Lock, Strike, Avoid

Burning Wheel First Reading
1

Zelbinian and I were doing a mock Fight with Sword characters, Fidhean vs. Ssisz. The roden got me in a 1D lock, and then we came to an action where I had Avoid (escape) and he had Lock (increase).

The Lock rules say that you can use Agl, For or Power to escape - my Agl is better by far, so I used that.

But… how would that interact with a Strike? Can an Avoid (escape) be used to reduce the impact of a Strike? And if so, is it a versus test or independent? The matrix implies versus. But in that case, is it extra Avoid successes that can reduce the lock, or all of them (which is what we did)?

The sucky thing about it being extra successes only is that I’m not afraid of his puny bites, as I’m armored. I’d much rather not oppose his bite with my avoid than have to beat his Strike dice to reduce the lock. Anyways, which way around is it?

(Another option entirely would be for me to roll twice, once with Agl against Ob 0 to reduce the lock, and once with Spd against his sword.)

2

This didn’t actually come up, right? This is theoretical, right?
You only get the privilege of using your Agility if you’re using the Escape action. Otherwise, you have to use your Speed to Avoid the Strike. But your intent is Escape. So the Strike comes in unopposed and you use your Escape action as intended.

3

Given that he did have Avoid scripted, could he choose to use it to Avoid the Strike, using his Speed, rather than attempting to escape the Lock, even though his original intent was to use the action to escape the Lock?

4

It came up naturally in a Fight, but not as part of a campaign or anything, just a run-through of the BWG Fight rules (my first, actually!) It’s not one of my ‘find the weirdest edge cases I can find’ situations. :slight_smile:

Luke, that makes sense to me.