Cadfan said:I've done some fighting in the past. I'm just guessing, but I can probably hurt someone the most with a kick to the pelvis. For some odd reason, I've never been in a fight where I kicked the other guy in the pelvis 12 times in a row, while never attacking him with my hands. That's what happens if you allow everything as an at will attack. It isn't realistic that you would use only your best possible attack, over and over. The ebb and flow of the fight will force you to use other, less optimal choices. I think its fine to represent this with a selection of at will abilities, some situational abilities, and some abilities you can only use a limited number of times. That's the least cumbersome way I can come up with to mimic something like how often in a fight you can throw a heavy kick instead of a quick jab.
I'm going to disagree. The way I see it, you could try to kick the guy in the pelvis twelve times in a row (or some other maneuver), but chose not to. Why? Probably, because of risks or other circumstances. Most likely,
a) You recognized the risk of your opponent catching on making him more likely to avoid your attack or worse come up with a counter that exploits your maneuver making you more vulnerable to their attack and/or placing you in a vulnerable position.
b) recognizing that while you might have access to the target area it was decreased by positioning or some other factor that would have decreased accuracy and you run the risk of being off target.
c) positioning or distance make it impossible to make contact with the target area. You have no way to make contact with the area you want to target. You are just better off trying something else.
d) You have attacks that while not as damaging are more reliable.
Regardless of why you chose not to, there was nothing physically preventing you from trying the attack again. Both A&B might still succeed, but you weighed your options and chose something else, because repeating the attack sequentially just becomes less optimal. However, that doesn't mean that a good opening to reuse the maneuver can't present itself later whether at some random time (e.g., the opponent dropping their guard performing their own maneuver, being fatigued, or being "rocked) or because successfully created an opening using feints and combinations or trying to catch an opponent off guard by "throwing caution to the wind hoping" hoping to catch them flat-footed. Then, there is just being able to reliably reuse your maneuver, because you completely outclass your opponent in terms of combat skill.
Watching MMA's and professional fighting, you will see examples of fighters reusing maneuvers multiple times in a fight. San Shou fighting Champion, Coung Le and former multi-time kickboxing champion, Bill "Superfoot" Wallace are both good examples that come to mind right now. Coung Le routinely and successfully utilizes leg scissor takedowns and grapple/slams against his opponent. He may not utilize them in successive attacks, but he successfully utilizes these multiple times in a round let alone a fight, because he sets his opponent to place himself in position. As for "Superfoot", the guy earned his name, because he only had one good leg, but he could throw kicks at nearly 60mph and he could place those kicks with precision up, over or around his opponent's defenses. He would use a variety of combinations comprised of jab like kicks, hook kicks and roundhouse kicks using the same leg. With both fighters, their opponent's know the technique are going to be coming especially in the case of "Superfoot", but both fighters repeatedly use these maneuvers in an "encounter" and do so successfully.