[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Seneschal

Turn 1
Due to his Basic Speed 7, Yu goes first. He activates his Lifting ST and DR advantages, grows muscles, shreds his clothing, flexes and goes "boo." He loses 2 FP and his Trained ST is raised from 13 to 21.

Trained ST 21 is 2d CP, which is a nice, healthy, bone-crushing total. Expectation for a grapple is 7 CP (2d), where a leg grapple will be Trained ST 28 (21 * 1.2 +3) for 3d-1 (!).

Turn 2
Yu chooses Wait, preparing to do a Scissors Hold if someone comes within Reach 1 of him.

Goona charges Yu with a Move & Attack, activating his Wait. Yu slides down to her feet and tries to trap her left leg between his own. He has Scissors Hold-18, so he does a Deceptive Attack, lowering his skill to 14 and Goona's defenses by 2. He rolls a 5 (not a critical, since his effective skill has fallen below 15), and Goona fails her Dodge.

There's a good, active debate about how far to lower Deceptive Attack, and this example shows why lowering to 16 rather than 14 can play well!

Yu rolls Control Points for his two legs (Grip ST 22 + 3 Training Bonus = ST 25)

ST 28!

and inflicts 4 CP. Goona suffers a -1 penalty to DX and ST from referred control, or -2 from active control when using the grappled leg. Since she is standing and has only one free leg, her posture is unstable.

Because he has Extra Attack (Wrestling), Yu now does a Force Posture Change to knock Goona to the ground. He rolls vs. his ST for two legs (25), at a -4 penalty to drop a foe three posture levels (standing to lying down), at a +1 from the Ground Guard perk, for a total of 22. Goona resists with her Judo skill, at a -1 penalty for referred control, a total of 13. She loses and falls down face-up.

Had Yu spent any CP, it would have lowered Goona's roll even more, which is where instability comes in.

The GM judges that her new posture and referred control penalties drop her weapon skill below the possibility of success, so she loses her attack.

I think that this is reasonable. Prone (-4), Referred Control (-1), and attacking into the side arc as a Wild Swing (-5) is a whopping -10. Those face-down postures suck.

She and Yu are lying down in supine outstretched postures, in an L-shape, with their legs in close combat.

Note: The way this plays out, I cannot help but notice that Scissors Hold provides almost no benefit. In the old system, it gave +3 to subsequent takedown attempts and a cumulative -1 penalty to attempts to break free. Here, it seems to be just a Targeted Attack (Leg Grapple/Legs).

Well, it keeps your vital torso out of your foe's reach, allows you to slam them face down for -9 penalties minimum . . . seems like that's pretty good! It also gives you that 20% ST boost (using the legs). Against foes that are no so overmatched that you can ignore them, being able to spend CP and have it count double can be a real benefit.

. . . and -1 for lying down (the highest Ground Fighting allows).

I think you can buy this off even further if you use Technique Mastery (Ground Fighting), but that's a judgement call.

Note 2: Facing rules become unclear from a supine posture. The "rear", where no defenses are allowed, is presumably facing the ground, and even if an attack comes from behind, overhead, a supine fighter might intercept it, since it is directed at his front, only upside-down. We decided to treat this as a side attack.

Personally, I'd call this the FRONT arc, and let the posture penalties (-4 to attack, -3 to defend) speak for themselves. It would give a good reason for all those BJJ fighters to prefer laying on their back if they've bought off Ground Fighting - all attacks are from the front, if you are willing to lay on your back in the middle of furious combat!

Turn 3
Yu steps into close combat with Goona, trying to grapple her sword-arm with his two arms.

She has to get up first, eh? Hrm. Guess not - you have a flat move 1 by belly-crawl or roll, so you can do it. Interesting.

He has skill-18, -1 for posture (Ground Fighting is not at full skill), -1 for hit location, -2 for Deceptive Attack, for a total of 14. He rolls a 4, and Goona gets no defense - Yu's rolls CP for ST 21, doubled for critical - 9 CP to the arm.

Again, a low roll. Grappling with the arms for 2d and doubling should result in (a) an even number, and (b) an average of 14 CP.

On her own turn, Goona attacks to break free, and rolls a critical. Since she only uses her free arm, her Grip ST is halved, and at a further -5 from referred control. She manages to shave off 2 CP from her locked arm, reducing the CP tally there to 12. The referred penalties drop to (12+4)/4= -4 to DX and ST.

Why only use the free arm? Definitely try and break free with both arms, and in a lock, Committed (Strong) would make sense too. The successful Break Free unlocks the arm (of course, Yu will just re-lock him up).

Goonc attacks with his sword again; this time, Yu tries a normal Dodge, at -1 penalty from posture, for a total of 10. He succeeds, and dodges the sword blow.

I think (I'm in a hurry, as I'm gong to be late for work) that Yu's dodge is penalized by his OWN CP, since he can't maintain a grip with full mobility. Need to check that. Dodge is penalized from your own grapples unless you let go. (Unless we nixed that in playtest as too complicated).

For his first attack, Yu rolls back, does a handstand and drops his legs onto Goonb's neck, who attacked him last turn from behind. The GM likes the move, so he allows it as an Acrobatic Triangle Choke.

I and Black Widow approve!

Yu rolls vs. Triangle Choke-16, at -1 for shock penalty, -1 for posture, for a total of 14. Goonb doesn't get to defend, as his neck is grappled. Yu rolls 9 CP to the neck, so Goonb has a -4 active control penalty to the neck and a -2 referred penalty everywhere else.

Why doesn't Goonb get to defend? I missed something there. You always get a chance to defend against a grapple . . . did Goonb AoA last turn?

For his second attack, he performs a Force Posture Change with both legs, at ST 25, -4 for bringing the opponent from standing to lying, -4 for raising himself from lying to kneeling

-4 would be lying to standing; lying to kneeling is -2.

and +1 from Ground Guard, for a total of 18. Goonb resists with Judo-14, at -4 for referred penalty to Whole-Body Actions, for a total of 10. He fails, falls down face-up, with Yu kneeling over his head.

Note: I think we did the Whole-Body thing correctly. If this is calculated as 9 CP (neck) + 4 referred CP (head) + 4 referred CP (torso) = 17/4 = 4.25, then we got it right. But Whole-Body penalties have a very short and not very clear description in TG.

FWIW, I agree. That goes by fast, and it can be complicated in play. I'm working on a spreadsheet to automate it.

Goonc now steps in front of Yu and does a Committed sword swing. Yu opts for a Grabbing Parry again, but this time spends 1 FP for Feverish Defense, giving him +2 to defense, for a total of 12. He succeeds by 3, negating 3 damage and absorbing the leftover 4 damage into his DR. He also inflicts ST×0.5 CP to the sword, and rolls 1 CP.

Boy Yu's rolls sucked this game. STx0.5 should be ST 10, for 1d-2. 1 CP is OK here, but still, low rolls!