[Houserule] No defense roll if < 3

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

It's bad for the attacker, if the enemy with dodge of 1 try to defend, he'll critically fail 50% of the time, meaning half of his attacks will be criticals.

I could fix that though. I could house rule that although the defender won't get their active defense if it's < 3, they still have to roll, but only to see if they critically failed to defend.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

I could fix that though. I could house rule that although the defender won't get their active defense if it's < 3, they still have to roll, but only to see if they critically failed to defend.

Except... what if they realized this and didn't want to defend?

Think about some emergency situations where you're just supposed to ball up or assume a defensive posture etc; aren't they akin to someone realizing that the average person (or any person) would never make the relevant Defensive or Acrobatics or [insert appropriate check] roll?

It certainly is counter intuitive, but if a character has the skill to know how badly outclassed s/he is, then is it that hard to realize "Well, might as well just take the hit instead of taking the hit while I was twisting away to evade the blow?"

I mean, if we are going to go that far, then shouldn't attack and defense rolls happen simultaneously? To see if the defender will accidentally dodge into an attack that was going to miss (...it happens irl)? It might be nice when a character critically fails an attack against an easy target to see if that target can critically fail a dodge, turning both into normal failures.

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Except... what if they realized this and didn't want to defend?

Think about some emergency situations where you're just supposed to ball up or assume a defensive posture etc; aren't they akin to someone realizing that the average person (or any person) would never make the relevant Defensive or Acrobatics or [insert appropriate check] roll?

It certainly is counter intuitive, but if a character has the skill to know how badly outclassed s/he is, then is it that hard to realize "Well, might as well just take the hit instead of taking the hit while I was twisting away to evade the blow?"

I mean, if we are going to go that far, then shouldn't attack and defense rolls happen simultaneously? To see if the defender will accidentally dodge into an attack that was going to miss (...it happens irl)? It might be nice when a character critically fails an attack against an easy target to see if that target can critically fail a dodge, turning both into normal failures.

Well I use tbone's house rule where you must declare that you're going to defend prior to knowing the outcome of the attack roll. But that wouldn't entirely eliminate the situation you've described.

I'd consider a Will roll (possibly capped at 14, like a Fright Check) if the player was deciding to go against their character's instincts and not reflexively try to defend themselves, however poorly. Then again, you raise a good point: they may be skilled enough to realize they shouldn't even bother defending. Maybe, on second thought, make them roll vs their skill (but based on Will, or maybe IQ or Per) to let them elect not to defend. Then again, there's nothing stopping them from AoAing each turn if they figure they're never going to be able to defend...

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

It would mean that attackers with high skill able to do major deceptive attacks or feints would have an easier time (slightly).

Seriously, if Miyamoto Musashi wants to katanify Joe White Belt, I don't have a problem with Joe White Belt getting katanified pretty damn quickly.

Removing the defence roll entirely sounds a bit too drastic to me. A milder version could be that if your defence roll is less than 3, you must roll a 4 on 4d6, reducing your chance of makint it from 1/216 to 1/1296. One could go further and say that if your defence roll is negative, you must roll 5 on 5d6.

That slows down play a lot, though, relative to how fast it already is, so it might be simply to jus say automatic failure.

A "way out" of that is that any kind of general Luck, or some Luck Aspected that is or can be relevant, can allow a roll of 3-or-less anyway, but merely getting that roll counts as 1 usage of Luck, and so there's no direct benefit there from Luck Talent, although it would of course apply to a second Luck usage, if the character somehow has the ability to use Luck twice in a very short period of time.

[gilbertocarlos]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

I could fix that though. I could house rule that although the defender won't get their active defense if it's < 3, they still have to roll, but only to see if they critically failed to defend.

So AOA means I'm better at defending?

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by gilbertocarlos

So AOA means I'm better at defending?

Ha, yes, well, that would be the outcome, I guess. As I suggested about making Will (or maybe IQ or Per) rolls to defend, maybe if your active defense rolls all go below 3 you also need to make a similar roll to AoA.

Then again, taking constant AoAs wouldn't represent being better at defending, depending on how you look at it. Sometimes you're in such a bad position that attempting to defend will be worse for you, and you'll be inclined to screw it up and leave yourself more vulnerable (hence, the critical failures), and you have effectively 0% chance of succeeding. In those cases, isn't the realistic survival solution to either AoA or try to Run Away? You're not even trying to defend, so you can't have epic fails.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

Ha, yes, well, that would be the outcome, I guess. As I suggested about making Will (or maybe IQ or Per) rolls to defend, maybe if your active defense rolls all go below 3 you also need to make a similar roll to AoA.

Then again, taking constant AoAs wouldn't represent being better at defending, depending on how you look at it. Sometimes you're in such a bad position that attempting to defend will be worse for you, and you'll be inclined to screw it up and leave yourself more vulnerable (hence, the critical failures), and you have effectively 0% chance of succeeding. In those cases, isn't the realistic survival solution to either AoA or try to Run Away? You're not even trying to defend, so you can't have epic fails.

I often have low level mooks use AoA or AoD (or run away or hide if they get hurt or terrified) because they really don't know how to fight well. They still can be dangerous if they take somebody by surprise.

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

I often have low level mooks use AoA or AoD (or run away or hide if they get hurt or terrified) because they really don't know how to fight well. They still can be dangerous if they take somebody by surprise.

Actually, AoD is a good idea. My house rule could exempt AoD from that, so even if < 3, you can still attempt your active defense... maybe as an additional bonus, with AoD, you can't critically fail, regardless of how you roll. With Committed Defense, maybe you get the former but not the latter. Both still probably wouldn't be worth it most of the time though if your modified active defense is under 3...

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Am I the only one who saw the title and thought for at least a second, "No defense roll if you're in love..?"

[MatthewVilter]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Am I the only one who saw the title and thought for at least a second, "No defense roll if you're in love..?"

lol

I guess that is covered by the normal surprise rules...