battle bellow (taunts) effects

[galafrone]

A question has arisen in our group
say there is MR. A, troll skyraider, 7th circle with battle bellow talent rank 7 and CHA step 6
he faces a group of 12 enemies, 6 in front of him (more or less) and 6 guarding another side of the same alley, say at 5 hexes / 10 yards away
he can battle bellow the first 6 (or just the targets he wants to "battlebellow) then roll his dices and record his effects then jump (with great leap) in the middle of the 2 groups and battle bellow the other 6 ?
this will split the groups for targeting (and assessing the difficulty) in 2 and so his chances are greatly increased to battle bellow all 12 enemies
or he can just battle bellow once and HAS to target all the enemies in range ?
or he can BB just 1 enemy at time, like it was battleshout ?
in this way (the fractioning) he must spend more simple actions and so more strain, but the result is greatly enhanced
say he does 1 group only in round 1
then he in round 2 jumps over and BB the other group
the first BB effects stays in play even if he BB a different group ?

same for taunt. can i taunt a different "foe" in the same round ?
can i taunt foe A in round 1, resulting in a - 4 step (extraordinary) and for example having rank 5 taunt he stays taunted for 5 rounds
then in round 2, taunt foe B resulting in a - 3 step (excellent) and he stays taunted for 5 round aswell ?

or a taunt/battle bellow stays in effect only on the targets of the last round action ?
and can i do them multiple times in a round with the effects remaining even if the targets are different ?

i hope to have be precise, a thing i doubt.
anyway, any thought ?

[Razan]

Any talent can be used ONLY once in round, unless description changes this rule.

So only 1 test, but the player chooses how many he wants to target for BB.

As for Taunt, you can taunt 1 guy in first round, then the other in second round and so on.

For both talents effect stays for as long as description says (rank rounds).

Hope that helps.

[galafrone]

it helps
where i can find the rule about the first sentence ? :
"any talent can be used only once in 1 round, unless description changes this rule"
it make sense (and for example anticipate blow expressly say you can use it on as many opponent as his talent rank x round)

[slayride]

The major reason you can only use a talent once, even if its a Simple Action, is because its a retry sort of situation. If you allow a character to Taunt as many times as he wants in a round, they will take a ton of Strain and eventually succeed. This isn't particularly exciting...as if you roll ten times in one round you will eventually get that -4 penalty you want. Makes the turn last forever (10 Taunts and now you want to Anticipate Blow on all 6 opponents in front of you, move, then attack? What is that a 17 roll turn? I can imagine mage's wanting to strangle the Swordmaster. 16 Strain is also rather debilitating...lol ) and isn't particularly realistic to what you can accomplish in one round (6 seconds). That's why there is an Action cap optional rule in the books. I am even stricter on this, you can only use one vocal chord using Simple Action talent in a round, so choose Battle Bellow, Taunt, Battle Shout, or Kiai, one only. Unless they have an ability that allows a second social attack in the same round, for example the Troubadour's Encore ability. Same thing with sight Simple Actions, so choose from Astral Sight or Lifesight for example. Of course, I also apply the same rationale to the monsters as one power use per round. The Horror only gets one Terror Test per round, regardless of Standard Actions, the Dragon can only use Dragon Breath once per round regardless of the number of Standard Actions (even if they are both Strain abilities and hurt them, eventually with enough Standards, spam Terror will get the whole party who will likely be unable to act as the Horror Skin Shifts them, kills its members and reanimates them to kill them as they are locked down in fear, and spam Dragon Breath is a TPK easily (Even if the power even says you can do it multiple times per round, its a matter of fairness to me)).

Battle Bellow is a range of 3 hexes x 7 = 21 hexes, so generally most characters are within reach for that. You can target as many enemy characters as you like from 1 to all. Or for that matter from 1 to all allies. The talent's base Difficulty is the highest Social Defense among all targets +1 for each target beyond the first. So if all the enemies have Social Defense 7, targeting 12 of them would result in a 7+11 = 18 Difficulty Number (At Step 13 +Step 4 Karma = 17...so less than 50% chance. Targeting one less gives a better shot. Also since the effect is based on Result Level, it may be better to target less and hope for more impact that way. For example targeting 2 would end up with a 8 Difficulty, 13 is a Good Result on that, 16 Excellent. So those 2 characters could end up with a -2 penalty easily based on Step, -3 with Karma generally as well). -1 on 12 characters can hurt, but -3 off of two of them can be worse.

[galafrone]

thanks slay for the rationale behind the 1talentxround (and your house rule seems very smart, tbh).
i wanted to know where it was in the rules, just to step up an index i am building
anyway, the second part of your post is ok, i never had problem with that
what i wanted to know if, in your example, i can target 6 in the first round and the other 6 in the second round (or 4+4+4 in 3 rounds) and the effects of (assuming succesful) battle bellow where applied all (so the second battle bellow doesnt cancel the effects of the first one and so on).
in this way, if the talent use on different targets in followin rounds doesnt cancel the previous use, the skyraider can do some quick math (i am for fast declarations, 6 seconds are fast) and try to debilitate all his opponents dividing the impact of the battlebellow on less targets / round to maximize his chances to have a positive result
i am correct ?

[slayride]

You can target 6 in the first round, then 6 in the second round. The effects of the first talent use continue until the duration ends unless you are knocked out (p.58 PG with some exceptions such as Wood Skin) even if you use the talent again on different targets. They would have different duration tracks, like the first attempt if successful would last 6 rounds, and the second attempt would be your 7 rounds duration. You can also reattempt the first try on the same targets if you failed in the first round or retry in a later round to try and get a better result, however some talents like Kiai have an escalator clause that makes the second attempt a Good Result to succeed. Also a character can only be affected by the same talent's effect once (p.57), so that although you could attempt to Battle Bellow a target that is already Battle Bellowed, only the greatest penalty would apply. (For example an Average Result in the first round for -1 penalty, A third round reattempt on the first group yields a Good Result for a -2 penalty, only the greater of the two penalties would apply to the characters (-2, not a -3) and the duration would be reset to 7 rounds, from your latest Battle Bellow).

[galafrone]

roger on "overlaying" effects, i had them already grasped from an arma's answer on taunt.
all fine now
thanks for the clarification