Shields

[Dissolv]

Well, from a GMing perspective, my current (low power) campaign seems to have resolved the balance issues with 1h and Shield vs. 2H weapons, as described above.  The real question is as the campaign progresses, will the players feel a need to "up-arm" and ditch their shields like Gothic era Knights, and is that a bad thing?

I"m torn.  A magically armored hero with a great iron Greatsword is indeed a spectacle.  But should the players think that set up to be "more powerful" than the standard cultural weapons that got them that far?   Or can missile combat remain serious enough the whole campaign to encourage shield use? 

The game does eventually change and the first PC to get enchanted Iron Armor more or less breaks the curve.  9 points of armor is enough to render that player nearly invincible to the lower tier threats, like farmers or militia -- Javelins + Speed dart = 13 maximum damage, Broadword + 1d4 strength bonus = 13 points max as well.  So the 9 armor guy only has to have access to Shield 2 or Protection 4 to be immune to all non-special or critical attacks.  Combine this with his likely 100%+ Parry, and melee is a great way to lose half the Sun County militia.   If there are enough of them, and they are for some reason willing to fight to the death, they can win, but the odds keep going way, way down. 

Nomads may fare better, as they can safely empty their quivers on such a warrior (killing his mount if necessary), but at 12 points maximum damage for an arrow, there is going to be a lot of rounds before they can put him down.  Backed with enough healing magic (because critical hits happen, and will eventually defeat any amount of armor), the heroic warrior might be able to literally outlast their arrow supply.  

But.......isn't that what we want?

Does that first full iron plate armor PC stick with 1 handed weapons? and why or why not?  Can fights between two such heroes be fun, or will they be a "clink"-fest while rolling for specials and criticals?  And is that bad if it is? 

Having established that the lower level gaming seems more or less fine the way it is, it all comes down to how the upper end works in RQ:G.  To me, at least.  Hopefully my players stick with this campaign and we get there, but it will take some time, especially since none of them have ever played any RQ anything before.  My main goal is to present the world to them in a sensible, believable way, and allow for interesting combat strategies to be developed.  So far none of them have noticed anything with the combat mechanics like the old time veterans and or HEMA people might have.  Then again HEMA guys are using medieval technology, and in Glorantha we are not. 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

3 hours ago, BrentS said:

Not only is it simple but it just seems to make sense that professional weapon training would include skill with all facets of that weapon's use.

Maybe.  But wouldn't professional training in lying also include the facet of detecting lies?  In other words, why aren't Fast Talk and Insight combined?  Or Hide and Spot?

[Dissolv]

A great resource for those interested in old school combat.  I listen regularly.

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt14YOvYhd5FCGCwcjhrOdA

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, Dissolv said:

Thinking on it, it seems like a buckler, especially a metal buckler (sure this is not a common bronze age thing, but neither are two handed weapons -- this IS Glorantha), should be beefed up over the wooden variety in hit points.  10 AP seems reasonable, heck even 12.  That sucker is metal! 

I'd easily go to 16, maybe even more - a buckler (or what we might probably use, something like an Indian Dhal) is really sturdy, and while it might not stop your arm from getting broken,  the shield itself is all but unbreakable (you might want to go with different values for the shield's own sturdiness and how much damage it absorbs). Swords break a lot more easily than a sturdy disc of metal - that fairly small shield weighs over 2 kg! Also, bucklers are used a bit differently than regular shields - used to cut off angles of attack rather than being used for blocking.

Also, I wouldn't go the typical RPG way for bucklers, where you're allowed to have a weapon in the same hand - yes, there's that buckler&dirk, but it's really not the default way of fighting.

Best of all, bronze is one historical material for Dhals, so it provably works.

  

Edited July 2, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Dissolv]

3 hours ago, BrentS said:

I like the rolling of attack and parry skills into one unifying weapon skill. Not only is it simple but it just seems to make sense that professional weapon training would include skill with all facets of that weapon's use.

 I'm not a fan.  Anyone who has sparred has encountered that guy who is notoriously hard to hit.  Or the blitzer who wants to always be the guys attacking.  People are not uniform in their attack and defense skills by any means.   Sure, they might get trained the same way, but they come away with different lessons.  "Oh no, I got hit, have to attack faster to keep that from happening!", versus, "oh no, I got hit, have to tighten up my guard and improve my footwork."  This happens even in the same style of fighting, at the same gyms, with the same instructor even.

[Dissolv]

haha, my source works:

 

 

[Akhôrahil]

I was thinking of that one, yes. 🙂

Edited July 2, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Akhôrahil]

2 hours ago, Dissolv said:

Second thought on it -- campaigns should see more weapon damage and extended missile exchanges.  Sartar has the cultural weapon of javelin, so the old "throw two and then charge" seems natural.  1d10 is not to be scoffed at, and impales are a major problem, even from angry farmers.  

Don't forget impales vs shields, either - two javelins in a shield makes it useless, which can screw up a shield-wall pretty good. Which was part of the point.

