I think perhaps, the simplest approach is to disregard the focus on actions which gets away from this whole thread's debate over what an action, and simply apply the part in parenthesis which is to all die rolls and totals.
That only partially solves the problem, and it very seriously changes the balance equation.
In the current setup fatigue and wound penalties apply once in "normal" combat (when you roll for Defense) and none at all in "magical" combat (when you are targeted by a spell like a Pilum of Fire that automatically hits). With your proposed change, fatiigue and wound penalties would apply twice in "normal" combat, and once in "magical" combat.
Sure, the relative difference would decrease, and you would get a "wear down" effect from weaker damaging spells.(which is a good thing). The diffrence would not disappear, however, and wounds and fatigue in normal combat would become far more crippling (which may, or may not, be a good thing).
It's not so much a proposed change as much as it is my reading of the RAW / RAI, which seems to differ from your reading. And no, wounds don't apply twice in my games. They apply on the stress die check. In mundane combat, it's the defense roll, in magical combat, it's on the soak.
1 Like
I think you missed some things, or you probably wouldn't have said this. Of course, much got scattered above. First is what I pointed out from core:
The knight takes no action to defend. We know this means Wound Penalties to not apply. But how do we calculate Attack Advantage? The core book is silent on that. The closest we could assume is that this is as bad as botching. That would mean we set Defense Total to 0 regardless of any actual scores.
But then we turn to LoM. Sure, that chapter has that name. But half the chapter explains how the rules work for clarity, while the other half explains some ways to alter them. How do you know which is which? They conveniently wrote "Option:" before each optional rule. This isn't one of those. It's an explanation where the core book was silent. It's saying "Taking no action to defend yourself is worse than taking an action to defend yourself and botching. Instead of using 0 you use -10."
As you can see, my deduction had already been from the core book. Meanwhile, this non-optional-rule doesn't change the core book mechanics because they're silent here. It fills in the gap. Or you can just go with botch-equivalent 0 from the core book only if you want, but that just makes the lightning do even better.
That is 100% the key to this whole thread's debate, though.
That would have been a house rule until this erratum was written. That's exactly why this erratum was written: I pointed out to David that the rules say it should apply twice in regular combat unless Soak is not an action. He chose this fix for clarity, as the earlier explanation given in the rules was erroneous.
As for Soak being an action, we have a few things. Most valuable is
Wound Penalty does not apply to Soak because Soak is not an action
Even though this is explicit, some people want more than that for non-Combat Soak Total, claiming it represents dodging. Here are some problems with it represent dodging:
- There are spells like Parching Wind, Curse of the Desert, and Wizard's Icy Grip. You get to Soak these. What are you doing? You're dodging your innards?
- You get Soak if you're unconscious, naked, and tied up. How exactly are you dodging?
- When you can dodge the books give non-Soak rolls for this. There are aiming rolls with spells that go up against Defense Total for dodging. There are dragon breaths that use Qui+Athletics for dodging. So when dodging is available, there is a mechanic outside of Soak.
Pretty clearly Soak here does not represent any sort of dodging.
Some people separately claim realism for compiled wounds means Wound Penalty should be included in non-Combat Soak Total. But when we look at realistic scenarios we find much more realistic results when it is left out. I'm not going to repeat my whole analysis, but you can see it where I have showed how much more realistic it is, including references for real-world times: Wound penalties against fire etc - anyone house ruled like this?
So the rules tell us explicitly Soak is not an action so Wound Penalty doesn't apply. They show us that dodging actions against spells are not handled by Soak. And we get much more realistic behavior when Wound Penalty does not apply to Soak. The first of these should be sufficient as it's explicit, but the remaining two should convince doubters of the explicit statement.
I'd say you have argued it is more realistic. But you have not convinced me (or several others, it seems) at all, quite the opposite. That said, I had completely missed those threads, and they were quite interesting, so thanks.
I disagree. While LoM fills in a gap, you are (erroneously, in my opinion) deducing from it that Wound and Fatigue penalties are capped, something that has the potential to significantly alter the corebook dynamics of "heavily wounded combat" well outside this edge case (and seems at odds with what the corebook itself states on p.178).
RafaelB's interpretation (namely, that you modify every Defense Total, including that -10 when defenseless, by wound and fatigue penalties) has the immense advantage that a single remark in the Optional combat rules chapter in LoM does not change the corebook dynamics outside of that edge case. It seems to me you are failing to see his points, which I find quite convincing - more convincing than I could be, in fact, so I'll rest my case for now.
