Re: [DL] fate chips & the PIt

[Allan Seyberth <darious@darious.com>]

I'll have to cast my vote for allowing characters to chip off damage in the Pit.

The lack of fate chips in a duel is to prevent players from going into one with
a stack of ten, and not worrying about it.  It's a mechanic to preserve the
intensity and the cinimatic feel of the moment.  

I would use the same mechanic for a couple of samurai standing four feet from
each other in an iajitsu duel.

It's about that instantaneous moment, on the knife edge, between life and death.
  One moment. . .one instant. . . one frame. . . and it's all decided.

A pit fight has a different "feel" to it, in my mind.  The cinimatic standard is
to have the hero get the snot smashed out of them, and then stand back up and
win in a glorious comeback.   That's kind of hard to do when you've got a -3
penalty to everything you do.

You might want to run the whole thing as a tournament, and let the player know
that these chips, and only these chips, can buy off damage throughout the whole
tourney.  

Another possibility is to not allow any fate chips that the player starts the
fight with to be used on damage, but that fate chips will be granted based on
crowd approval, and that those can be used to buy off damage.



Quoting Jim Burzelic <zombi_bobb@yahoo.com>:

> That's the same logic I use for any combat. "Well, you
> were ambushed and he shot you from behind but your
> fate chips make it so that his aim was just off enough
> to graze/miss you, only tearing through your coat."
> Same use. For me, it comes down to the duel. In both
> the gun-duel and the pitfight the characters are
> dueling. All the posturing and psyching out that is
> done in the moments before the lead flies is also done
> in the arena. Stare-downs, insults, and whatever else
> are used in both places. That's why I think the two
> situations are congruous.
-- 
Allan Seyberth
darious@darious.com