Marei's Seven - a walkthrough

Reader indicated that the fight in the [url=Marei's Seven][/url] thread was at least partially a learning exercise, so I thought that a blow-by-blow walkthrough might be useful in analysing what happened and any oddities or purely mechanical mistakes that were made.

Please note that this is my interpretation of events. There may be factors I'm overlooking or unaware of that can explain one or more of the things I've noted below.

The Battlefield
As presented, the battle takes place atop a plateau or "
imposing hill"
. Only two paths lead up to the plateau. At the top, we find Marei, standing atop a horse with a noose around her neck. The noose is looped over a bough of the hanging tree. At the opposite end of the plateau are seven horses, each bearing two riders.

Reflections: No information is provided about the size of the plateau, so we have no knowledge of how far away Marei and our opponents are. It is only now that we are also informed that the path up to the top was too steep to ride, so we are all on foot.

Via PM, I am informed that Marei is equidistant from us and Lionel's band, and that she can be reached in a Lesser Action. Since we are on foot, I assume that this means she is about 3-4 yards away and Lionel's band is about 6-8 yards away. This is information that could easily have been provided in the initial description, thereby speeding up play by allowing players to begin planning their actions immediately.

What is still missing is a description of any salient battlefield qualities (p. 159-162 GoT rules). I therefore assumed that there are no battlefield qualities that can be activated using DP.

Initiative Order
Baelon - Jorah - Dunstan - Five longsword knights - Greatsword knight - Jon - Seven woodsmen - Kevan - Benedict - Theomore - Lionel Darry

Round 1
Baelon: Uses one Lesser Action to mount his horse and another to control it ([url=per this post][/url]). His horse uses a Greater Action to sprint to the tree. Baelon spends 1 Fatigue to gain an extra Lesser Action, which he uses for a Cautious Attack to cut Marei's noose.
Reflections: If the distance to the tree had been known beforehand, Baelon wouldn't have had to assume that his horse needed to sprint to get to the tree.

Jorah: Uses on Lesser Action to mount his horse and another to control it. The mount takes a Lesser Action move in front of Baelon. Jorah uses a Free Action to taunt Ser Lionel.

Dunstan: Uses a Lesser Action to mount his steed and another to blow his warhorn. Spends 1 Fatigue for an extra Lesser Action to ride between Marei and Lionel's band.
Reflections: Dunstan never states that he uses an action to control his steed, so technically the steed is uncontrolled. He also spends 1 Fatigue to gain an extra action which he doesn't need to perform himself, since he can use the steed's actions to move once it's under control. However, by simply replacing his last action with an action to control the steed, and then having the horse move with its own actions, Dunstan would achieve the exact same results as he described.

Five longsword knights: Each knight uses a Greater Action to Charge a separate foe.
Reflections: At this point, no mention has been made of the knights dismounting and charging on foot. In retrospect, the relatively low number of bonus dice rolled is a hint, but with no knowledge of the knights stats it's impossible to be certain as a player. Not knowing that the knights have dismounted also compounds the issue of not knowing how far apart we are, since a Charge on a horse can obviously cover a much greater distance than a Charge on foot.

Mounting a steed is a Lesser Action, and it seems reasonable that dismounting safely would also be one. If that's the case, all the knights would have needed to spend 1 Fatigue to enable them to both dismount and Charge.

Greatsword knight: He uses a Greater Action to Charge Dunstan and hits him for 4 DoS (23 vs. CD 7), totalling 32 damage and forcing Dunstan to take a wound.
Reflections: The same as for the longsword knights.

In addition, due to later being reminded that he had missed adding bonus dice from Animal Handling to his attack in Round 2, Dunstan spends 1 DP to give the greatsword knight -1D to his attack, lowering the result to 18 and 3 DoS, totalling 24 damage. Dunstan's armor absorbs 10 points of damage, leaving 14 to go through, dropping him to -5 (9-14 = -5). Dunstan takes 2 injuries to reduce this damage, putting him at 1/9 Health, but doesn't note this reduced Health in his combat statistics, which makes for confusing reading.

