Running my first combat, would appreciate a veteran checking the procedure. Ill try to make it brief.
Two minion bowmen are faced with an advancing PC swordsmen through scattered, rocky terrain. They are at Long Range. The round begins and the PC starts to act but the GM spends 2 Doom and the two minions act first.
They loose their bows at the advancing figure. Normally a D1 as they are at optimum range for their Shemitish bows. The Player however announces he will pay a Doom and Defend. He rolls for Acrobatics, adds a die for a Momentum spend, and gets a single success. The archers roll (2 dice, one each) and get a single success as well. A tie goes to the player but the DM spends another Doom and gives the tie to the archers so one of them has hit.
The bow does 4 damage and 4 dice are rolled with a result of 4 damage and 3 effects. The bow’s quality is Piercing 1 so 3 Armor Soaks will be ignored for this hit.
The PC is in heavy cover though, advancing through the boulders, so he gets a Cover Soak of 4, rolls 4 dice yielding 3 Soak… eliminating all but 1 point of the incoming damage. That last point hits the PC and the hit location die indicates his right arm. He is wearing a mail coat and thus the arm has an Armor Soak of 3… but the bows effects cancel this. 1 point of damage wounds the PC for 1 Vigor lost.
So basically the archers took a couple shots at their target, a shaft or two sailing high or splintering off the intervening rocks but one got through, hit the man in the arm but managed to only partially penetrate his mail. He yanks the offending thing from his bicep with little more than a scratch.
You have two archer minions. They can either act together in a small mob or individually.
If they act as a mob they roll one attack, the player defends once. This is mostly what you have done. BUT I wanted to make a note that as they are working in a mob they are essentially a single opponent in many ways. We only ever roll one attack and one damage for the mob. In order for two archers to score two hits in the round they would need to attack individually.
However, since they are acting as a single “thing” you only need to interrupt initiative once, so the spend is a single doom. (See Page 272 “Seize the Initiative”)
If they attack individually they roll 1 die each, you need to spend 1 point of doom for each of the to go before the player. The player spends 1 doom to defend the first time and 2 to defend the second time.
Minions can of course buy up to 3 bonus dice with doom in either scenario.
This next part is strictly opinion. Unless the rocks were super crowded, i’d probably just increase the difficulty of the shot vs giving heavy cover, unless the PC is intentionally moving behind them.
However we shall continue with cover.
Bow does 4 damage, 3 effects = 4 damage and 3 piercing.
Cover provides 3 points of soak, which are nullified by the piercing of the bow.
4 points hit the PC who is wearing chain providing 3 armor, reducing it to 1.
(ie this part looks correct to me)
Having just “Piercing” and “Armor” is for simplicity reasons. Of course, arrows do not penetrate stone, but if you had multiple Armor types (cloth, leather, wood, stone etc.) and multiple Piercing types (serrated, bladed, etc.) this would complicate combat.
Also, piercing does not necessarily mean that arrows penetrate a stone wall. Maybe there is a small crack in the wall and the shooter gets really lucky. Or the arrows hit the wall and loosen some bricks which subsequently fall onto the character behind the wall. This seems reasonable for just 1 point of Vigor lost.
Since cover are dice, as an optional rule you could say that stone or especially thick wood provides +1 Armor Soak per Effect rolled.
Honestly, if you want it so the cover soak and the armor soak stacks for the purpose of Piercing, I don’t see a direct problem with it. In which case, the piercing would get through the Cover, but not the armor in this case.
Also, I’m glad you are playing the Game Rgrove0172 given your grievances with Loads.