OW! That head of yours is sharp!
For starters: you get
one maneuver. Basically you get to declare one intent each for ATT and MAN, with your DEF intent always being "to defend." (Hmm, I suppose I could require you to specify "defend against who," but that would probably be needlessly strict.) So you're trying to do one thing, mechanically, with you Maneuver, though descriptively it could include a whole slew of ducking, dodging, hopping on tables, whatever.
So let's break it down:
"Cronar lunges to the throne, twisting cunningly like a jungle cat past the Undead guard, to plunge his sword into the vile sorceror's heart!"
We've got Cronar, Sorceror, and Guard, here. The Guard has already (let's say) successfully Guarded the Sorceror last round, So top of the round, they all declare intent: Say Cronar's intents are: ATT: Kill Sorceror, MAN: Pass Guard. The Guard's intents are: ATT: Kill Cronar, MAN: Guard Sorceror. Let's say the Sorceror's intent is Complete the Ritual. I haven't worked stuff like this out yet, but we can probably assume that a non-combat action would take the place of ATT, and if it requires sustained stationary action, it would cancel out MAN as well.
So when all is declared, folks move their dice around. Say Cronar puts one die in ATT (which is already quite high) and two in MAN. The Guard puts all three in MAN to block him. And the Sorceror puts two in Ritual and one in DEF. And when they're ready, they roll! They announce their succees, like "Two in Attack, Zero in defense, one in Maneuver." And compare. So like, say the guard lands gets 1 success on ATT but so does Cronar on DEF. He doesn't touch him. Further, he gets 0 on MAN to Cronar's 2. So Cronar passes him. Cronar gets 3 on his ATT vs. the wizard's 1 on DEF, so in goes the blade. For something like the ritual, I'm guessing you'd probably base it on successes needed, so let's say he needed 3 and rolled 2--Cronar stopped the proceedings just in time.
One thing worth noting: If the Gard hadn't Guarded last round, he'd be rolling this round to
establish the guard, so Cronar wouldn't have to roll pass--he could concentrate on Flanking the Sorceror or whatever. And if he beats the MAN then he passed the guy just fine, but if the Guard wins MAN then the Guard maneuver's in place and Cronar can't reach the Sorceror. Not sure if his attack just fizzles or if he can turn around and attack the Gard or what. In any case, once a combatant is already Guarding, then they're rolling to
maintain the Guard and the other guy
has to roll Pass to get by. I'm thinking this should probably apply to Cornering too.
(All of the above was worked out just now when I examined the situation. So thanks for helping me fine-tune.)
Now, in my rough system, I was thinking "three strikes and you're out" for wound levels. Which would mean if he was previously uninjured, the Sorceror would still be alive. Or maybe Cronar's got a +1 vs. Sorcerors sword or something. 'Course you'd know whether he was dead or not when you narrated, so that'd be incorporated.
Speaking of: who has narration rights? Well, that's a tricky issue. I addressed this at the end of my response to -E, but I'm not entirely sure which way to go. With generally two goals per participant per round, and the possibility of multiple combatants with divergent allegiances, it's hard to say who the "winner" is for a round's action. So that means of assigning rights is no good, it seems. One method would be to assign it by a different criteria, like "high die narrates." That way you'd be narrating your successes at some times and your failures at others. Or you could just have everyone describe their own actions, but it could get confusing as to order: "Do I narrate the Guard's unsuccesful attack now, or do you narrate charging forward first?" Tricky.
I like the idea of one person narrating the round. The Cronar example pretty much includes everything you need for the round's action. . .if the guard had injured Cronar in the process, I'd just add a clause like "shrugging off the bite of its ghostly steel," but that's all you need. If the Sorceror's player (GM, or whoever) wants the Sorceror to have any dying words, he just speaks them--I dont want to trample on people playing their own characters. But sharing around what is essentially the cinematic blocking fits with the streamlined, "keep it hopping" feel I want for this game, and means everyone still gets a chance to describe cool stuff.
Thoughts?
Peace,
-Joel
PS Thanks for the SotC tip, dansebie. . .I'll look into that!
PPS What I'm picturing, Beejazz, is more like holding someone at bay with a drawn bow/loaded crossbow--"Don't move or I'll shoot!" But it's s till a pretty rough idea (like everything here!.