Jon: Uses a Lesser Action to attack the knight who targeted him, and a second Lesser Action to Maneuver the knight.
Reflections: Because the knight's combat stats haven't been revealed, it would ordinarily be impossible to determine how many DoS Jon achieved on his attack. Fortunately, the roll was high enough that, for all practical purposes, 4 DoS could be assumed.

It was clear from the knight's attack roll that he had Fighting 4, but since I was still working under the assumption that he was mounted, it was not possible to determine how effective Jon's Maneuver action had been. Lack of information about the battlefield also made it impossible to know whether the knight could be maneuvered off the edge of the plateau, and lack of clarity about the distance to the 4 unengaged woodsmen made it impossible to know whether maneuvering the knight in their direction would serve any useful purpose. In short, lack of information made it impossible to determine the actual outcome of this action.

Seven woodsmen: Three woodsmen spend both Lesser Actions on a double move and then spend 1 Fatigue to attempt Knockdowns against Ben, Kevan and Theomore. They are successful against Ben and Theomore. The other four woodsmen use one Lesser Action to move, and another to Aim their attacks in Round 2.
Reflections: The distances moved once again contribute to lack of understanding about the situation on the battlefield. There was also no information given about the placement of the four unengaged woodsmen. For instance, were they all standing together, or were they spread out, getting ready to target individual opponents?

Kevan: Uses a Lesser Action to mount, and another to attack the woodsman who tried a Knockdown against him.
Reflections: Kevan doesn't use a Lesser Action to control his mount, so his steed would be uncontrolled. However, I can't find any rules directly stating what that entails as long as you're not trying to get the mount to do anything. Personally, I would at the very least rule that you would forfeit the +2 damage bonus gained from the horse fighting with you.

Kevan appears to have forgotten to add his Animal Handling rank as bonus dice to his attack roll, and he adds the +2 damage bonus to his base damage, rather than after multiplying for DoS. In his post [url=here][/url], Reader did state that he thought it should be added to base damage, but I disagree - the text on p. 163 doesn't mention base damage, just damage.

Benedict: Uses a Lesser Action to test Agility (Acrobatics) to stand up as a Lesser Action, and another to attack the knight who attacked him.
Reflections: Ben rolled 10 on 3d6 to stand as a Lesser Action, but forgot to deduct his AP from the roll, and so should have failed the Difficulty 9 test.

Theomore: Spends 1 DP to "
invoke the quality of being surrounded by meatshields"
preventing the knight and the woodsman from moving adjacent to him and carrying out their intended actions. He then uses the rules on Expanded Specialites (p. 204) to Vault into the Saddle as a Free Action, followed by a Lesser Action to control his mount and a Lesser Action to attack the knight who attacked him.
Reflections: I assume that Theo's use of DP is intended to activate an environmental (battlefield) quality. Since no such qualities had been defined before the battle began, strictly speaking it shouldn't be possible to activate one now. Also, from his description, Theo appears to have wanted to spend his DP to gain the benefit of the Obstacles quality (p. 160), but since he only names "
meatshields, horses, allies, etc."
a more correct quality would IMO be Bystanders (p. 161).

Further, spending DP has specific effects for both Obstacles and Bystanders, neither of which is to provide a physical barrier preventing movement. Preventing movement is an intrisinic feature of Obstacles and doesn't require spending a DP (you spend a DP to bypass this feature instead);
Bystanders don't prevent movement at all. Spending a DP for Bystanders makes an attack that hit you hit a bystander instead - it has no other effects. In short, I feel this was very iffy use of DP that went well beyond what the rules specifically support.

The Vault into the Saddle option provided on p. 204 is achieved by using Animal Handling with the Acrobatics specialty (normally keyed to Agility). There is no mention of what sort of action this is, but since the default for Acrobatics is a Lesser Action I feel that this should have been the case here as well. Also, although it isn't stated outright, the text for Expanded Specialties heavily implies that they are intended for situations where you want to use a specialty in which you have actual bonus dice together with a situationally more appropriate ability. Simply substituting in the ability, as Theo did, seems to go against RAI.

