Confused about Evocation.

[Jim]

I don't know if I'm missing something simple here or what, but I'm confused about the evocation example given in the book.  On page 251 of Your Story, it gives an example of Harry using a fire evocation with 8 shifts of power to attack a vampire.  Harry's roll plus his bonuses equal a difficulty of 8, so he succeeds in the evocation.  The vampire tries to defend, but only rolls a 4.  Given that Harry wins the roll, the attack itself is successful.  I understand all of that.

What I don't understand is how the attack comes out to +12.  An excerpt from the example: "The vampire rolls to defend against Harry’s roll of Legendary and gets a Great (+4), which means the blast strikes home and inflicts a 12-stress hit on him (4 for the attack, 8 for the weapon value). "

Harry used 8 shifts of power, so that's treated as a weapon:8 attack.  I don't understand where the "4 for the attack" came from.  Is that the difference between Harry's roll of 8 and the vampire's roll of 4?  I've skimmed through other parts of the book on weapons and conflicts, and I can't find a solid explanation of this.  If my stated guess is correct, does that mean that every attack causes damage equal to it's weapon value plus the difference between the attacker's and defender's roll?  And if the defender doesn't roll to defend, would that be treated as a defense roll of 0?

Please help.  I'm confused.  :-(  Please don't tell me to RTFM.  I have read what should be the relevant sections, and I'm still confused.  I'm looking for a solid explanation of how that "4 for the attack" comes into play.

Thank you in advance.

[MijRai]

The bonus from the roll beating the defense gets turned into attack.
Say Harry rolled a 4 instead of an 8. He'd have done 8 shifts of damage from the spell.
If he rolled a 5, he'd have done 9 shifts.
6 makes a 10 shift.
So on and so forth.

It works like that for any attack. Otherwise, a plain Fists attack would still be a Weapon 0 and do no damage. Everything over the defense roll adds 1 to the damage.

[Jim]

So if someone chooses not to roll defense, if they choose to take the attack full-on, would you assume a defense roll of 0?  So the total stress would be 16?

[Becq]

It works in much the same way as weapon combat, if you understand that.  Basically, you make a contested roll to see if you hit.  If your (attack) roll is equal or exceeds their (defense) roll, then you hit.  The difference between the roll (number of 'shifts') is used, along with the weapon strength, to determine damage.  So if I attack someone with a pistol (weapon:2, or w:2), and I roll 3 better than my opponent (3 shifts), then (a) I hit -- because I rolled higher, and (b) I do 5 stress worth of damage (shifts + weapon strength).  If the target has body armor of some sort, then it subtracts from the final damage inflicted (not from the attack roll).

Spells are the same, except that the spell strength determines the "weapon strength".  In the case of the example, it was an 8 shift evocation, which generates a w:8 attack.  Any shifts I generate on my attack roll are added to the attack strength to determine damage.  So in the example, 4 shifts + w:8 = 12 stress of damage.

[wyvern]

I would say that someone trying to just *take* the attack would still get to roll... just they'd get a base defense of zero, same as if they were surprised.  Which could be increased via invoking aspects, via appropriate stunts, or via a block action (such as, say, Harry's enchanted duster).

For example, one of the monsters I've statted out has a stunt that lets her use endurance for physical defense instead of athletics; if someone shoots at her, she doesn't bother dodging - she just takes the hit; and she's got enough endurance that an ordinary thug with a gun will see his bullets just bounce off.

[Jim]

My question, though, is what if the would-be defender chooses not to roll?  For instance, I, as the GM, tell a player, "someone is whacking you with a sword, make a defense roll vs. athletics."

For some insane reason, they say, "I'm not going to make any attempt to dodge or defend.  I'm going to stand perfectly still and let the sword fall where it may."

Would you treat their defense roll as 0 or as -4?  And in either case, would you add in their athletics bonus if they're not even trying?  (I'm guessing the answer should be 0 with no bonus.)

[wyvern]

Huh.  I'd tend to say that puts the result squarely into the realm of narrative effect; if they're not defending (and don't have appropriate toughness powers to have a chance at surviving), they're going to get their fool head chopped off.  My reaction as a gm would be to tell them, "Uh, if you do that, you're going to die.  You realize that, right?" - and if they want to make a new character, well, alrighty then.  Maybe you could let them off with an extreme consequence, but that's getting a bit close to plot armor...
(note: this only applies to truly lethal weapons like guns, swords, etc.  For fists, knives, and other things that are less likely to one-hit an ordinary person, see the following paragraph; for weaker weapons, "appropriate toughness powers" could just mean a decent endurance.)

On the other hand, if they've *got* appropriate toughness powers, I'd probably count it as a defense of zero, run out the numbers, and then give the player one last chance to change his mind once the full consequences of that choice are on the table.  Depending on how good the attack is, and how much toughness powers the character has, they might even be able to get away with doing this; the guy with mythic toughness *can* just ignore an ordinary thug with a handgun - but the guy with merely inhuman recovery is going to be looking at some hefty consequences (if not an outright take-out) when they're under attack by an evocation specialized wizard.

[luminos]

If for one reason or another, one of the parties in a conflict doesn't want to oppose the other party, there is an existing mechanic to handle that.   Its called a concession.  If for some reason, the guy says he justs stands there and takes the hit, he is making a concession, saying that he loses the physical conflict.  Use the concession rules to figure out what happens then.  He could very well concede and make it his terms that his character dies.  Hopefully this doesn't happen without a good reason, or you are having an issue dealing with the actual person and not the game, and should therefore talk to the actual person to find out why this is happening.