confused
Anyone else here getting confused as to who is arguing for what? Did someone (and I’m not implying anyone specifically) pull a Feint … or was that a Manuever?
Or a well-bluffed Attack?
No … wait … Everyone knows Attack is Optimal … so they’d think I would think that they are using Attack … so therefore I must … ummm …
… well, whatever it is, I’m tapping Nature.
pulls 3 random action cards and smiles at GM
John: AAA isn’t even a solid workhorse. It’s a direct assault on the opposition with no concern for self. It has its time and place. But as a general “Good strategy,” it isn’t.
Agreed.
The best time to script AAA is when you think there’s no realistic hope for victory, and you’re just trying to hit enough disposition to force a compromise. Essentially, it’s kamikaze tactics … sacrifice your goal, hit zero, and force the conflict to end before the opponent can recover.
I think we have to agree to disagree on this point. I would characterize it as “blitzkrieg” tactics – it’s a fast rush to shut out the opponent. I would agree only to the extent that if you have more base dice than your opponent, then AAA makes less sense. For even odds or if you have fewer base dice, it’s usually a reasonable approach.
A few people have commented that if you pump Fate/Persona points and bonuses to Defend to recover a lot of your disposition later with Defend. I don’t dispute that, but it’s comparing apples and oranges if you compare it to A/A/A strategy that uses no points or resources. In an A/A/A strategy, you spend earlier to shut out your opponent quickly, rather than waiting for him to do damage.
A good example is the literally textbook example – i.e. the conflict example from the book of Lieam vs the snake. Lieam’s player managed to pump in points to shut out the snake in a single attack on the second volley. In an A/A/A strategy, he would have done that on the first volley, and assuming the same rolls, he would have won with more disposition left than in his M/A/D strategy. (Not to mention that in the textbook example, his Defense was a serious mistake.)
John:
Most critters don’t have Rewards points to spend; even other mice have them at the GM’s whim only.
Therefore, in any player strategy, one should consider the possibility, neé probabiity, that players will both have them and be willing to spend them, especially to accomplish mission goals.
Also, generally, the example PC’s have more dice for defend than for attack, before artha gets involved.
Well, now we’re back to my initial argument. A/A/A ends too soon, and in this game, the only “experience gain” is when you maximize the number of times you perform tests – it lets you get more ticks on success/fail, and you get more chances to earn Player’s Turn checks.
Good Point, Stormtower…
With an AAA strategy, one can only tick one or maybe two skills (since no skil can be ticked more than once per conflict).
A mixed strategy allows ticks on at least 2 skills, and possibly 4 or even 5, depending on the specific confict.
Every GM Turn test is an opportunity for earning checks; no once-per-conflict limit for them; each test it is thus potentially 5 checks… tho more realistically 1 or 2 is more likely… and thus a short conflict is again not optimal.
Oooh… I somehow didn’t see that rule. Thanks for pointing it out!
Fair enough. Though with regular Fight, there are only two stats used (Fight and Nature), and a single Maneuver is enough to get the one check. Also, for any conflict type except War, you can use the full range of skills from only Attack and Maneuver choices.
Yes… but usually you are dealing with a patrol of mice.
Each mouse would have a better chance of cycling through all the action test types if the conflict took longer than what you’d get with plain A-A-A.
Also, at the tail end of the conflict, you can end with a “desperate” A-A-A and use your traits to generate checks; so now you have both success/fail tick marks and checks.
And if the GM tends to use a lot of A-A-A, you can try facing it with vs. actions and “aim for a tied” test. And then choose to give up the tie breaker to gain more checks.
Good ol’ M - A - D, nothing beats that.
I totally see where you’re coming from Corvus. Just try two things in your next game and let us know how it works out…
Raise the stakes. Have a set of stakes just once that says “Kill all the mice (PCs)” or “burn Sprucetuck to the ground.” Thus compromise becomes “some of the mice die and you all have to figure out which ones” or “half of Sprucetuck is ash goodluck cleaning that up.” A secondary suggestion is that I see a lot of “do this” vs “stop them from doing that” kinda stakes. Stakes should be independant. If the GM says “I want to frame her for this murder,” stopping the framing should not be the players goals. They should want something else, maybe the villain is implicated, or the PC is asked to help with the investigation. Thus both parties could possibly get their goals (especially with a major compromise). That always makes for a hot story.
Up the descriptive factor of the actions - stress that when they are describing attacks that it has to be an all out attack. With a good group of players they will really start feeling kinda thuggish (even on non-combative conflicts). Savvy tactians like Flanking and faking our their opponents to lure them into a false. Clever politicians make their opponent stumble over theor own words. Hunters want to set traps and lure their pray to them. With straight up AAA, I tend to think your players will either start being bored with how they percieve their characters or settle into that kinda of group and everyone may be happy just slugging away. They will win conflict after conflict but hopefully at a high price.
Hope that is helpful,
I agree that the constant attack strategy is a very effective way to win a conflict. Possibly even the best. The biggest problem I’ve noticed with this strategy however is when it’s used at the beginning of a long mission.
For instance in my first game that I GM’d one PC decided to do nothing but attack against a lone badger and the badger did attack, Feint, Attack. He succeeded in defeating the beast but got badly injured, tired, and angry as a compromise for winning in such a narrow victory.
The injuries he incurred made him pretty much useless in any other fight situation that occured in the the game which made the game much more difficult for the party considering he was their only “true” fighter.
Even crossing a flooded stream is much more difficult when you have a broken leg. Where most mice could easily shimmy across a branch the party had to find a way to build a floatation device to get their injured comrade to safety.
Also it played out poorly for him in the Player Turn because he had to spend his checks alleviating his ailments instead of being able to do other things that he wanted to do.
In the meantime the Badger managed to get away while being pretty badly hurt itself but it lived to strike another day whereas if the guardmouse had played a little more defensively the margin of victory could have shifted enough in the favor of the mouse so that he could slay the badger and end its reign of terror permanently.
So in summary I do believe the all out attack strategy is very effective and can even be a very good roleplaying option for a fiery warrior mouse (I gave out some pretty good bonuses for the PCs roleplaying.) But the cost of being an all out attacker are very heavy and often times the juice is not worth the squeeze in your conflict.
Most have already given their take on this but those who wish to go down the D&D route and just hack and slash will find out pretty quick that they and their group are going to pay big time for attempting a straight attack attack attack. Sure you can do it but the gamble will not always land the way you want it to.