Ser Lionel: He is stated to "
mirror"
Jorah's actions, so presumably he does nothing but move adjacent to Jorah.
Reflections: Presumably Lionel too had dismounted, if he exactly mirrored Jorah's actions.

Round 2 to follow in separate post.

Round 2
Baelon: Uses one Lesser Action to attack the knight who has engaged him in combat. He uses his second Lesser Action to Maneuver the knight if the latter is still standing. If neither the knight nor any other opponent is available to Maneuver, Baelon will use the action to cut the ropes binding Marei.
Reflections: Baelon also adds the +2 mounted combat bonus to his base damage. As stated before, I disagree with this interpretation.

Jorah: Uses one Lesser Action to attack Ser Lionel, and the second to Knockdown Ser Lionel.
Reflections: Jorah originally adds +2 to his attack roll, but then removes it stating that "
the +2 comes from attacking non- mounted"
. By this, I assume he means the bonus mentioned on p. 163, which is a bonus to damage, not the attack roll.

Reader later points out, and I agree, that Knockdown isn't applicable to a mounted foe. The closes equivalent is Pulling a Rider from a Mount (p. 164). Jorah retcons by changing to Aim.

Jorah also appears to have forgotten to add bonus dice from Animal Handling to his attack rolls.

Dunstan: Uses one Lesser Action to Knockdown the greatsword knight, and the second for a standard attack.
Reflections: Dunstan rolls 13 on his Knockdown test, and notes that he takes 1 Fatigue to "
ignore AP"
. Since his own AP doesn't affect the roll, I presume he means he takes Fatigue to ignore his 2 injuries. However, he has then taken 2 Fatigue and so should take a -2 penalty to his Knockdown test anyway. If the greatsword knight has at least Agility 3, the Knockdown fails.

Five longsword knights: Baelon's foe is successfully maneuvered and the uses a Greater Action to Yield.
Jon's foe uses a Lesser Action to re-engage Jon, and his second to Attack, taking Fatigue to ignore his injuries. The attack fails to penetrate Jon's AR.
Kevan's knight is noted as being defeated in Round 1.
Ben's knight delays his actions until his woodsman partner can offer an assist, then makes a single Standard Attack. He is noted as being defeated on Ben's initiative.
Theomore's knight is noted as being defeated in Round 1.
Reflections: Ben's knight only makes use of one of his Lesser Actions, and should also have benefitted from Ben failing his Agility test to stand up in Round 1. IMO, Theomore's opponent would probably also still be fighting (see Theo post for round 1).

Greatsword knight: He uses a Greater Action to stand, and spends 2 Fatigue for 2 Lesser Actions - Maneuver against Dunstan (successful) and a Move action to reach his horse.
Reflections: The write-up [url=here][/url] reads as if the knight spends 1 Fatigue to gain a Greater Action, but that is illegal. Having taken 2 injuries, his Maneuver test takes a -2 penalty, but should have taken a further -1 penalty for Fatigue spent to gain the action (it would still have been successful, however). Also, Maneuver is a Fighting test, so bonus dice from specialties should reasonably apply to both the attack roll and the defender's passive Fighting defense.

As noted above for Dunstan, the greatsword knight also shouldn't have been knocked down in the first place.

Jon: After much discussion...uses a Lesser Action to attack his knight, and a second Lesser Action to Move to engage the woodsmen, and the spends 1 Fatigue to attack one of the woodsmen. Both the knight and the woodsman are killed.
Reflections - late update: Per the house rules for this game, this is actually an illegal move. The house rules state that we cannot use Fatigue or DP to gain extra attacks. Jon's turn should have ended after moving to engage the woodsman.

Seven woodsmen: One of the woodsmen is killed by Jon before he can act, so six are still in action on their turn.
The three woodsmen who aimed last round apparently do nothing - no actions are noted for them.
Kevan's woodsman Aims and then Attacks Kevan.
Ben's woodsman Assists the knight and then Aims.
Theo's woodsman also does nothing - no actions noted.
Reflections: At least four woodsmen never take any actions during Round 2, despite being able to act before Kevan, Ben and Theo. No woodsmen have been killed in Round 1, and only Jon kills one in Round 2 before the woodsmen are able to act. This is just incomprehensible...

