From: Joerg Baumgartner (rq4@sartar.toppoint.de)
Date: Mon 19 Jul 1993 - 12:28:10 EEST
In <4B8790137EA@marketest.wharton.upenn.edu>, you write:
> Unless I've totally misunderstood combat (and my players with me) you
Do you mean double move + dodge, or single move, attack + dodge?
> single move, parry and dodge...you can't use more than two actions
When would this movement occur?
> rq4@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner) writes:
>> I hate systems that proclaim static combat, i.e. combat where the
>> characters either move or act. With the strike rank system RQ had a
>> mechanic to cope with this problem, if not perfectly, so at least
>> sufficiently so.
> ALWAYS can move a bit in a round: you can combine a single move with any
> two melee actions, so you can single move and dodge, single move and
> parry,
> for combat activity, so that third for movement is always possible. Now
> you can't TRIPLE move and do any of these, but somehow that doesn't seem
> a great flaw.
> The biggest flaw with the old strike rank system was that you had to pay
> attention to EVERYTHING, all the time. You couldn't skip any strike
> ranks because SOMEBODY was bound to be moving in them.
Oh, I could. I simply figured out when this person would arrive at the
location aimed at and allow missile, magic or miscellaneous actions for
the oponent in the meantime. Thus 12 meters of movement were 4 strike
ranks to skip. several people moving towards each other could be resolved
as easily.
> Not to mention
> the crazymaking problems when you were handling a bunch of NPCs, some of
> whom had moved (and therefor delayed later strike ranks) some of who
> hadn't. At least the current system gets rid of most of that.
Well, I don't bother to calculate the very minutia if there isn't a very
good reason for it, i.e. one character dodging a bunch of guards. (BTW a
situation not covered by the rules, where one can dodge only once in a
round.)
>> I think that a maneuver roll to determine advantages after movement and
>> combat is ok, but it should be related to the overall fighting skill,
>> not necessarily a separate skill.
> I can't agree. There are static fighters who are used basically waiting
> for the fight to come to them (most formation fighters) and there are
> those who are used to fluid fights.
Have your player characters -ever- formed a shield wall? Or a wedge? Mine
haven't, maybe their opponents, but not the PCs. You see, formation fights
are taking the individuality out of combat, and the result could as well
be determined with the battle skill, modified by attacking and parrying
skill. What PCs like to do is jump around, hamstring opponents, gain
favorable positions, etc.
> motion of the fight is no more interrelated than is, say, your attack and
> your parry.
Good point there: From what little experience I had with stick fighting one
evolves a skill of stick-handling, not of hitting or intercepting hits
separately. Mind: I like the possibility for slightly differing values in
attack and parry skills for melee weapons, but I find it hard to imagine a
master gladius attacker (90%+) with a parry skill of 30%, even if he uses a
hoplite shield all of the time.
-- Joerg Baumgartner rq4@sartar.toppoint.de 0,,
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