Smoking Frog

That is one cute baby in the video.

Excellent! I just ordered the book and PDF combo.

Who did the map of the Amber Coast on the website? It is brilliant in how good it looks and how well it conveys information.

Cheers,

Karl

I am trying to get my head around strike ranks, and I can't help feeling that this system is somewaht broken: as has been pointed out, the bigger/longer your weapon is, the more often you tend to strike, especially if you have high size and dex. Now, size and str I can understand, they make sense, but that weapon reach thingy is just whacked. What I am thinking is that they should be exactly the opposite, the smaller/shorter the weapon, the more often you're able to attack (provided you are within the 'range'). The longer weapon striking quicker makes only sense to me when the combatants are initiating the melee, ie. when they're still relatively distant from each other.

So what I am thinking here is using the weapon sr only in the first melee round, when the two combatants are engaging. After the first round, I would reverse the weapon sr: 0 becomes 3, 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 1, and 3 becomes 0, and vice versa, of course. Only if the combatant maneuver away from the opponent can they regain the advantage of the weapon reach.

I am also inclined to allow combatants attack multiple times in a round, provided their sr (modified as above) allows them to do so. I would perhaps consider giving a cumulative -10 penalty for each additional attack. No requirement of the 100% skill rule for multiple attacks, though.

EDIT: Of course this mod would require some common sense rules for deciding when you're able to close in, and reverse the weapon sr. If the owner of the longer weapon wins the first combat round, or if it is a tie (no hits), then this can't happen. Or when the combatant with shorter weapong dodges or parried the opponent, he/she may decide to close in to take advantage of the short weapon. And so on.

I'm not an expert on BRP/RQ systems, but I do have some experience training with Japanese weapons of different lengths. I can see why you have some difficulty with the "reality check" aspect of this game system. The rule is trying to capture a very complex aspect of armed combat in a simple mechanic.

Every weapon has an optimum attacking distance based on its length and how it is used -- a swung sword has a different attacking distance than a thrust sword, etc. Every weapon also has different characteristics that make it "faster" or "slower" to use: A moderate length naginata with a not-too-big blade can be manuevered/swung fairly quickly while a halberd with a very large head might be very difficult to swing because of the imbalance and weight, depending on how well made it is.

The important thing about attacking distance is that an effective way to fight someone with a long weapon is, as folks have pointed out, getting inside of his attack range. This works even against swords when you have a weapon like a staff that can be used at various attack distances by "choking up" on the grip, that is, by changing your grip to "shorten" the weapon. Trying to change your grip on a sword could result in lost fingers. Quarterstaffs probably work well at this too: use the staff's full length to get inside your opponent's range, then shorten up the grip on the staff and deliver a nice crushing blow.

There were many classical fighting schools in Japan that taught grappling in armor and with weapons precisely because someone might try to get inside the range of your sword and take you down. Or you might want to do that to your opponent.

It seems to me, then, that if you wanted to have an accurate simultion of what is going on in armed combat, you should probably have a mechanic for when two people are using weapons with similar strike distances, and have mechanics for how to get inside a longer weapon's strike distance and how to get back away from someone inside your strike distance. And you need to have mechanics for grappling with weapons and in armor.

I'm not sure, however, that if you cooked up something like that that it would be worth the trouble. But it might be a good exercise just to try it.

That's my thought for the day, and it's worth at least what you've paid for it -- nothing!

Cheers,

Karl

I'm afraid this is incorrect. Weapons (and Shields) in combat in the Gold book work the way I described previously, by the rules-as-written at least. The rules on p277 are for breaking objects and are distinct from combat - they are in fact pretty much the rules from RQIII and haven't been edited to bring them in line with the core BRP rules in the gold book. Damage to parrying weapons in RQIII worked pretty much as you described but that's not how the baseline rules are in BRP. This might help - http://basicroleplaying.com/showthread.php/1519-BASIC-ROLEPLAYING-The-Chaosium-Roleplaying-System?p=24749#post24749

Cheers,

Nick

Thanks, Nick. Ironically, I recently picked up a copy of RQ 3d Edition and have been reading it for comparison.

Cheers.

I can't find this explicitly discussed anywhere, but p277 "Damage to Inanimate Objects" seems to imply that the rule for shields and weapons is the same: damage in excess of the armor points reduces the object's hit points. Of course, weapons don't have armor points, just hit points. How this works with shields is clearly stated: damage in excess of the armor points reduces the shield's hit points. As I understand that, if a shield has 22 hit points, when the parry is successful, any attack doing 22 points or less is simply parried with no negative consequences to the shield or the target. If the attack does more than 22 points, the excess knocks off hp from the shield until it reaches 0 and then the excess damage goes onto the shield's user.

Using the rapier (hp 15) as an example, this would presumably work like this: when the parry succeeds, any attack that does 15 points of damage or less does not hurt the rapier. Damage over 15 would be deducted from the rapier until, presumably, when it reaches 0 it breaks.

I'm also a bit fuzzy on this, so if this is not how it works, someone please let me know. I would like to get this right.

--Karl

Thanks for your work, Charles. I recently picked up a copy of Stormbringer 5th Edition on Ebay and I am really impressed with the game. Stormbringerrpg.com is a great resource for those of us who don't mind playing out of print games.

I've had a long-standing interest in the Baltic crusades. It's great to see a high quality supplement covering this obscure but fascinating setting. Bravo!

To PDF or not to PDF, that is the question.

Thanks, Jason, and DirkD for the pdf.

I still have the GURPS Hellboy book, but it's nice to have a BRP option. Now if I can only find some players . . .

--Karl

Leffe Brown or Doppel

Thank you, monks!

Thanks for the rules. They look like a good way to deal with gangs of expendibles.