Second, critical hits are fractional rolls are triggered off advantage, not triumph.

No, a triumph can trigger a crit. The purple die is weighted more to threat than the yellow is to advantage, and if you roll a triumph there is one of your yellow that is not contributing to advantage. Triumph will usually be used to trigger the crit, if you do have enough advantage to trigger then it can upgrade the crit by +10. Both will have far greater effect than a knockdown.

The fact that you get triumph only 1 in 12 on a yellow ALONE makes the talent not worth taking. That it will often be the choice between knocking down or the superior choice of doing a crit makes it a very bad choice of talent. As I said, knocking someone out is superior to knocking them down, making them unable to take an extra maneuver for the rest of combat is superior to giving them the choice of spending a maneuver to stand up once.

No, a triumph can trigger a crit. The purple die is weighted more to threat than the yellow is to advantage, and if you roll a triumph there is one of your yellow that is not contributing to advantage. Triumph will usually be used to trigger the crit, if you do have enough advantage to trigger then it can upgrade the crit by +10. Both will have far greater effect than a knockdown.

The fact that you get triumph only 1 in 12 on a yellow ALONE makes the talent not worth taking. That it will often be the choice between knocking down or the superior choice of doing a crit makes it a very bad choice of talent. As I said, knocking someone out is superior to knocking them down, making them unable to take an extra maneuver for the rest of combat is superior to giving them the choice of spending a maneuver to stand up once.

I'm entirely confused on how you are either purposely ignoring my points or you just don't have anything to say.

Let me put it simply:

Triumph is not the only way you crit.

Got it? Need a refresher? Or would you like to me explain the statistics?

Let's be honest. Most of your melee brawlers are going to be 4 brawn at least. The really good ones who hone their craft to another level will at least. So even your starting character with 4 brawn, +1 melee damage, +10 to crit, and the knockdown talent, a vibro ax and (taking extra obligation for creds) a mono-molecular edge attachment. 2 Ranks in Melee give him a YYGG die pool at the very start. That's a pretty good pool, especially when you consider you are usually only going up against 2 purple dice.

Now our "starting" melee character does 8 + number of successes damage on a swing, per swing, with pierce 2. He crits on each and every advantage that turns up. That is far better then waiting on a Triumph.

That 1 in 12 Triumph you are incorrectly bemoaning? Our starting melee character has roughly a 15% chance to toss a triumph every throw. When he gets his third rank in melee, that 15% rises to 23%. And when he gets the 4th rank, that 23% rises to almost 30% chance to toss a Triumph. 30% is almost one Triumph every three to four rolls on average. That's not anything to just shrug off.

But let's go back to our starting character. Remembering that he crits on every advantage, with a +40 modifier right out of the gate. Now let's look at your theory of "its better to crit then knockdown because it controls the fight better". Let's analyze the numbers on that, shall we?

Let's say our starting character with YYGG tosses 3 successes, 3 advantages, 1 Triumph, 2 threat and one failure. A pretty good roll. He ends up with 3 successes (counting the triumph), one advantage, and one triumph. This means he pummels the bad guy for 11 damage with pierce 2, and crits once with the advantage.

Let's see here, his options are:

Crit once, 11 damage pierce 2, +40 to the roll, knockdown

or

Crit twice, 11 damage pierce 2, +50 to the roll, no knockdown.

Looking over the chart, there is lots of mayhem and dismemberment, but not really a lot of death until you get to 140+. And anything less then 150 isn't instant death. In your theory, you are better off critting twice right? That +10 will do more to control him then anything. We're going off the assumption that the 11 damage pierce 2 isn't going to kill him outright. Most of the time, that is going to be the case.

Except that even with +50 you still need to roll a 100 to instantly kill him. You have a 1% chance of instant death. Good call. The one that kills him next turn? Well you need an 91 or better. 9%. Slightly better, but not very likely.

Meanwhile, option number one does more to control the fight. You've crit him, got +40 meaning you've probably caused some awesome wound or injury (as anything over 40 is pretty good) and you've put him on the ground. Meaning unless he takes a maneuver to stand, he's going to be giving the big, bury crit making machine of a melee character another blue die to crit him in the face with. And if he does act first, he has to not only deal with whatever ravenous critical injury our melee character has just dealt him, but now he really has no option to get away.

