From: Wayne Shaw (shadow@qedbbs.com)
Date: Tue 20 Jul 1993 - 12:51:53 EEST
rq4@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner) writes:
> > Unless I've totally misunderstood combat (and my players with me) you
> > 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,
>
> Do you mean double move + dodge, or single move, attack + dodge?
Sorry. Actually, both are true.
> > single move, parry and dodge...you can't use more than two actions
> > 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.
>
> When would this movement occur?
Before and after the rest of the round. If you're complaining that you
interweve movement with your attack, that's strictly correct, but on
using the new system, I haven't seen a case where anyone wants to.
>
> 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.
Nice in theory, but I always ended up someone finishing an overlapping
spell, or firing off a missile during that period, so I'd have to
interrupt anyway.
>
> 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.)
Except that my players almost always insisted on it, since it was
possible them to preempt an attack by hitting the guard with a spell or
missile before his attack eventuated. It was just generally a pian.
Also, doesn't taking a double dodge option let you dodge every incoming
attack in the round (albiet at a progressively worse chance)?
>
> 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.
>
Mine do it all the time, particularly what we've always refered to as
"battle triangles", the trick of three fighters setting back to back so
they have no possibility of someone getting behind them. I've also seen
circles and pincers several times. Doesn't always happen, but my players
never seemed to consider avoiding letting someone get at their back
interfering with their individuality...they consider it survival.
> 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.
Well, I can certainly see an argument for more interrelation than there
is, but the only real reason a sword and shielf man should know much of
parrying with the sword (from what my SCA friends tell me) is that he
loses use of the shielf once in a while, or gets swung at from a bad
angle to parry with it. At least the experience improvement factors that
in: if you end up using it to parry, you improve in it after all.
>
>
> --
> Joerg Baumgartner rq4@sartar.toppoint.de
------------------------------
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