Kevan: Uses a Lesser Action to attack his woodsman, and the Moves with his second Lesser Action.
Reflections: Kevan is still sitting on an uncontrolled mount, forgets to add bonus dice from Animal Handling, and cannot Move by himself while sitting on an uncontrolled horse.

Benedict: Uses a single Lesser Action to attack his knight.
Reflections: As noted in my round 1 post, Ben should still be flat on his back. This wouldn't have affected his attack roll, but might have had a positive effect on the knight's attack, as well as enabling the woodsman to attack instead of Aim.

Theomore: Uses a Greater Action to Trample three woodsmen.
Reflections: The description of Trample notes that you can trample over your enemies "
by moving in a straight line through them"
. Since we have no knowledge of how the woodsmen were aligned (were they really all standing in a straight line waiting to be attacked?) it is an assumption on Theo's part that he can even target more than one of them when he decides on this action.

When Theo starts his Trample, the first target should reasonably be the woodsman who tried to knock him down on round 1. One more woodsman is still engaged with Ben, leaving the three "
aiming"
woodsmen who have done nothing as the only remaining "
open"
targets. Letting all of them be potential Trample targets seems very generous to me. Once again, an actual description of their placement would have made it clear from the beginning how much success this action might have had.

Ser Lionel: Uses one Lesser Action to attack Jorah, and one to Aim.
Reflections: Lionel rolls 7d6k5 on his attack. Given that he later rolls 9d6k6 when using Aim and an extra test die for Pious, it would appear that he actually didn't use Aim to help his attack in round 2, which is odd, to say the least. Also, he doesn't appear to be adding any bonus ranks from Animal Handling to his attack.

Lionel is not getting his +2 bonus damage for being mounted.

Casualties at end of Round 2: All five longsword knights and the greatsword knight. Ben's knight and the greatsword knight would probably still be in the fight had all actions been resolved correctly.
Five woodsmen are down. Both Kevan's kill and the sheer number that Theo tramples are iffy IMO. The biggest problem, however, is that four of the woodsmen never actually take any actions during Round 2, despite having superior initiative to the PCs that kill them.

Round 3 post to follow tomorrow.

Three quick things and I will shut it. No need for any response, as I am not looking for PvP confrontations.

1. I pm-ed Reader after my error was made, with the resolution I would have liked, but there were a few more. I received no response so rolled with it.

2. The knight unless he ran/moved would have went down in the second round, if not the second the third and the woodsman would have bit it in the second. His damage in second may have caused injuries, but not game changing. Same end result.

3. I say all that to point out that this thread has sucked what little joy I got out of that chaos away. I do understand your reasoning for the posts but can't help but feel a little bashed.

I understand why all of you are upset, but would you have a do over and just suck it up if it was offered?

I have been catching up with all posts and most people wanted for another player that kind of feels like Jon when a culminating moment with build up got ruined?

Back to reading posts, this is a very interesting story and small plot twists and so many fickle lovers.

Two points of clarification on my actions:
In round 1, I did not make any assumptions about needing to have my horse sprint. I chose have her sprint because:
a) there was no reason not to
b) there is an advanced rule that attackers get -1D against targets that sprinted in their last turn ("
Moving Targets"
, p172).
I wasn't sure if the "
Moving Targets"
rule was being used or not, but I had no reason not to, so why not?
In hindsight, I'm thinking that the simplest way to handle mounted combat might be to make the "
control a mount"
roll a free action, and the horse and rider are treated as one composite agential unit - that is, they share a set of 2 lesser/1 greater action. Thus as a unit they can move (at the horses speed) and attack, or charge(again using the horse's speed), but not mount and sprint in one turn, or sprint then attack, etc. (unless there is a DP/fatigue expenditure for extra actions, but that would be the same as usual)

In round 2, I just went with Reader's interpretation. The book is written ambiguously, but as a determination had been made already, I went with that.