1 Like
Have you actually looked at the times? You think if the average person puts just their hand in ice water for barely over a minute they'll die? That's the more realistic version? That's what happens when you apply Wound Penalties to non-Combat Soak Total. If you really think this is more realistic, I highly suggest you go look at the references I provided. You can do the same with other stuff. There isn't really much to debate here except if the specific substances and temperatures of the right +Damage since all you have to do is check the rate at which Wounds are taken to real-world survival times.
This sounds suspiciously like you didn't read what I wrote. Wound Penalties are not capped at all. I've never said that they are. I'm just asking everyone to stop erroneously applying Wound Penalties to things that are not actions.
And it blatantly disagrees with numerous canonical statements. If you want to house-rule this way, sure. But we know for sure it's incorrect since his stated outcome is internally inconsistent and since I provided an example that directly shows it is incorrect.
What I really wonder about is why you're arguing to hard when I've shown the rules aren't as broken as you thought. Why not be celebrating? All you have to do is agree Wound Penalties don't apply to non-actions and your problem is solved.
I'll complete a few more things, if I may.
I think you are talking about the knight receiving an Incantation of Lightning? This still doesn't solves the problem of the explicit statement on page 178 that you have been consistently ignoring about penalties having no maximum. And that should be applied to the knight being kicked by the child. Again: a knight with 100 light wounds, but not dead, not defenseless, one that is trying his best to not be kicked, by the rules, has his Defense Total + penalties. No -10 cap.
I will make two points: the first one is that there is no perfect simulation of reality by the rules. The second is that ignoring the possibility of penalties applied to non-combat soak has it's own drawbacks. You point a few corner cases in the mentioned topic, sure. But to give a counter-example: two people being tossed from 3rd floor, one with two broken legs, one fine. Who do you think is more likely to be wounded after the fall?
I'm not arguing that adding penalties to non-combat should or shouldn't be done, and I don't intend for this to be a competition for who can find more weird corner cases either. I'm saying that your claim of realism isn't really that strong.
To my count, only a couple (allegedly). As I said before, I'd like to come back to this later. After we clarify if this -10 cap for someone that isn't defenseless can be directly tracked to the rules or if it's just an interpretation. If it's an interpretation, mine differs, and I'm willing to slowly discuss how and why. I swear that it's based on my honest reading of the rules, I'm not just disagreeing for the sake of it.
Leaving this behind (for now), I go back to my key point against your argument, callen:
Our child-fighting knight isn't defenseless. He is very wounded, sure. But he is still awake, standing, and for some reason, fighting a small child with all he has. He is not defenseless nor helpless (as in, not sleeping, tied up, immobilized, etc). Is there any actual rule that you can point to that would limit his Defense Total + penalties to -10?
1 Like
Nobody has been ignoring that statement.
For a defenseless target it does not matter how much wound penalties they have, because their normal Defense Total (including all bonuses and penalties) is replaced by a flat -10 in Defense Total.
As for this not applying for a non-helpless person, please explain how it is possible to have worse defense than no defense at all?
No, you have. Look at the initial post. Nowhere it stated a defenseless target. But somehow, in the middle of callen's argument, he mentions a defenseless target, and this derailed the point of the original post with this discussion that doesn't really solves anything, because it doesn't address the main issue.
Sorry, but it's the opposite way around. There is a rule in page 178 of the corebook that states that penalties have no maximum. If you want to disregard this, you need to provide actual rules, not just interpretation.
(I can explain, mind you. But then I'll have my opinion and you will have yours, and none of them will have any real weight in the face of a clearly defined rule, unless we decide to enter erratum terrain. To do this, however, we should make sure of what the actual rules say, shouldn't we?)
Nobody has disregarded that rule!
What I am saying is that it sometimes does not matter how much wound penalties you have.
For example: Botch the roll, and your Attack Total or Defense Total will be 0. Does not matter how much bonuses or penalties you have, because the Total is set to a flat 0 when you botch.
Defenseless opponents have a Defense Total of -10. Doesn't matter if they have -200 in Wound Penalties, the Defense Total will still be -10.
And just to be clear: Wound penalties are included in the calculation of Attack Total or Defense Total.
Just look at the combat examples on p172 and p174 in the core rulebook and you will see that all the calculated Attack Totals and Defense Totals include Wound penalties.
So what you are saying is that, except for house-ruling it based on a personal understanding of how you think things should work (which is totally valid), you can provide no more substantiation as to why a non-helpless person would have his Defense Total capped. Is this right?
What I am saying is that logically it is not possible to have worse defense than no defense at all.
So far I have seen no counterargument to that.
I will take that as a "yes".
Now, addressing how a man can be worse than defenseless:
Pepper a man with 11 arrows. By luck or grace, each one inflicts only a light wound. He can still fight. Both arms, legs, eyes. He isn't incapacitated yet, in any way. But he has a -11 penalty. Does this really seem so contrived to you?
