Child's kick vs Incantation of Lightning

Games Discussion Ars Magica
101

Combat is stoopid. I should just errata all the rules for it out of the game.

Ahem.

We do not seem to be getting to a consensus on this, but one thing we do need is a rule for the Defense of a helpless, unconscious, or completely passive opponent. It doesn't need to be the same rule as the one in LOM.

The obvious options seem to be:

(1) –10, flat, not modified by anything.

(2) –10, treated as the result of the roll, and you do not get to add Stat + Skill because you are not doing anything, so no Stat or Skill apply. Wound Penalties do apply.

(3) Autokill.

I am strongly inclined to not fiddle with anything else at this point, as there seems to be no consensus on how things should be changed, and everything seems to have negative consequences somewhere. A rule for helpless targets in combat seems to be necessary, however.

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102

I don't see the need. I find this a lot easier to play by ear.

If you really have to make a rule, I would prefer an immobility penalty (say -10) to the regular defence roll. Not sure if that is your (2) or if that was meant to require no die. The reason for this is that it seems to be the minimal variation over the regular combat sequence, and thus it avoids a few pathological cases such as the question if a given conscious and wounded target is passive «enough» to benefit from the flat -10 in option (1).

In practice, at the table, it is going to be (3) autokill nine times out of ten, but that takes no rule. If we need a rule, it must be because there are some fringe cases that requires some simple mechanics.

103

I'd +1 this, except Trudevang did this and ended up with players leaving the game like the proverbial rats fleeing a sinking ship :wink:

104

With those 3 choices:

  1. This is current, as you said. It avoids the huge combat disparity that started this thread. It keeps environmental damage much closer to reality.
  2. This creates the big imbalance that started this thread. The complaint had been that a child's kick became way more powerful than Incantation of Lightning, which is not currently the case because you can just not defend and accept the -10 against the kick, while Wound Penalty does not apply to Soak. If you implement (2), then you recreate this problem unless you make more changes as well. You would additionally want to change non-Combat Soak Total so it takes a Wound Penalty while Soak Total does not, which requires a couple more pieces in the errata. That creates additional problems, for which you'll want more errata to fix things like walking outside under a hot sun without a shirt on will now kill you almost immediately.
  3. This is what SG's and GM's do in lots of games when the end is inevitable, just waiting on that one lucky roll. I've never seen anyone object when SG's and GM's make this call.
105

My preference is the second option for combat. Autokill is acceptable in executions, after a battle, and duels to the death where no one will step in.

But then I also think wound penalties should apply to non-combat soak considering I would have died had they performed CPR on me after open heart surgery when my heart stopped beating rather than open me back up and massaged my heart I am well aware that wounds can make one more susceptible to further or worse wounding.

106

It seems to me the best way to handle someone who is defenseless is to skip the attack roll, consider it an automatic hit, and roll damage versus soak applying wound penalties to the soak roll.

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107
  1. Autokill for me. Greatly dislike 1.

2 I see some merit, however, sorry David, not a fan of -10. It should be zero and wound penalties apply, and only if a deliberate action such as the push the sword through the heart, slit throat, whatever, is unavailable.

What problem are we trying to solve and what problem might we make?

Let's ignore the edge examples. Anything that can't practically happen is near pointless to discuss. How are we getting to 100 light wounds? Iced Water? Move the hand out, and if you can't, the SG should improve his writing. Epic villainy this is not. "So you expect me to talk?" "No Mr Bond, I expect you to wee your pants."

Let's look at the more likely events.
I think most people agree giant beast become near unkillable if a -10 cap is applied. That seems undesirable.

The original problem was magic being second rate to physical attacks, as magic, by some interpretations of the rules does not add wound penalties to soak rolls. That ambiguity is still there. If there was one rule to lock in, I'd want wound penalties affect non combat soak rolls, to make magic and weapon strikes affect wounded entities the same.

Why do I dislike -10? A static target, such as a hay bale is not defending. Is someone surprised not defending? Seems hard to say no. A child with a bow and no training can hit a target at roughly 60 paces all the time. If we care about realism, that's bad. Fagan stops having the children be pickpockets, they just incapacitate people with sling bullets from the shadows.

Applying -10 for passive opponents makes surprise overwhelmingly strong, and surprise is already powerful. This -10 cure is worse than any problem existing now.
If it's determined -10 is only for the truly helpless, not the just surprised, it gives the weird situation that it's easier to hit with a bow a sleeping target than some unfit peasant standing in a field. Hitting a prone target is clearly harder.

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108

Fine: just play a character in the Middle East or Africa. Oops, you're all dead. Ice-water is not an edge case. It's an example where we have good information on timing. Claiming nearly all such environmental cases are edge cases just doesn't fly, as we're talking about a huge portion of what it covers.

109

A hand in iced water is an edge case. By using a hand in iced water, instead of long term exposure to a desert environment, it is trying to suggest this is so stoopid, the rule must be changed. It's an oft used debating device, however, accept that it is a debating device to show the opposing position is ridiculous, when it is not.

If you had earlier presented the more reasonable proposition that long term exposure to heat means everyone outside on a 40 degree day dies, I would have not called it an edge case, I would have suggested that requires an errata of exposure rules, not wound penalties.

For the sake of posting in good faith, 2 responses had been made before I added the following paragraphs.