I get why you wanted to do this thread;
the fight itself was a huge mess with many mechanical errors;
it is good to catch those so that we can learn from it.
However, I do disagree on one point - this was clearly being done in a "
theater of the mind"
style, not as a tactical battle-game. A battle map or precise distances would have helped with tactical planning, but in my opinion does not capture the feel of battlefield chaos. I play other games for tactical combat, and they have a whole host of other rules to support it. This game can work that way, but a lot of other stuff needs to be added to make it work right. SIFRP has many more features with narrative style gaming (such as player narrative control of defeated foes outcomes, DP, etc). Why should combat be any different? That being said, more description would have been helpful.... but I don't think battle maps are necessary... this was about as large of a combat that would be seen (anything larger would use the Warfare rules), and while it was a bit of a stretch, it was ok.

Benedict Blackthorne wrote:Three quick things and I will shut it. No need for any response, as I am not looking for PvP confrontations.

1. I pm-ed Reader after my error was made, with the resolution I would have liked, but there were a few more. I received no response so rolled with it.

2. The knight unless he ran/moved would have went down in the second round, if not the second the third and the woodsman would have bit it in the second. His damage in second may have caused injuries, but not game changing. Same end result.

3. I say all that to point out that this thread has sucked what little joy I got out of that chaos away. I do understand your reasoning for the posts but can't help but feel a little bashed.

No response? Well bugger, I can't just let you drop in here, feel that you've been unfairly bashed and then waltz out again! I'm looking for a constructive discussion and your post is a good start. Thank you for that.

So, unwanted response...
Regarding the risk of PvP and 3., you have my sincere apologies if you feel that I am singling you out for a bashing - I really am not. This thread is intended to help get an overview of what actually happened in the fight (since I found it very confusing) and to point out errors that were made so that they can be avoided in the future.

I am not trying to apportion any blame and I do not believe that anyone in the thread acted out of any sort of malice (i.e. was trying to cheat). I do believe that everyone did the best they could under the circumstances. i.e. chose their actions in a manner that they believed was consistent with both the rules and the scenario as presented.

Regarding 1., the only question I have is that, if you discovered the error on your own and received no response to your PM, why not just edit your post and accept the (temporary) setback?

Regarding 2., The end result isn't really in dispute. I think the fight emphatically showed that the NCs would have had to use far cannier strategies to realy challenge our PCs. However, as you yourself note, had both the knight and the woodsman been able to attack you, with +1D for Ben being on the ground, then you may have suffered damage that would have forced you to take injuries. To me, being forced to take injuries is not insignificant.

Thanks again for posting!

Baelon wrote:Two points of clarification on my actions:
In round 1, I did not make any assumptions about needing to have my horse sprint. I chose have her sprint because:
a) there was no reason not to
b) there is an advanced rule that attackers get -1D against targets that sprinted in their last turn ("
Moving Targets"
, p172).
I wasn't sure if the "
Moving Targets"
rule was being used or not, but I had no reason not to, so why not?

Very good points that I hadn't considered! In that light, choosing to have the horse Sprint was the smart move no matter how far away the hanging tree was.

Baelon wrote:In hindsight, I'm thinking that the simplest way to handle mounted combat might be to make the "
control a mount"
roll a free action, and the horse and rider are treated as one composite agential unit - that is, they share a set of 2 lesser/1 greater action. Thus as a unit they can move (at the horses speed) and attack, or charge(again using the horse's speed), but not mount and sprint in one turn, or sprint then attack, etc. (unless there is a DP/fatigue expenditure for extra actions, but that would be the same as usual)

I'll avoid addressing house rule suggestions in this thread, since coming up with house rules isn't its primary purpose. Happy to discuss your suggestion elsewhere though.

Baelon wrote:In round 2, I just went with Reader's interpretation. The book is written ambiguously, but as a determination had been made already, I went with that.

Perfectly understandable.

Baelon wrote:I get why you wanted to do this thread;
the fight itself was a huge mess with many mechanical errors;
it is good to catch those so that we can learn from it. However, I do disagree on one point - this was clearly being done in a "
theater of the mind"
style, not as a tactical battle-game. A battle map or precise distances would have helped with tactical planning, but in my opinion does not capture the feel of battlefield chaos. I play other games for tactical combat, and they have a whole host of other rules to support it. This game can work that way, but a lot of other stuff needs to be added to make it work right. SIFRP has many more features with narrative style gaming (such as player narrative control of defeated foes outcomes, DP, etc). Why should combat be any different? That being said, more description would have been helpful.... but I don't think battle maps are necessary... this was about as large of a combat that would be seen (anything larger would use the Warfare rules), and while it was a bit of a stretch, it was ok.

