Nudging failure in combat

[Baijo Gosum]

on page 183 it says that "Attacks have a special Outcome ..."

I took this to mean you use the damage and defeat rules in stead of the "outcome - difficulty" rules that can result in complications

for example during our last session one of my players was involved in an honor duel.  His opponent got a pair of fours and the player got a pair of twos, they both got two nudges.

The question is, can the player use those two nudges for anything?  Or should I count the pair of 4s as the difficulty and give the player two complications in addition to the reputation damage he took from the honor duel?

thanks!

[Crafty_Alex]

on page 183 it says that "Attacks have a special Outcome ..."

I took this to mean you use the damage and defeat rules in stead of the "outcome - difficulty" rules that can result in complications

That sounds about right...

for example during our last session one of my players was involved in an honor duel.  His opponent got a pair of fours and the player got a pair of twos, they both got two nudges.

The question is, can the player use those two nudges for anything?  Or should I count the pair of 4s as the difficulty and give the player two complications in addition to the reputation damage he took from the honor duel?

In this case, Nudging failure would normally be used by the loser of the roll (I assume in this case that was the character rolling his Defense dice?) to eliminate Complications. Remember, all rolls in a Conflict are either a Contest or a Challenge - since this was a head to head roll, it's a Contest and you'd use the winner's Result of 4 as the Difficulty to determine the loser's Outcome (page 160).

Fortunately, though, the loser of this round would not suffer any Complications, because of the Nudging Failure rules (page 155) - his Outcome gives him 2 Complications but those Complications are negated by his 2 Nudges anyway

[Baijo Gosum]

Ok, so you can take damage and suffer complications as a result of an attack. Conflict just got more intense in my game lol.

Thanks for the help!

[Crafty_Alex]

Ok, so you can take damage and suffer complications as a result of an attack. Conflict just got more intense in my game lol.

Thanks for the help!

You've got it. Note you don't HAVE to impose Complications in Conflicts, especially when it's not going to advance the story (the ultimate point of the exercise) - often, I don't throw Complications into combat beyond the narrative, just because taking damage is stressful enough for the defenders

[Baijo Gosum]

True. It is nice to have a consistent mechanic you can use to spice things up if the combat is turning into a monotonous meat grinder.

I imagine it would also help to balence out the conflict if the narrator feels its getting to lopsided, and was starting to impact the feel you are looking for.