Re: Mechanical discussion

[Loreia]

I'd assume non-combat mounting was assigned as a type of action in foresight of situations arising in which other actions or circumstances outside of combat would interfere, such as a surprise attack.

[Benedict Marsten]

One would assume. I think it mainly pertains to mounting in combat.

[Ser Jorah Holt]

I know that we've discussed the optional combat rules, but are we using the expanded specialities at all?

[Ser Jorah Holt]

I remember there being a discussion about allowing using a lesser action to withdraw safely one space in combat. Did this get agreed?

[Baelon Drakeson]

It was discussed, as that is part of the book's moving-out-of-combat passive attack rule, but it was never officially incorporated into the house rule.
I'm all for it, personally.

[Ser Jorah Holt]

I thought it had been agreed, which is why I've been using it

[Baelon Drakeson]

I thought it had been agreed, which is why I've been using it

I had a feeling that there was a misunderstanding going on. Feel free to change Gareth's actions.
I think the best way to retreat is to use your first lesser action either to bolster your defense with a Cautious Attack or to use Maneuver to push your opponent away.
Also, you can take a fatigue to ignore your AP for the round as well (bonus - if you take the fatigue on your turn it will also protect you if your opponent follows and attacks)

[Kevan Lyras]

viewtopic.php?f=161&
t=1455&
start=20#p38619
Just looking for a quick confirmation: By the rules, I should be able to spend a DP on my opponents Stay-in-the-saddle roll to bestow a -1D and make him fail his check, correct?

[Septon Arlyn]

even with a -1D he would still have 12, enough to meet the TN 12 to stay in the saddle, but next round he does not even hit you so it should be easy clean up

[Kevan Lyras]

Ah, you are right, yeah your roll was too good, but seems to be compensates by a very bad roll on the next...

[Septon Arlyn]

averages. Sometimes you knock the ball out of the park, but other times you hit it straight to the pitcher

[Yoren longshore]

Averages are like bees on speed, you don't exactly know where it's going, but you may suspect it of going for the honey.

[Reader]

http://dragonsdance.forumatic.com/viewtopic.php?f=161&
t=1455&
start=20#p38619
Just looking for a quick confirmation: By the rules, I should be able to spend a DP on my opponents Stay-in-the-saddle roll to bestow a -1D and make him fail his check, correct?

Confirming your timing understanding was correct, even if the -1D wasn't enough to force failure in this instance.

[Yoren longshore]

Overall, I feel like the reward from warfare as per the books is way too high for a game like this.
Taking your skirmish as an example Baelon (general comment, just taking your battle as an example, I know you did just as per the books) it seems crazy that this little fight gives as much glory as winning the melee plus a huge ransom (due to the status to wealth conversion, more than the winner of the joust) and power increase to boot...

This + Baelon's post on what he learned shows the kind of things we can all learn from the skirmishes. Tuning suggestions welcome in mechanics thread.

Now, I'll try my hand at this. I believe that we shouldn't change it too much, only enough to make sense.
First, war is expensive, fielding the army may cost one wealth. This negates some of the resource gains.

Second: Nobody gives a rats ass about skirmishes, so switching glory one down may do the rules more justice. This means that after a battle the victor would gain one less glory.

Third: The resource table should only be used if the attacker is the victor, as otherwise it makes no sense, the -1d6 to law should happen to the defendant regardless of victory though. Peasants don't like foreign armies in their field...

[Theomore Tullison]

My position on things like this remains:
Opportunity for reward for one character should be no greater than opportunity for reward for another.

What complicates matters with glory is that in standard play, everyone's part of the same house, and glory is predominantly a boon to the house (since glory for resources is a far better deal than glory for +1b *before* the dice are rolled). A situation no longer true in this setting. Inequality of number of characters per house does not help, but since characters may be mobile, that's a difficult factor to control.

That doesn't mean that everyone gets the same amount of goodies. Activity should count. The risk one is taking should count. Luck should count. But the narrator ought to do his best to facilitate that each character has the same opportunity to reach out and grasp the delicious fruits.

Essentially making it a balance thing, if reader can compensate characters not being commanders in skirmishes and such, then it's fine. If he finds it difficult, then he should tone them down.

[Yoren longshore]

Well, I simply came with a suggestion, as there was a request for it.

[Baelon Drakeson]

I am going to disagree significantly. EDIT: With Yoren's points - Theo's had not been written when I wrote this post, and I do not have time to think through that post at the moment.

I do not think that we have seen enough of the war rewards to judge whether or not they are appropriate. From my small war, I think they are appropriate, possibly too LOW for the defender. I was lucky in having the optimal end condition, and rolled decently on my units. That will not likely be the norm.

FIrst, a general comment:
War should not be frequent. A typical unit is 100 soldiers, so even a single unit represents a significant level of organizational scale. Fighting bandits or an Ironborn raiding party would typically at most be a skirmish level combat, which should not yield the same returns at all. Having a fighting force of 400 pirates show up? That's a pretty unusual situation - probably some Lysian lord's private army. Note that even the Blackwood/Bracken mess is not a war-scale event, but rather a series of skirmishes and raids.

Addressing Yoren's points:
1) Fielding the army - well, I don't really have a problem with this, though I would rather see war be costly in other ways - battles should be difficult (especially offenses), fear of retribution (from the target or their target's allies), political issues (possibly leading to influence loss) and so on. Remember that our targets for war would largely be other houses - parts of our own nation. There should be some serious retribution for any sort of open warfare without sanction from one's liege lord. That House Tully has not stopped the Blackwood/Bracken feud is a stain upon House Tully's honor. Lord Gorman should have been financing his projects by fining them heavily rather than borrowing from the iron bank - when the houses start having to sell off assets (i.e. lose holdings) to pay the fines they might reconsider.

