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Old 10-30-2023, 08:33 AM   #1
ebonfowl
 
Join Date: Oct 2023
Default Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

Per Martial Arts p. 95, the penalty from Rapid Strike is not supposed to be eligible for buyoff in techniques that include it, but many published techniques seem to violate this rule such as Whirlwind Attack from basic, Cleaving Strike and Greater Cleaving Strike from dungeon fantasy, and Spinning Attack from martial arts, to name a few.

Is it the case that rapid strike penalties CAN be bought off when used in a single large sweeping strike such as with whirlwind or cleaving strike? This seems plausible as it is one attack with multiple targets, not multiple attacks.

This, however, would not explain Spinning Attack. I don’t know what is going on under the hood with Spinning Attack, but I assume it contains, at the least, Feint and Rapid Strike for two maneuvers against the same target but the penalty can be bought off all the way to prerequisite skill - 0.

What am I missing here? Can other drawbacks in the technique offset the Rapid Strike penalty allowing the technique default to be improved to prerequisite skill - 0?

Thanks!
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Old 10-30-2023, 08:53 AM   #2
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

I'd have to check my copy of MA again, but I don't think Spinning Strike involves a Feint. You have to successfully roll against Spinning Strike to do it, and the target needs to fail their roll for in order to suffer a defense penalty, like Feint, but it's much less powerful in that it's a set penalty (-2 IIRC) rather than having the penalty depend on Margin of Victory. It's also rarely a good choice, even if you've invested in it.

Whirlwind Attack wasn't built to the guidelines in Martial Arts, and would have been difficult to do so anyway, given it can attack a theoretically-unlimited number of foes (typically it's going to be restricted to 6, one for each hex, but you could have multiple targets in each hex if they're small and/or grappling each other). I think the authors basically just piled up all the drawbacks they could think of (must be All Out but doesn't get any benefit from it; consumes all the movement you get from AoA; cannot be combined with any Techniques or esoteric skills; random hit location but with the targeted location still giving its full penalty; any critfail results in all subsequent attacks being critfails) and then tossed another -5 on top for good measure. As with Spinning Attack, I don't think Rapid Strike ever factored in.

As for Cleaving Strike, again I'd have to check the origin of it (forget if it was a Pyramid article or a DF book), but I think the Under The Hood setup made it a Combination, which does allow you to buy off the Rapid Strike penalty. I don't think it has the drawbacks of requiring you to set the hit locations when buying the Combination (although I think it uses random hit locations, which has a similar effect) or of having the target(s) get a bonus to defend if they've seen it before (or getting such when one attack misses, although IIRC the whole sequence ends on the first miss, which is a much worse drawback), however. I think the biggest rule-bending involved is that it allows Barbarians and the like with sufficiently-high ST suffer only a -3 per additional attack, just like if they had Weapon Master or Trained by a Master, and I honestly don't think that's a huge deal in this case.
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Last edited by Varyon; 10-30-2023 at 08:55 AM. Reason: it's their != if they're, not sure how I messed that one up...
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Old 10-30-2023, 09:09 AM   #3
ebonfowl
 
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Default Re: Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

Spinning attack defense penalty is based on margin of success just like a feint. It does include a bunch of other drawbacks though. But essentially it allows you to make a feint and attack on the same turn even though a bunch of things can go haywire if you screw it up. I haven’t been able to find anywhere where the authors explain what is happening under the hood, but I can’t see any other way to build it aside from feint and rapid strike.

Cleaving strike allows the user to select what hit location to attack for each new target and does continue on a miss - it stops if it is blocked, or doesn’t drop the target, knock them back, or sever the body part. So definitely a lot of drawbacks in there.

