The example on page 172 changes nothing though?
The Attack and Defense Totals are modified by the wound penalty. They are not included in the calculation. The example doesn't change with my interpretation or yours, but only one of the interpretations is consistent with the rest of the rules.
I didn't ignore, it just doesn't contributes to the point. As you said, recovery is a different mechanic. We are talking combat.
So - what value is it you are using when calculating Attack Advantage?
Attack Advantage is defined as:
Attackerâs Attack Total â Defenderâs Defense Total
You seem to want two different Defense Totals. One before adding wound penalties and one after.
Not at all. I'm arguing that there is difference between including the wound penalty in the Total and having it applied to the total afterwards. Both semantic and practical.
If it makes easier for you to consider this as two Defense Totals (say, Defense Total and Modified Defesne Total), no problem. I would agree that this is clearer.
To me, the fact that the wound penalties are not explicitly included in the Totals (any Totals at all, by the way, unless I'm missing some) tells a lot of how they should be applied.
Read the quote I gave you carefully. It disagrees with you. If you don't see that, read it again.
You made an argument about accumulated wounds. There are rules for that. And you don't seem to be paying attention since you said "recovery is a different mechanic" and I'm not talking about recovery, just something that uses Recovery rolls. Sure, you suspend it for the pile of seconds of combat for game play, but then it kicks in right away.
I totally understand what you're arguing. There are two problems:
Other possibility: They told us how to modify things so they didn't have to write Wound Penalty into piles of formulas all over the place.
Edit: Oh, this might help you see it: It's applied to the roll, which is included in the total, so it shows up in the total. Look at the example again.
Let's go back a few steps, to avoid derailing the initial discussion. We can return to the Defense Total formula later (I'm willing to die on this hill).
I get you when you say "from LoM, defenseless is -10 Defense Total". But the next step "you canât be worse than defenseless" is just your personal interpretation. I'm correct in that there is nothing, RAW, to support that?
Because once more, from AM5 p.178:
There is no maximum limit to a characterâs Wound Penalty.
The interpretation that the DT should be limited to -10 requires you to explicitly disregard what is clearly stated at the core book.
So, for a specifically not defenseless combatant with 100 light wounds, he would have a huge penalty on his Combat Totals and be more prone to being killed by a child's kick than by an IoL, as per Ezzelino's initial claim. Itâs there anything wrong with this reasoning?
Just don't defend, and you're defenseless (without defense). RAW does not require you to not just take the blow. You're now no worse.
Or you can go with core rules and intentionally do something equivalent to botching and get a 0 instead.
This is an enlightening discussion, I am happy I opened the thread.
I have to say that after a little swaying, I agree with RafaelB. The "there is no limit to the Wound penalty" statement on p178 and the fact that it modifies Attack and Defense Totals strongly siggest his interpretation.
I would stress that callen's is only a (somewhat iffy) deduction from a paragraph in a chapter of Optional combat rules in LoTM; as it would change endgame combat dynamics significantly from the corebook, I would not assume it's in place unless it can be found in the errata. But it's worth pointing out to David Chart in the other thread.
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.
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:
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.
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?
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.