The metagame here is getting pretty interesting. James can play it a little more safe, going with Pre-Emptive Parry and Reading the Defense this pass, or he can attempt to capitalize on his higher Initiative by going with a straight up attack, and forcing Wilhelm to burn some Initiative with Parry or Riposte. The latter will almost certainly result in a hit by Wilhelm, and his next attack would likely hit as well, if James forgoes a Parry Interrupt. That worst-case scenario would have Wilhelm up 3 cuts to James 1, but would leave James with two extra passes to capitalize on, 3 if Wilhelm uses Pre-Emptive Parry or the Parry Interrupt following a Riposte. He'd need to hit with both to break even, and that would almost certainly require at least 1 more use of Edge. Going the safer route has James with 1 extra pass, or possibly 0 if Wilhelm forgoes the use of any Interrupts, which isn't likely. Hmm.
A question: if James splits his attack dice, will those attacks count for Wilhem accruing -1 penalties?
Using the CFD boost right before the Alle is fair.
That said, there is a Drain component that doesn't seem to have a soak roll. "After this time the head case suffers a number of boxes of Stun damage equal to the hits on the NV roll." An argument could be made that this is simply the technological equivalent of an adept's Attribute Boost and therefore should have a Drain roll as well, but that's not written nor even implied.
I'm a little confused. This post mentioned a Soak/Drain roll for the CFD powers:
http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=23135.msg464171;topicseen#msg464171I don't think we should be locked into that, but I want to make sure we're on the same page. Are you saying that James takes Hits Stun Damage at the end of using the Attribute Boost power?
In other news, my favorite SR podcast did an interview with this metal musician who's set up a "band" based in the SR universe. If you like that kind of thing, you should give it a listen:
https://johnnynuclear.bandcamp.com/album/atomic-heartI think I'm going to split the difference here, and have James use both an Attack and the Pre-Emptive Parry.
CT3 IP1Free: Pre-Emptive Parry
Free: Called Shot
Complex: Melee Attack
James Initiative is dropped to 30.
He has: AGI (11) + Close Combat (7) + Touch Only (2) - Called Shot (4) = 16 dice.
Melee Attack:
16d6t5 10Capped at 7 for Accuracy.