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

[BlacKnight]

Well, RoS made me step up my game and actually discard nameless bandits. All bandits had names. All bandits had a reason. Those who did not ran away after first wounds or after the party killed their leaders.

Of course that there will be some fights where you go in without SAs and there will be those guys in taverns that just want to draw blade without any forethought about getting killed.

But most of the time those guys will go for fists and when someone flashes a blade, they step back. Nobody wants to die just for nothing.

I approve of this. No more random fights.

For example: the situation you described with captain and Oscar - Oscar has a good reason to go fighting. And had it happened in front of all the soldiers, captain would have a good reason not to step back. But here, alone? She would definitely hear his cause - and I assumed she has an SA regarding the book.

Otherwise she would not fight.

Yeah, in this case I assumed Oscar tried to get the book with diplomacy first, but failed and thus resorted to arms.
The book is actually an handbook to build advanced weapons that would be useful against the titans.
Oscar wants to bring it to his father, so that only his family can produce such weapons and then sell them to the military. The captain, probably, won't accept to limit the access to a tool that could help all of humanity.
It doesn't help that Oscar is in a precarious mental state for seveal reasons, so he doesn't have the patience to hear the captain's argument. He wants the book and he wants it now.

It could be any of these: an oath to take revenge, hatred against the entity or drive to see them dead.

For me, the distinction is mainly for roleplaying and to ensure SAs are not all focused on one thing. It's a subtle thing, but you'll most probably notice differences.

Passions are irrational. When my players had a hatred, they suddenly really went for the neck of the enemy. I've had two players who started with "Hatred: Slavers" - both for backstory reasons - and any time slavers entered picture, they did everything they could to destroy them. No holds barred.
Drives are decisions and are more rational - the same two players, completely different approach. "Should I do this dangerous thing that will follow up on my drive?" vs. "CRUSH THE SLAVERS!"
Oaths are usually a source of conflict. An oath is "the easiest to break", but players seldom do so. It's the "paladin" stuff - you want to show off that you can pull the oath off even in face of insurmountable obstacles.

Again, it's interesting to watch how they motivate and form your players' choices in play.

Let's see: Oscar main goal is to be forgiven by his father for certain things happened in backstory.
This could be a passion or a drive. Given that he's willing to go against his comrades and superiors to accomplish it, I will consider it a passion, although at the beginning of the campaign I didn't think he would have gone so far.
His second goal is to become a great soldier and fight against the titans. This is a promise he made to a friend who died years before.
I'm not really sure about this last one. It could be an oath, but also a drive. Considering the promise is his main motivation for accomplishing this, I think oath is the best fit.

You are not mistaken, but FYI: Drive adds to your CP, so you can consider it part of CP (you get it once per round). Stance bonus is separate, so you did that correctly.

Captain responds with a lightning fast counter for 14 dice (2 dice activation cost in addition).

Feints? Feel free to roll for us both. I will then go over results.

When Oscar sees the captain's move he panics and training kicks in: he steps sideways and swings towards the head, striking to kill with all he has got.
It's a feint and cut in zone 5 with 8 dices, so 4 dices gets added to the previous 13, for a total of 17.
Results are: 1, 3, 3, 10, 6, 7, 1, 1, 9, 5, 6, 9, 10, 7, 3, 3, 9.
With an ATN of 6 there are 9 successes.

I don't know what weapon have you setted on for captain Valzer, so you should roll for her.

Comment: when I saw the 14 dices counter I was like "OMG, I'm ****ed. Use feint! Use all dices you have!"
This tanslated nicely in Oscar starting the fight with the idea he could disarm or lightly wound the captain without much issue, then losing his coolness when the captain showed her skill, thus forcing him to rely on what he had learned to save his life.

Good news: the system handles this easily.
BoIT handles its magic via Sorcery Pool, which consists of your magic attribute and your proficiency. Let’s say you have 10 dice to cast a spell (e.g. to attack with magic you use Witchfire proficiency; you can shoot lightning out of your eyes, fire out of your hands, or just collapse a part of a building or shoot mana daggers – the actual damage type is for you to specify).
You then split the pool into two parts – a spellcasting check and containment check. If you get spellcasting successes, the spell works. If your containment check beats your spellcasting check, you acquire no Taint.
If not, you get Taint equal to not contained spellcasting successes. Meaning Preservers will put most of their pool into Containment, but Defilers will happily shoot away with most of their dice pool.
Also: by the virtue of not amassing Taint, Preservers are able to cast more spells (on average) than Defilers this way (Taint slowly blocks dice from your dice pool). You could also implement a Corruption mechanic I was working on, giving some advantage to Defilers, but at cost of increased Taint, working on death spiral once they reach certain threshold.

Actually in Dark Sun Defilers are more powerful than Preservers, because they exploit the environment.
This can be easily modeled by allowing to move Taint to the environment, causing the destruction of vegetation and fertile ground.
This way a Defiler can cast without worrying about containment, while a Preserver needs to balance spellcasting and containment.
But it also allows a preserver to match the power of a defiler, at the price of getting tainted...

Well, no idea what to do there. You’d have to give me more information on how it works.

Every character in Dark Sun has a psionic talent. This could be modeled with gifts, but it would require to create those gifts. Each psionic gift could give access to a power (a spell) that doesn't cause taint.
A psionic pool would also be needed, maybe from (WP + MA)/2. I divide by 2 because otherwise psionic powers would be too powerful, given the lack of taint.