I do not want an errata for exposure. Ars majica is about the magi. It devotes most of it's energy to magi. In the core rule book, I don't see rules about cover, firing arrows in to a chaotic melee, etc, either. Work it out! Are we surprised that a set of rules designed to map someone in a raging fire or a blizzard doesn't reliably map if a British tourist watching the Ashes test at the height of an Aussie summer dies of heat stroke? I'm not. This is why I keep using the term edge cases.

Good luck and thanks for your work on trying to achieve a meaningful, useful errata David.

110

I presented full immersion in ice water, partial immersion in ice water, and I think partial immersion in fire. Choosing just one of my examples to say all of them are one edge case is... a sign you're not reading what you're referring to? (I'm choosing the best option there.)

And we're not talking about long-term hot-sun exposure. If your arms are bare you die in a minute or so if Wound Penalty applies. That's pretty short-term.

Yes, I said you if you change non-Combat Soak Total to include Wound Penalties, then you would need to make other changes for exposure. I never said Wound Penalties need to be changed.

111

Sorry to hear that.

I would note your contradiction, though: opening you back up with Wound Penalties applied would kill you if doing CPR with Wound Penalties would. You cannot really claim Wound Penalties - CPR - death and ignore Wound Penalties - open up chest - death. The difference between the two cannot be handled by applying or not applying Wound Penalty to Soak. The game handles this with medical rolls for an Incapacitated person and rolling well or poorly (bottom of p.179).

112

In this thread you mentioned a hand in ice water, nothing else.

It just isn't. This rule is in a supplementary rule book, not core.

113

And I provided a link to the others because, as I said, I didn't want to spend all that time redoing the mathematical analysis. Please read.

The point remains: it's not edge cases as it's all over the place with environmental factors. Claims otherwise are either naive or disingenuous.

Yes, it is current, which is why David said it's

not modified by anything

Again, if you stick to only core, you avoid the Wound Penalty entirely the same way; but core gives no answer about what should be used, only that Wound Penalty doesn't apply. The best guess from core is probably a flat 0, as that's what you get for a botch.

114

I probably have a slight preference for 2, to avoid Lame Leviathans (huge adversaries with -100 of wound penalties who just can't be killed, because their Incapacitated wound range starts at 50+). BUT only if wound penalties equally worsen the outcome when you can't defend because the attack is automatic - e.g. a Pilum of Fire, because otherwise you get Wyrmkiller Waifs who can kill with a clumsy kick the huge dragon that a Flambeau has been fruitlessly piling nuclear explosions on.

If magical attacks are to remain untouched, I'd strongly prefer 1, that enforces some symmetry between the child-tossed dart and The Crystal Dart (that's what made me start this thread after all).

I would really dislike 3, autokill, because there are situations when it's reasonable (you can punch a dagger through the eye of the armoured but defenseless knight), and there are others when it's not reasonable at all (e.g. if the attacker is using a ranged weapon from some distance away, if he using a light, blunt weapon like a kick or stick, or if the target is markedly non-human - can you autokill a defenseless kraken?) Whether autokill is possible is best left to the SGs discretion, though a note in this sense ("in some cases ... such as ...") might be nice.

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115

I'm opposed to anything which includes capped wound penalties, so #2.

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116

given those options #2

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117

If the intent is to keep the status quo... as I understand most people play with uncapped wound penalties (interpretation supported by the core book, which should keep being core), so in a certain sense #2 is the option that makes the least changes.

#3 should be under the purview of the storyguide, for the reasons stated by Ezzelino.

118

More people may prefer 2, and that's fine. But let's at least be honest that it will require errata in a number of areas to implement it. On top of that, some more errata on top of those would probably be desired to fix some issues it would create. 1 requires no errata whatsoever, though a note added to the core book could be helpful.

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119

Can we create a fairly straightforward distinction between Soak against "attacks", which does get the Wound penalties at some point, and Soak against "environment", which does not?

It looks to me as though that would go some way towards fixing the problems. Putting your hand in ice water would not kill you, but Pilum of Fire would.

First pass: It's an "attack" if the point in the game at which the damage is applied is not an abstraction to make the rules work, but rather reflects when the damage is inflicted in the fiction. Thus, Pilum of Fire is an attack, and so is falling damage (which is inflicted when you hit the surface), but the damage from putting your hand in ice water is not.

I have the feeling that this is actually a whole set of different edge cases. We could ignore them individually, but there are enough of them that at least one of them causes problems for most players (different ones for different players). Of course, because they are different, they need different solutions…

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120

Is that to say that it is an attack if it is instantaneous? While damage continuous over some duration is environmental?

That seems clear. It is not at all clear, however, that these edge cases form a set which can be handled collectively.

It seems that there is a bug in the recovery rules. It is well known that hundreds of light wounds in real life make them all heal more slowly than a single wound, and it may be fatal. In ArM, with a skilled medic (even without magic), would expect to heal almost all of them in a week. There is the botch risk, but core does not discuss botching; neither the number of botch dice, which should probably increase with the number of wounds, nor the consequences.

Furthermore, it seems that we try to fix this problem in the recovery rules, by changing the combat system so that previous wounds will increase the severity of new wounds. Instead of dealing with the effect of large numbers of wounds, we upgrade the later wounds.

Why is this a problem? Well, it is a problem because the logic of wounds making the body more fragile and vulnerable is also relevant to environmental damage. The hand in ice water may not kill you outright, but when you add it to other wounds, the combined effect is more than the sum of individual wounds.

And on the bottom line, it seems that the driving force is the desire to make pilum of fire more powerful, as a more universal kill'em all spell, where the hoplite's problem would be more easily solved by learning a targeted attack spell to complement the toolbox.

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