The Riddle of Steel: why not using all dices to attack ?

[Lacco]

Thank you for the answers!

You are most welcome.

I'm looking forward to discussing one of my favourite RPG systems.

I'll try to explain my issue in detail.
As I see it, the goal in combat is to make an attack using more dice than the defender can use on his defence.
There are three stages in any exchange:
1) Attack (attacker chooses)
2) Defense (defender chooses)
3) Feint (attacker chooses)

Yes and no.

The goal in combat is to survive, defeat the opponent and not get hurt too much (the order may vary: sometimes you just fight to kill, regardless of survival). If you are familiar with the combat as war vs. combat as sports dichotomy, this game lies definitely on the "combat as war" side. I will help a lot.

Also: due to RNG element, larger dice investment does not necessarily mean success. But I accept that in theory, it gives higher probability of success.

If we are talking about pre-roll decisions, I would add following:
0a) Terrain Rolls (both may choose)
0b) Stances (slower REF should choose first)

Both are optional, but they do matter a lot, especially when fighting enemies with higher combat pools.

The attacker has the last choice, but dices added with feint cost 2 dices each from the pool.

Feint: 2 dice spent per one added. Yes.

Also: Feint works miracles when used properly - but its advantage in theoretical exercises is not readily apparent. Think of it as psychological warfare. You throw a simple cut, your enemy responds with strong parry because they think it is a feint. It is not, he squandered a lot of dice - advantage: you.

In a way, the combat system can be approached in multitude of ways: one of them is slowly and safely piling advantages on until your enemy no longer has ability to fight back.

Also: dice MAY be added during feint. They do not have to. So you can be feinting a feint... in a way.

But even considering that, the defender can't risk to see the attacker dice pool increase too much, so he has to commit dices to his defence with a wide enough margin to cover a possible feint.

He doesn't know the attacker dice pool, sure, but he can estimate it to be similar to its own. If the attacker pool is way larger... well, the defender had no chance to begin with.

Here I disagree: he has a chance.

Spoiler: Personal Anecdote

Show

Just to prove the same point I once defeated a CP 14 rapier fencer with CP 8 peasant wielding a stick and a rock. In featureless arena. The lady tried a full-on attack, I went for full evasion. She missed spectacularly twice. I threw a rock, she got hit - CP 11. After some dancing she decided to go for another attack, I parried successfully, bashed her with 1 die. After first attack she barely got any dice left and went down easily.

Do not underestimaty any enemy. As the rulebook states, you would not like a dagger in your gut: your character would neither.
Fight for your life.

For sake of your example, let's assume similar (+/-1 CP) pools. You never know at the beginning: and while theoretical discussion is worthy its value, the practice is far from theory in this case.

And your players should be warned that assuming "similar" dice pools is a mistake - see "combat as war". Challenges will not be "balanced". They should not be.

But here comes the Counter to mix up things. With an activation cost of 2 dices, this maneuver allows to recover dices from a defence (actually from the attacker successes).
This means that the defender can use more dices, knowing that they will (at least in part) come back.

Correct.

So what can the attacker do? If he uses a medium attack it will get countered, so he can:
-use a weak attack, so that the counter activation cost eats away the benefits.
-he uses all of his dice on the attack.

If it's the first round, he could also open with Beat. Which is actually extremely good maneuver.

Or bind & strike, if he has a shield or off-hand weapon.

Or double-strike.

…well, too many options.

But there's another problem: maneuvers like expulsion or block open and strike works the opposite of counter, giving an advantage to the defender basing on his own successes. So a weak attack can be stopped using enough dices to deter a feint, while still an advantage for the next exchange.

Correct.

You also have the extremely-dangerous-but-hard-to-pull Duck & Weave (which I have seen to work only twice per my career, but both times spectacularly).

Assuming both fighters use weapons with an ATN and DTN of 6, we can assume that half of the dices rolled are successes. Good fighters can have around 12 dices pools.

Again, good theoretical example and basis for experiment. I'll go with it even though it limits creativity a lot (after all, not everyone carries a bastard sword or cut&thrust…). But bear in mind that it's like playing chess only with pawns or playing rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock with only Spock.

A 6 dices attack can be upgraded in a 9 dices using a feint, so the defender (named Bob) will use a 9 dices expulsion, spending 11.

The attacker (named Alan) won't feint and the result will be a succesful defence with 4.5 successes, which give a 4.5 penalty to the attacker and obliterate his chances of doing something next exchange.

Now Bob has 1 dices against 6 of Alan, but the latter has to roll 10 to get a success. Bob can attack with his only dice, without much risk.

Let's keep with RoS' tradition of rounding down.

I'm fine with this until we get to last paragraph.

Assuming your example goes as planned, Bob has 1 die left and Alan has 6 - so far so good - but the advantage of Expulsion is that if Bob thrusts in second exchange, Alan gets a penalty of 4 dice (his blade is thrown off-center). So: Bob thrusts with 1 die (50:50 hit or miss) and Alan actually defends with 2 dice or attacks (Bob hits first if successful).

Expulsion will have no effect on TN, so the underlined part is invalid.