Still, does that mean drawbacks in the technique CAN reduce the rapid strike penalty so the remaining penalty can be bought off? Or are all these cases instances of designer fiat?
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Old 10-30-2023, 10:10 AM   #4
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by ebonfowl View Post
Spinning attack defense penalty is based on margin of success just like a feint. It does include a bunch of other drawbacks though. But essentially it allows you to make a feint and attack on the same turn even though a bunch of things can go haywire if you screw it up. I haven’t been able to find anywhere where the authors explain what is happening under the hood, but I can’t see any other way to build it aside from feint and rapid strike.
As I said, I'll need to check MA when I get home. I distinctly recall that the target gets a roll to resist the penalty, and they only need to succeed, not win/tie in a Quick Contest (which is how Feint works), to eliminate the penalty - in fact, I think they actually get a bonus to defend if they succeed. Which resulted in me completely writing off the Technique as useless - against a low-skill foe it can work reliably, but against anyone with skill 14+ it's utterly useless (and even against those with skill 12 it's typically going to be a bad idea). It's possible it's a Feint and Attack Combination, with a whole lot of Special Drawbacks and probably a Special Benefit of being able to target any hit location instead of needing a separate Combination for each.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ebonfowl View Post
Cleaving strike allows the user to select what hit location to attack for each new target and does continue on a miss - it stops if it is blocked, or doesn’t drop the target, knock them back, or sever the body part. So definitely a lot of drawbacks in there.
Ah, sounds like I was misremembering - I know it's largely meant to represent the Cleave Feat (and related) from That Other Game, so I assumed it had more of the same mechanics; being able to hit the next target on a Miss (or Dodge) but stopping if you fail to make it through, makes perfect sense.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ebonfowl View Post
Still, does that mean drawbacks in the technique CAN reduce the rapid strike penalty so the remaining penalty can be bought off? Or are all these cases instances of designer fiat?
To my knowledge, Combinations can have Special Drawbacks and Special Benefits just as readily as normal Techniques can. The GM needs to be careful about just what Special Benefits are allowed, of course - "Target any Hit Location" and "No defense bonus when earlier attacks miss or are defended against" are both very potent for Combinations, as they run the risk of making it so that you can simply buy off the Rapid Strike penalty with no caveats. But the authors may have decided these particular Combinations were limited enough by circumstances that allowing for such Special Benefits was acceptable - Spinning Attack has a really heavy downside (providing I'm remembering how it works properly), and Cleaving Strike (and related) requires the attacks to target later foes, in addition to outright ending prematurely in many situations. So they probably aren't terribly abusable, and at least in the case of Cleaving Strike, there's the additional benefit that it simplifies the Technique (DF likes a degree of simplicity in play, hence why instead of having Techniques it gives Power Ups that include Techniques bought up to full).
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Old 10-30-2023, 10:34 AM   #5
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Default Re: Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

Martial Arts, page 80. Optional Rule: Combinations.

This is what all the things you listed use.
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Old 10-30-2023, 10:50 AM   #6
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Default Re: Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

Quote:
I distinctly recall that the target gets a roll to resist the penalty, and they only need to succeed, not win/tie in a Quick Contest (which is how Feint works), to eliminate the penalty - in fact, I think they actually get a bonus to defend if they succeed.
I know you are gonna look, but just for clarification: The quick contest works just like feint if the attacker wins, whether the defender succeeds or not (unless I have an old edition or something). The BIG drawback is if the defender wins the quick contest, they get a bonus to defend equal to their margin of victory. This is actually superior to feint in one sense though: feint uses margin of (attacker’s) success if the opponent fails but the attacker succeeds, not the full margin of victory, but Spinning Attack always uses margin of victory. So if your opponent fails and you succeed, the bonus would be larger than a similar situation with feint, potentially much larger. Though, the drawback considers only margin of (opponent’s) victory as well, so it can likewise be quite large.

So it is useful against foes that have high active defenses if your melee skill is much higher than theirs as it allows margins to come into play rather than just success/failure. Same as a feint, I suppose, but executed in the same turn as the attack (with a laundry list of drawbacks).
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Old 10-30-2023, 10:55 AM   #7
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Default Re: Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

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Originally Posted by zoncxs View Post
Martial Arts, page 80. Optional Rule: Combinations.

This is what all the things you listed use.
Uhhhhh, I don’t think so. Spinning Attack would cost extra points to buyoff if it was a combination (level one of the technique would cost 4 points assuming a combination of something like feint and an attack). This isn’t indicated anywhere in the technique description. Unless I am misunderstanding something fundamental about the way combinations are created and priced, which is beyond just possible!

And Whirlwind definitely is not a combination as the author has posted all the underlying components. I haven’t seen anything about what Cleaving Strike and Greater Cleaving Strike are, but at least the Greater version can’t be a combination either as it exceeds the maximum number of allowed attacks in a combination.

