Does Beard of the Dragon trigger Tail of the Dragon?
The text in Beard says targets you fail to attack "take" 3 wound, so essentially you're NOT "inflicting" the damage.
I have a player who's first move in battles is to attack all named foes so get gets a 5-7 boost on his speed.
Technically it says "targets of your failed attacks." You must attack someone, and fail to hit them, before they take the 3 wounds from Beard.
To get a 5 boost on speed the PC had to spend (1+3x5=) 16 shots attacking different targets, spreading his damage out. This assumes there were five Featured Foes in the battle in the first place, which is kind of a high number unless your playing group is big. Anyway, that 5 point boost on speed translates into about 2 extra attacks per keyframe...but he's probably not getting the boost until the second or third keyframe (because it took him 16 shots to accrue it). More efficient characters should have already taken out most of the mooks and some of the named enemies by that time. Is it really that unbalancing? I haven't seen it in a game but on paper, it doesn't seem that unbalanced of a combo.
For example, let's say your PC has a speed of 8 and rolls a pretty standard 4. On shot 12 he activates beard. On shot 11 he attacks a Featured Foe, misses, does 3 wounds. On shot 8 he does it again. On shot 5 he does it again. On shot 2 he does it again. In the second keyframe, his effective speed will be 12. Which is certainly a nice boost, but there are other schticks that can give a nice speed boost without having to chain 5 schticks together and do a damage to 4 Featured Foes.
Oh.. I think you misunderstood. His first action is attacking ALL named foes at once, making the target challenge about 19 or so. He usually misses. Since he missed everyone, they all take 3 wound and he gains a +1 speed for all of them.
As per the rules, you can attack multiple opponents with a single attack.
Then he goes on attacking one or two at a time.
If there are more enemies that jump into the fight, as one GM links two fights together, he attacks all of them at the beginning of that sequence and since it's a continuous fight, he gets another +5. So if we manage to make it to another sequence, he gets a minimum of 19 initiative, assuming he rolls a 1.
I'm asking Robin about this one. It's possible that you're letting him get away with those multiple attacks a little too easily. Why are your featured foes and bosses always standing together in a group? I know we kind of encourage you to be a little cinematic with this, but honestly that's your first point of interference.
When I'm running I have various "levels" or "areas."
Some heroes fight on the roof, some on the ground.
We're passing the GM spot in an episodic game, so I'm not currently in charge, and most of our fights in the current arc consist of single buildings with one floor at a time.