Blocking an attack?

[Penthau]

I was running a mock combat to help get some exposure to the rules for my players and we had a question. My wife's character has tower of faith and they were fighting a ghoul. She can use tower of faith to set up a block with her conviction, so could she make the block against any claw attack that the ghoul makes? It started attacking her first, but switched to another target who was doing more damage. I sort of pictured the tower of faith making things more difficult for the ghoul in general, no matter the target, but would only allow it against the claw attack, not vs any action the ghoul made. Does that sound right?

[sinker]

I think you may have mis-read tower of faith. Assuming we are talking about the Conviction based stunt and that there isn't a different tower of faith somewhere, the stunt allows one to gain an Armor:1 against any social or mental stress. So if the ghoul was trying to intimidate her then she would be able to reduce the amount of stress that she receives by 1 but it's not going to help her with the ghoul's claws. If you are looking for a way to have a faith based physical defense then you might want to look at the Holy Touch power or use the spellcasting powers with a different theme (or Sponsored magic: Soulfire).

[MijRai]

I think he meant this Stunt:

Devout Words: The strength of your faith
alone allows you to give others pause. You may
use your Conviction skill to perform a block in
physical conflict, potentially preventing someone
from making a conflict action against you.

[sinker]

Aha, sense is made. One would think I would have seen that while I was looking at the conviction stunts...

The quote handily answers the question though, it does very clearly say "potentially preventing someone
from making a conflict action against you."

[Penthau]

That's the one, I was working from memory.

More generally, can someone do a regular block (not using that stunt) against a target's attack, regardless of the target's target? For instance, player A sets up a block against the ghoul's claws, even if the ghoul attacks player B.

Aha, sense is made. One would think I would have seen that while I was looking at the conviction stunts...

The quote handily answers the question though, it does very clearly say "potentially preventing someone
from making a conflict action against you."

[JesterOC]

Yes you can block an action against more than one person however the guideline is as follows. If the block can effect more than one person, it can only 1 specific type of action, if it only effects one person, it can effect multiple actions (p 210)

[Wordmaker]

Also Blocks aren't reactive. You can perform a Block only on your action. So you couldn't stop the ghoul attacking if it acted before you, but on your turn you could apply the Block to try and hold it back from attacking you.

[sinker]

Another thing I realized is that it could also be an offensive block. So instead of defending against specific attacks for all friendlies in one zone, you could block all actions by the one ghoul. It's much more efective that way.