A Challenger Appears! Green versus Red

[Plane]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I think green has either needs to spend AP to stop or make an attack. Or we can have him make that really penalized attack at -4 and defensive attack damage.

Slamming you does seem like the most obvious solution, but it's not my specialty... if you dodge then I think it's implied that I evade automatically for free.

Not sure about missing.. undodged missed slams getting automatic evasion sounds off.

If you parry though, I dunno maybe if a parry is successful it should be the defender's option whether they stop the guy face-on (take semi-slam -2 defensiveish damage) or deflect him (give slammer a free evade and they go stumbling past as if it was a dodge) ?

Then if I somehow hit without a defense working: Grappling does have an automatic move-reduction mechanic for that...

Actually that might be one way to reduce the damage: you roll your damage against me FIRST, then I subtract move resulting from that, and THEN roll damage against you by my now-reduced velocity. We could still add the defensive attack penalty, but this serves my desire of wanting something LESS damaging than a defensive attack.

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I just thought of another way to think of parries as well, compare to basic set's weird hard cap "you can only parry attacks weighing X, and punches weigh ST/10" ...

What if a parry is conceived like an impermanent grapple in that you roll thrust to determine control points, and then you apply those control points to JUST the attack you intercepted?

That way it reduces the DX (which you can apply to see if that would've caused it to miss) and even if you don't cause it to miss, it also reduces the ST, so you would reduce the damage the attack does.

I'd have parries use twice ST for calculating thrust (like a shove) with a +1 for 2-armed parries (like shoves) to make it super good at depleting ST/DX of attacks though, since they don't have time to build up CP like grapples do. If using a "grapples are twice as good" rule system then it could use 4x ST.

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Now... if I don't slam you and instead try to punch you... would hitting you help slow me down? You dodging the punch wouldn't cause me to run past you like with a dodged slam, nor should being parries, but I'm thinking that it should count like a random attack in that case.

If I roll 9 or less, I'm going to accidentally collide with you (you can dodge at +2)

If I roll 10 or more, I'm going to miss you... in which case I think it's like a free evade without needing to spend an Action Point...

BUT: in that case, I should only be able to evade to your left hex or right hex (veering to one side or the other) and definitely not directly behind you, since this is accidental evasion not intentional evasion.

As to which... one way might be to base this on which side the punch was being aimed at? Like if I'm punching left arm, then I would veer to your left (my right) and if I'm punching your right arm, then I would veer to your right (my left).

Another possibility: which limb you use to parry might determine it. If I was accidental-slamming your torso then perhaps if you parry right-handed I should veer off to your left side, and if you parry left-handed I should veer off to your right side?

That's assuming that parries involve the use of the stronger chest muscles to push someone inward/across to the opposite side... there are also outward parries though, but I think those use weaker muscles and are more for deflecting light objects, not entire bodies...

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That's one interesting way the "roll Control Points" idea could work... you could treat inward parries as ST*2 thrust and outward parries as ST*1 thrust.

So basically it should be the parrier's option if they deflect the attacker to one side or the other. If they deflect neither left or right, then they probably shifted the punch up or down, so it still misses, but you're still looking at an accidental collision.

As there's no actually intentional use of the Evade technique, instead of a Quick Contest, I think maybe we'd just roll a dodge, which I think is what you would do if someone had shoved your enemy into you. That's basically what's happening here, except that it was their own momentum shoving them.

Dodging the momentum-carried accidental slam is also something that could come up if we determined some kind of minimum requirement of actually making a guy veer left/right, like maybe related to knockback rules or depleting the ST of the incoming attack to 0.

That sort of resembles the 'graze' idea in period, but more incremental than just a 1/2 damage on a by-1 failure...

I'm trying to remember the positioning here...
July 23 you were 5 yards off, my 3y/s momentum narrowed it to 2
you chose AOD and didn't mention stepping backward...
Aug 1 you were 2 yards off, my 3/s brought my into your hex and I leg-punched

That could've already created the "deceleration dilemma" since I should've had the momentum to travel 1 extra yard but you were in the way...
but Aug 5th since you retreated you were 1 yard off, so my remaining 1 yard of momentum brought me into your hex again (as mentioned Aug 6)

You know the weird thing is that I could so easily dodge while carrying a 3y/s momentun like that... B366 doesn't list any penalties to dodging AT ALL, except for an inability to retreat. You just can't parry... Martial Arts amended that to be that you can't parry if you attacked with your arms, otherwise you can't dodge if you did any other attack. Either way, Move and Attack leaves one form of completely unimpeded (except for non-retreat) defense, which is really strange!

One thing that comes to mind... if you dodge during a Move or a Move and Attack, perhaps the AP spent on dodging should be forced as counting towards deceleration?

After all, there's just no feasible way you could be focusing on keeping absolute speed while twisting out of the way of an attack... conceptually that's just off. You're altering your form in some kind of inefficient way.

So even though I don't WANT to slow down (I like the idea of my higher HP injuring your char with the momentum) I think I should be forced to... but rather than voluntarily spending AP with the intent of slowing down by itself (which the char wouldn't do, they don't care about accidentally ramming) the AP voluntarily spent on dodging (because Green WOULD want to avoid Red's kick, a lot more likely to injure him than an ccidental bump) also counts as AP spent towards deceleration... because active defenses are inherently decelerative and compromising to maintaining optimal running speeds.

So based on that... how much should I reduce my 3y/s velocity as if I spent 1 AP to do so?