That is what we call "fight control". In order to just have a 50/50 chance of instant death you need that + crit modifier to be +100. That's a few ranks of the talent, and several critical hits. That is not fight control. It can be once our starting character gets some more xp under his belt. But at the beginning? It's better to control the fight through knockdown.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless. Situational, sure. But you cant exclude those situations in your value assessment. It's like saying, "my GM would never give me Setback on my check to unlock a door, so the Bypass Security talent is worthless." Great, maybe you won't get any use out of it, but don't make sweeping generalizations about a talent being completely useless based solely on your own circumstances.

Wow, that got unneccesarily vitriolic fast.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that one of the benefits of knocking an opponent prone is that they spend their maneuver standing up and not disengaging . Against a fellow melee opponent it's not a big deal, but it's a problem for ranged opponents. It forces them to attack you with a penalty in addition to giving you a bonus to your next attack.

No, a triumph can trigger a crit. The purple die is weighted more to threat than the yellow is to advantage, and if you roll a triumph there is one of your yellow that is not contributing to advantage. Triumph will usually be used to trigger the crit, if you do have enough advantage to trigger then it can upgrade the crit by +10. Both will have far greater effect than a knockdown.

The fact that you get triumph only 1 in 12 on a yellow ALONE makes the talent not worth taking. That it will often be the choice between knocking down or the superior choice of doing a crit makes it a very bad choice of talent. As I said, knocking someone out is superior to knocking them down, making them unable to take an extra maneuver for the rest of combat is superior to giving them the choice of spending a maneuver to stand up once.

I'm entirely confused on how you are either purposely ignoring my points or you just don't have anything to say.

Let me put it simply:

Triumph is not the only way you crit.

Got it? Need a refresher? Or would you like to me explain the statistics?

Let's be honest. Most of your melee brawlers are going to be 4 brawn at least. The really good ones who hone their craft to another level will at least. So even your starting character with 4 brawn, +1 melee damage, +10 to crit, and the knockdown talent, a vibro ax and (taking extra obligation for creds) a mono-molecular edge attachment. 2 Ranks in Melee give him a YYGG die pool at the very start. That's a pretty good pool, especially when you consider you are usually only going up against 2 purple dice.

Now our "starting" melee character does 8 + number of successes damage on a swing, per swing, with pierce 2. He crits on each and every advantage that turns up. That is far better then waiting on a Triumph.

That 1 in 12 Triumph you are incorrectly bemoaning? Our starting melee character has roughly a 15% chance to toss a triumph every throw. When he gets his third rank in melee, that 15% rises to 23%. And when he gets the 4th rank, that 23% rises to almost 30% chance to toss a Triumph. 30% is almost one Triumph every three to four rolls on average. That's not anything to just shrug off.

But let's go back to our starting character. Remembering that he crits on every advantage, with a +40 modifier right out of the gate. Now let's look at your theory of "its better to crit then knockdown because it controls the fight better". Let's analyze the numbers on that, shall we?

Let's say our starting character with YYGG tosses 3 successes, 3 advantages, 1 Triumph, 2 threat and one failure. A pretty good roll. He ends up with 3 successes (counting the triumph), one advantage, and one triumph. This means he pummels the bad guy for 11 damage with pierce 2, and crits once with the advantage.

Let's see here, his options are:

Crit once, 11 damage pierce 2, +40 to the roll, knockdown

or

Crit twice, 11 damage pierce 2, +50 to the roll, no knockdown.

Looking over the chart, there is lots of mayhem and dismemberment, but not really a lot of death until you get to 140+. And anything less then 150 isn't instant death. In your theory, you are better off critting twice right? That +10 will do more to control him then anything. We're going off the assumption that the 11 damage pierce 2 isn't going to kill him outright. Most of the time, that is going to be the case.

Except that even with +50 you still need to roll a 100 to instantly kill him. You have a 1% chance of instant death. Good call. The one that kills him next turn? Well you need an 91 or better. 9%. Slightly better, but not very likely.