I usually don't use either figures or maps for most of the RPGs I play IRL, but IME the need for precise information on distances and locations increases a great deal as soon as I'm playing games with a hard-coded set of actions to choose from in combat. SIFRP is definitely such a system, even though there are far more detailed systems as well.

As a simple example, IIRC, Baelon's foot movement is 2/4 in full kit? On horseback, it's fairly reasonable to assume that its move could have gotten you wherever you needed to go by ordering a Sprint, so the actual distances aren't that important. On foot, having a foe 2 or 3 yards away is the difference between being able to Move and Cautious Attack (which seems to be your favorite :;
): ) or being forced to Charge in order to engage.

But, even with a system like SIFRP, one can get away with far less detail at a gaming table than I feel is possible in PbP, because at the table, a player can just ask for clarification when his turn comes around and get an instant response. Clearly, this is far less likely to happen in PbP, where many people will be in different time zones or will have varying amounts of time to spend logged on.

Thanks for posting!

Round 3
Anyone not noted below is either defeated, fleeing or chooses not to take any actions.

Baelon: Uses a Greater Action to charge the greatsword knight, who moved to a horse in Round 2.

Jorah: Uses one Lesser Action to Aim, and the second to attack Ser Lionel.
Reflections: Jorah appears to have forgotten to add bonus dice from Animal Handling to his attack rolls and is not taking his +2 damage for being mounted.

Dunstan: Uses one Lesser Action to Move (ride) to Ser Lionel, and the second for a standard attack.
Reflections: Dunstan appears to have forgotten to add bonus dice from Animal Handling to his attack roll. Dunstan also takes a -2 penalty to his attack roll, but since he has both 2 injuries and 2 Fatigue, he should be taking -4.

Dunstan has forgotten to update his combat stats to reflect that he removed the earlier wound in lieu of 2 injuries, which makes for confusing reading.

Greatsword knight: Is noted as being defeated by Baelon's attack.

Two woodsmen: The woodsmen are noted as breaking and fleeing in round 3. Only Ben was still engaged in combat with a woodsman, the other woodsman is probably the last "
aiming"
woodsman. Ben's foe is noted as being cut down by Ben's passive Fighting check as he turns to flee. This leaves one woodsman fleeing on foot.

Benedict: Takes no actions except for a free attack as his woodsman opponent turns to flee. He notes that the woodsman is defeated but still alive.

Ser Lionel: Uses one Lesser Action to Aim, and one to attack Jorah. He activates Pious for +1D.
Reflections: Ser Lionel does not appear to be adding his Animal Handling ranks as bonus dice. Lionel is not getting his +2 bonus damage for being mounted.

Casualties at end of Round 3: The fleeing greatsword knight is captured.
One woodsman is defeated by Ben, the other is fleeing.

Round 4
Jorah: Uses one Lesser Action to Aim, and the second to attack Ser Lionel.
Reflections: Jorah is not taking his +2 damage for being mounted. He is rolling more bonus dice than before, but it's still unclear whether he's adding all or some of his Animal Handling ranks as bonus dice.

In response to Ser Lionel's attack in round 3, Jorah first gets his math wrong and only takes 1 injury to reduce the damage despite needing two. With two injuries, his attack roll is reduced to 3 DoS. Jorah later retcons this by taking 1 Fatigue to ignore his injuries and therefore retains his 4 DoS.

Lionel: Is noted as being defeated and burns a DP to choose death.

Casualties at end of Round 4: Ser Lionel is dead. The fleeing woodsman is noted as being captured by our reinforcements. The knight who yielded to Baelon in Round 2 is captured. The status of all other defeated knights is left up to the players.

