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

[BlacKnight]

Sorry for the delay, I was quite busy in the last days.
But I also recovered Flower of Battle, so something good has happened.

She had ATN 5 (rapier), I had DTN 4 (full evasion ala RoS).

She should have played to the strength of the build. Think about this:
How do you know the opponents' CP? You test it.
How do you test it? Careful defensive and offensive.
Once you know the approximate CP, what can you do?

From GM's perspective, it's again a thing about roleplaying opponents taking into account their capabilities, intellectual abilities, tactical thinking...etc.

A simple peasant with CP 8 will know two tactics: run away & throw stones or bash bash bash. Had she gone for weak cut, the peasant would not guess a feint = she could have deceived him and wound him in first exchange. After all, his decision to run came after she produced the large amount of dice.

Not before. Had she gone for cut for 4 dice, the peasant would try to parry for 5 and she could have either let it go, to see how many dice he has... or she could have gone for a feint with 4+4 (discard 4) dice to go straight for the kill. Both would be viable tactics. After she knew he had only 8 CP, her plan could have changed. A series of quick feints, few light wounds and he's down. Or bait him to overspend and go for a counter.

Let's see: with a DTN of 7 on the parry, the peasant had a 30% chance of doing 3 or more successes. With 8 dices, the fencer would have done 5+ successes in 56% of the cases. So around 13% chance for the fencer to fail.
Which is better than the previous case, but it relies on the opponent using a sub-optimal tactic.

The main problem I have with this is that the dice pool is, in the end, an abstract mechanic.
I'm not really sure of how to represent real moves and real behaviours with it.
For example you can say the peasant doesn't know feints exists, but on the same token I could say he should go full evasion anyway, because he's agaisnt a clearly superior opponent and can't afford to not use its best defensive option.

I think this is a difference between RoS vs. BoIT again.

Toss & Stop Short do not require the attacker to win: both are basically opportunities to cancel an oncoming attack if you have the initiative (they do not give the opportunity to attack back, including stealing initiative!) for low dice investment (ideal if you overspent). For Stop Short, you only need 2 or 3 dice to increase opponents' TN that your respective attributes do not matter and for some builds it allows to actually gain some advantage in fight. At least in RoS. For Toss, you need to hold something in your hand (it is actually suggested that Toss could be repeatedly used with someone's cloak after a break in combat), but a single die is sufficient for it to be effective.

Example: You and your opponent have both 10 CP and are dueling using renaissance sideswords & cloaks. You attacked for 9 CP, the opponent went for full evasion for 5 CP and it was a tie. Similar as above. Had you used your whole pool, you would be statistically dead. You still have one die. Now you have the initiative, but with 1 CP left you are afraid your opponent may launch an attack and hurt you easily. So you Toss your cloak for the 1 die. Your opponent may - according to the rules - either dodge or not. If he dodges, he may allocate dice vs. TN 7. If he does not, the roll is only on you, unresisted. Either way, the opponent loses exactly 1 die...and you retain initiative.

The only limitation here is the amount of items you can toss.

I checked RoS and the Toss maneuvers says "If you win each success in the margin cause him to lose..."
Stop Short says "If the attacker wins, then his opponents lose dices..."

I usually refer to Flower of Battle when weapons are the topic. Of course, here we are talking about late-era rapiers that were mostly used for their point, not blade, with "fencers' grip", which disallows really powerful swing attacks and is best suited for lighter swordplay, not parrying axes and such. There is also the possibility of using "draw cut" maneuver, which adds +1 to damage for cuts, but I digress.

In Flower of Battle, some weapons have the descriptor "heavy" and these are actually used for the higher DTN. Most swords still count as light, so for example sabers and longswords will still get the lower DTN.

This is more a problem of terminology, I think, as nobody can agree what exactly a rapier is, what a sidesword is and so on.
Anyway, I think the Cut and Thust sword from RoS or the Sidesword from FoB are nice and balanced, and other weapons could be "skins" of those.
For example I could use the Sidesword stats for a rapier, to make a thrust oriented weapon that can still cut.

We are going in circles, but mostly because your opponent does not know your CP and does not know if he can afford to go for expulsion in first round. If you know you have a dice advantage, you may safely go for expulsion - if not, it's a risk but may be still worth it.

Again: DTN 8 is for e.g. greatsword, or axes. A longsword vs. rapier gets still the DTN 6.

Thrusting attacks often wound worse - they go deep, so the pain & shock values are often worse. Aiming for certain zones gets easier with thrusts. And you get your own benefit: if you go red-red, then with thrust your chances of landing first wound actually go up (REF+1).

And oftentimes there is the advantage of length or lower ATNs in specialized weapons. See the ATN for axes as opposed to ATN for spears.

The bonus to REF for thrusts sounds really interesting, but I can't find it on the handbooks. Any chance you remember from where it was? It's not in the hit location tables neither the initiative section.

Flower of Battle suggest a different solution to stealing initiative - activation cost depends on your proficiency, not opponent's PER. It moves between 5 and 3 CP. Both of you may then add dice to your REF from your combat pool for the roll of "who hits first" - meaning that if the opponent spends all his dice as Alan did, he opens himself to this more than if he left few dice behind.

It also suggests you add length penalties to REF rolls for determining who hits first...

And yes, it is perfectly possible to do the "iaido" thing where the hero waits for opponents' attack and then moves in to attack faster. After all, it's all a valid tactic...

As you can see, the system is quite complex: and we haven't even gotten to Twitching (Zwerchcopteeeer! you hide few dice into your hand before attacking via cut, the opponent must defend successfully - after the attack you declare twitch, show your hand - if you have more dice than your enemy has successes, you actually keep initiative, attack the opposite side and add double the dice to your next attack) or favouring (oooh... let's see: you send your GM a note about your character holding shield in specific area to cover it better and pay some dice... if the enemy attacks the area you are focusing, your dice investment gets doubled for purposes of defence)...

...so many options.

Yet often what works best is the easy approach. Defend well, attack weak, keep dice in reserve to scam the opponent, search for opening.

Yeah, reading through FoB and there are many options that improve the game a lot. That rule for stealing initiative is really neat and does a lot against the alpha strike tactic.

To answer your question: Yes. And no.

The system simulates real combat - which means there is always a chance for failure, wound and death. The last one can be postponed via Drama mechanic if things get out of hand, but players should be ready their backsides will get kicked - and that wounds take time to heal. In BoIT the Mending magic helps speed up healing (to days instead of weeks), but players need to take care not to get hit too much.

So in a way, yes. The attacker is only postponing their inevitable death by fighting. As we all do.

On the other hand, the winning move is this:

"My name is Inigo Montoya..." I have proficiency of 12 (as fencing master) and Reflex 7. And +5 dice from my Hatred (six-fingered fencer) SA, +5 from my Loyalty (defending my friends), +5 from my Oath (avenge my father's killer), +5 from my Conscience (I am fighting for the right thing), totaling at 39 CP.

Why do you fight when you have no investment in the outcome...?

Well, with all those dices I would go full attack

BTW, if you want to run a practice combat outside your player group, I think I can arrange one

At this point I'm mostly convinced, but why not?