Hey all, I know, it’s the same old same question. I thought I had it down, and my players have gotten me all messed up. So I’m now asking you, fine people, to assist if you can.
So, I’m going to use a made-up weapon, because my question will be gotten to with that. There is no weapon I know of that does this, but these are basically the qualities that are, in some combination, causing the issue.
Say it’s a weapon that does 4 Combat Die damage, and it’s got Knockdown, Piercing 1, and Vicious 1.
My player rolls a 2, 3, 5, and 6 on damage. So we have 4 damage, I’m good with that.
But, do we have:
2 ignored soak, 2 extra damage, and a foe knocked down with the roll as well, or do we have
A foe knocked down, and 2 effects that we can spend on 1 or 2 ignored soak, or 1 or 2 extra damage, allowing for an answer of 1 ignored soak and 1 extra damage, as well.
Or some other answer, I’m not totally getting?
If you roll an Effect (i.e. a 5 or 6), it triggers all applicable Qualities.
So if a weapon has Knockdown, Piercing 1 and Vicious 1 and you roll a single Effect, you gain all of the benefits, i.e. knockdown, 1 ignored soak, +1 damage. You don’t have to “assign” single qualities to your rolled Effects.
P 151: “If one or more Effects are rolled when rolling for damage, then all Qualities that trigger on an Effect will trigger”
Also, all qualities say in their description: “For each Effect rolled…”. They only care about the number of Effects that have been rolled, not if there are other qualities present.
Take the Javelin for example: It has (among others) the Fragile and Piercing 1 qualities. If the player character could “assign” Effects to qualities, they would obviously use all Effects for Piercing 1. If the GM could do it instead of the player, they could use all Effects for Fragile. So in the case of the Javelin, the fairest thing would be to just use both qualities on each Effect.
Awesome, thank you. That’s what I thought but the players brought up “for each effect rolled,” and I started to doubt myself.
Next question, if I may, do players have a choice? Or are the effects mandatory?
Ex. Our sorcerer cast what we call the Kali-Ma attack (from Indiana Jones Raiders and the Temple of Doom) heart ripping out of the chest at range attack. And had Vicious on it, but didn’t want to completely mind F* the rest of the party in the area, so he just “chose” to Not activate the quality. I also wasn’t sure of that, but again it was argued, and for quicker resolution I said I would “away to the forums” between sessions.
I don’t see how applying qualities can be optional. If you are hitting someone with an axe, that will likely do extreme damage (i.e. the Vicious and Intense qualities). It doesn’t make sense to say “Oops, I didn’t want to do so much damage”.
Regarding your example: I assume the sorcerer uses Dismember. I think this is an intended drawback. If the attack is brutal enough, it effects the party. You can’t cherry-pick the result you want. That is in the nature of the weapon or the spell. You accidentally chopped someones head off with an axe? Too bad. You should have thought of that possibility before attacking.
Edit: You can in fact spend one Momentum to give your attack the nonlethal quality, but this does not mean that you can reduce the damage.
BTW, players can spend Fortune to influence the story. Saying the attack should have been less effective would fall under that category.
Is there not a momentum spend to make attacks less lethal?
You are right! I totally forgot about this. You mean “Subdue: The attack gains the Nonlethal Quality.”
So scratch what I said about less lethal and less brutal attacks (I’ve edited my original post). Still, it’s quite a stretch to subdue someone with a Vicious weapon.
Exactly! That is one of the costs of using Sorcery. No, you can’t make the attack less horrific, AND it specifically states that the Sorcerer themselves are NOT immune to their own effects. So, the Sorcerer flinging hearts about will ALSO have to suffer Resolve damage.
