Worried about the state of fouling

[mattgslater]

I still foul in LRB, and I give the only good justification for a foul: I want to hurt the guy.

See, I don't know anyone who's motivated by that: we all want to win and earn SPP. Every once in a blue moon, a couple people decide to have it out on the field over something else, and there was at one point a Skaven team running around with a lino named Ratt Slater, whose job was to mark big guys and soak up gratuitous fouls. But otherwise, fouling is for Zombies, Hobgoblins and Stunties and used against big guys and Wardancers.

When you foul, you:
a) forfeit your last action of the turn, though you probably keep a TZ.
b) most likely force an opposing player to forfeit an action, but no guarantees.
c) maybe force the opposing player to forfeit a few or even several actions (KO+recovery), but probably not.
d) maybe force your opponent out of the match, maybe your guy, maybe both.

So you're giving up an action 100% of the time (sometimes a couple other actions or positional relationships, like suboptimal block resolution, to maintain assists), and a ~1/4 chance to give up a player (20-30%, depending on circumstances), and the victim loses an action most of the time and has a slightly larger chance to give up a (prone) player. You can dedicate a skill toward increasing that chance by about 40% and reducing the need to game for a foul a little bit by getting a "free" assist. If there's a big value discrepancy, and the fouling team has either the numbers or the Bribes to account for doubles, or the speed to play man-down, then it makes a little sense... if the positioning is right, and the game tempo is right.

Boring. I totally agree that the trend to weaken 3rd Ed fouling rules is absolutely necessary: they were broken the other way. I also agree that every one of the maze of fouling rules over all of the LRBs needed tinkering. But I think it's because most of the fixes have come from the wrong place. Fouling should be a generally-poor idea, incentivized. That's how to make it fun and keep people from complaining.

I sort of like the idea of adding a few more SPP categories as house rules. I wouldn't mind seeing an ejection as worth 1 SPP.

Yeah. That's possibly one half of the answer. I like that a lot. If your other problem is lots of Bribes, apply a cumulative -1 on Bribe rolls (2+, then 3+, then 4+...), except on Stunty teams. I have to say I haven't seen much of Bribes around here, but that's largely because we play in fixed formats without big TV gaps.

[mattgslater]

Back in the old days, foul SPPs were both a lino development mechanism and a penalty for Dirty Player. Your DP would get skills he didn't need, and your TR would get jacked way up for it.

...TR was so underpowered as a leveling mechanism that the 2nd part of the latter sentence doesn't make sense.

Depends on your league structure. In a fixed schedule, TR gaps over 25 or so were very rare. At TR gaps of 11-30, you'd get stuff that you'd never be able to afford in LRB5. The reasons that TR was underpowered are a) it didn't account for injury, b) it didn't allow for much tailoring, and c) it didn't mean much in terms of immediate match value except at the 11-(18-22?) range. Oh, yeah, and all the stupid Treasury games you had to play to keep the coffers empty (we had to make a 3-game rule with hiring and firing players, unless they were MNG; even then, you'd see people checking the schedule, flipping through their notepad, and buying a TRR instead of a replacement player as a means of jettisoning cash).

Still, it was loaded with sweet spots. If I could induce a 3rd-ed card for 110k, damn, where do I sign up? How about a 3rd ed card and a bonus MVP for 210k? Sweet, if you ask me. Sure, every once in awhile you'd draw a Sewer Map when you only had 11 guys, but you'd be just as likely to get Robbed, or maybe any one of several instant surprise turn-enders.

Also remember, a 50k Dirty Player with 65 SPP adds 18 to your TR. In LRB5, his TV add is 110k+. Big difference, that.

[Grumbledook]

I wouldn't look at fouling as "giving up an action"

chances are you are going going to do a move action with that player anyway

just you get to do an armour roll at the end of the move action with a chance of missing the rest of the game

[mattgslater]

I wouldn't look at fouling as "giving up an action"

chances are you are going going to do a move action with that player anyway

just you get to do an armour roll at the end of the move action with a chance of missing the rest of the game

How often do you want to move into the exact square that you need to move into to foul? Really? How often do you have to decide between better positioning and an Armour roll? Foul victims are almost always marked before the foul happens, and can't receive before their actions. Double- or triple- covering a prone player is often (not always) done at big situational expense.

[Grumbledook]

I do whichever I deem to be the best for my team at the time

If I picked the fouling option it wasn't at the cost of losing an alternative action

you can usually work out if you have a spare man to use for a foul who doesn't need to be in another square

when you are caging up with the ball there will often be team mates who can assit the foul so you are moving somewhere where you would be useful anyway and still do the foul

when marking catchers, if you knock one of them over again a spare man can come in to do a foul if need be

I don't foul much at all to be honest, I don't often deem it necessary at the expense of losing one of my players, that is more important than the action they could have otherwise taken

[mattgslater]

I don't foul much at all to be honest, I don't often deem it necessary at the expense of losing one of my players, that is more important than the action they could have otherwise taken

I agree about one thing, though. If you foul at 7+, you've got a precisely 1/4 chance of being caught (3 perms to get busted and fail, 12 to fail without getting busted, 3 to get busted and succeed, 18 to succeed and get busted 1/6 of the time), and for the most part an ejection is worse than 4 squirrelly moves, except at the end of the game, when fouling is often marginal in potential upside. That doesn't mean you can disregard the Foul action itself when considering the cost of fouling. It's almost as bad as being stunned, except for the lost TZ, unless you've got a reason to be in that square (the lost 3 squares the next turn would be lost anyway).

