Noob Q: Defense and Vision

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Realistically, you should probably apply half the darkness penalty to your block and parry, thus making it pretty much a wash unless one party or the other has night vision.

That would be my take on the situation. Darkness penalties amount to DX and Per penalties for tasks with a vision component, and DX penalties affect DX-based skills. Thus, if you're at -N to DX, you have -N to combat skills, which means -N/2 to defenses. I'd also apply this to Dodge, for consistency's sake.

[Henquist]

How would darkness affect an acrobatic dodge? would the -3 visibility penalty count twice? once against your dodge and as a DX penalty vs your acrobatics?

[Mcoorlim]

That's an interesting question. I could see it go either way, given the way that the acrobatics roll modifies your defense.

You pass the acrobatics roll? You flipped well in regards to the attack you're facing. You twisted your body the right way to help your dodge.

Fail? You flipped in a way that actually made it harder to dodge the attack.

Both of the above imply that the acrobatics maneuver is made in relation to the attack coming at you. Does visibility affect this? I would assume so (but I might be wrong about how acro dodges actually work or what they mean).

[Henquist]

Acrobatics skill is a performance skill. You dont need to see the attack coming IMO otherwise it would suffice as a dodge skill in of itself, or dodge might be derived from acrobatics. All the acrobatics roll is for is to see if your fancy manuever is successful or not. Once you roll you modifiy your dodge by the success or failure result. Now is the time to worry about what your see and what you dont, during your dodge roll.

Thats my take on it. Would love to hear more opinions.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Henquist

How would darkness affect an acrobatic dodge? would the -3 visibility penalty count twice? once against your dodge and as a DX penalty vs your acrobatics?

Sure, they're different classes of penalty. This assumes darkness penalties affect the acrobatics roll in the first place, plenty of acrobatic moves can be done blind.

[Mcoorlim]

Originally Posted by Anthony

This assumes darkness penalties affect the acrobatics roll in the first place, plenty of acrobatic moves can be done blind.

With the +6 (or whatever) bonus for routine tasks there's a lot of things you can do blind.

But combat's that's the question here. Does the acrobatic move part of an acrobatic dodge get its own vision penalty?

[Mehmet]

Originally Posted by Henquist

How would darkness affect an acrobatic dodge? would the -3 visibility penalty count twice? once against your dodge and as a DX penalty vs your acrobatics?

I'd probably only penalize dodge roll - unless there is a definite need for the character to have a visual component to the acrobatics part of the maneuver which I cannot imagine at the moment.

Cheerio!

[Collective_Restraint]

I always had concerns around the darkness penalties. A low light penalty of -3 can seriously cripple a somewhat reasonable warrior, DX 10 with a Weapon Skill of 12, and make him almost useless with a skill of 9. Even if the lighting isn't that good, missing more than half the time someone that's only a yard from you while swinging a broadsword seems pretty harsh to me.

[Tai]

A reasonable but inexperienced (Skill level 12 is good, but I think 14 is 'veteran' level) warrior, who had any sense, in a situation where poor lighting was making it difficult for him to hit in the first place would

a) Find a way to move the fight to better lighting
b) Find a way to move better lighting to the fight
c) Take extra care over his moves, at the cost of number of attacks (Evaluate maneuvers)
d) Fight harder to make up for it, taking much bigger risks to try and compensate for the lack of light (Committed/All-Out Attacks)