Defensive Riposte

[TheeGravedigger]

We've got a priest character who was asking about the combination of Full Defense and Riposte, basically if it would be possible to combine them, and if you did, how it would effect the bonuses.

Full Defense is +2 to avoid attacks, Riposte allows you to sacrifice your next action to turn a successful defense into an automatic attack.

The way he was wanting it to play, he'd declare a Full Defense, he'd get attacked, and he'd pick one of the attacks to turn into a riposte, and for the rest of the round he'd be exposed.

By the Rule of Cool, it makes sense to allow it, especially since the character was to have an aspect that prevented him from attacking normally. We are still working on the details, whether he'll be allowed to attack in circumstances other than defending, or not.

Any thoughts?

[Deadmanwalking]

Actually, by the rules it's perfectly legal to do that as is. He loses his next attack from using Riposte, not necessarily this round's. Now, I'd make him not get the bonuses of Full Defense the next round (since that was the attack that got used), but I don't see a need for a new stunt or special rules.

He could just sit there and keep riposting every round thereafter, but he'd only get the Full Defense bonus the first turn (or any other turn following one where he didn't Riposte).

And the Aspect would just get him a Fate Point every time it was a disadvantage, like any other Aspect.

[iago]

Yeah, that stunt might have been a little, hm, under-described in terms of the limits I imagined placed on it. This same question came up on RPG.net; the patched stunt description reads:

Riposte: On a successful defense with Weapons, you may sacrifice your next action to turn that defense into an immediate and automatically successful attack.  Your attacker must be within range of your weapon, and if you’re mounting a full defense (page 199) you do not get the benefit of the +2 bonus when your defense roll converts to an attack roll.

That said, I'd be fine with an alternative implementation that suggested if you had the +2 Full Defense bonus, you could use it on the attack, but it'd leave you with a temporary aspect of "exposed" on yourself (available for an opponent to tag).

[Korwin]

deleted...

[iago]

Dude, I don't even understand your hypothetical scenarios, so I'm thinking something's not getting communicated clearly here.

[Korwin]

My mistake I did'nt read your post properly, misunderstood a whole lot and my post based on my misunderstanding was not readable.

I'll delet it, to clear the Thread up.

[Mal_Luck]

Iago, could you maybe give an example of the updated Riposte in action? 

[iago]

Iago, could you maybe give an example of the updated Riposte in action? 

I have the stunt. It's my turn in the exchange. I choose to go full defensive, because I have feeling I'm outclassed, and this dude really has it in for me. +2 to my defenses until my next turn.

Dude attacks me with a sword (I've got one too); he rolls a Great (+4) attack (as I feared).  I've got I'm only at Fair (+2) Weapons, let's say, and I'm using it as my defensive option.  If I roll +0 or worse, my defense is 2 (skill) + 2 (full defense) = 4, not bigger than his attack, so he's gonna hit me square up and I'll take the margin plus his Weapon:2 rating in stress. 

If I roll +1 or better, I defend (because my base is 4, as calculated above) just fine. If I want to activate my stunt to turn my defense roll into an immediate attack, though, I'm going to lose the +2 bonus from the full defense *on the attack*.  Let's run that scenario first:

I roll a +1, added to my base of 4, so my defense is Superb (+5). Against his Great (+4) attack, it's a successful defense.  I activate the riposte, so that defense roll now becomes my attack roll and vice-versa: Superb (+5) attack vs. Great (+4) defense. BUT, I lose the +2 full defense bonus in this conversion so it actually comes out as a Good (+3) attack vs. a Great (+4) defense. That's a miss.

But if I roll better than +1, then I'm still gonna get a Great result on my riposte attack even without that +2 full defense bonus. The riposte attack will connect with his Great defense (his attack roll that I've turned on itself), and I'll get to add my own Weapon:2 to the margin of success.

In order to do that riposte, though, I've had to sacrifice the next exchange's action (essentially I used it in advance for the riposte).

So, next exchange, it comes my turn, but I don't get to do anything. I've already done it.  If the guy comes at me again, I won't be operating with a full defense bonus because I wasn't able to re-declare a full defense as my second exchange's action.