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Old 11-12-2016, 09:50 PM   #7
McAllister
 
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Default Re: Extra Attack (Multi-Strike), Feints, Setup Attacks, Rapid Strike

Quote:
Originally Posted by kflux View Post
So please (!), someone disagree with the summary to 5 (Question 5 is in the OP). :)

Thanks!
I agree with how the situation presented in Question 5 works out, but I think the attacker is going about their business in entirely the wrong order. If the order were feint -> setup attack -> followup attack, it seems to me that the second would benefit from the first, and the third would benefit from both. No?

Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
Can you amplify on the issue? It's been a while since I've used or reviewed my own work here.
So, I've posited that I can take -4 and still reliably hit, so I suppose I have a pretty nice score: that, or I'm hitting something really big. Let's say I have Broadsword-20, Extra Attack, and I'm wielding a pair of bokken. To keep things fair, we might as well give my opponent two swords, Broadsword-20, and Combat Reflexes, for a Parry of 14. Hmm... now that I do the math out like this, I see there might not be a problem.

The scenario I was envisioning was one where I continually alternate righthand-lefthand attacks on the torso to stack up a growing setup penalty, and never cash it in for a followup attack, preferring to keep the penalty growing. Why take -4 to impose -2 on the next parry if I can take -4 to impose a penalty on every subsequent parry in the fight? Assuming they never parry well enough to erase the penalty, it should keep growing, even using the rule that each subsequent defense gets +1.

But what I see now is that, against an adversary of equal skill, the penalty won't get the chance to accumulate like that. Using the numbers above, I drop my skill to 16 to inflict -2 on the following attack, but a Parry of 14 is fairly likely to remove the whole penalty. Plus, if repeated setups give a cumulative +1 bonus to defense, even a Parry of 13 is reaonably likely to chip away at the penalty faster than it stacks up.

So my new conclusion is that stacking a ton of setups into an insurmountable penalty is a workable strategy in two circumstances: 1. your skill is noticeably higher than your opponent's (but then there are plenty of ways to make sure a hit connects), or 2. your opponent is very large, and the bonus you get from their SM lets you lay on the setup penalty plenty thick. So it's not nearly as effective as I estimated it would be.
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