Meanwhile, option number one does more to control the fight. You've crit him, got +40 meaning you've probably caused some awesome wound or injury (as anything over 40 is pretty good) and you've put him on the ground. Meaning unless he takes a maneuver to stand, he's going to be giving the big, bury crit making machine of a melee character another blue die to crit him in the face with. And if he does act first, he has to not only deal with whatever ravenous critical injury our melee character has just dealt him, but now he really has no option to get away.

That is what we call "fight control". In order to just have a 50/50 chance of instant death you need that + crit modifier to be +100. That's a few ranks of the talent, and several critical hits. That is not fight control. It can be once our starting character gets some more xp under his belt. But at the beginning? It's better to control the fight through knockdown.

Quick english refresher for you here. "Triumph can be used to crit" does not mean "triumph is the only way to crit."

The reason I ignored your points is because they're garbage.

Lets start with the math. If your combat is 4 rounds and you're rolling 2 yellow this means it comes up about 1 combat in 4. Pretty useless. Not only does something like lethal blows come up every hit, but it doesn't cost a triumph. 10 points on knockdown is a very bad investment compared to lethal blows or your second rank of melee, or anything else that costs 10.

More math. I said this last post, but YOU ignored it so here we go again. I'll make it simple for you. If you roll a triumph that leaves 1 yellow and 2 green vs. 2 purple. That is 1.5 threat average vs. 1.9 advantage average, assumeing you're fighting chumps that aren't giving you setbacks. So guess what, most of the time using that triumph means no crit even with your rare 5 mono sword which most GMs are not going to let you have, forget about a normal sword or axe.

Now lets compare qualitatively. Your argument is silly on it's face. You're trying to claim only death on the crit chart matters and ignore the fact that even mid rolls have an effect FAR MORE SEVERE than being knocked down that last until end of combat. And then you give an example that requires such a ridiculously good roll it might come up once in a character's career... And even when it does come up, you've hit the guy so hard he's probably lost a leg and fallen over anyway, or is simply flat out dead so, guess what, knockdown is again useless. You couldn't even give a decent example where it is useful. Next.

Lets compare cost. I already touched on character cost earlier that 10 points is better spent on... pretty much anything given how rarely this will come up, and how rarely it will be useful, but lets look at what ELSE you could have done with a triumph assuming you don't want to crit or crit harder. Would you rather... turn the tide of the battle or knockdown? Would you rather strip the enemy of defense for a round or knockdown? Would you rather upgrade your defenses against every enemy for a turn or knockdown? Well toss crit in the mix and knockdown is 0 for 4.

So there you go, all your points addressed and beaten to the ground. Knockdown comes up too infrequently, it costs character bulding points to do somthing with a triumph that you can already do things with anyway, and the ability it gives isn't as good as the things you can already do with a triumph.

Wow, that got unneccesarily vitriolic fast.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that one of the benefits of knocking an opponent prone is that they spend their maneuver standing up and not disengaging . Against a fellow melee opponent it's not a big deal, but it's a problem for ranged opponents. It forces them to attack you with a penalty in addition to giving you a bonus to your next attack.

Is there a rule that requires you to be standing to move, or can you disengage while prone? While I wouldn't let someone change range bands while prone, I don't see anything stopping them from disengaging.

If the party isn't all melee, being engaged also means the party can't really shoot at the downed target or risk hitting their ally, and the prone enemy is also giving a setback for being prone. So it isn't all roses here.

The penalty for shooting with a light weapon while engaged only means they are up to 2 purple, so no harder than melee is anyway, so not much of a penalty really, so only against a heavy weapon taking it to 3 purple is it really a benefit... but then they'll just spend the 2 strain for the extra maneuver meaning all your triumph really ended up doing is 2 strain, which is a waste of a triumph and a waste of a talent.

Wow, that got unneccesarily vitriolic fast.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that one of the benefits of knocking an opponent prone is that they spend their maneuver standing up and not disengaging . Against a fellow melee opponent it's not a big deal, but it's a problem for ranged opponents. It forces them to attack you with a penalty in addition to giving you a bonus to your next attack.