Now, scale this to 111 arrows and he has -111 penalty. I admit that this seems contrived. Any reasonable mind would say that there is no way for someone to get -111 arrows to his body and keep going. I'm not going to disagree with this. But what we are actually examining here are the rules themselves. I just scaled the amount of arrows. The principle should be valid.
But hey, give him a couple of wounds so that he has a -10 Defense Total (let's assume three heavy wounds). A few ribs broken, maybe a punctured lung. This guy is going to have a hard time staying alive after this fight, but he is alive right now. He can still hold his sword. He can still dodge. And you can be sure that he will, if you try to hit him.
Now, assume that this guy IS tied down. It should be obvious that any other strike against him should be more likely to kill him than a strike against his identical twin brother, equally stated, but unharmed, no? And bear in mind, I'm not talking about a coup de grace. I'm talking about a reasonable combat situation. Chopping their heads off isn't combat, it's an execution (call this a personal interpretation of mine, if you will). In actual combat you don't really have the time to aim carefully, you swing the best you can and hope, if you somehow end up inflicting a fatal wound, all the better. And in the case of an execution, just kill them. An action that can't fail shouldn't be rolled at all.
Now, let's say that an archer takes one shot against each of them, our -10 DT guy and his unharmed twin, both tied up, from a reasonable distance, in a combat situation. Can you see that one of them has a better chance of surviving said shot? If so, you should at least partially agree with me that wound penalties shouldn't really be caped based on an individual being defenseless, because you can, indeed, be worse than helpless. You can be helpless AND hurt.
Now, can you be not helpless, and still, due to wound penalties, be worse than a defenseless guy? Sure. Pick our lung-punctured twin. Give him a few more blows, so that he has a -15 Defense Total. Again, he can still stand. Move. Run. But your next blow hit his (already) hurt ribs, and a new wound opens, one worse than what it would have been if he wasn't damaged already. You don't even need to bee too strong. Even gently applying pressure to his torso could kill him, while this would surely be impossible for a defenseless, but unharmed target.
Anyone can probably find a few points to disagree with the interpretation above. I, on the other hand, could give a few more examples (I believe that most of them rest on the idea that if you are heavily wounded enough, any further strike should be much more capable of spelling your doom), and you can be worse than defenseless because defenseless isn't the same as being in the brink of death.
But as I said before, this is my understanding. I can see how some would rather rule that the Defense Total should be capped. I just happen to disagree with that interpretation. And there is nothing on the rules that support that. And if you cap it, the rule on p. 178 is irrelevant.
I'll wait a bit, read any opposing comment. And them we can address what you argue are examples for the wound penalties being included in the Defense Total formula, but actually are just descriptive text (you can disagree from this too).
2 Likes
How did you get there? The point from the beginning is that the knight facing the child is going to take no action to defend.
Somehow??? Derailing??? Have you read what I've written??? That is the entire point and not derailing it at all. There is no rule that says you must take an action to defend. There is a rule for what happens when you take no action to defend. Meanwhile, Wound Penalties do not apply to a non-action. That is the entire point. If you're that wounded, you just take the blow rather than defending. You get a straight -10 replacing the Defense Total and Wound Penalty does not apply. If you're not really Wounded, then you're better off taking an action to defend. Show me one rule I've applied incorrectly here rather than something you would like different than it's written.
At this point the burden of proof is really on you all to show why Wound Penalty applies to something that is not an action, especially when we have the statement
Wound Penalty does not apply to Soak because Soak is not an action
which necessarily implies Wound Penalty doesn't apply to non-actions, on top of Wound Penalty being very specific that it applies to actions. I really don't get why you all believe Wound Penalty applies to non-actions.
I will take that as you not understanding what I write
That being the case, I am not going to argue with you any more. It is not worth the frustration.
We can talk edge cases forever. We have to remember the rules are a numerical abstraction of the world and wont work for everything. The SG needs to apply a degree of logic for edge cases.
The hand in iced water example, two ones and a seven on the first damage roll, somehow this person dies unless the SG intervenes (as they should). I don't think the child kick is the best of examples either, as it does need a ridiculous wound penalty set up, and the extremeness of the example distracts from what is a relevant point.
This derails your own argument. You've been arguing reality as a key point. Look at how meta that line is.
The weirdness of things achieving fatality when they shouldn't isn't something purely to do with accruing damage penalties, it's to do with die rolls and numbers being used to attempt to model an event.
