Some Fight!, Hesitation, Weapon Mechanics and related questions.

Burning Wheel First Reading
1

After playing a couple of games, I’m loving BWG and, in particular, how Fight! and DoW work, but I have a lot of questions:

Let’s use Knight with B5 reflexes versus Bandit with B4 reflexes as an example. Let’s say Knight Scripted 2/2/1 for first exchange, and Bandit scripted 2/1/1

  1. How does hesitation stack? This situation may apply to different wounds in a Fight, or wounds on top of intimidation or surprise.

E.g. V1,A1 Knight strikes Bandit with Light Wound, bandit fails Steel, hesitates for 2 actions. Bandit then changes his actions for V1A2, and V2A1 to Stand and Drool. Knight Strikes again on V1,A2, for another Light Wound. Bandit again fails Steel, now hesitating for 2 more actions. He still has to hesitate for V2A1 for his first wound. Does he:
a) Now add 2 more hesitation actions to the remaining hesitation action that he has left (bringing the total to 4 hesitation actions), so that he wound up hesitating for a total of 4 actions (2 for each wound) or
b) He’s already hesitating for his next action for the first wound, so he adds one more to that (so he winds up hesitating for a total of 3 actions) V1A2 for the first wound, V2A1 (Counting both for his first and second wounds), plus V3A1 for the second wound.

  1. Can he declare a different hesitation for each wound in the above example? I’d think yes. First wound he Stands and Drools, Second wound, he chooses to Run Screaming, or vice versa

  2. Great Strike: You get to choose +1 to your IMS damage results… means that if my normal IMS, say, with a sword, is: B4/B7/B10, when I do Great Strike I can choose to bump it to B5/B8/B11, correct?

  3. Avoid: P.441, 1st paragraph: “When playing a stat against a skill, impose a double obstacle penalty for the stat.” On P. 443, Under Avoid, section Special: “it never suffers a double-obstacle penalty for being unskilled.” Speed is not a skill, so, what it means there is that it doesn’t use the double obstacle versus Skills, right? If not, how does Avoid work versus Strike? Knight rolls 3 successes on his Strike roll, Bandit rolls 2 on Speed test to avoid… Knight wins and hits with one extra success, which he can use to shift the hit location, no? Or does the Knight win by 2 successes?

5)Avoid only counters all attacks on the action. i.e. Bandit scripts Avoid on V1A1, Knight scripts V1A1 Strike, V1A2 Strike. Avoid only works against the Knigth’s V1A1 Strike, but the V1A2 Strike goes unopposed.

  1. Knight scripts Block & Strike, Bandit scripts Feint. How does Block & Strike action interact with Feint? (Feint does not test against Strike, but is an Ob1 action against Block…) Can Bandit test Feint against the Block portion of the Knights B&S?

  2. This is a Weapons Mechanics question: Do defenders who are Hesitating get to declare posture, as per p.465?

  3. Weapon Speed, p. 466 says WS is number of times PER EXCHANGE. P. 467says consecutively… So, if B5 reflexes Knight has a mace, can he script V1A1 Strike, V1A2 Strike, V2A1 Block, V3A1 Strike and V3A2 Strike? Note that that uses the mace WS of 2 to strike 4 times in the exchange, but has a ‘rest action’ in between. Or does WS mean that Knight can only script Strike 2 times in the entire exchange, and must use his remaining three actions to Block, Avoid, Push, Lock, etc?

9)Poor quality weapons are Ob2 to use, meaning that on the action interaction tables in Fight, one changes the Ob1 tests to Ob2… are the other types of tests altered? e.g. Knight tries Disarm vs. Bandit’s Strike , Ob=Skill . Would that Ob be modified if Knight were using a PQ weapon to try the Disarm maneuver? I’m thinking no, but… is it a form of disadvantage, applying +1 Ob to all my actions? Again, I think no…

10)Page 481: Characters with a Shield and Shield Training may Block Great Strike action… So on the table of Great Strike vs. Block becomes Skill vs. Skill if the defender has a shield + training, no? (Instead of the Ob1 standard test for Great Strike, and the - for Block)

Thanks!

2

Welcome Eloy! Wow that’s a lot of questions. For ease of reading I’m going to quote each individual one and then answer it.

Hesitation is additive. If a character is hesitating for two actions and then takes another wound that causes another two actions of hesitation, the character will hesitate for four actions. In your example, the bandit will hesitate for the rest of the current exchange and the first action of the next exchange.

Note that this is even worse than it looks. That initial Light wound, in addition to taking away 1D from all of the bandit’s stats also reduced the bandit’s Reflexes by one. The second Light wound reduces the bandit’s reflexes by another 1. In the second exchange, the bandit will only have 2 actions, and the first one will be spent hesitating.

  1. Can he declare a different hesitation for each wound in the above example? I’d think yes. First wound he Stands and Drools, Second wound, he chooses to Run Screaming, or vice versa

Yes.

  1. Great Strike: You get to choose +1 to your IMS damage results… means that if my normal IMS, say, with a sword, is: B4/B7/B10, when I do Great Strike I can choose to bump it to B5/B8/B11, correct?

Correct.

  1. Avoid: P.441, 1st paragraph: “When playing a stat against a skill, impose a double obstacle penalty for the stat.” On P. 443, Under Avoid, section Special: “it never suffers a double-obstacle penalty for being unskilled.” Speed is not a skill, so, what it means there is that it doesn’t use the double obstacle versus Skills, right? If not, how does Avoid work versus Strike? Knight rolls 3 successes on his Strike roll, Bandit rolls 2 on Speed test to avoid… Knight wins and hits with one extra success, which he can use to shift the hit location, no? Or does the Knight win by 2 successes?