Is there a rule that requires you to be standing to move, or can you disengage while prone? While I wouldn't let someone change range bands while prone, I don't see anything stopping them from disengaging.

If the party isn't all melee, being engaged also means the party can't really shoot at the downed target or risk hitting their ally, and the prone enemy is also giving a setback for being prone. So it isn't all roses here.

The penalty for shooting with a light weapon while engaged only means they are up to 2 purple, so no harder than melee is anyway, so not much of a penalty really, so only against a heavy weapon taking it to 3 purple is it really a benefit... but then they'll just spend the 2 strain for the extra maneuver meaning all your triumph really ended up doing is 2 strain, which is a waste of a triumph and a waste of a talent.

No explicit rule, but this system isn't like SAGA (d20) in that it runs on explicit rules. Jay's games have a baseline assumption of common sense first and rules second. This is one of those cases.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

Wow, that got unneccesarily vitriolic fast.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that one of the benefits of knocking an opponent prone is that they spend their maneuver standing up and not disengaging . Against a fellow melee opponent it's not a big deal, but it's a problem for ranged opponents. It forces them to attack you with a penalty in addition to giving you a bonus to your next attack.

Is there a rule that requires you to be standing to move, or can you disengage while prone? While I wouldn't let someone change range bands while prone, I don't see anything stopping them from disengaging.

If the party isn't all melee, being engaged also means the party can't really shoot at the downed target or risk hitting their ally, and the prone enemy is also giving a setback for being prone. So it isn't all roses here.

The penalty for shooting with a light weapon while engaged only means they are up to 2 purple, so no harder than melee is anyway, so not much of a penalty really, so only against a heavy weapon taking it to 3 purple is it really a benefit... but then they'll just spend the 2 strain for the extra maneuver meaning all your triumph really ended up doing is 2 strain, which is a waste of a triumph and a waste of a talent.

No explicit rule, but this system isn't like SAGA (d20) in that it runs on explicit rules. Jay's games have a baseline assumption of common sense first and rules second. This is one of those cases.

Common sense shouldn't bar disengaging while prone, especially since you can take a few swings or shots of your own to open space while doing it.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

This is understandable, but knockdown, in my opinion, is more powerful than what is listed on the Triumph rolls.. It's realistically a product of a 41-45 fractional roll on a critical hit, minus guaranteed strain... And it can be used in addition to the effect of a critical hit. In addition, additional Triumphs can be used to knockdown larger silouettes, which is a pretty big bonus (two triumphs is required to disable equipment for instance), so using three triumphs can be used to knock down a rancor...

In any case, like we've been saying its situational. If your GM is playing RAW and sees that on the table listed on 206 doesn't have anything that's close to knockdown for the cost, and looks on 217 and sees that the closest thing to knockdown is a 41-45 fractional roll on crit, they may not allow the group to fully utilize an effect given by a talent. That's up to the GM in the group, were just trying to show ideas and situations that the talent would be useful... But it's up to the GM whether or not they want to throw situations that might require the use of certain talents... Like awayputurweapon mentioned, if your GM isn't requiring setback dies on Computer checks, there's no reason to get code breaker either. If your characters are flying around in a maneuverable vessel, skilled jockey is useless... Etc...

As a final note, all talents aren't applicable to every game, it's it to the GM and the party to decide how they want their adventure to play out; if the group wants simplistic combat or a story that sides on narrative, rather than RAW or heavy use of skill checks, this game allows you to do that. On the flip side, if the game wants tactical combat, a challenge for adventures with moderate chances of not succeeding they can get that too out of this game. No talent is useless unless the GM and group simply don't use it, or decide not to get in to situation that certain talents provide use.

Wow, that got unneccesarily vitriolic fast.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that one of the benefits of knocking an opponent prone is that they spend their maneuver standing up and not disengaging . Against a fellow melee opponent it's not a big deal, but it's a problem for ranged opponents. It forces them to attack you with a penalty in addition to giving you a bonus to your next attack.

Is there a rule that requires you to be standing to move, or can you disengage while prone? While I wouldn't let someone change range bands while prone, I don't see anything stopping them from disengaging.

