Jorja glanced around the common room of the Lighthouse quickly. None of her gladiators were near by, but she leaned forward and lowered her voice anyway. "The team here doesn't believe I ever do that, and I don't want them to hear me saying differently, Diaretic. They'd get expectations, and I don't have any plan to make life that easy for 'em. But here's the way I go at it when I'm feeling generous with my warriors. Mind you, this is just the way *I* do it, and there are plenty of other approaches.
"Say I've got a warrior who's a pure offensive style, which means a basher, a lunger, or a slasher. I don't count strikers, as they're versatile and sometimes unpredictable. Say I've started him out fast, maybe 8-6-x. Unless he's fighting another pure offensive, he should be first off the mark. So I look for the problem. If it's a problem with his numbers and style and he should have been some other kind of fighter, well, too bad, we're both stuck with it. I can boost his offensive effort to ten--sometimes it already IS ten, of course, but if it isn't, then that goes up to the top. I can drop his activity level, say to four. I know some people start their offensive warriors going 10-10-x, but to my mind, this is just asking for early burnout in a fight. I've seen that kind of thing--a warrior comes out of the starting gate like his socks are on fire, and by the MIDDLE, not the end, of the first minute, he's panting and staggering, and losing. Sure, some warriors can take that kind of energy burn, but most can't.
"So I tinker with his numbers, and it doesn't help, he still gets jumped when he shouldn't. The next thing to try is dropping the weight he's carrying. Maybe I've got him in some kind of mail, okay, I drop that to leather. This reduces his protection against blows from his opponent, of course, but everything's a trade-off. If he gets out there first and deals a shrewd blow or two, it won't matter; he'll win before he gets hurt. If he's already in leather, or if I want to lighten him up further, I'll drop his backup weapon and give him a lighter one. Say he's got a scimitar with a backup same, maybe I'll drop the backup to a shortsword or even a dagger. I'll always leave him SOME backup weapon--"
"He'd have his fists, if you didn't give him a backup weapon, wouldn't he?" Diaretic asked.
Jorja shrugged. "Well... yes, but none of the pure offensives do well with their fists. Strikers, maybe, but not bashers, lungers, or slashers. They can and will use 'em if they have nothing else, but they won't do well. And frankly, I wouldn't even send out an aimed blow, the CLASSIC unarmed style, with nothing but his fists for backups. I've seen too many of them 'struck in the arm with the parry'. It's too risky for a warrior who's already got problems. Unless, of course..." she looked suddenly thoughtful, "I'm hoping he'll get killed...."
Diaretic raised his eyebrows. "Do you do that much?"
"Send them out hoping they'll die?" Jorja shrugged. "Well, yes and no. I run everything, maybe send one warrior in a hundred to the Dark Arena--after he's fought for a year or two. There are often warriors that I would LIKE to see die, even though I hate the hassle of recruiting new ones. But I've never sent a warrior out unarmed, unarmored, and with the basic 1-1-1 default strategy. At least, not deliberately. There's a team I have in Murska that was running on maintenance once. I wasn't paying attention, and no less than THREE new warriors started up there without strategies--and survived! They had horrible records by the time one of the other managers managed to get my attention, 0-19 I think it was, but they survived. Tough men, and they eventually made it to graduation, once I gave them 'sharp pointy things' to use on their opponents. But I don't do that deliberately." She paused and signaled for one of the waiters to bring Diaretic a fresh drink.
"Where was I? Warriors getting jumped when they shouldn't be, right. As a last resort, because I don't really care for tactics, I might give such a warrior decisiveness in the first minute, also.
"But if none of this works, if he still gets jumped regularly, then I have to think about taking a different approach. Maybe he'd be better off running slowly, despite his style. So I put more armor on him, some kind of mail, usually, and I slow down his first minute, maybe invert it: 4-6-x or 4-8-x or something. And then in the second minute pop him up to eight or ten offensive effort, on the idea that he'll catch the faster offensives when they're tired. Sometimes it works. Especially with beginning warriors, winning can often be a game of endurance. He who is still standing, wins."
Diaretic nodded and sipped his drink. Half-formed ideas of how he might use these ideas on his own warriors revolved in his mind. "What about the opposite case, a defensive warrior who can't last long enough to win as he should?"
"The total parry who collapses from exhaustion in the second minute?" Jorja laughed. "I've had a few of those over the years. I call 'em 'the warriors of exasperation'. It isn't easy running everything, you know--I end up with some warriors that not even a mother could love, and with them, I tend to do really dumb things, just for the heck of it. The aimed blow with a deftness of three or four, for instance, or the total parry with no con.
"But for the, hmm, 'legitimate' cases of warriors running too fast, well, there are signs as obvious as an offensive getting jumped. 'Fighting to conserve energy', 'straining to hold his weary arms at guard', stuff like that in the fight report is a sure sign. You can take two approaches to that, lower the weight they're carrying so as not to burn their energy that way--lighter armor, lighter weapons. Or slow 'em down. Say I've got a ripper going 6-8-x and stumbling with exhaustion in the second minute. I might slow this warrior down to 4-6 and see if that helps. Heck, I've even done that with offensives. Back when I started slashers out going 10-10-x, I'd get them stumbling with exhaustion and losing because of it in the second or even the FIRST minute, and I'd slow 'em down. Activity level comes down first for an offensive warrior--I think of that as the 'dodging and parrying' number. Offensive effort comes down first for the defensives."
"Hmm." The younger manager frowned, making a series of linked rings on the table top with the wet bottom of his glass. "What about warriors who flail wildly?"
"I've been told that this is due to lack of attack skills, and unless you're going to train stats and burn those skills, nothing but time will cure it. But I've found that sometimes--not always--lowering kill desire helps. Drop it to five, say, if it's higher. Dropping the offensive effort a notch might help, too. I think of 'flailing wildly' as 'trying too hard'. You can never be sure, of course, because managing gladiators is an art, not a science." She paused and half stood, looking toward a center of commotion. "Do you want Wednesday to get falling down drunk on the night before the fights?"
-- Jorja, The Lighthouse