Correct. All Speed successes count in an Avoid. In your example, the knight would win with 1 success.

5)Avoid only counters all attacks on the action. i.e. Bandit scripts Avoid on V1A1, Knight scripts V1A1 Strike, V1A2 Strike. Avoid only works against the Knigth’s V1A1 Strike, but the V1A2 Strike goes unopposed.

Correct. The Avoid only works on the action it is scripted. However, if the bandit were facing three knights, all of whom where striking on V1A1, an Avoid on V1A1 would be great. The bandit’s Avoid successes would work against all the incoming Strikes.

  1. Knight scripts Block & Strike, Bandit scripts Feint. How does Block & Strike action interact with Feint? (Feint does not test against Strike, but is an Ob1 action against Block…) Can Bandit test Feint against the Block portion of the Knights B&S?

Block & Strike is a combination of the Block action and the Strike action (see the Interactions portion of the action on page 442). Feint beats the block portion. Any dice allocated to defense are wasted, as the Feint bypasses the defense. The end result is very similar to what would have happened if both sides had simply selected Strike as their action.

  1. This is a Weapons Mechanics question: Do defenders who are Hesitating get to declare posture, as per p.465?

Yes, the player of the character taking the blow always gets to decide what location is on offer. The attacker may then spend successes to move to another location.

  1. Weapon Speed, p. 466 says WS is number of times PER EXCHANGE. P. 467says consecutively… So, if B5 reflexes Knight has a mace, can he script V1A1 Strike, V1A2 Strike, V2A1 Block, V3A1 Strike and V3A2 Strike? Note that that uses the mace WS of 2 to strike 4 times in the exchange, but has a ‘rest action’ in between. Or does WS mean that Knight can only script Strike 2 times in the entire exchange, and must use his remaining three actions to Block, Avoid, Push, Lock, etc?

Personally, I like limiting it to the number of times you can Strike, period. If I recall correctly, we playtested it somewhat that way and then softened our stance. But the rule is about consecutive strikes. If you’re wielding a mace, you may strike two times in a row before taking another action. So you might have something along the lines of V1: Strike, Strike; V2: Push; V3: Strike, Strike.

9)Poor quality weapons are Ob2 to use, meaning that on the action interaction tables in Fight, one changes the Ob1 tests to Ob2… are the other types of tests altered? e.g. Knight tries Disarm vs. Bandit’s Strike , Ob=Skill . Would that Ob be modified if Knight were using a PQ weapon to try the Disarm maneuver? I’m thinking no, but… is it a form of disadvantage, applying +1 Ob to all my actions? Again, I think no…

It is essentially the same as applying a +1 Ob penalty to your weapon skill when using the weapon.

10)Page 481: Characters with a Shield and Shield Training may Block Great Strike action… So on the table of Great Strike vs. Block becomes Skill vs. Skill if the defender has a shield + training, no? (Instead of the Ob1 standard test for Great Strike, and the - for Block)

Correct. It is a skill vs. skill test.

3

Thanks a lot, Thor!

One really needs to play through the subsystems to really grok them, and that’s where the questions start popping up… I’ve read the book a couple of times and it’s only through play that things start clicking in my head.

I went over the Fight! procedure with a fine tooth comb after a couple of play-throughs, and that’s where all the questions came from.

There’s a lot of info spread out through a couple of different sections, and this helps a lot in putting it all together.

We’re starting with a big Fight! on my Monday game, and it’s gonna be much smoother now. :slight_smile:

4

Okay, mo’ questions!!!

  1. Same setup: Knight and Bandit as above.

This time, though, Knight takes a Light wound on V1A1, which brings his reflexes down by 1 die. He succeeds in the Steel test. Wound penalties apply immediately, so, what happens to the actions he has scripted for the rest of the exchange? (he scripted 5 but now he’s entitled to 4 only)
Possibilities:
a) he keeps his script as is for this exchange (so he takes his full 5 actions), then only scripts 4 in the next exchange (doesn’t seem right, as doesn’t apply the penalty immediately, but is the simplest solution)

or b) He has to lose one action this exchange to reflect his effective reflexes of B4.

Per the changing an action rules, p. 457, No forfeiting or Changing in Volley 1, so V1A2 goes thru…

Can he choose to forego any one of the remaining 4 actions? If he forgoes the V2A1 action, does the V2A2 action the de facto V2A1 action? Or does V2A1 become No Action, and the V2A2 action remains as a V2A2 action (can only be countered by an opponents scripted action in the same slot). I’d think he gets to choose which of the V2 actions he wants to keep and that becomes the new V2A1.

Or can he only ever choose to forgo A2 actions, and must preserve A1 actions whenever possible?

Can he instead forego V3A1 action, and keep V2A1 and V2A2 as scripted?

I’m probably over thinking this, but having played a few exchanges, I can easily see these kinds of situations arising easily…

5

You keep your script for the current exchange. On the next exchange, you script one less action.

6

oh, awesome. KISS principle. I love it :smiley:

Thanks

7

Wait what? Really? I’ve never played it that way. I was always under the impression that wound penalties (including life ruining reductions in Reflexes) happened immediately. I’ve always made players re-do their post-injury scripts to reflect their new reduction in functionality (while still making sure that their reduced script still passes all checks to the best of their ability)

8

See Changes to Reflexes on page 433.

9

Well, clearly I’m a cheater. Thanks for that.