2) Glory. Again, war scale events should be rare. Just fighting in a war was considered worthy of inclusion in the White Book, but Jaime laments how few of his tourney victories are in there. War glory should be on par or even higher than a tourney victory. The Glory rewards scale with the size of the conflict, and seem appropriate to me. The rewards are not all that large, really.

3) The only resource gains the defender can get per the rules are the wealth from a ransom and power increase from unit improvements. Neither are guaranteed (if you are getting a ransom from every battle the enemy is stupid - if you know you can't win you retreat). The only guaranteed gain for a successful defense is the glory, which will on average not even make up for the Law loss unless it is a VERY large battle.

FInal thought - I am coming to the conclusion that the Law loss should scale with the size of the battle. Armies of 1000s of troops should do more damage than a small battle like mine. Maybe not all Law, though. A defender in a large battle might lose defense (as buildings are damaged), lands (as fields and towns get crushed underfoot, forests cut down for campfires and other things), population (as smallfolk flee or get killed by pillaging), or even wealth (as assets get damaged in the fighting, pillaging by troops, etc.) Of course, those penalties should be subtracted from any gains a victorious attacker gets, too.

[Yoren longshore]

Well, I think the issue of differing opinions may be derived from this point: should war be beneficial for the victor? I work from the prospect that even the biggest military victory should not be a clean resource gain. Azincour (1415) is considered one of the biggest victories in history, but that campaign still ended in a big resource loss for the victor. War should measure its success on whether or not you came out ahead of your enemy, not on whether or not you benefited from it.

[Baelon Drakeson]

War should be profitable for the attacker if they win. Why else would they have gone to war? However, any profit comes at a cost, or at least a risk.

Defenders who win should at least have the possibility of resource gain - in the form of glory and unit improvements.

[Theomore Tullison]

It's situation dependent, really. Recall in the dance of dragons that one of the primary motivations for the northmen to come south was that there would then be less mouths to feed come winter? Tywin's Riverland campaign was basically about feeding his army by foraging. It's medieval warfare, where you can find records of battles with three people dead, compare to 18th century battles where 2000 died from the first volley of gunfire. Diseases, desertion and starvation was what brought down armies, not enemy swords.

Warfare was mostly draining on whoever's lands the armies marched through. Though profits may be debatable.

[Baelon Drakeson]

Two mechanics questions regarding house actions.
1. Does it take an action to equip a unit (i.e. spend a wealth for an equipment upgrade)?
2. Are we using the wealth holding limit from the core book (2 per domain) or from Out of Strife, Prosperity (varying limits based on holding type)?

Oh, and on a side note I just discovered that there is a panel discussion at Dragoncon today about RPG mechanics. The panelists are:
Jason Buhlman (lead designer of Pathfinder)
Monte Cook (lead designer of too many things to list)
Robert J. Schwalb (lead designer of this very game)

It's situation dependent, really. Recall in the dance of dragons that one of the primary motivations for the northmen to come south was that there would then be less mouths to feed come winter? Tywin's Riverland campaign was basically about feeding his army by foraging. It's medieval warfare, where you can find records of battles with three people dead, compare to 18th century battles where 2000 died from the first volley of gunfire. Diseases, desertion and starvation was what brought down armies, not enemy swords.

Warfare was mostly draining on whoever's lands the armies marched through. Though profits may be debatable.

Well, sometimes only the "
important"
deaths were recorded, so we have to take those records with a grain of salt. Plus we are dealing with an abstraction meant for driving narrative, not a period-accurate simulation.

The only reason for anyone to go to war is because they think they are going to get something out of it, hopefully without too much loss of troops. Obviously there should be risk, but not all wars should be started by people who can't do a basic risk/reward analysis.

[Loreia]

[url=Standard Attack][/url]: 4d6k4+2 13 2 DoS

[OOC: I don't think the two superior bonuses stack]

Let's discuss that here.

A superior weapon's +1 is constant. The superior shield I have is just a normal-sized shield that provides +2 Defense. It provides no Offhand damage when used offensively. In order to make it stack, I would have to choose a two-weapon attack or a combined attack. The entire point of those actions is to increase damage on hit. My shield can't do that, so there wouldn't be any point. Or maybe there would, but I maintain that a benefit gained from a weapon's grade should be constant. A sword isn't duller or lighter between attack actions.

[Baelon Drakeson]

When the shield was granted as an award, Reader said:

Loreia Merrgal <
snip>
a superior quality shield (+1 to attack rolls as normal for superior quality, but chief virtue is its harder to break)

I took the bit in parenthesis to mean: "
you probably won't use the +1 to attack much, but it has another more useful feature"
.

You would get the +1 superior bonus with the shield if you were to attack with the shield - you can't use it as part of a combined attack, but you can attack with just it (if, for instance, you were disarmed of your sword).

I'm curious what the mechanics of the "
harder to break"
are.

[Loreia]

I think that would have to do with things like the Shattering quality being less effective. Maybe every 1 Shattering counts as .5 to break the shield, for example.

I took the bit in parenthesis to mean: "
you probably won't use the +1 to attack much, but it has another more useful feature"
.

Fair enough, I can jive with that. It means the +1 is useless in most situations, but I'll take "
harder to break"
.

[Yoren longshore]

Quick question that probably has more to do with my lack of reading comprehension than with the rules: How does an impale weapon damage if it is thrusted into an opponent?

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