I didn't edit my posts because the wound retcon happened after the battle. If I start rolling another test dice and adding it to the posts, than the results would likely cause a need for other players to edit their actions as well, with no need really.
Specifically if Dunstan had another test dice on the greatsword knight, than maybe Baelon wouldn't have to run him down in the next round. That would require him to do something else instead, which would maybe have effect on the other characters etc, etc..

Butterfly effect.

Dunstan Tullison wrote:I didn't edit my posts because the wound retcon happened after the battle. If I start rolling another test dice and adding it to the posts, than the results would likely cause a need for other players to edit their actions as well, with no need really.
Specifically if Dunstan had another test dice on the greatsword knight, than maybe Baelon wouldn't have to run him down in the next round. That would require him to do something else instead, which would maybe have effect on the other characters etc, etc..

Butterfly effect.

Okay, color me confused.

Your stats from the joust suggest that you have Animal Handling 3 and Fighting 4 (Spears 1B). In your [url=round 2 post][/url] you roll 4d6k3 on your Knockdown test, suggesting that you have Athletics 3 (Strength 1B), and you roll 4d6 for a standard attack with a lance, which is consistent with your stats from the joust. Where are you knocking off a test die? It seems to me that you're rolling all your normal dice (except for forgetting your Animal Handling rank as bonus dice on your attack).

I rolled 4d6 hecause i had the 3d6 normal attack plus one die from a succesfull knockdown. If i didnt have a wound i would roll 5 test dice not 4.

I have 4 athleticks, rolled 3 bc of the wound

Wait, so are you saying that you didn't take your second Fatigue point until after the Knockdown roll? If that's the case, why did you note it next to your Knockdown test?

Assuming you did do that, your Knockdown test is good, except that it should have still suffered a -1 penalty for Fatigue from round 1. If this is correct, then yes, your Knockdown attempt still succeeded since you'd get a 12.

However, I'm still confused as to why you changed your post to indicate that you had taken 2 injuries instead of 1 wound if you knew the changes weren't going to take effect until after the battle? If you're going to play as if you have the wound throughout the battle, wouldn't it have been easier to just leave things as they were?

Also, in your [url=revised round 3 post][/url], you are once again rolling 4d6-2 for a Standard Attack. This is consistent with having 2 Fatigue, but not for also having 1 wound or 2 injuries. Is there something I'm missing here as well? :?

BTW, please don't get the impression that I'm picking on you. I'm genuinely trying to understand your posts because I find them quite confusing. And I don't like feeling confused... :;
):

Damn, forgot one more thing:

Dunstan Tullison wrote:I rolled 4d6 hecause i had the 3d6 normal attack plus one die from a succesfull knockdown. If i didnt have a wound i would roll 5 test dice not 4.

If you have Fighting 4 and +1D for a successful Knockdown, you would normally roll 5d6 on your Standard Attack, right? If you spent Fatigue to ignore your wound, why didn't you roll 5d6 on your attack roll?

If you're in fact saying that you didn't spend any Fatigue to ignore your wound in round 2, then you should have rolled 5d6k4 after the Knockdown, because the -1D from the wound and +1D from Knockdown don't cancel out - each affects your dice roll in a different way.

[Jon Cobb]Dunstan has forgotten to update his combat stats to reflect that he removed the earlier wound in lieu of 2 injuries, which makes for confusing reading.[/quote]

This is why I edited my posts, it seems it would make your reading less confusing.
It feels like we are spinning in circles a bit now,

[Jon Cobb] If you're going to play as if you have the wound throughout the battle, wouldn't it have been easier to just leave things as they were?[/quote]

Things I did wrong: Didn't include 3B from AH in mounted attacks, didn''t make a roll to control the steed.

I originally spent one DP for a bonus dice to succeed in the knockout action, however when I saw I had 3 unused bonus dice from AH i could have rolled for that, I changed the DP action to impose -1D on the opponent. So if any of those 3 turned out to be a 3, knockout would be succesfull, even with 2 points of fatigue (one to ignore armor penalty, one to make an extra action).
Do you substrack armor penalty from Athletics checks? I thought you do, that is why I took a point of fatigue, to ignore that.

