Re: Mechanical discussion

[Baelon Drakeson]

Finally found it! It's a ways back in this thread.

2) Charging: You are right, that the rules say one must charge in a straight line and we should play accordingly. However, I strongly suggest that a diagonal charge should be possible as well: a) It is a straight line, so not against the rules as written b) it increases the usefulness of infantry units, which helps with your topic 3
-->
In the end, we need a ruling from Reader on this as well

2) A diagonal line is a straight line.

By this logic I would argue that a 10, 20, or 30 degree angle line (and any other value) is a line just as much as a 45 degree angle (vs a 0 or 90 degree orthogonal which was the assumption prior to your post quoted above).

EDIT:

If the rule where any straight line no matter the actual movement along the grid, we run into all sort of problems an actual tabletop game can have:
Does the straight line have to go from the midpoint of the starting cell to the midpoint of the ending cell?
From a corner?
Which cells count as moved through? (This is necessary to check whether a movement is blocked by another unit or a readied melee attack triggers

I would say midpoint to midpoint is the simplest, though "
all corners to all corners"
is the least ambiguous. I favor simplicity.
If the line travels through a square, no matter how little, it counts as moving though that square.

In this case, there would be no question in my mind that the Red Sword's readied attack would trigger - there's no way to charge to either unit in a straight line and not end adjacent to the Red Swords.

[Reader]

Straight lines just mean no turns.

Stepping back from pure rules, the way this naturally plays out in my mind's eye is the red swords intercepting whichever cavalry unity charges first. Need anything more from me?

[Kevan Lyras]

Straight lines just mean no turns.

Ok, then this is decided, thanks.

Stepping back from pure rules, the way this naturally plays out in my mind's eye is the red swords intercepting whichever cavalry unity charges first. Need anything more from me?

I will use my last order in the first round to make them intercept the unit, which is not attacked by the arrows, should they attack at the sametime. That way one cavalry unit will face a volley of arrows while the other faces the red swords, before they come crashing in on the poor archers :-)

One last question:
It is actually beneficial for me to lose the second round initiative. Otherwise I just have to waste another order to "
pass"
. Can I take a 6 in my initiative roll for round 2 (routine success, similar to Theo in the Tourney) and hope the enemy commander rolls higher?

[Theomore Tullison]

This being a "
hot"
situation, routine success is probably calculated as all dices comes up as 1.

[Baelon Drakeson]

I will use my last order in the first round to make them intercept the unit, which is not attacked by the arrows, should they attack at the sametime. That way one cavalry unit will face a volley of arrows while the other faces the red swords, before they come crashing in on the poor archers :-)

Not going to focus-fire? Interesting.

One point of clarification: Readied orders trigger after the triggering action, so it the Red Swords would attack after the cavalry, correct?
The archers, of course, will still fire first - their trigger is the cavalry coming into range, which happens before the cavalry get into their own range.

One last question:
It is actually beneficial for me to lose the second round initiative. Otherwise I just have to waste another order to "
pass"
. Can I take a 6 in my initiative roll for round 2 (routine success, similar to Theo in the Tourney) and hope the enemy commander rolls higher?

By the same logic it is in the Dornish commander's best interest for you to go first again... so he too would want to "
take 6"
... or if Theo is right, you would 'take 4' and the Dornishman would 'take 3'.

[Reader]

In this scenario - best roll forces opponent to go first seems sane.

Readied action - not sure for warfare breaking ties/readied interaction. Maybe simultaneous. I/someone else can review books tonight.

[Baelon Drakeson]

In this scenario - best roll forces opponent to go first seems sane.

Readied action - not sure for warfare breaking ties/readied interaction. Maybe simultaneous. I/someone else can review books tonight.

If a slight modification is allowed to my ready trigger, I think it will be a moot point in this battle, so we can carry on, and pause if it would make a difference later.

The slight modification is instead of "
when Unit 1 initiates a charge or attack..."
it should be "
After Unit 1 performs a charge or attack."

It was my intention all along to have Unit 1 take the arrow hit.

[Kevan Lyras]

One point of clarification: Readied orders trigger after the triggering action, so it the Red Swords would attack after the cavalry, correct?

