zelbone said:

The improved defences say they replace the lesser versions, so they are no longer available. At least, the one I read said that; I don't keep the action cards near my computer. I'm getting weary of digging them out every time there is a question and wish they were listed in a book for ease of reference.

As for attacks being opposed or unopposed, I don't really care. I just want my players to have to roll more than one Challenge dice for an attack and I wanted the rules to support that.

Sorry, didn't make sense after I re-read this post.

As pointed out, the rules say the default difficulty for a melee/ranged attack is 1d (Easy). The GM may choose to adjudicate it as an opposed test if they desire, but by default it is *not* an opposed check, regardless of quoting a definition of "characteristic". I asked you to show where in the rules it says that Defense is a characteristic for the purposes of an opposed test. As pointed out, the rules specifically mention that the GM can choose to have an attack action be an opposed check ... which obviously would not be needed if it was in fact already an opposed check.

The fact is that Defense, per the rules, adds a Misfortune die and has no effect on difficulty. Feel free, as a GM, to make them opposed checks. However, as I mentioned, about the highest Defense a person is ever going to get is 5, wearing full plate and wielding a tower shield. I think the highest enemy Defense I've seen is 3. Typical Defense ratings are going to be from 0 to 2. That means that a St 4 attacker is >= twice the Defense, so using it as an opposed check gives a difficulty of Simple, and therefore 0d. This in no way accomplishes what you want, which is to increase the difficulty of melee/ranged attacks. The only people that have an increased difficulty by using an opposed check are low-strength/Agi attackers, like mages.

Yes, most attacks seem to hit. You know what, it makes combat pretty short and dangerous.

If you want more misses, then yes, make your default difficulty <PP> instead of <P>. The rules say the GM can make it an Unopposed check (ie, he can assign the difficulty) if that would better serve. However, just because you think attacks hit too much (which is a different discussion), does not mean it is (or should be) an Opposed Check ... because it clearly isn't in the rules, and it won't increase the difficulty.

Agility is NOT useless in a fight. Agility is the Strength equivalent for Ranged attacks. Both are used offensively. Agility should not factor into Defense or else you make Agility more important than other characteristics.

Edit: If you wanted to do an opposed check for combat, I would use Str vs Str for melee, and Agi vs Agi for ranged. That would seem to keep the balance reasonably well.

Hauer Glaeken said:

No, the improved Active Defences *replace* their counterparts in your deck.

"As pointed out, the rules specifically mention that the GM can choose to have an attack action be an opposed check ... which obviously would not be needed if it was in fact already an opposed check."

You're omitting that it actually says the GM can choose to have it be opposed or unopposed, which would mean that it's neither. But you win, I conceed, it's a standard check, score 1.

I agree with other statements, however, that if you make it opposed then you're counting Defence twice. Maybe the cards all have a typo and it was supposed to be "vs. Agility."

I'll never agree that "vs." does not mean opposed, though.

Looking forward to reading the FAQ and errata.

dvang said:

I feel like I should clarify that I use the Agility characteristic (or some other appropriate one) in an opposed combat check, not the Defence rating. That stays as black dice.

You're omitting that it actually says the GM can choose to have it be opposed or unopposed, which would mean that it's neither.

Hehe. Sure, I agree that i it actually *is* neither. Melee and Ranged attacks have a default difficulty of 1d (Easy). This can be changed to either an Opposed check (difficulty based on chart), or Unopposed check (GM chooses difficulty) at the GM's discretion.

I agree with other statements, however, that if you make it opposed then you're counting Defence twice. Maybe the cards all have a typo and it was supposed to be "vs. Agility."

Well... you would be counting it twice if you were using Defense as the opposed characteristic. (1) You are using Defense to give <P>, and (2) using Defense to give . Thus, you are using Defense twice.

I'll never agree that "vs." does not mean opposed, though.

Oh, I definitely agree that it implies some sort of opposition. However, the rules seem pretty clear that a melee/ranged attack is not an official Opposed Check unless the GM decides he specifically wants it to be. I think the intent was to remind people that Defense applies modifiers, but the "vs" has ended up causing confusion.

I feel like I should clarify that I use the Agility characteristic (or some other appropriate one) in an opposed combat check, not the Defence rating. That stays as black dice.

If I was going to make combat an Opposed Check, I would agree that using Defense isn't the best idea. I hadn't given it much thought previously, because the default <P> works for me. Combat is short and brutal, which seems to work well. It seems, though, that using a standard "vs Agility" for all attacks would place too much extra emphasis/bonus on Agility. Agi already increases ranged attack, ranged damage, and inititative. (BTW, I wasn't suggesting that you were saying this, monkeylite. I saw you added "or some other appropriate one". I'm just discussing in general here). Toughness doesn't fit well, since it already counts as Soak. Hence, the most balanced approach, from a quick glance, seems to me to be St vs St (melee) and Ag vs Ag (ranged).

I think the main problem with using agility in the way some have proposed (as the characteristic versus which an attack is rolled as an opposed check) clearly makes it the most valuable stat since, as dvang has pointed out, it already is the strength equivalent for attacking. If you went munchkin on that (which is what I think most people are trying to avoid by clarifying the rules) then ranged fighters are easily twice as good as melee combatants as they only have one stat that they need to 'max' rather than two.

If you wanted to make agility the stat for defence (or as dvang suggested as an alternative, agility for ranged defence and strength for melee) then I think it would need to replace one's defence score entirely. For example, gaining the benefit of full plate armour and a tower shield would seem to make gaining the benefit of a high agility at the same time unlikely in any realistic way. But once again you run into the problem of a stat being more valuable than another. To agree on another idea of dvangs, the best solution would seem to be to simply raise the default difficulty of all attacks to a level that you and your group deem to be sufficient.

As a note on that chaos warrior scenario described by Hauer; unless you had an agility score that was 6 or greater (somehow) you wouldn't be adding any more challenge dice to the pool than the standard one, and (assuming you are not giving the benefit of agility and the defence score) you would be losing all the misfortune dice from your armour (while retaining it's soak value) actually making it easier for him to hit you. In fact, against anyone with an agility score of 2 the chaos warrior would roll no challenge dice on his attack. Also, when attacking the chaos warrior in melee with a strength stat of 3 or less (assuming you are using strength as the opposing stat in melee) would mean that the attacker would be rolling 4 challenge dice, and 3 challenge dice unless he had a strength score of 6 as well, in which case that person would only roll 2 challenge dice.

Besides all of those problems the opposed check just makes combat drag as stats are looked up and compared to one another and I just don't see the benefit of less hitting and more page flipping.

dvang said:

Good idea. I'll give that a go.

dvang said:

Sorry but I disagree. According to me, Agility should be used in defence.

You also could use Str vs Str in order to parry and Agi vs Str to dodge.

Same thing for me, I use black dice to represent Defence value !

Edit : I don't remember where, but I have read that it's almost impossbile to dodge when you are wearing a full plate armor...

Parzival said:

1 Purple die is nastier than 2 Black dice, unless you really want to give someone a Sword and a Skull. And you need Coordination etc. trained in order to pick up the Advanced actions anyway, so giving a bonus for having them trained would be redundant.

Not that I want to rain on people's discussion here. But this probably warrants its own thread in the House Rules section of the boards, rather than in the Rules Questions.

Personally I plan on leaving combat as is. I like short and dirty combats in my RPGs. I've played too many games where combats last for hours either because people cannot land a blow, characters have so many hit points/damage reduction that it takes a rediculous amount of damage to end the combat, or both.