Edit: actually, neither version of cleaving strike can be combinations as they both allow the selection of hit locations “on the fly” - which is forbidden by the combination rules.

Last edited by ebonfowl; 10-30-2023 at 11:25 AM.
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Old 10-31-2023, 02:39 AM   #8
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Default Re: Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

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Originally Posted by ebonfowl View Post
What am I missing here?
Part of what you're missing is these are made as Power-Ups, so they aren't "just Techniques". GMs can do whatever they want when building things for their campaigns, and price adjustment, prerequisites, and limits are just a few things a GM might ignore when building powers.
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Old 10-31-2023, 02:58 AM   #9
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Default Re: Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

Whirlwind attack breakdown from Kromm:

https://forums.sjgames.com/showpost....62&postcount=8
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Old 10-31-2023, 03:42 AM   #10
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Default Re: Rapid Strike in Techniques Question

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Originally Posted by ebonfowl View Post
I know you are gonna look, but just for clarification: The quick contest works just like feint if the attacker wins, whether the defender succeeds or not (unless I have an old edition or something). The BIG drawback is if the defender wins the quick contest, they get a bonus to defend equal to their margin of victory. This is actually superior to feint in one sense though: feint uses margin of (attacker’s) success if the opponent fails but the attacker succeeds, not the full margin of victory, but Spinning Attack always uses margin of victory. So if your opponent fails and you succeed, the bonus would be larger than a similar situation with feint, potentially much larger. Though, the drawback considers only margin of (opponent’s) victory as well, so it can likewise be quite large.

So it is useful against foes that have high active defenses if your melee skill is much higher than theirs as it allows margins to come into play rather than just success/failure. Same as a feint, I suppose, but executed in the same turn as the attack (with a laundry list of drawbacks).
As it turns out, we're both wrong. Spinning Attack functions as a straight Feint for the first bit - it's a Quick Contest, and you use Margin of Victory to determine the defense modifier (bonus if target wins, penalty if character wins). It's required to be a Committed (Dedicated) or All Out (Strong) Attack. The reason I wrote it off is that it doesn't allow you to use Deceptive Attack. Oh, it claims you can, but considering you give your foe an effective +2 in the Quick Contest for every -1 to their defense (net +1 to foe's defense for -2 to your attack), it's worse than useless.

So, the Technique starts life as Rapid Strike, Feint and Attack, at -6. Limited maneuver selection I don't think is a legitimate drawback (it should be IMO, but isn't). The Feint QC potentially giving a bonus is, for +1. Deceptive Attack being Nerfed is as well, for another +1. The default penalty assumes Committed (Dedicated) Attack, which is a further +2 (and note this is why All Out (Strong) Attack is at -2 to skill), bringing us to our total of -2. Kicks have a further drawback, in that the check to avoid falling on a miss is penalized, for a +1, hence why they're at -3 instead of -4. There should probably be a further -1 to account for the fact it does stack with a preceding Feint.

Cleaving Strike is explained in Pyramid #3/61. It's a 3-attack Rapid Strike, for -6 to hit (as it assumes the character has TbaM/WM). It gets a further -1 for the special benefit of giving the target a penalty to avoid falling down. The drawbacks, good for +1 each, are:
  • Cannot do anything else that round
  • Can only attack foes in front in a specific order (left to right or right to left) with swinging attacks
  • No movement (beyond required facing changes as you turn to engage each foe)
  • A successful Block, Parry, or simply not going down from a hit ends the attack sequence prematurely

For a grand total of -3.


And, as is clear from each of these (and the linked Krommpost explaining Whirlwind Attack), it would appear your original supposition was indeed correct - in these cases, the penalty for Rapid Strike is allowed to be bought off without having to go through the hassle of Combination. And, honestly, these aren't alone - the rules for Fast Firing Bows basically have you using Rapid Strike with the first attack serving as a Ready, and Quick-Shot (DF11:33) lets you buy off this penalty.

I'd say the take-home from all this is that, yes, it can be appropriate to allow buying off the penalty for Rapid Strike, but only under very specific circumstances - that is, the GM needs to examine any such Technique suggested by a player with a fine-toothed comb.
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