I would say it has to be before. The cavalry will be in range of the red swords before the unit will be next to the archers.

[Baelon Drakeson]

One point of clarification: Readied orders trigger after the triggering action, so it the Red Swords would attack after the cavalry, correct?

I would say it has to be before. The cavalry will be in range of the red swords before the unit will be next to the archers.

I'm more concerned with the order in which my cavalry will charge than that... like I said, I don't think the order of those attacks will have a significant effect on the battle.
Are you okay with the proposed modification to the ready action? On the assumption that the triggering action occurred first I worded the ready action in a way that, with the other interpretation, would produce the opposite of what I intended.

[Kevan Lyras]

I know;
-) You acted the way you did to get one unit through unharmed and I tried to prevent just that with the readied actions I took.

But for the sake of getting this going, I am not against you changing your readied definition.
A different approach judt occured to me, but I will have to check once I am back home.

If you post your revised ready-action, I will answer in the IC thead with my last order for round 1 once I am back on a PC.

The readied action probably needs some attention anyway, but that is nothing that prevents us from continuing IC.

In general, I think we need some understanding how complex the condition constructs for the ready actions can become.
Like, would it be ok for Theo in the other battle to conect all his infantries together via "
readied"
charge-actions and have all of them storming the castle at the same time? Could he even have one peasant unit charging and have all infantries charging after the peasants so that all readied archer counteractions hit the peasants and the rest comes through unharmed?
One step further: Could the defender have his archer set to: "
Shoot any unit coming into range unless there is a second unit that is more dangerous looking like they will charge just afterwards?"

Just examples obviously, but you see where I am going with this...

[Reader]

Like, would it be ok for Theo in the other battle to conect all his infantries together via "
readied"
charge-actions and have all of them storming the castle at the same time? Could he even have one peasant unit charging and have all infantries charging after the peasants so that all readied archer counteractions hit the peasants and the rest comes through unharmed?

I'm torn on this - it's a striking image, but these are feudal armies, so preference is to order units piecemeal forward as in standard rules.

One step further: Could the defender have his archer set to: "
Shoot any unit coming into range unless there is a second unit that is more dangerous looking like they will charge just afterwards?"

This actually feels a little more reasonable than the above.

[Baelon Drakeson]

Like, would it be ok for Theo in the other battle to conect all his infantries together via "
readied"
charge-actions and have all of them storming the castle at the same time? Could he even have one peasant unit charging and have all infantries charging after the peasants so that all readied archer counteractions hit the peasants and the rest comes through unharmed?

I'm torn on this - it's a striking image, but these are feudal armies, so preference is to order units piecemeal forward as in standard rules.

Honestly, having enough orders to get them all readied would be tricky... and if they are in bow/siege range they'll just be getting picked off while it happens. If they are outside bow/siege range, then it doesn't really matter if they advance one at a time or all at once so much.... and all it would take would be to take out the one triggering unit to waste all those set-up orders. I don't have a problem with this being feasible - it would not be a particular effective tactic, I think.

Also, I think it would be reasonable to say that once that first peasant unit was defeated the other archer readied actions would not trigger until the next unit moved into range.

One step further: Could the defender have his archer set to: "
Shoot any unit coming into range unless there is a second unit that is more dangerous looking like they will charge just afterwards?"

This actually feels a little more reasonable than the above.

It's.... vague. It's almost as flexible as deferring an order - you can decide on a case-be-case basis whether or not to trigger the ready. I think ready conditions should be simple and inflexible.
Also, there's only so much we be able to know about enemy orders - it's not like we would know all of the horn, drum, or flag signals that our opponents are using to convey orders to their units.
Orders that have clear and observable effects (i.e. moving and attacking) are one thing, but reacting to readies and the like... well, anything more than assuming the basic "
attack the first to come in to range"
is probably too much. I mean, that's what the Command TN is representing, the possibility of orders not being received? If our own units can fail to receive an order, it would make sense that the enemy would have an even harder time "
receiving"
those orders....

[Theomore Tullison]

Nothing stops me from assembling the entire force outside scorpion range, give ready orders to all of them while the Wyl's twiddle thumbs and then have them all act at once.

