Sigil Rann in Combat

[Arazmus]

When a Demorthèn uses an Ogham to attack (e.g. Stone Arrow) is his/her attack roll the Demorthèn Arts difficulty roll used to determine whether or not the effect is summoned and then is the damage (2d10 for a 3rd circle summoning) added to the amount that the target's defense was exceeded by then protection subtracted to determine damage.

Example: Tor (the Demorthèn) is in the woods and assailed by a rabid bear. He manages to beat the bear's speed by 4 and decides to euthanize the poor creature with Stone Arrow before it guts him like a trout. Tor has Way of Empathy 5, Sigil Rann 6 and the Sixth Sense advantage (+2 bonus to Demorthèn Mysteries domain). He decides to use Stone Arrow as a 3rd Circle power (difficulty 17) in order to inflict 2d10 damage, unsure if he'll get another shot, he wants the first one to count as well as not wanting to prolong the bear's agony any longer than necessary.
The bear has a defense of 12 an armor of 3 and only 9 health due to it's advanced illness.
Tor rolls a 7 on his Sigil Rann for a total of 20 (exceeding the 17 difficulty).
He rolls 2d10 for the damage getting 3 and a 1 for a total of 4.

Now...is this resolved as an attack roll? Is the 20 serving as the to hit roll exceeding the bear's defense by 8 adding the 4 from the damage roll for a total of 12 minus the bear's protection of 3 for a total 9 health damage (enough to kill the bear).

Or

Once the Stone Arrow is summoned is there no attack roll and the 2d10 is rolled for 4 damage, the protection 3 is subtracted and the damage ends up as 1 health, resulting in a more angry rabid bear?

Thanks in advance.

[StripelessTiger]

Well, for clarity, the damage (even for spells) is always applied to the margin of success AFTER the to-hit roll has been compared to the defense, or in this case summoning difficulty.

Since you are rolling against the Summoning difficulty NOT the Defense of the enemy by using Demorthen Arts in place of Close Combat/Shooting and Throwing to determine the margin, the calculation for damage is the same.

If you beat the Difficulty of 17 by 20, and the spell damage was 2d10, the total damage BEFORE armor is taken into account is Margin + Damage.

In this case it would be (20-17)+(2d10)-Protection = 3+(3+1)-3 = 4

You would do 4 damage to the bear. Your rolls were rather low.

The maximum you could have done (barring critical confirmation) would be:
(23-17)+(10+10)-3 = 23 an insta-kill!

[Arazmus]

So the opponent's defense is immaterial when a Demorthèn is using Ogham to damage a foe? Is that actually in the rules anywhere? because we can't find it.

[StripelessTiger]

So the opponent's defense is immaterial when a Demorthèn is using Ogham to damage a foe? Is that actually in the rules anywhere? because we can't find it.

That is correct. There is not mention anywhere in the rules of Defense playing a factor in a Demorthen spell. The only mention of defending against a spell is called Resisting a Power on page 251.

Defense is a physical determination of resisting the attack, not actual damage reduction. It works more like Armor Class or Dodging/Blocking.

The same goes for spells, but instead of Defense, they just automatically hit if you succeed, because they affect all creatures the same regardless of "defending". However, you can reduce the damage.

In your particular case, the same page states that you defend by using your Stamina if the blow is physical, as with Stone Arrow.

"When physical resistance is involved...the target may make a Stamina roll to halve the effects. Any suffered damage is halved, rounded up."

Conversely, you swap Stamina for Mental Resistance if the spell is mental, not physical.

At third circle, you would have to roll a 7 on a Stamina resist roll (assuming Stamina is default of 10) to take half damage because the difficulty is 17.

So back to the bear example, I guess you could make a Stamina roll for the bear to reduce the damage.

[Arazmus]

Is the Stamina roll in lieu of protection then? Or does the bear in the example get its 3 armor taking 4 damage THEN able to halve that if it makes a stamina roll?

[StripelessTiger]

Is the Stamina roll in lieu of protection then? Or does the bear in the example get its 3 armor taking 4 damage THEN able to halve that if it makes a stamina roll?

The Stamina roll is applied to the damage of the spell only, not the margin. After that, I would assume you also apply the Protection reduction after tallying the margin in. Otherwise, what's the point of armor? And it offsets the margin factoring into damage a tad.

If someone gets the bright idea of casting lower rank spells for better margins, you need to remember that lower rank spells are easier to resist damage on since they have the same DC as it takes to cast. Halving 20 damage to ten is a bigger reduction that 2 points from Protection onto a high margin.

I have tested it. It seems fairly balanced.

[Arazmus]

It just seems to go against the basic design principle of easy resolution you find throughout the system. It is also to be desired that the RAW were a bit more clear (ie addressing it whatsoever) on the matter. I like a nice rules light system as much as anyone but this seems to be a serious omission.

This seems to be a bit clunky in fact...

[Clovis]

Can you explain what your problem with this system is? The way I see it, it is actually fairly simple: you get hit by a spell, you can make a Stamina roll to halve the Damage. Pretty simple, isn't it?

However, if you're not happy with the basic rules, feel free to change them, for example by including Defense in resisting to magic powers

[StripelessTiger]

I think that the Attack(to-hit) versus Defense is a little confusing myself and it tends to muddy the waters a bit when referring to Damage.

The character technically doesn't have an Attack stat, its just Close Combat + Way + 1d10 (aka a Domain roll). It can be replaced by Shooting, Throwing, or Spellcasting.

The Difficulty Check is Defense for everything except spells, which have their own DC to cast. You could just make the spell roll have to beat the enemy's Defense stat, but in my opinion, that is very unbalanced and reduces the effectiveness of spells by ALOT.

Stamina is used for Disease resistance in Esteren. You simply do this for physical and mental spells using Stamina and Mental Resistance. A number of tabletops use a separate magic defense/resist stat.

You could very easily just CREATE a new stat called Magic Defense (something like Reason + Empathy + Conviction) instead of using the spell DC chart and give a flat +0/+1/+2/+3/+4 per rank to the casting success. It makes the spells harder to cast, but their damage is still the same.

[Clovis]

Well, if you feel that's be a good way to go, do feel free to implement it into your game, and to give us some feedback regarding the results! We don't claim our system to be perfect and all-encompassing, after all, just to be something light and easy to use that can provide a satisfactory means to resolve most situations. If you want to go the extra mile to fine-tune it, far be it from me to stop you from doing so!