I've been reading through the arsenal PDF the past couple days, and definately like the styles/maneuvers section. A few things have thrown me off though, in regards to finishing move. When is it applicable? A few examples to illustrate my point.

Magician A has taken martial arts (karate) advantage +1 to melee block and the maneuvers finishing strike and riposte.

Magician A also knows the spell death touch.

He wants to cast death touch on samurai B. He makes his unarmed attack, and gets at least one net hit, successfully able to cast the spell.

Now, finishing move says "A character with this maneuver who has succeeded in striking his opponent (whether damage is inflicted or not) may immediately follow that attack up with a move designed to finish the opponent off." So, can the make cast death touch, make his melee attack to successfully touch and cast the spell, then follow it up with a finishing move if need be, sacrificing his next action to do so?

Next question. Say the samurai survives, and punches back at the mage, but the samurai wasn't smart and has no melee skills to speak of. Samurai attacks, and the mage blocks, and successfully blocks the attack. Riposte says that a character who successfully blocks or parries gets to make an immediate attack on the attacker. So, he does so, using up his next available action as its an interrupt. He punches back, and hits the samurai. Oh, but he also has finishing move. He just successfully struck his opponent, so can he then sacrifice his next available action (the one after the one he sacrificed for the riposte) and strike again?

Maybe breaking it out into combat turns would show better what I mean.

Mage A and Samurai B Start combat, standing next to each other. Mage gets a 7 initiative and samurai gets a 6. (I know, I'm just making up numbers to illustrate the point) Neither have any initiative enhancements.

Turn 1: Initiative 7: Mage casts death touch at samurai, succeeds int he melee attack with 1 net hit, and casts the spell, the samurai's mage buddy is counterspelling for him though, and the spell doesn't do anything. Mage doesn't take any drain. Mage has struck the samurai, and uses finishing move, sacrificing his action on Turn 2 to finish the samurai, he hits and does 2S damage.
Turn 1: Initiative 6: Samurai is mad that the mage punched him, and attacks back. The mage elects to block the attack (since he does have the advantage for block with his karate martial art). The mage successfully blocks the samurai's attack. The mage uses his riposte maneuver sacrificing his Turn 3 action to attack the samurai and does 2S. The mage has successfully struck the samurai and uses his finishing move maneuver sacrificing his Turn 4 action to attack again, doing another 2S.
Turn 2: Initiative 7: The mage doesn't get to act, as he's already spent it.
Turn 2: Initiative 6: Samurai stupidly punches at the mage again, the mage successfully blocks it, ripostes sacrificing his turn 5 action. The mage has struck the samurai doing 2S and sacrifices his Turn 6 action to finishing move, He succeeds again and does another 2S knocking the samurai out.
Turn 3: Initiative 7: The mage stands around because he has no actions.
Turn 4: Initiative 7: The mage stands around because he has no actions.
Turn 5: Initiative 7: The mage stands around because he has no actions.
Turn 6: Initiative 7: The mage stands around because he has no actions.

So, the mage ends up having to stand around for 12 seconds after the samurai has hit the floor? Because the mage has used his actions in advance?

If this is incorrect, please explain how and why.

Yes. You can make a normal melee attack as part of a touch spell, and finishing move deals with ordinary melee attacks.



Yep. All of this deals with interrupt actions, which are just regular actions that you're allowed to take before it's your normal turn. I wouldn't describe it as just standing around after beating the person all at once though. Action phases and combat turns are pure metagame, they don't describe a realistic course of events, they're just mechanics which make the combat system flow.

Ok, say the samurai is smart, and instead of punching again, he retreats out of melee range, leaving the mage standing there for another 2 combat turns unable to take an action at all. Makes sense there right?

The mage can still take Free Actions, so he can move (either towards the samurai or away) or make use of any other abilities he has that only require a Free Action. This is of course on the assumption that the mage only has 1 IP, and that the samurai survived 3 melee attacks and a Death Touch spell.

There was a discussion on how many IPs can be taken in advance before, maybe you can dig it up. I´m of the opinion that you can only ever borrow one IP.

Consequently, the smart move is using a firearm on the magician, who cannot go on full defense any more.

wouldn't death-touch cast upon the samurai mean, that the SAMURAI gets to do the magical damage?
i allways thought that those spells meant for the recepient of the spell to benefit from them . . so the mage would have to cast the spell at himself . . and if the spell is sustained, he gets the minus to his dice pool to show for it right?

