Rules puzzle: Extra Attack and readying

[Incard]

Ciaran, I think what Bill is taking issue with is your assumption of him as trying to lay blame at someone's feet, and you telling him the fault was his after all. He wasn't trying to assign blame, but instead attempting to get some crunchy rules advice and clarification. He sounds like he's having fun with his character, and was a bit unsure of how to properly proceed into an area that his character was not explicitly designed for. To me, your post did come off a bit crass and aggressive, although it sounded like your intent was to reveal what you thought the real issue was.

Bill - it looks like myself and the other posters have helped uncover some of the crunchy bits you were looking for and you've found yourself an interesting new tactic for your supers character, some directions in which she can develop her new style once she trains up a bit. Out of curiosity, will the players in this game have the downtime opportunities to make use of the improvement through study rules? It seems like some games have almost no down time for the characters, and for many others the chance is rare. It's always fun to have something your character is trying to get better at. And I find it's more interesting to do it in this kind of way, rather than just adding yet another level to some master-level weapon skill.

[Kromm]

Mark and I are arguing, but we're talking in rules terms when we disagree. I'm good with arguments like that . . . they're nice and, I dunno, Socratic or something. Let's not have argumentative arguments, though, okay?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Incard

Bill - it looks like myself and the other posters have helped uncover some of the crunchy bits you were looking for and you've found yourself an interesting new tactic for your supers character, some directions in which she can develop her new style once she trains up a bit. Out of curiosity, will the players in this game have the downtime opportunities to make use of the improvement through study rules? It seems like some games have almost no down time for the characters, and for many others the chance is rare. It's always fun to have something your character is trying to get better at. And I find it's more interesting to do it in this kind of way, rather than just adding yet another level to some master-level weapon skill.

La Gata is currently enrolled in a martial arts academy where she's studying the Karate skill, and is spending time practicing the Fast-Draw (Rock) skill on her own. The GM has not decided at this point that she's had enough time to gain a point in either. Between a once-a-month schedule, having had some sessions cancelled, and having game time progress slower than real time, I'm doubting that La Gata will have gained anything through study by the time I retire her.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Kromm

As I said, I'm not against allowing an extra Ready, but I think it's a potent advantage if it has no restrictions on the type of Ready or the skills/weapons involved, and if it requires no die roll.

Hmmm. What are the rules for Readying if your style involves a weapon in each hand—say, a rapier and a main-gauche? Can you Ready them both in a single maneuver, or does it take one maneuver for each, and thus two seconds? I can't find this in the Basic Set or Martial Arts.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Mark and I are arguing, but we're talking in rules terms when we disagree. I'm good with arguments like that . . . they're nice and, I dunno, Socratic or something. Let's not have argumentative arguments, though, okay?

I will be happy to cease talking to Ciaran entirely, at this point.

Bill Stoddard

[Ciaran]

Originally Posted by Incard

Ciaran ... to me, your post did come off a bit crass and aggressive, although it sounded like your intent was to reveal what you thought the real issue was.

Thank you Incard. I'll try and elevate my discourse to the polite level of Mr. Stoddard's.

Excuse me while I now sod off.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Hmmm. What are the rules for Readying if your style involves a weapon in each hand—say, a rapier and a main-gauche? Can you Ready them both in a single maneuver, or does it take one maneuver for each, and thus two seconds? I can't find this in the Basic Set or Martial Arts.

From the text of Readying Weapons and Other Gear (B382-383), I would guess two Ready maneuvers would be needed. The references in the first few paragraphs are repeatedly singular in nature. Perhaps more telling is the note (in the fourth paragraph) that a single Ready will let you accept one item being handed to you [in combat]. Additional objects exchanged each require their own Ready. This seems to indicate that Readying two items, one in each hand, requires a degree of concentration beyond that represented by a single maneuver.

Just my best guess... If you play "fast and loose", it probably doesn't matter much if you let characters Ready items in both hands at once.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by whswhs

but given La Gata's ST, to get optimal damage, she needs to throw steel balls weighing 9-16 lbs., and ONE of those is a handful for her, if you figure the radius of a steel sphere with that weight.

