Rule interpretation
Neon White:
Hi all, first post here after more than a year of lurking. I am new to Sorcerer and have introduced it to my gaming group for a trial run. I am the GM and have made quite an effort to understand the system both as written in the main rule book plus supplements, and also with the help of the wiki and numerous threads here at the Forge.
I still have a lot of questions though - all arising from a first combat session we are playing through at the moment. The game is online (play by post) which allows a lot of time for reflection on how exactly to apply a given rule.
Any guidance anyone can offer in relation to the questions below would be much appreciated!
1) When a demon confers its special damage to a sorceror, does the sorceror attack with stamina or the demon's power (if the latter, would it not negate usefulness of 'fast' insofar as 'fast' adds the demon's power as initiative dice but not 'action' dice.)
2) When an object demon has not conferred its special damage, how does it attack if it doesn't also have range? What happens when it is a weapon wielded by its master. What happens in the case of (e.g.) special damage: poison, which may coat the blade of an object demon (knife) when activated. Does the wielder have to hit on the same round as the power is activated? Does it carry over into the next round or several? Is the damage done based on the wielder's stamina or the special damage, or both (successes on one rolled into the next roll?) How can they do so if the rolls are simultaneous at the start of the round?
3) Do successes in defense from a previous round always give bonuses to an action in the following round? Does this affect initiative too? (I suspect it is only when the new action is directly relevant to the success-generating action from last round.)
4) If a character sucks up an attack and takes damage as a result, do the damage dice apply to his attack later in the round? How does the penalty work given that his attack dice are already on the table?
5) Does temporary damage affect next round's initiative if it was inflicted before the character acted in the prior round. i.e. the character sucks up an attack, takes damage, then acts (with temporary damage reducing his dice pool). Presumably there is not penalty to initiative and action next round except from lasting damage?
6) If a character has taken damage in a previous round, his next action may be at enough penalty dice to give him zero or negative dice pool for his next action. I understand that zero is the minimum, and so in a contested action one would normally add one die to both the wounded character's dice pool, plus also that of the person acting against them (please confirm this understanding). How exactly does this work in a combat situation where multiple characters are attacking that same wounded character - do they all get +1 die to their attack?
7) If a demon's action to boost its master's stamina occurs late in a round, does the boost carry over into the following round or is it lost? Does it add to the initiative of the master for that following round?
8) Do roleplaying bonuses, prior successes and other currency-related bonuses add to the single die available for passive defense? If so, then for a low stamina character, the bonuses could easily make him always prefer to always suck-up an attack rather than abort to carry out an active defense.
9) If a character is carrying temporary damage from the previous round, presumably their action (and therefore initiative) dice are impaired for the current round. What happens if they abort their attack to defend? Does the temporary damage also apply to the defence (even though it has already adversely affected their initiative)?
10) Following on from (9) what happens if that character is attacked by a second character later in the same round (presumably the temporary damage dice are lifted)? Does this also apply if their first defence is passive (sucking up the attack) and the second defence is active? i.e. the character has so many negative they might as well defend passively. Is it the case that, later in the round, because of the prior passive defence, the temporary damage has been lifted so they then defend actively with only lasting damage penalties.
11) Do Demons and other NPCs get the same advantages from carrying over successes (default, I suppose so since penalties do seem to apply too). What about ‘roleplaying’ bonuses?
Sincere apologies for the barrage of questions. As you can see, I am a bit tied up in the possible ways to resolve the various questions outlined above. My players are similarly unclear.
Any help will be gratefully accepted!
The Dragon Master:
Don't have my books on my right now. I'll be in their vicinity this evening and will post my interperetations then.
Ron Edwards:
I love questions like these! I am only stealing a moment of time to tell you that I will follow up as soon as I can.
Everyone, let me do it first this time, OK? Only because I really want to.
Best, Ron
The Dragon Master:
Will do.
Ron Edwards:
Hi there,
Answering these questions was a lot of fun.
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1) When a demon confers its special damage to a sorceror, does the sorceror attack with stamina or the demon's power (if the latter, would it not negate usefulness of 'fast' insofar as 'fast' adds the demon's power as initiative dice but not 'action' dice.)
