A small question about conflicts. If you win the maneuver action by a margin of Success of 4 or greater, can you both impede your opponent and disarm them? At a MoS of 5 can you disarm and gain position? It’s a silly nitpicking question. I could see a GM saying that it would be possible only if it made fictional sense. Since a disarmed opponent is already somewhat impeded.
Anyways thanks for your time.
If a disarmed opponent is already impeded narratively, it’s going to be super easy to justify the penalty!
Yes to both, although the only text I can cite that supports this would be the back of the character sheet: “You may buy multiple
effects if you can afford it. You can’t buy the same effect twice on the same action.”
pg 109; Here’s my reading on the rule and how I rule as GM:
With margin of success 1 or 2, clearly the rules indicate you can only ‘buy’ an efect of Impede or Gain Position, respectively.
With margin of success 3, you can ‘buy’ Disarm, or alternately ‘buy’ both Impede or Gain Position.
So, as to the question of spending margin of success in excess, I’ve always ruled the excess is lost. This is because I don’t agree the intent of a Maneuver is to offer all those opportunities in a single action. I think the intent is to pick a quick result and drive forward; whereas, having a chance to gain more benefit is a problem of overwhelming the beat-by-beat fiction of a Conflict volley.
In the text, I think the real confirmation is in the following, “The Maneuver action has three possible effects: impede, gain position and disarm.” In this sense, I don’t see that permission is given for a player to request Disarm and another effect–accepting that the Disarm description offers the only exception. Further, the text of, “Margin of success is applied to the effects described below.” gives additional insight that the amrgin of success is not a bank of successes to be used up; it is a score which can be immediately applied or lost. So, excess margin of success doesn’t maintain value. The last point, “you can use an effect again if you play another successful Maneuver on a subsequent action.” indicates that you must attempt the action again in order to gain another effect.
Now, it does have some text on the character sheet that may seem to allow a combination of effect, but I’d use the book text as the clarification about how that combination can be accessed–namely, MoS 3 may alternate Disarm, or both Impede or Gain Position. In contrast, the book text has no indication that a higher margin of success can be applied to both Disarm and Impede or Disarm and Gain Position.
So, that’s my reading and how I’ve always ruled.