Heh. That's a boys' or mens' shot put (also an old field gun's shot). Given that your character is a dodge-money (IIRC) and two of these put her into Light encumbrance I can't see her wanting to carry many.

[vitruvian]

The GM has not decided at this point that she's had enough time to gain a point in either.

Personally, if I were the GM in a *Supers* campaign, I'd have no issue letting Bill sink an earned CP into the skill immediately, on the basis that it's a 'powered skill' (to borrow a phrase from MEGS), i.e., actually just a new application of her existing super-reflexes rather than a mundane skill requiring anything like 200+ hours of study. Heck, I'd probably even let a more mundane character who's had the experience of fumbling for the projectiles in combat use earned CP rather than study.

Hmmm. What are the rules for Readying if your style involves a weapon in each hand—say, a rapier and a main-gauche? Can you Ready them both in a single maneuver, or does it take one maneuver for each, and thus two seconds? I can't find this in the Basic Set or Martial Arts.

I think by RAW it's a Ready for each, but at the very least I'd allow one in each hand, with the same penalties as for DWA. OHWT and DWA techniques should apply to Ready as well as Attack maneuvers, I would think, so no need to take these twice. In a more cinematic campaign, I might even just allow it, ignoring the penalties. After all, cross-drawing swords or sharpened dinner plates or whatever is a staple of cinematic fighters, and isn't even really that unrealistic. After all, what is a juggler doing but multiple Readies, throws, and catches every turn, albeit with small objects?

Or, even given Kromm's ruling that EA only gives you *attacks*, not *maneuvers*, I might just say that a Ready is close enough in nature to an Attack that I'd allow the substitution anyway. After all, you can do better with a couple of points in Fast-Draw for any weapon you really want to draw quickly, and even if used to re-Ready weapons that normally become unready on use, that just means that EA 1 increases a character's frequency of attack from once every two turns to once every turn. Doesn't really seem unbalanced to me; seems to me the real reasons that ATR is worth 4x as much have to do with being able to stack two Moves or end your sequence on an AOD, things like that, rather than the Ready component. But that may just be me.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

From the text of Readying Weapons and Other Gear (B382-383), I would guess two Ready maneuvers would be needed. The references in the first few paragraphs are repeatedly singular in nature. Perhaps more telling is the note (in the fourth paragraph) that a single Ready will let you accept one item being handed to you [in combat]. Additional objects exchanged each require their own Ready. This seems to indicate that Readying two items, one in each hand, requires a degree of concentration beyond that represented by a single maneuver.

Just my best guess... If you play "fast and loose", it probably doesn't matter much if you let characters Ready items in both hands at once.

Some further thoughts on this:

The text on p. 103 of Martial Arts says that Fast-Draw rolls are made at a cumulative -2 penalty for additional attempts in the same turn, for each hand separately. For example, you can Fast-Draw a rapier with your primary hand at no penalty, cast it aside, and Fast-Draw a pistol at -2; in the same turn, you can Fast-Draw a dagger at -4 with your off hand, drop it, and Fast-Draw another pistol at -6. So it appears that there is no inherent prohibition on keeping track of each hand separately when it comes to grabbing weapons. There is no mention of a need for an Extra Ready to grab that dagger, for example.

What if you don't have Fast-Draw? There's no explicit statement that I can find, but I can see several possible answers:

*You need to buy an Extra Ready.

*You still don't need an Extra Ready; the two hands don't interfere with each other. This seems to make sense for configurations like rapier and main-gauche, or sword and buckler.

*You can take Double Ready as a perk for a specific weapons combination. This lets you grab, say, a rapier and main-gauche, or two rocks, in a single action, but does not let you grab any two weapons. I kind of like this in that it seems commensurate with the cost of Fast-Draw: you invest a point in Fast-Draw (Rock) and you can grab two weapons instantly with good rolls, or you invest a point in Double ready and you can grab two weapons in one second without rolling.

*Alternatively, we could say that double ready normally takes two seconds, but that if you have Ambidexterity you can do it in one second—it's the relatively poor accuracy of the off hand that slows you down. That seems more debatable.

I kind of like the perk option, actually. Does it seem to be balanced as far as cost is concerned? If so, I'll talk to my GM about it.

Bill Stoddard