Any attack using Special Damage uses the demon's Power as the score for the roll.
You're absolutely right about Fast. That ability is quite useful if one (including the demon) is using a score which is less than the demon's Power, but completely negated if whatever score being used is equal or higher than that Power. That is on purpose.
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2) When an object demon has not conferred its special damage, how does it attack if it doesn't also have range?
This depends to a very great extent upon what sort of object we are talking about and what exactly is supposed to be happening which is described as Special Damage. You'll have to give me a more specific in-game situation. Some object concepts will be much more limited than others in this regard.
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What happens when it is a weapon wielded by its master.
The weapon is attacking, not the person holding it. The person holding it may feel as if they are wielding the weapon, or perhaps he or she may not, depending on how you want to describe the specific features of the demon. But it's the demon's attack, not the person's. Also, you would have to tell me which of two situations you would prefer: (i) the weapon can attack without a wielder, the classic "dancing sword;" or (ii) it cannot, and the pseudo-wielder has to be there to provide the necessary circumstances in which the weapon can make its own attacks. Both are equally valid by the rules, or rather, the rules are built to accomodate both of these concepts, as well as others.
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What happens in the case of (e.g.) special damage: poison, which may coat the blade of an object demon (knife) when activated. Does the wielder have to hit on the same round as the power is activated?
It's treated exactly like any other Special Damage: one roll, the demon's Power, is the attack. Never mind any nonsense about someone else having to hit first. The user of the ability, demon or person holding the knife, rolls the Power as his, her, or its attacking score.
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Does it carry over into the next round or several?
I'm not entirely sure what this means. Are you thinking in terms of poison steadily affecting a target over time? That's easily handled by the weapon simply continuing to make rolls, and as long as it's successful, it can make another roll on the next round. By the rules, they're separate attack rolls, but they're fictionally causally linked together by the continuity of successful rolls.
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Is the damage done based on the wielder's stamina or the special damage, or both (successes on one rolled into the next roll?) How can they do so if the rolls are simultaneous at the start of the round?
Special Damage, if you're talking about the poison. If you want the wielder to do damage as well, then that'd be a separate roll on the wielder's part and have nothing to do with the Special Damage particularly.
I'm assuming here that the demon is the user of the Special Damage. If so, then this is interesting, so let's summarize: you have a demon knife using Special Damage as its own attack, and you have the guy holding the knife making a "plain knife" attack with it, as two actions on the same round. To an observer, it looks as though the guy is supernaturally fast! But it's really because the physicality of the knife is being acted upon/through by two beings.
I hope you can see that the founding assumption of your later questions in this section - which is to say, that the poison is somehow dependent upon the wielder successfully hitting - is incorrect, making most of your concerns unnecessary.
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3) Do successes in defense from a previous round always give bonuses to an action in the following round? Does this affect initiative too? (I suspect it is only when the new action is directly relevant to the success-generating action from last round.)
Let me clarify one thing - bonuses from successful rolls affect the character's next roll, regardless of whether that roll is later in the current round or in the following round.
I also need to clarify something which I think you know, that the "initiative" roll in Sorcerer is precisely the same as the attack roll.
Given all that, to answer your question, we have to assume that we're talking about the last roll someone makes in a given round, which just happens to be a defense roll. It succeeds. And yes, you are right, in the fiction at this moment, whatever the character did which constituted that defensive action is very well suited, perhaps even crucial, to the action he is taking in the next round. If all of that is the case, then yes, the bonuses carry over into that attack roll (presuming it's an attack, which is simplest for the moment).
And to clarify yet again, if you make a defense roll, and it's not your last roll in the round, then no, nothing about that defense roll carries over into the next round's roll or rolls.
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4) If a character sucks up an attack and takes damage as a result, do the damage dice apply to his attack later in the round? How does the penalty work given that his attack dice are already on the table?
Yes, that's how the damage applies. The answer to the second question is that you take that exact value of the total penalty and have the defender apply them as bonus dice to the defense roll. (This all presumes that the total penalties inflicted were not so severe as to stop the character in his tracks, which can also happen.)
