Opposed Combat Tests

DamonJynx

Cosmic Mongoose
Can someone please tell me who is right (see below)?

Position 1
Also, with opposed tests in combat for manoeuvres and major and minor wounds it works like this:

If the successful attack/parry roll that provokes an opposed test is higher than the opposing skill, the opposing skill is rolled normally and must succeed to negate the penalty.
If the provoking roll is lower than the opposing skill, the opposing skill roll must be under the provoking roll.

I hit you with an attack of 73% you fail on your parry. I use the bleed combat manoeuvre which forces you to roll a resilience test. If your resilience skill is lower than 73% you must succeed normally (i.e. under your skill), if your resilience skill is over 73% you must roll under 73% to succeed, over 73% in this case counts as a failure even though it may be a success normally.

Position 2
That doesn’t work your rewarding the weak and punishing the strong, what you wrote is backwards. If you're so good that you can hit with a 73 then an opposing skill verses that should be equally as good to beat you. This the reason why the higher roll is better, within the level of success anyway, critical success will beat your 73 even if the opposing skill success chance is less than 73, though that would be the only way to beat it.

I mean if someone is so good that they can roll a 73 and still pass they should be given some reward for their skill and not allow a weaker opponent with an opposing skill of 60 to have a better than average chance to just shrug off your advantage. Also if a really weak person rolls a 20 success even though his skill is only 21 someone opposing that roll who has say 120 can only beat them with a 19 or less... sounds wrong to me.
 
Position 2 is correct.

Only a critical Resilience roll can save the victim from a high attack skill roll above his Resilience skill.

So in your example (assuming the victim has a Resilience of 60%) the victim must roll 01 to 06 or loose the opposed test.

This is designed to show that a more skilled warrior can place their blow with more devastating effect.

See page 34 of the Core rules for Opposed Skill Tests.
 
That is a bit confusing but the answer is this.

Original attack roll is a normal success 73. Bleed Combat Manoeuvre is chosen so victim must make a Resilience roll and *beat 73*. That means that to win you have to either:

Succeed and roll *higher* than 73 OR You have to get a critical success.

If your Resilience skill is 60% then you *cannot win normally* because any normal success would not be over 73. Therefore the only way to win is to roll a critical success.

One way to think of this in a short-hand form is to say that it's roughly the same as having to make a Resilience test at -73%. Which is to say that it's very, very hard.
 
Thanks for sorting that out guys. After I re-read the rules I thought I was probably wrong. Oh well. Time to suck eggs.
 
DamonJynx said:
Can someone please tell me who is right (see below)?

Position 2 is correct.

eg1 Attacker has a skill of 75% and rolls 73
a) Defender has a skill of 60%
Defender must beat a normal success of 73, which he can only do by getting a critcal (1-6)

b) Defender has a skill of 93
Defender must beat a normal success of 73, which he can do with a critical (1-9) or a normal success of 73-93

eg2 Attacker has a skill of 21 and rolls 20
a) Defender has a skill of 84 - he needs to beat a normal success of 20, which he will on a critical (1-8) or a normal success of 21-84
b) defender has a skill of only 18, he can only win on a critical (1)


eg3 Attacker has a skill of 75% and rolls a critical success of 7
a) defender has a skill of 60% - He can't win!
b) defender has a skill of 93 - he only wins on a critical of 8 or 9

eg 4 Attacker has a skill of 21 and rolls a critical of 2
a) defender has a skill of 84, he will win on a 3-8
b) defender has a skill of 18 - again he can't win

Remember
I) Critical beats success beats fail beats fumble
II) If (and only if) the "level of success" is equal, the highest number wins
 
I worked out where I went wrong.

As combat itself isn't strictly an opposed test, I mistakenly thought that the triggering roll set the Maximum value for the opposed skill and you had to roll under it and within your skill percentile to succeed, completely ignoring the fact that the rules state the resilience rolls etc are an opposed test. Hence my logic is consistent, but my premise is way off.

Thank you all for the quick replies they resolved the situation quite nicely.
 
Wow, looks like I was doing this wrong. Guess I was still doing it the old RQ way.

I guess these rules make sence.... but it seeems like it would really slow down combat...

What do you think guys?
How is RQ2 combat?

T
 
troy812 said:
What do you think guys?
How is RQ2 combat?

In my experience thus far combat seems to run fairly quickly and smoothly with only the occasional hiccup whenever we encounter a new or unusual situation and even then it usually doesn't take us too long to find a solution.

For the most part I find combat in MRQ2 has a good mix of realism and abstraction. Its realistic enough to seem logical and intuitive yet contains enough abstraction to keep a fairly quick and steady pace during combat. YMMV.
 
troy812 said:
I guess these rules make sence.... but it seeems like it would really slow down combat...
Once you run through combat a couple of times it gets second nature and flows smoothly. With the addition of Combat Manoeuvres fights tend to finish a lot faster.
 
Mongoose Pete said:
troy812 said:
I guess these rules make sence.... but it seeems like it would really slow down combat...
Once you run through combat a couple of times it gets second nature and flows smoothly. With the addition of Combat Manoeuvres fights tend to finish a lot faster.

And it is fun watching players only familiar with d20 fight in mrq2 for the first time. They are horrified how quick and crippling combat is.

"5 goblins, pah, no worries, ahhhh!! My arm has fallen off!!"
 
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