Stahl, in SR4 Death Touch is a single instant combat spell of touch range. So you cast it and touch some poor schmuck to try and kill him. I'm not sure if it even existed in SR3 because I always stayed out of melee with casters.

ah, so they changed that O.o

Opinion != rules. You can borrow as many IPs as you want, provided you have the opportunity for interrupts. Unless of course you can cite a page that contradicts this; I'm not aware of any. So the mage can still go on full defense even after using his multiple interrupts with Arsenal manuevers.

I said there was a discussion AND that this was my opinion.

I consider the notion that one can "borrow" as many IP as one wants stupid, and at least the german edition of full defense does speak of the next action, not the next available action. Which is way more sensible in a system that bothers to limit base IPs per round to four.

That's fine. I just didn't want anyone to think you were talking RAW. The second part of your statement sounded like you were declaring the rules in general. I just wanted to clarify: there's no such limit in the book. You can do as you like, I'm just being noob friendly. The rules are confusing enough without people coming in and giving their own house rules, if we don't clarify what's really a rule and what isn't, the poor noobs will go nuts

You seem to have a hard time with peoples house rules...

Seems pretty damn clear he meant it was his opinion...

Look, houserules are RAW!

Ok, wait, Finishing Moves? Did i miss something? (probably i did...)

You mean to tell me that my unarmed beast that i have in the works(hey, ive been wanting to make one for awhile since im not as into firearms even though they are 'better'), can combo a couple of kicks into his DM/LDM and remove half the enemies health bar?


and i don't have Arsenal yet why?

And you feel the need to intervene here, why? I just wanted to make sure it was clear. If you want to turn this into an argument, I'm not interested. I think it was pretty well settled before you butted in with your troll bait.

I was typing my response as you were typing yours...
Make of it what you want...

Yes, hes quite powerful, but I could easily dump a few powerpoints of counterstrike, pick up some improved reflexes, tank magic by one level, and have a few more skills that would make him a real threat. This was more an intellectual exercise, just to see how bad it could get with only having 1 IP, yet spending actions 3-6 combat turns out.

IMHO, you could only use riposte or finishing move if you still have actions left in that turn.

Just curious, do you have rulebook backing? Or is it simply how you think it ought to be?

That's how he thinks it should be...
According to RAW, if the Old-Blind-Ninja-Master with 1 IP got attacked by 4 guys with 4 IPs, he could go on full defense, losing his action for this turn...
Block the first guy, riposte and finish move, losing his action for turn 2 and 3...
Block, riposte and finish move the 2nd guy, losing his actions for turn 4 and 5...
Same with guy 3 and 4 and then on to IP 2, where he could repeat the whole thing...
RAW there is no limit to how many actions you can borrow...
Now, this sounds much worse than it actually is, since every attack lowers the defense DP by one and one of the attackers could just step back, pull a gun and "bust a cap in his ass"...

Except, assuming the old-blind-ninja-master has some decent dodge dice, he can interrupt, burn another borrowed turn, and go on full ranged defense to avoid getting shot. Also, when the guy tries to step back, he can spend a free action (still has those) to intercept him, and get a free attack, and finishing move on him. As long as more than one (or two with the right adept powers) don't try to retreat during the same turn, they most likely won't escape.

A good point on losing dicepool for previous attacks. Its worded such that you lose -1 for every attack (after the first) you've defended against since your LAST ACTION! This means, if you burn actions 10 combat turns out, any attacks you defend against during those turns will add up, since you've not yet had an action.

Eh. I'm not sure I buy that interpretation. Even if you interrupt to borrow your next 20 actions, when those actions roll along, you still get the action phase and can take free actions during that phase I thought, to move and whatnot. So each round becomes the new last action, not the last action you took. I could be way off though. It would kind of suck to think of getting stuck for 20 rounds with a slowly dwindling defense pool.

Maybe a balance to the infinite action borrower though.

Ah, this is another point of debate...
You don't get your complex (or 2 simple) action(s), but you do get your free action, so does it count as your next action for full defense (which works til your next action), or as your last action (for defense penalties)...
I would say free actions don't count on both accounts...
Which means OBNM would have to wait for a while before his full defense DP would be refreshed, as it where...

EDIT:

Yes, this was partly my reasoning too, it would limit the amount of actions you borrow because you don't want to get stuck with 3 turns of not getting your defense back...

The rulebook says he can "borrow" actions of the next turn, if it is to full defense(SR4 p. 138 ). Again, IMHO, if that would be the case for riposte, finishing move or throw, the description of the move would say so, as it does with full defense. Borrowing a action from the next turn , to me, is a exception, and should only apply to full defense.

Finish move and riposte both say it counts as an interrupt action and uses up the character's next available action, it says nothing about this action having to be from the same turn or even the next turn, it just says your next available action. So if you used the actions of this and next turn, they are not the next available ones, the first one in 2 turns would be...