The last attack was a mistake, I should have rolled 3d6, not 4d6. I thought Lionel was unmounted, and Dunstan has an extra test dice because he is mounted.

And no problem at all, I'm no expert on these rules - it's always good to nitpick a bit.

Dunstan Tullison wrote:I originally spent one DP for a bonus dice to succeed in the knockout action, however when I saw I had 3 unused bonus dice from AH i could have rolled for that, I changed the DP action to impose -1D on the opponent. So if any of those 3 turned out to be a 3, knockout would be succesfull, even with 2 points of fatigue (one to ignore armor penalty, one to make an extra action).

Ok, now I'm a little confused. By 'knockout' do you mean knockdown? If so, the bonus dice for being mounted do not apply, they only apply on fighting tests (which now that I look, I should apply to maneuver as well)

Dunstan Tullison wrote:Do you substrack armor penalty from Athletics checks? I thought you do, that is why I took a point of fatigue, to ignore that.

No, only from Agility tests.

Dunstan Tullison wrote:The last attack was a mistake, I should have rolled 3d6, not 4d6. I thought Lionel was unmounted, and Dunstan has an extra test dice because he is mounted.

Mounted vs. unmounted adds +1B, not +1D. It doesn't really add much compared to the +XB from AH.

Ah, ok.
Well, I'll make mental notes. Thanks.

Dunstan Tullison wrote:Things I did wrong: Didn't include 3B from AH in mounted attacks, didn't make a roll to control the steed.

Agreed. Those bonus dice could have been really useful - shame you forgot about them.

Dunstan Tullison wrote:I originally spent one DP for a bonus dice to succeed in the knockout action, however when I saw I had 3 unused bonus dice from AH i could have rolled for that, I changed the DP action to impose -1D on the opponent. So if any of those 3 turned out to be a 3, knockout would be succesfull, even with 2 points of fatigue (one to ignore armor penalty, one to make an extra action).
Do you substrack armor penalty from Athletics checks? I thought you do, that is why I took a point of fatigue, to ignore that.

The AH bonus dice wouldn't have affected your Knockdown roll, because Knockdown is an Athletics test and the AH bonus dice only apply to Fighting tests (p. 58 of the GoT rules).

Your armor penalty only affects Agility tests and CD (p. 155 of the GoT rules), so you didn't need to spend a DP to ignore your own AP. Normally, the knight's AP would have reduced his passive Agility, but Reader has houseruled that [url=AP doesn't apply in Knockdown tests][/url].

Dunstan Tullison wrote:The last attack was a mistake, I should have rolled 3d6, not 4d6. I thought Lionel was unmounted, and Dunstan has an extra test dice because he is mounted.

And no problem at all, I'm no expert on these rules - it's always good to nitpick a bit.

A mounted attack against an opponent on foot provides +1B, not +1D, so if Lionel had been on foot, you should have rolled 8d6k3:
Fighting 4 = 4d6
+AH bonus dice = 7d6k4
+1B for attacking an opponent on foot = 8d6k4
-1D for being wounded = 8d6k3

The important thing to remember about penalty dice is that you don't subtract them from the number of dice you roll, only from the number of dice you get to keep. In effect they're a sort of reverse bonus dice, rather than reverse test dice. P. 30 of the Got rulebook makes this quite clear:

Penalty die
A die subtracted from the test dice (starting with the lowest first) after any bonus dice have been discarded but before the dice are summed to determine the result. A penalty die is abbreviated –#D, where the # is the number of penalty dice, e.g., –2D is two penalty dice.

Late update, but an important one I think. Baelon just pointed out to me that I broke Reader's house rules in Round 2, when I declared the following actions:

Jon: After much discussion...uses a Lesser Action to attack his knight, and a second Lesser Action to Move to engage the woodsmen, and the spends 1 Fatigue to attack one of the woodsmen. Both the knight and the woodsmen are killed.

Per the house rules, you cannot spend Fatigue or DP to get a second attack!

We're using the fatigue rules (but you can't use fatigue or destiny to generate extra attacks)

I completely overlooked this, which just goes to show how easy it is to get tunnel vision! All I can say in my defence is: House rules! We hates 'em, don't we my precious!