counterstrike!).

Thanks again, Quincy. So, a push is not a ‘big push,’ throwing the other guy many meters away. So again, I might not have seen the benefits because I am not using positioning advantages yet.
I plan to use it in the fight with the zombies in the cellar; let’s see what happens. Hehe.

Taking the opportunity, when skill tests were necessary, I used savage mauling from the bear, but it’s only 5, while its power is 8. Is it intended to be weaker?

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Can you give an example? I’m not quite sure I understand the question.

It feels weird to me that the bear’s ability to strike (skill, savage mauling) is weaker than its power (which should be the same base stat).
So, a strike from the bear seems less effective than its push, for example. Like when a player opens a skill (after beginner’s luck), it equals the base stat. Or is there something I am not understanding?

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Skills opened by a player equals one half the root stat rounded down.

EDIT: The reference for that is on page 50.

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