This exchange could have similar alternatives (let's explore!):

Alan: 6 dice for thrust to belly!
Bob: All rite mate! Expulsion with 9 dice!
Alan: Gotcha! Feint & thrust! I'll go for the torso and add 3 dice!
--- this means Alan's CP is brought to 0. He used all his dice - 6 for the attack, 3 to add dice to feint, 3 to pay for it ---
Now they roll:
a) Alan beats Bob (highly probable): based on your assumption he hits with 1-2 net successes, with completely average stats this is a level 1-2 wound; still manageable and if you go for a break in combat you could still get your full CP in some cases; a very lucky roll could mean "through the heart" instadeath.
b) Tie: Alan retains initiative, but since he spent all his dice, Bob has 1 die to wound him in second exchange. If it hits, the same as above occurs.
c) Bob beats Alan (least probable, but could happen due to RNG dice): Alan has 1 die to attack, same as before, expulsion has no additional effect this round but a GM could rule that the penalty will flow to second round, which gives Bob nice advantage.

If I were Alan, I would do something else:
Alan: 6 dice for thrust to belly!
Bob: Ha! I know this trick! You'll feint! Expulsion with 9 dice! …that's 11 total…
Alan: You guessed well but still fail! Feint & cut - I'll go for the arms! That's +1 to my CP. Oh, and your expulsion is now a standard parry! Let's see… I'll add just 1 die…1 set aside (8 CP spent, 5 CP remaining).
Bob: I rolled 8 successes… damn, for nothing. Single die to attack, huh? Diagonal cut.
Alan: Yeah, keep the initiative… you paid for it.

Remember: expulsion works only against thrusts and weak cuts with 4 dice or less. Feint & cut can easily turn an expulsion into parry.

Alan now has 5 dice (4 die advantage). If this is sword & board build, he can easily go for simultaneous block & attack or block open & strike. If it's longsword/greatsword build, evasive attack would be my choice (2 dice to attack, 3 to raise the TN) so that he has 1 die with TN 9 versus my 2 dice at TN 7.

But I digress. Shall we continue?

If Alan had used more dices on his attack he would have reduced the threat of his feint, while giving more reasons to Bob to use a counter.

Correct, in a way.

8 dices attack -> 10 dices counter -> 4 dices back, thus 4 vs 4 dices left in the pool.
If Alan had used less dices than Bob would have still used an expulsion, this time using less dices. While this leaves Alan with more dices in the pool, the penalty on rolls would still leave him at disadvantage.
4 dices attack -> 8 dices expulsion -> 2 dices left for Bob and 8 for Alan, but the latter has a -4 penalty.

Thus I conclude that Alan best option would be to go full attack, as it negates Bob the option of using special maneuvers with activation cost, unless he wants to risk.

In this theoretical example constructed with specific averages in mind? Yes.

In game? Not so much. There are too many variables for one approach to work.

Of course this would change if DTN were to be lower than ATN. You mentioned shields, and I guess it would be easy to edit weapons to lower their DTN.

I wouldn't do so. See below.

In the example above, if Bob could use 7 dices instead of 9 to counter Alan's 6 dice attack and potential feint, he would still have 8 dices left (5+3 from the counter), more than the 6 left to Alan.
But in that case, what could Alan do? Weaker attacks get expulsed, powerful attacks get countered.

…cut to arms? +1 die for the attack will move into 9:6 territory, which is pretty devastating.
…disarm? Activation cost 1 for some weapons, still 7:6 (or 7:4 if Alan decides to counter; can't use expulsion in this case)
…just straight up attack? 8:6 is good odds and it's not really possible for Alan to launch an attack without suffering a hit…
If dice obey the 50% probability, this is actually a good way for Bob to win the match.

So from viewpoint of risk management: if you can manage a set of powerful attacks, the opponent is less likely to be able to counterattack, but if dice fail you, you are most probably dead. So, full attack is a valid tactic, but not universal.

It helps when the GM takes the opponents as people/characters. They also do not wish to die.

A couple of notes:
-a player doesn't know the opponent dice pool, but he can make estimates. My thoughts above about optimal choices remain true even if the opponent has a larger dice pool. Sure, the opponent will have dice advantage, but that would be true whatever the player had done, so it doesn't make sense to do anything different.
-terrain can make a difference, sure, but it should be an add-on, not a necessity.
-the points you made about armor make me think that maybe toning down lethality a bit could be an improvement. If one could take some light wound without too much trouble than defending at dice disdvantage would be a more efficient option.

Correct: bolded part.

Incorrect: underlined part. There is plenty you can do to even the field (e.g. stand on a table to gain height advantage, choose a weapon that will give you an advantage), including choosing the combat.

Which is actually my major point: in RoS, you - or the players - have to choose their battles. If you are standing against a swordsman with equal CP, the same weapon and stats as you, without advantage… tell me, in RL: why would you do that?

Aside from proving your abilities in sports (e.g. HEMA), this makes no sense.

The system is built with this assumption in it. Breaking it down to maths will lead you to exactly what you found: if you have 25 dice and everybody has 10, you will crush anybody.

Now if you took into account terrain rolls & terrain, added spiritual attributes and extended the experiment to different builds, weapons and armor sets… you would get a different beast. You would have to fight for survival, for love, for your country or your ideals, your oaths and maybe against a hated enemy…

…the system is also meant to simulate as real duelling as possible. While there are certainly places where battle of attrition happens (especially when heavy armor gets into play), most of the time you get one or two smaller wounds and you are out (or give up). Or you get your Spiritual Attributes firing and fight through the pain. If your fingers get chopped off, most people will not continue the engagement (unless fighting for their life).

Also, the lethality depends on your use of Armor and also Drama mechanic. Two naked guys with swords will chop each other easily, two scale-mail-clad characters will make a lots of smaller wounds before one falls dead of bleeding. And characters are able to spend Drama to decrease wounds by 2 levels, so there are safeguards against instadeath if the GM wishes to give the characters a fighting chance.

Question: did you have any chance to test this system? Or are we talking pure theory so far? Only Core RoS or are we talking Flower of Battle?