<html><body><div>It especially hurts when it is a ratan sword hitting mattress padding. Not so much ratan against metal helmet.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Just to confirm suspicions, yes, when we designed RQ combat we were thinking in terms of heavy armor. Three out of the four of us were used to armoring as much as possible. Then we made having heavy armor difficult for a beginning player. It's like my devising an experience system that relied on dice rolls when I have atrocious dice luck. As I told George MacDonald, it seemed like a good idea at the time.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>As Wayne says, we tried to make combat interesting. I've been working toward making it even more interesting, though not very hard RL, and other fantasies, have been taking up most of my time. Adding the Martial Arts skill and Maneuver skills have helped to some extent.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Combat is detailed because (1) we (three out of four) were familiar with it and (2) it was the easiest interaction to detail, based on our prior experience. And we all liked combat games. Not to mention combat.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>And of course we tend to discard characters with arms of 3 and keep the ones with arms of 4.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Over the years, I've come to like the idea of either set weapon damage, with variable armor, or variable weapon damage, with set armor.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I also agree that d4+2 (plus any damage bonus) is a problem when a limb can be 3 points, or even 4. Maybe a more linear curve for damage is appropriate. Wayne had one for his old Defenders of Justice game that might be adaptable. Essentially a damage bonus kicks up the dice of the weapon. D6 becomes D8, etc. Perhaps all weapons are either d4 (daggers and such), d6 (swords and axes), or d8 (two-handers). Each also has a minimum Damage Factor (or something) which tells you how much of a damage bonus you have to have to increase the die of the damage. Perhaps 3x the max damage of the weapon? So someone with a dagger only has to exceed 6 in both STR and SIZ to increase, while someone with a broadsword has to have STR 9, SIZ 9, and Someone with a two-hander has to have 12/12. Assuming these are also the points where the die increases, it means that someone with 12/12 does just as much damage with a dagger as a two-handed sword. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Anyone done anything with any scheme similar to this?</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Steve Perrin<BR><BR></div>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 8px; MARGIN-LEFT: 8px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid" webmail="1">-------- Original Message --------<BR>Subject: Re: [Runequest] Ow being hit with a sword hurts<BR>From: Wayne Shaw <shaw@caprica.com><BR>Date: Tue, May 27, 2008 11:20 am<BR>To: RuneQuest Rules <runequest@rpgreview.net><BR><BR>At 09:38 AM 5/27/2008, you wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite"><FONT color=#000080 size=2>Yeah this was another good point; the RQ projectile. In D&D a bow just felt like another weapon, but in RQ it was something to be feared. Gary mentioned how the lethal a single duck with a crossbow could be, but gather 3-4 archers, some with the ability to fire more the once per round and you’re looking at a good chance of being impaled with each volley; this encouraged players to both take advantage of ranged combat and think twice charging an unseen archer (as opposed to running away).</BLOCKQUOTE><BR>An ongoing tactical issue was what to do when you saw enemy archers--of _any_ level. Because you were going to have to close up with them, and even relatively incompetent archers could crit, and a crit+impale was pretty much enough to take down virtually any human depending on where it hit.</FONT> <BR>
<HR>
_______________________________________________<BR>Runequest mailing list<BR><A onclick="return true;Popup.composeWindow('pcompose.php?sendto=Runequest%40rpgreview.net'); return false;" href="http://email.secureserver.net/pcompose.php#Compose" mce_href="http://email.secureserver.net/pcompose.php#Compose">Runequest<B></B>@rpgreview.net</A><BR><A href="http://rpgreview.net/mailman/listinfo/runequest_rpgreview.net" target=_blank mce_href="http://rpgreview.net/mailman/listinfo/runequest_rpgreview.net"><a href="http://rpgreview.net/mailman/listinfo/runequest_rpgreview.net">http://rpgreview.net/mailman/listinfo/runequest_rpgreview.net</a></A><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></body></html>