Quick DFRPG Questions: Evocation vs. Attacks and Stealth

[jhosmer1]

I was running a playtest of my DFRPG scenario I'm going to run, and a player asked a very good question.
His wizard was attacked by a Red Court Vampire.  He replied that he was throwing up a shield.

In looking at the rules, I couldn't see anything that allowed him to use magic as a reaction.  (I couldn't find anything that ruled it out explicitly, either...)

So, my question is this... if someone is attacking a wizard, can he use a spell for the opposed roll?  Seems to me that an answer either way would greatly effect the way the game plays.
 
I also had a stealth question... I was running a playtest on Thursday, and someone wanted to move and use his stealth at the same time. I know Stealth talks about modifiers due to movement, and the Speed Powers can chop 2, 4, or more off modifiers due to movement... but I couldn't find any mention of how movement modifies the difficulty... best I could find was movement modifying the difficulty of any roll (p 312), but that only gave a +2... so the Superhuman and Mythic Speed abilities seem like overkill.

Not having time to look up anything at the table, I just said, "OK, +1 difficulty for each zone you move through," and that worked for the moment, but I'd like to know what the actual rule is.

[iago]

In looking at the rules, I couldn't see anything that allowed him to use magic as a reaction.  (I couldn't find anything that ruled it out explicitly, either...)

So, my question is this... if someone is attacking a wizard, can he use a spell for the opposed roll?  Seems to me that an answer either way would greatly effect the way the game plays.

Honestly, I forget what Lenny intended here -- I'll see if I can ask him. But Harry does talk occasionally about not having the time to get his shields up, so that's food for thought.
 

I also had a stealth question... I was running a playtest on Thursday, and someone wanted to move and use his stealth at the same time. I know Stealth talks about modifiers due to movement, and the Speed Powers can chop 2, 4, or more off modifiers due to movement... but I couldn't find any mention of how movement modifies the difficulty... best I could find was movement modifying the difficulty of any roll (p 312), but that only gave a +2... so the Superhuman and Mythic Speed abilities seem like overkill.

Again, can't remember the intent. I'll let you know if I find the time to find anything about it.

[iago]

Honestly, I forget what Lenny intended here -- I'll see if I can ask him. But Harry does talk occasionally about not having the time to get his shields up, so that's food for thought.

I am leaning towards allowing evocation blocks and counterspells as defenses, but I'm doublechecking with the dev team to see if this interpretation flies. Short of that, I might allow it as a "sacrifice your next action" thing, but that's a second-choice alternative; we'll see what the dev query returns.

Edit: Ahhh, and there's the sacrifice, too; if you do an evocation spell as your defense roll, you DON'T get a normal defense roll, so the "block" version ends up being the only difficulty your attacker faces to hit you. That supports the whole notion even more, IMO; that's an interesting choice.

[SoulCatcher78]

This brings up a question for me...can you "ready" an action/block/manuever/spell?  This would be along the lines of gathering the power needed for the shield but not launching it.  If you're surprised it wouldn't be much good but (as the boos point out) not even a monster is faster than the speed of thought.

[iago]

There's no "ready action" in the system, really. That's excessively fiddly.

[iago]

Current draft marginalia for YS254 -- there's absolutely no room to put it on the previous two-page spread -- which I'm vetting with my (so far unresponsive) dev staff:

HARRY: Billy, I have a question from the previous pages. Can you do Block evocations instead of rolling to defend? How about counter­spells?

BILLY: I’d rule that you can do it with a block, but keep in mind that when you forego your defense roll, your blocking spell is the only difficulty your attacker will have to overcome—no defense roll means no defense aside from that. If the block is not broken, it would persist until the end of the next exchange.

BILLY: I’d also say that counterspells can’t be done reactively, due to the assessment requirement.

[Biff Dyskolos]

In looking at the rules, I couldn't see anything that allowed him to use magic as a reaction.  (I couldn't find anything that ruled it out explicitly, either...)

I was wondering about this as well. Throwing up a shield (Block) on a defencive roll just doesn't seem right. What I was think about was a *fast* attack where you only have time to summon one shift of power so it does no damage. You would just roll 4dF + Discipline as a defence and describe the effect as you like. Spirit, a flash of light that causes your attacker to flinch at the last moment. Air, a gust of wind deflects the blow.

[iago]

Fast attacks mean you dive for cover, you don't call up a spell.

[iago]

I also had a stealth question... I was running a playtest on Thursday, and someone wanted to move and use his stealth at the same time. I know Stealth talks about modifiers due to movement, and the Speed Powers can chop 2, 4, or more off modifiers due to movement... but I couldn't find any mention of how movement modifies the difficulty... best I could find was movement modifying the difficulty of any roll (p 312), but that only gave a +2... so the Superhuman and Mythic Speed abilities seem like overkill.