If the party isn't all melee, being engaged also means the party can't really shoot at the downed target or risk hitting their ally, and the prone enemy is also giving a setback for being prone. So it isn't all roses here.

The penalty for shooting with a light weapon while engaged only means they are up to 2 purple, so no harder than melee is anyway, so not much of a penalty really, so only against a heavy weapon taking it to 3 purple is it really a benefit... but then they'll just spend the 2 strain for the extra maneuver meaning all your triumph really ended up doing is 2 strain, which is a waste of a triumph and a waste of a talent.

No explicit rule, but this system isn't like SAGA (d20) in that it runs on explicit rules. Jay's games have a baseline assumption of common sense first and rules second. This is one of those cases.

Common sense shouldn't bar disengaging while prone, especially since you can take a few swings or shots of your own to open space while doing it.

Yeah, disengage is just a couple feet, it's pretty common sense to allow it. Many game systems do.

Given a round being maybe a minute long even changing range bands while prone is reasonable given that short is only something like 10 to 30 feet. Although I probably wouldn't allow it generally.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

That's why I said "shouldn't" if your group can already do it with 3 Advantage (and not just Threat) then you're not playing by RAI (case in point this talent), and therefore some things might be broken that you now need to fix. It's not gonna be a huge problem, but please oh please understand that some people do play it differently and therefore not "everyone" can do what you say they can do. It is not a global problem, but rather a problem that certain GMs & players might run into if they are ignoring certain fine points of the core rulebook.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

That's why I said "shouldn't" if your group can already do it with 3 Advantage (and not just Threat) then you're not playing by RAI (case in point this talent), and therefore some things might be broken that you now need to fix. It's not gonna be a huge problem, but please oh please understand that some people do play it differently and therefore not "everyone" can do what you say they can do. It is not a global problem, but rather a problem that certain GMs & players might run into if they are ignoring certain fine points of the core rulebook.

It really seems that since "turning the tide of battle" or the average crit roll from a triumph are both much more powerful, that RAI you should be able to do something as trivial as knock someone down. Which is one of the main points of why this talent is bad. It really should probably read "When you score a triumph you may knock the target prone as an incidental. This does not cost you the triumph."

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

That's why I said "shouldn't" if your group can already do it with 3 Advantage (and not just Threat) then you're not playing by RAI (case in point this talent), and therefore some things might be broken that you now need to fix. It's not gonna be a huge problem, but please oh please understand that some people do play it differently and therefore not "everyone" can do what you say they can do. It is not a global problem, but rather a problem that certain GMs & players might run into if they are ignoring certain fine points of the core rulebook.

It really seems that since "turning the tide of battle" or the average crit roll from a triumph are both much more powerful, that RAI you should be able to do something as trivial as knock someone down. Which is one of the main points of why this talent is bad. It really should probably read "When you score a triumph you may knock the target prone as an incidental. This does not cost you the triumph."

That's a good alternative.

Yeah, I like that as an alternative.

I might actually be going with that for my group.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

That's why I said "shouldn't" if your group can already do it with 3 Advantage (and not just Threat) then you're not playing by RAI (case in point this talent), and therefore some things might be broken that you now need to fix. It's not gonna be a huge problem, but please oh please understand that some people do play it differently and therefore not "everyone" can do what you say they can do. It is not a global problem, but rather a problem that certain GMs & players might run into if they are ignoring certain fine points of the core rulebook.

It really seems that since "turning the tide of battle" or the average crit roll from a triumph are both much more powerful, that RAI you should be able to do something as trivial as knock someone down. Which is one of the main points of why this talent is bad. It really should probably read "When you score a triumph you may knock the target prone as an incidental. This does not cost you the triumph."

I think that this sounds like a good alternative to the RAW as well.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

The chart for spending advantages and triumph lists the ability as "When dealing damage to a target, have the attack disable the opponent or one piece of gear rather than dealing damage." So unless I'm missing something the knockdown talent allows the attacker to deal damage and knock the target prone rather than forgoing damage to do the same. Everyone can already knock people prone however I'm sure any melee bruiser would love to be able to damage on top of it as well.