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5) Does temporary damage affect next round's initiative if it was inflicted before the character acted in the prior round. i.e. the character sucks up an attack, takes damage, then acts (with temporary damage reducing his dice pool). Presumably there is not penalty to initiative and action next round except from lasting damage?
This "initiative" talk is hurting my head a little bit ... it's not an initiative roll. Those are the action rolls, what the characters are doing. I know you probably know that.
But that aside, this is a great question, and you are absolutely right: the temporary penalties only operate toward the next roll, and in this case, the character is only penalized by the lasting damage in the next round. In this sense, bonus dice and temporary penalty dice are exactly alike.
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6) If a character has taken damage in a previous round, his next action may be at enough penalty dice to give him zero or negative dice pool for his next action. I understand that zero is the minimum, and so in a contested action one would normally add one die to both the wounded character's dice pool, plus also that of the person acting against them (please confirm this understanding). How exactly does this work in a combat situation where multiple characters are attacking that same wounded character - do they all get +1 die to their attack?
I'll start with your second sentence: your understanding of that issue is exactly right. To answer your last question, we have to presume that although the character has penalized to zero, they did not take enough damage at once to knock them out of acting at all. All right, given all that, then yes, all the attackers would get the +1 bonus. Sucks, huh?
People who wonder how several player-characters could possibly defeat a single, powerful opponent should be taking notes.
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7) If a demon's action to boost its master's stamina occurs late in a round, does the boost carry over into the following round or is it lost? Does it add to the initiative of the master for that following round?
By "late in a round," I presume you mean after the master has already performed his or her action at normal Stamina. The Boost will affect the master's next action, whether it is, for instance, a defense still later in this round, or the action which begins the following round.
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8) Do roleplaying bonuses, prior successes and other currency-related bonuses add to the single die available for passive defense? If so, then for a low stamina character, the bonuses could easily make him always prefer to always suck-up an attack rather than abort to carry out an active defense.
Yes they do apply! However, your "easily" does not correspond to my usage of the bonus dice rules. Insincere and uninteresting attempts to gain bonus dice should not be honored. (see Role-playing bonus dice, Bonus dice questions, and [Sorcerer] The cold and bloody northland for help with this). And if the stated actions are consistently sincere and interesting across many scenes and actions and sessions, then you should not only be awarding bonus dice to this player (and yes, helping his character survive, or at least permitting better odds), you should also be buying him or her beer and possibly offering sexual favors.
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9) If a character is carrying temporary damage from the previous round, presumably their action (and therefore initiative) dice are impaired for the current round. What happens if they abort their attack to defend? Does the temporary damage also apply to the defence (even though it has already adversely affected their initiative)?
No. The next roll rule applies in full. Once the temporary damage has done its, well, damage, to the initial roll, then that particular penalty is gone forever.
And I am relieved to see you correctly state the action/initiative issue. This question did not hurt my head, and I thank you.
I hope you can see that the concept of the "round" is actually not as important as the concept of "next roll" for temporary bonuses and penalties of all kinds. Hey, I found this thread: How long do rollover bonuses last?.
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10) Following on from (9) what happens if that character is attacked by a second character later in the same round (presumably the temporary damage dice are lifted)? Does this also apply if their first defence is passive (sucking up the attack) and the second defence is active? i.e. the character has so many negative they might as well defend passively. Is it the case that, later in the round, because of the prior passive defence, the temporary damage has been lifted so they then defend actively with only lasting damage penalties.
That's correct. You can probably see that this is a viable (if most-often doomed anyway) strategy - "if I'm only getting one die, I might as well get zero and roll one anyway."
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11) Do Demons and other NPCs get the same advantages from carrying over successes (default, I suppose so since penalties do seem to apply too). What about ‘roleplaying’ bonuses?
Demons and other NPCs get all carryover successes, but if you're the GM, then you should be especially critical of yourself and remember that such carryovers wholly depend on the dramatic and visual logic of the dependency of roll B upon roll A's success. Don't grant them to yourself unless the other players appear to be engaged by the logical connection between the two actions. This will probably be a little harder on-line ...
I hope all of this helped! Let me know.
Best, Ron
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