This may be a case of things being all spread around. In aggregate, 311-312 talks about looking at various factors that exist and adjusting difficulty appropriately. Movement is but one of them.  And the skulking trapping on YS143 gets into this a bit: "It uses many of the same rules as Hiding, above, but it adds in difficulty factors based on how fast you are moving and the terrain. A slow crawl isn’t much harder, but running is tough. Bare concrete isn’t much of an issue, but a scattering of dried leaves and twigs makes it much more difficult to move quietly." I'll see if I can get into the stuff on YS312 and help it achieve more obvious unity with YS143, but I think the unity is there (just muddy).

[Biff Dyskolos]

Fast attacks mean you dive for cover, you don't call up a spell.

Diving for cover would use Athletics as a defence, wouldn't it? The original question was could evocation be used as a defence. That would mean using either Lore, Conviction or Discipline for the defencive skill.

[iago]

Diving for cover would use Athletics as a defence, wouldn't it? The original question was could evocation be used as a defence. That would mean using either Lore, Conviction or Discipline for the defensive skill.

Yes, Biff, and I've answered that already, above. You then came in and talked about the need to defend against "fast" attacks despite that answer, so I figured you needed something more. The something more is "dive for cover, nimrod, don't take your time to cast a spell".

[iago]

This may be a case of things being all spread around. In aggregate, 311-312 talks about looking at various factors that exist and adjusting difficulty appropriately. Movement is but one of them.  And the skulking trapping on YS143 gets into this a bit: "It uses many of the same rules as Hiding, above, but it adds in difficulty factors based on how fast you are moving and the terrain. A slow crawl isn’t much harder, but running is tough. Bare concrete isn’t much of an issue, but a scattering of dried leaves and twigs makes it much more difficult to move quietly." I'll see if I can get into the stuff on YS312 and help it achieve more obvious unity with YS143, but I think the unity is there (just muddy).

Okay, marginalia time!

Addition to YS178:

HARRY: So what are all these “difficulty factors due to moving”, Billy? I’ve looked at skulking on page 143 and modifying difficulties for movement on page 312 and I’m still confused!

BILLY: Well, the difficulty modification stuff is mostly about looking at the situation and adding +2 for each factor that works against the stealthy individual. So here, each “reduced by two” amounts to “ignore one factor”.

BILLY: So to get into a specific example. Let’s say you want to move quickly across several zones, some of which are covered in crunchy-sounding gravel.  Those are two factors, each adding +2 to whatever the GM decided the basic difficulty was. Inhuman Speed ignores one of those. Supernatural ignores both.

I'll poke around and see if more needs to be gotten at, but I think that hits the core of it.

[Biff Dyskolos]

Yes, Biff, and I've answered that already, above. You then came in and talked about the need to defend against "fast" attacks despite that answer, so I figured you needed something more. The something more is "dive for cover, nimrod, don't take your time to cast a spell".

I apologize for having offended you buy you may have misunderstood me. I was not talking about defending "against 'fast' attacks". I was trying to suggest a fast evocation used as a defence. It would be like using Weapons to parry an attack. Except in this case you would be using an underpowered evocation (because you were doing really fast) to parry an attack.

[Deadmanwalking]

I apologize for having offended you buy you may have misunderstood me. I was not talking about defending "against 'fast' attacks". I was trying to suggest a fast evocation used as a defence. It would be like using Weapons to parry an attack. Except in this case you would be using an underpowered evocation (because you were doing really fast) to parry an attack.

Dude. He specifically said you could do basically that the very post before you asked the question. The only difference being that it's a full power Evocation. So, yeah, when you ask the question he just answered, he may've gotten a bit annoyed.

Re-read the posts before your first in this thread for details.

[iago]

Current draft marginalia for YS254 -- there's absolutely no room to put it on the previous two-page spread -- which I'm vetting with my (so far unresponsive) dev staff:

HARRY: Billy, I have a question from the previous pages. Can you do Block evocations instead of rolling to defend? How about counter­spells?

BILLY: I’d rule that you can do it with a block, but keep in mind that when you forego your defense roll, your blocking spell is the only difficulty your attacker will have to overcome—no defense roll means no defense aside from that. If the block is not broken, it would persist until the end of the next exchange.

BILLY: I’d also say that counterspells can’t be done reactively, due to the assessment requirement.

I've run this past the dev staff. As I suspected, we did not have an original design intent to provide for reactive blocks at all. Blocks are standard actions, so dev consensus is pointing at making it something you can do reactively only if you sacrifice your next action to do so. (If allowed at all. Lenny and I are still debating.)