Could you by chance knockdown a melee person and then move to short range so they'd have to spend a maneuver to stand up and then spend 2 strain to take a double move to catch up to you.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

The chart for spending advantages and triumph lists the ability as "When dealing damage to a target, have the attack disable the opponent or one piece of gear rather than dealing damage." So unless I'm missing something the knockdown talent allows the attacker to deal damage and knock the target prone rather than forgoing damage to do the same. Everyone can already knock people prone however I'm sure any melee bruiser would love to be able to damage on top of it as well.

That seems odd to me, gaining advantages should not negate the successes... Will take a look at the book tonight, got a page number for that table?

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

The chart for spending advantages and triumph lists the ability as "When dealing damage to a target, have the attack disable the opponent or one piece of gear rather than dealing damage." So unless I'm missing something the knockdown talent allows the attacker to deal damage and knock the target prone rather than forgoing damage to do the same. Everyone can already knock people prone however I'm sure any melee bruiser would love to be able to damage on top of it as well.

That seems odd to me, gaining advantages should not negate the successes... Will take a look at the book tonight, got a page number for that table?

No, this is actually on the table. If I'm not mistaken, there are two such trade-offs; one for disabling an item and one for stunning/disabling the target (I think?) in lieu of damage. To do damage AND destroy equipment, you need two triumphs.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

The chart for spending advantages and triumph lists the ability as "When dealing damage to a target, have the attack disable the opponent or one piece of gear rather than dealing damage." So unless I'm missing something the knockdown talent allows the attacker to deal damage and knock the target prone rather than forgoing damage to do the same. Everyone can already knock people prone however I'm sure any melee bruiser would love to be able to damage on top of it as well.

That seems odd to me, gaining advantages should not negate the successes... Will take a look at the book tonight, got a page number for that table?

It only negates the success if you choose to use it that way. There are a lot of instances where destroying a blaster is worth more than damage.

Quick english refresher for you here. "Triumph can be used to crit" does not mean "triumph is the only way to crit."

The reason I ignored your points is because they're garbage.

Lets start with the math. If your combat is 4 rounds and you're rolling 2 yellow this means it comes up about 1 combat in 4. Pretty useless. Not only does something like lethal blows come up every hit, but it doesn't cost a triumph. 10 points on knockdown is a very bad investment compared to lethal blows or your second rank of melee, or anything else that costs 10.

More math. I said this last post, but YOU ignored it so here we go again. I'll make it simple for you. If you roll a triumph that leaves 1 yellow and 2 green vs. 2 purple. That is 1.5 threat average vs. 1.9 advantage average, assumeing you're fighting chumps that aren't giving you setbacks. So guess what, most of the time using that triumph means no crit even with your rare 5 mono sword which most GMs are not going to let you have, forget about a normal sword or axe.

Now lets compare qualitatively. Your argument is silly on it's face. You're trying to claim only death on the crit chart matters and ignore the fact that even mid rolls have an effect FAR MORE SEVERE than being knocked down that last until end of combat. And then you give an example that requires such a ridiculously good roll it might come up once in a character's career... And even when it does come up, you've hit the guy so hard he's probably lost a leg and fallen over anyway, or is simply flat out dead so, guess what, knockdown is again useless. You couldn't even give a decent example where it is useful. Next.

Lets compare cost. I already touched on character cost earlier that 10 points is better spent on... pretty much anything given how rarely this will come up, and how rarely it will be useful, but lets look at what ELSE you could have done with a triumph assuming you don't want to crit or crit harder. Would you rather... turn the tide of the battle or knockdown? Would you rather strip the enemy of defense for a round or knockdown? Would you rather upgrade your defenses against every enemy for a turn or knockdown? Well toss crit in the mix and knockdown is 0 for 4.

So there you go, all your points addressed and beaten to the ground. Knockdown comes up too infrequently, it costs character bulding points to do somthing with a triumph that you can already do things with anyway, and the ability it gives isn't as good as the things you can already do with a triumph.

Thanks for the insult, but actually, you've been missing my point the entire time.

You are saying it's better to crit then to knockdown. I actually agree with this. However, that isn't my point. My point is with the low cost to crit with melee weapons, it is better to crit AND knockdown. This of course pretty much invalidates your entire post as you go on to point out all the ways critting is better then knockdown, of which, I agree with mostly.