What we want is some degree of consistency. To me a helpless person doesn't get -10. If someone is near a helpless person and wants to kill them, it is over. Knife across the neck, sword to the heart, pilum to the eyeball, it's done. No roll.
The big question is, how bad should a brace of wounds affect someone, and should it affect for all attacks? P171 of the core rules, the attack and defence totals do not include a (- wound penalties). I consider that makes it clear a botch sets the attack total and/or defence total to 0 before factoring in wound penalties. P178 specifies no maximum to wound penalties. Going to a non-core book to work around that, well, that's a house rule. Nothing wrong with house rules, but it's good to be clear.
To go back to the question in the OP:-
if there is no cap to how bad a defence score can go due to wound penalties
if would penalties do not affect a soak roll
for big monsters, the boom spells are not finishers, they just weaken the beast for a grog to finish, which seem off.
I've seen this in action. I have an archer companion and we fought a size 3 giant with something like 12 soak. We needed 21 damage to get better than a light wound. By the time he had 3 - 4 arrows in him and a few sword cuts, he's on his way down. Once the wound penalty is -8, attacks that bounced off his soak are light wounds, the old light wounds are now heavy, etc.
The mage with his 3 multi cast pilum of fires which are usually devastating is second string. All he is doing is weakening the giant so my archer can do the finisher.
If the core rules don't support wound penalties affecting the soak roll then I would house rule they do in games I ran, however, I consider combining what is written on P116 and P181 in the core books, suggest wound penalties affect the soak roll. I appreciate this isn't clear, and for the 20th anniversary edition 
clarifying wound penalties, and putting the P116 & p181 together would be good.
4 Likes
If I'm understanding callen correctly, they're saying that while wound penalties would apply without limit to your defense total, you could simply choose not to defend yourself and thus set your defense to a flat -10. In this way, there is no contradiction, but the interaction of the two rules means that in practice your defense total will never go below -10. Is that correctly understood?
1 Like
Let me take the other side of the argument, that of callen and ErikT. As I said, I disagree with it, but there is a chance I might makes things clearer.
Most rpgs have a gauge of how close a character is to incapacitation/death: body levels, health levels, hit points etc. There may be (but in some famous cases there are not) penalties to the "functioning" of the character, including his ability to defend himself, as this gauge moves from healthy-as-a-fish to dead-as-a-doornail.
ArM5 takes an innovative tack to that. There is no gauge, only the penalties, inflicted by individual wounds - the most grievous of which might be instantly lethal. And non-lethal ones can accumulate impairing the wounded character's defensive potential, making it easier to inflict a lethal wound (non-lethal wounds can also kill after combat, which is indeed how most people ended up dying from combat wounds until very recently).
And here's the catch. We might be tempted to interpret the total wound penalty as the missing gauge of how close a character is to immediate death. But it's not. It's a gauge of how close he is to inaction (more specifically, to inability to take non-automatic actions). This means, in particular, that a wound that would not be able to kill the character when healthy but e.g. sleeping, will not kill him no matter how heavily wounded he is. Which appear problematic: you can't incapacitate or kill a sleeping, tied-up, defenseless person with a single whip-lash, but you can certainly whip him to death in an hour so.
The crux here is that in Ars Magica you generate Attack Totals with a stress die. Every 300 rolls or so (so a single person whipping for half an hour) you'll roll a 32+. A person with Dex-1, Str-1, and the most basic ability to handle a whip - a weapon skill of 0(1) hits a defenseless one (Defense Total -10) with an Attack advantage of 42, and thus generates a Damage total of 38-Soak, meaning that even an exceedingly tough (sta+5, Tough), Large victim will be Incapacitated on the spot.
The system is, of course, not perfect. If you are lucky, by the rules you can kill a healthy, fresh person - in fact, a healthy, fresh dragon - with a single whiplash. Also, someone/something very large, and with a very high soak, can be brought very quickly to a point where they can take no non-automatic action (say -50+ to all actions), but then take a long long time to be incapacitated. The latter is particularly problematic because SGs will typically create "boss" opponents that can be wounded (PCs should be able to win, after all) but not killed in a single shot (PCs should not be able to win too easily) so the situation is more frequent than one might like. And the fact that no defense at all means a Defense Total of -10 should be made clear in the corebook, not hidden away in a chapter about optional combat rules in another sourcebook.
But the alternative is also problematic. Should you be able to fairly reliably (prob. > 75%) kill with a single kick on the spot a(n unarmoured) Weary character who's taken 2 heavy wounds and 2 medium ones? Even if you (and your victim) are pretty average in all stats (0, including Siz) and have just basic familiarity with Brawling (1)? Probably not, but that's what you get if you assume that the Defense Total can't be capped.
1 Like