Looking for opinions

Well I believe that is probably why the rules discussion thread was created, that way the community as a whole could discuss and decide on topics and rulings instead of people just pointing out things that are wrong and automatically changing so in a sense I believe that is where the nibbling is regulated or policed in the matter.

Since I'm the guilty party, I think I should weigh in on the matter. Unsurprisingly, I don't see the need to add further restrictions to Acrobatic Defense and Water Dancer III. Shocking, I know!

There are number of reasons for this:

1. Unless you pick up Armor Mastery, you're restricted to padded armor (AR 1) when using either of these benefits. That means you really are a glass cannon - any hit from any moderately optimized fighter is going to hurt and may lead to outright defeat in one blow (or death, if facing someone wielding a greatsword for example).

2. The name of the game is thus to avoid getting hit at all, which means pumping Acrobatics with Acrobatic Defense or Fencing with WD III. For a starting character, that means tying up a significant chunk of your bonus dice in one specialization. For Acrobatic Defense this is also a specialization which has no other combat or social value; for WD III boosting Fencing is hardly an opportunity cost, but OTOH you will also need both WD I & II first, so it actually costs you all your benefits as a starting character.

3. Using Acrobatic Defense requires a Lesser Action. As both fights in the practice thread have demonstrated so far, that means you can negate it by simply disengaging from the fight. If the Acrobatic Defender doesn't come after you, we end up in a deadlocked fight, but at least no-one's dying. (I admit this is situational, but the option to disengage will surely come up in many fights).

4. You're allowing yourself to be dazzled by the CD these benefits allow. But compare them to your own build for a second - you have Massive, which allows you to wield the strongest weapons in the game while still using the best all-round shield (large shield for +4 CD). Your own character has CD 13, which is excellent when combined with the fact that you have high Health and good armor (AR 6) to soak any hits (for instance, so far you've taken 45 damage before accounting for armor and only needed to take 1 injury). Meanwhile, any single hit from your sword will immediately put my character below 0 Health, and if you were facing someone built as a more run-of-the-mill combatant, Talos would surely have killed them by now. The only "cost" to you in gaining these advantages is that you had to invest in Endurance 5.

5. Your character is having difficulty hitting mine because you have Fighting 4. If this bothers you, just 2 weeks of gameplay will get you the XP you need to improve to Fighting 5, which will enable you to hit far more often. So don't judge these benefits from a static viewpoint - it's easily possible to develop your character to overcome any deficiencies you have when starting out. (And for the record, the Narrator has indicated that he would prefer it if characters keep their abilities to 5 or less, so you can be sure that Damon won't have a continuously improving CD in play).

6. As Balon said - there are many rules with fluff descriptions that don't fully match the actual game rules. Take the Staggering weapon quality for instance. According to the description, "the force of a Staggering weapon's hit can knock a foe senseless", and yet all it does is prevent said foe from taking a Greater Action on his next turn. That means he can still take a full set of Lesser Actions, such as moving and attacking, on his turn. So the weapon which is supposed to knock you senseless ends up preventing a character from choosing a limited number of actions, none of which are critical to your ability to affect your foe.

/Damon

No worries, I'm not easily offended and I certainly didn't take your post as a personal attack.

I understand where the desire to "fix" inconsistencies comes from - I've certainly houseruled many systems in my day - but nowadays I prefer to play systems pretty much as they're written. I find that houseruling tends to become a slippery slope where one eventually ends up rewriting large chunks of the game, so if a given system no longer appeals to me I generally bow out and play something else instead.

Oh, and kudos for playing in character during the duel!

/Damon

I'm in the "Don't allow bulk items" (or at the very least shields) for acrobatic defence, as it doesn't suit my sense of verisimilitude and Damon will be almost unhittable even with a smaller shield!

I'm in favour of putting together a short list of house rules to suggest to our noble Narrator, some borrowed from SOuthron Ambitions (I'd suggest the full plate at -4AP to match its flavour text, real life flexibility and to give it a similar AP/AR ratio to breatplates - this shouldn't disadvantage anyone as none of us can afford full plate at the moment? I think...).

As we get more familiar with combat we can add more of the advanced combat rules too.

If there's enough players who would like to see some of the advanced combat rules implemented, certainly let me know.

Rule of the thumb convention of mine is that you ought to get +2AR in return for one AP to make the tradeoff worth it. Everything heavier than splint is a 1 on 1 trade. Full Plate, by RAW, is only useful at the jousting lists, and for looking impressive.

As far as SA goes, about half of the houserules were improvements (some of which I've adapted personally), the other half was at best unnecessary.

As for advanced combat, that's a very mixed bag. Nice things in there, but also horrible horrible things that I like to pretend GR didn't put in print.