Your math is a bit off too. I ignored that part of your first post because it was just flat out wrong. Here's the truth of those threats you are rolling. One purple die has 5 faces out of 8 with at least threat. This is only one more face then the advantages on the green die. So yes, theoretically you can still throw more threat. However, in practice, this isn't how it works out at all. Because when attacking in melee you are only rolling against 2 purple dice. Whereas I'm throwing 2 yellow and 2 green in the example I was using. This means even if I throw that one Triumph that means I still have 1 yellow and 2 green, meaning I have an entire 1 positive die advantage. On average, you can only hope to roll 2 threat per roll. The max you can get with 2 purple is 4 threat, but since there is only one face of eight that has 2 threat, this means you have exactly a 1.5% chance of tossing 4 on two dice.

Some real world observations: I've been playing this game for some time now, and my players have be averaging about 2 successes and 2 advantages after taking threat/failure into consideration with similar dice pools (YYGG vs PP).

Also, I'm not trying to say that only death matters. You are. That was why I brought it up in the first place. Here, allow me to quote you again:

The fact that you get triumph only 1 in 12 on a yellow ALONE makes the talent not worth taking. That it will often be the choice between knocking down or the superior choice of doing a crit makes it a very bad choice of talent. As I said, knocking someone out is superior to knocking them down, making them unable to take an extra maneuver for the rest of combat is superior to giving them the choice of spending a maneuver to stand up once.

I bolded the important part.

Now if this is a misunderstanding on my part, my sincere apologies. But since I last looked over that crit table, "knocking someone out" wasn't listed on that chart. Therefore, the only way to "make them unable to take an extra maneuver" is to make them dead. Unless you roll the one critical injury that prevents them from making maneuvers. But we're back to that 10% chance that has nothing to do with how many +10s you add to the crit roll. You still have to roll to make up the difference. So no, the point still stands.

Would I rather.... turn the tide of the battle or knockdown? How about both? Would I rather... strip the enemy of a defense or knockdown? Still can do both. Would I rather... Upgrade my defences or knockdown? How about both... and bonus, if he stays on the ground he's at a disadvantage. Toss in crit in the mix and .... hey I can still do both.

You do still realize that unlike crit, you can use the knockdown talent when you don't damage the enemy right?

You do still realize that unlike crit, you can use the knockdown talent when you don't damage the enemy right?

This is a big advantage to knockdown... Especially on heavy soak targets. If you get a poor roll that is only a single success and a triumph, knocking them down can set up a two boost die roll on next turn. So, if a GM throws out a NPC enemy with soak higher than weapon damage, and lowering defense for the round won't have much of an impact, then doing a knockdown to add two boost dice is a very potent way to ensure that damage is dealt the following round. Obviously, this won't come up often, but in this situation warrants some merit.

All things considered, at the end of the day you've got a talent that grants you a Knockdown if you roll a Triumph, something that you otherwise shouldn't be able to do. Therefore the talent is not worthless.

My problem (and many others going by this thread before it derailed) would already allow people to be knocked down by the narrative aspect of rolling many advantages or a Triumph. So since it does something that everyone already can do, it is 100% a waste as written.

I just came to the forum after noticing Knockdown earlier this weekend and I have *this* exact issue. Ignoring all the crit-vs-knockdown discussion and the name calling and vitriol this is my core issue: I would ABSOLUTELY feel a Triumph would let you knock an opponent prone. That seems like a mild use of a Triumph to me. Is knocking an opponent prone equivalent to "Do something vital, such as shooting the controls to nearby blast doors to seal them shut."? (Quoted straight from the "Spending Advantages and Triumphs in Combat" chart.) I'd argue that that if anything knocking an opponent prone is less powerful then sealing blast doors.

If a player *without Knockdown* wanted to spend a triumph to knock a target prone with a vibro-axe attack I would have allowed it. Which would mean that Knockdown *did nothing*, and that implies that (melee) Triumphs can't knock opponents prone. That's a surprising bit of information to me. Does anybody have a good explanation why a Triumph can't extend to knocking an opponent prone without having this talent?