But there's almost always an opportunity cost to being in the square you need to be in to foul the most foul-worthy opponent, as opposed to using the would-be fouler to provide an assist or TZ somewhere else. And sometimes there's a cost to waiting until end of turn to move a particular player. Ever have a prone fouler and something important to do?

[DoubleSkulls]

Funnily enough I've basically come to a point where I think fouling isn't quite good enough in LRB5 and could do with a very small boost (maybe giving the +1 for the fouler again for example, or AtC - and no that won't make it into LRB6).

A couple of things though, hypothetically:

1) If you didn't handle petty cash correctly so for example you could top up inducements. That would make it easier to get exact multiples of 100k for bribes.

2) The you had a restricted choice of inducements. So for bashier teams there might not seem much point taking anything else.

So I would have use a lot of bribe based fouling too

I think its a viable tactic and a good one for bashy underdogs. However with a full set of stars & other inducements I think there are more reliable alternatives. I never really got the point of combining it with Dirty Player though.

[halinn]

Could make Dirty Player give +1 armor and injury, instead of or?

[Darkson]

Very simple answer to this.

House rule fouling back to how it was in LRB4.
Make IGMEOY a 6/4+/2+ track.
Change Get the Ref so that the ref still sends of on a natural six.

[Edit] Forgot to add to my fix for LRB4 fouling - DP becomes +1 or +1.[/edit]

As Aleksandr says, "Simples".

[Grumbledook]

simpler answer, leave it as LRB5 is ;]

[DoubleSkulls]

I was thinking about this some more and a simple boost would be to reintroduce AtC - but you can either argue the call OR use a bribe, not both. e.g.

Argue the Call
If one of your players is sent off by the referee, and you have not already tried to bribe the ref, you - the head coach - can try and argue the call. Roll a D6. On a 6 you are successful and the player is not sent off. On a 1 the ref send you off. As you are sent off any kick off rolls using FAME you must apply a -1 modifier.

[SillySod]

Yes and no. Its not risky in the sense that it can put you at a real disadvantage. Its risky in the sense that it might not work so unless you are a lucker or have bribes you need some kind of backup strategy.

that is how fouling should be imo and was the aim of the fouling rules

... but thats pretty boring IMO. Not because it doesnt produce as many splats but because it makes the game less like chess and more like snakes and ladders.

I prefer the brand of fouling which gives you a semi-reliable method to remove a problematic player. It has alot more nuances including the ability to threaten opponents to get them to play in a different way. The problem with this in the past has always been that its possible to build a strategy soley around using powerful fouls to destroy the opposition.

Actually I would prefer automatic ejection to LRB5 fouling if it meant getting back a proper threat to threaten people with.

[mattgslater]

I know there's this 3rd ed league that used to run up in Eugene, Or, which had an interesting houserule. Again, this is with +2/+2 DP, SPPs for fouling, no pull-offs on fouling assists, no counterassists, native +1 on AV roll, Argue the Call, and no rules prohibiting TRR/Pro on AV/Injury, and yet they managed to find a semblance of balance.

Doubles mean nothing. Instead, the victim's coach rolls 2d6 and adds +1 to the result for each assist. If the total is 10+, the fouler is spotted and his coach must ATC.

With the whole 3rd ed. menu, it really wasn't enough, but it did allow for theoretically-horrid fouls, so long as you didn't mind getting ejected. I'm not putting it out as an end-all solution, but the mechanic does allow for some stronger fouling while keeping it from running the game over.

You could quite easily go back to the old foul assist rules (ignore the victim's team), and make Dirty Player two +1 mods on either roll, and then make the rule "add the same modifier to the 2d6 roll as was used on the AV roll." That beefs up DPs, but it makes them ejection monkeys.

[mattgslater]

Ooh... in addition to a nerf on multiple Bribes (like that cumulative -1) or something to make it easier to get caught making big fouls (like the rule in the post above), this might give you what you want:

Fouling assists are calculated as a net, before rolling the dice. The team with fouling assists may use them as desired on AV and/or Injury, like Mighty Blow or Dirty Player. Dirty Player adds one fouling assist (or two if you want to buff it; a compromise would be one, plus another one if the DP isn't in an enemy TZ). So if you're fouling an AV7 player with 3 net assists and you roll a 6, you may add +1 to the injury roll.

Alternate buff to DP in those rules: a DP can always assist any foul if he is standing next to the victim, whether he's pulled off or not, even if he's the one fouling. That way, he makes his own fouls better, and may situationally make an ally's better. This would then become a lino skill, rather than a safety skill, as you'd be more likely to stick in with him.

[Wylder]

I quite like the current foul rules. The only people I ever foul are the stars. Wardancers, werewolves, star blitz/chatch players. Anything that is high enough in TV to be worth the risk to get them off the field (or even just stun them).

I don't consider it really worthwhile to foul linemen under most circumstances. One exception is that I foul with my chainsaw players whenever I cant afford to blitz with them, and the opponent hasn't left me a block to do. Chainsaws are going off anyway, so get those armor rolls in while you have a chance!

In my opinion this is all as it should be. Most BB players play (roughly) by the rules, except where they are up against an opposing player who is just too dangerous to leave alive. Meanwhile, psychopaths who have zero respect for the rules (to the point of bringing a running chainsaw on the field) just simply can't be reigned in!

This all makes perfect sense to me.