But that does not close a distance of 500y in one go. There's a few tricks I can pull which should serve to maybe be able to get a handful units within striking distance without disorganization penalties. Would be cool if I could ready an order to have them Sprint forward at some sort of signal and then leaving a standing order to keep going until the wall is reached, then scale the wall, then attack whatever is on top of it, but RAW doesn't allow that sort of thing afaik.

[Baelon Drakeson]

If you lead the way, the "
Fighting Withdrawal"
order has a standard order that they will move towards you... but that doesn't seem likely to occur.... and if it did, I don't think the Dornish would be targeting your forces with the siege...

Also, it wouldn't get them up the wall, or get them to attack, so you would end up with an army clustered at the bottom of the wall getting picked off one by one. Not such a good plan, really.

[Theomore Tullison]

Actually, I am not sure if the Wyl commander can ready the order he does.

Ready specifically says attack or movement, which under certain interpretations does not include charging. Yay for GR making so much stuff that needs clarification by the GM

[Reader]

Drafting rpg rules can be difficult, as indeed can drafting rules for anything! I think they put together a fun flexible system that can usually be solved with common sense and references to the game world. A rulebook can never account for all eventualities.

As a charge is both an attack and movement it seems reasonable to allow ready to respond to this.

Particularly if we think of this in terms of what is happening in Westeros - this is exactly the kind of thing you could ready troops for.

[Kevan Lyras]

If at all it can be argued that the Wyl commander is not acting coherently IC dur8ng his sally with all the orders he uses to get his troups ready, when he should try to destroy his opposition as fast as possible to get to the siege weapons before any reinforcements arrive. But from a rules PoV everything seems correct.

[Baelon Drakeson]

Keeping his troops alive is a necessary condition to destroying the siege, so I reject that doing so is contrary to his mission objective. It is instead crucial. Each order takes only a few seconds*, so it's not like he's using a lot of time on it.

* One full war round is one minute.

[Septon Arlyn]

[url:1qnya2lv]http:
//dragonsdance.
forumatic.
com/viewtopic.
php?f=79&
p=83283#p83283[/url:1qnya2lv]

So I'm the rulebook when using diagnose you get +1 d per every DOS, up to your bonus assigned into diagnose

So then miracle worker adds an additional + B dice that can be converted at a 2-1 ratio of bonus die to test die, on top of the regular benefit of diagnosis?

What the House role does is limit the number of test die you can gain from diagnosis then?

[Baelon Drakeson]

What's posted in the "
House Rules"
is just a summary chart combining the "
Diagnosis"
benefits (per pg. 63) and the Miracle Worker benefit. It's not actually a change from the printed rules at all.
If you notice on pg 63, the "
Diagnosis"
action gives +1D for each additional DoS - the first DoS just gives you the diagnosis (limited to your ranks in the Diagnose specialty).

Diagnosis without Miracle Worker gives:
Fail: no information
1 DoS: You know what caused the injury/illness/etc.
2 DoS: The info +1D to treatment
3 DoS: The info +2D to treatment
4 DoS: The info +3D to treatment

Miracle Worker adds to that +2B for a success AND +1B per DoS, plus the option to "
trade"
2B for +1D
1 DoS: +2B + 1B = +3B or +1D, +1B
2 DoS: +2B + 2B = +4B or +1D, + 2B
3 DoS: +2B + 3B = +5B or +1D, + 3B
4 DoS: +2B + 4B = +6B or +1D, + 4B

Add them together and you get the chart that Reader posted. Make sense?

[Reader]

What Baelon said!

No house rule here, just clarification.

[Septon Arlyn]

Ok sounds good. That is kinda what I thought you ment but on my phone the table came out all squirrely

[Reader]

Ok sounds good. That is kinda what I thought you ment but on my phone the table came out all squirrely

No worries, best to check!

Was on my phone for most of the day too so hard to be clear.

[Baelon Drakeson]

Can warfare marksmanship attacks be made at 0 distance?
The fact that archers and every other marksmanship unit has melee weapons as well would seem to indicate that they might sometimes need to use them.

[Kevan Lyras]

Hm, that did not even occur to me... but definitely a fair point. I will check the rules whether there is something in it about it.

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