2 hours ago, Dissolv said:

My current zoom campaign is seeing more bad guys drop to javelins + speedart than every other weapon combined.  Factors involved: party is fresh, so low skill, enemies are generally poorly armored, and many lack shields. 

In a campaign where we played Balazarings, my bread and butter was Javelin + Atlatl + DB + Multimissile. We shredded sabretooths with that!

Edited July 2, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Akhôrahil]

1 minute ago, Fred said:

Perhaps consider an in between. Thin bronze plating strengthening (like bands) a wooden shield for +4HP or so. Not sure how realistic such shields would be, though -  if such shields were ever made.

If you put metal on a wooden shield (apart from the buckle), it's usually as a rim. A more detailed shield system might differentiate between rimmed and non-rimmed shields.

Edited July 2, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Kloster]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

If you put metal on a wooden shield (apart from the buckle), it's usually as a rim. A more detailed shield system might differentiate between rimmed and non-rimmed shields.

Historically not. The only case I know of wood+bronze (non small size) shield are the greek hoplite shield, which can only be considered as the first composite armor of history, being composed of layers of wood, bronze and leather. Iron is another story, being used mostly for rims or center protection, like on the roman scutum.

[Akhôrahil]

2 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Iron is another story, being used mostly for rims or center protection, like on the roman scutum.

Yes, I meant iron historically, but it's also hardly a secret that Gloranthan bronze can frequently behave suspiciously much like iron...

Still, I would stay with either just the buckle, or a small all-metal shield.

[Kloster]

5 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Still, I would stay with either just the buckle, or a small all-metal shield.

Agreed on this.

[10baseT]

5 hours ago, Dissolv said:

This I find interesting.  My current PC's have a major ENC problem.  They want to wear good armor (scale to plate), and carry shields, 1h weapon, missile weapon, and about 1-2 ENC of misc gear like cash, food, rope, etc.  Most of them only have 1 to 2 ENC left after that, and have had to abandon good loot for fear of going to far over ENC in hostile territory.   A spare weapon is right out the window for them, and several of them have taken off multiple seasons for stat training (STR).

I think many may have this problem and it's not really acted upon but i think it can be with minimal fuss.
I experience 2 typical load outs 1) on patrol (the intent to engage) and 2) travel, getting from point A to B.

On patrol, you are expecting combat (going to ambush, engage in contact, etc) and do not have all the food, rope, supplies, etc. So you're carrying a combat load. Your supplies are left in a designated stating area and you patrol out from there. I think most PCs assume they operate here and that may not always be the case.

Travelling, you are geared up and definitely encumbered. If you do not have a mule for example, you are carrying all your food, water, mess kits, sleeping kit, torches, etc... (expected resupply can lessen food/water weight). If you engage with this load out, you  should be penalized. On the small man patrols i've been on when carrying 65+ pounds of gear, the only thing you can do is put one foot in front of the other. If expecting combat, you store your gear and move to the patrol posture i mentioned above. It is very unbalancing to fight with a bayonet when you're geared up, you can't dodge really. So, in general, i would expect PCs on foot to be overencumbered (where a smart foe will know it's a good time to ambush.... and will ambush when the PCs are going up an incline or negotiation some sort of obstacle... that's because their eyes will be on the ground.)

[10baseT]

This has been a great discussion to read and i've learned a lot and have some thinking to do on some house rules.

I think a couple of you can write a Jonstown Compedium on some optional rules that go into shields, weapons, melee combat in general. The way GURPS will put out a small PDF on say ancient sword combat or close quarter battle or why a mace/maul has 2 points of armor penetration... It gives more insight and options and some explanation for those that wish to go a little deeper. From what i've read, you have it... and i'd buy it 

[Thaz]

Love a good Matt Easton video. 

Armouring up is great. But still crits happen. Ask Rurik. 

Bucklers are nice, I've fought with them. They're not much use vs missiles though. 

I do think we need some shield love with different varietys and possibly higher hp. There were some really interesting bronze age shields 

I really don't think we need more crunch in the general rules. I think we're about at the sweet spot. 

[Lordabdul]

Good stuff in this thread but holy shit, people, four pages in less than a day? You people seem passionate about all this  

I've got zero practical experience of armed melee combat so I'm not gonna speak about the verisimilitude of this or that rule, but I do have extended experience GMing a bunch of different rule systems, so this is my 2 cents for making shields more useful or interesting (some of these points have been made already but forgive me for adding my +1 here):

• Narrative incentives: no rules, just the GM designing situations that make having a shield more effective than not having a shield.
  • More thrown and missile weapons coming at the PCs, especially as the first enemy attack of a combat
  • Having PCs be less "murder-tourists" and more "part of their community", by having them fight in shield walls, protect other people, etc.
  • Encourage having different loadouts by giving ample opportunities to "come back to base" (probably their clan tula or whatever).
• Combat rules: these are rules I've seen in a variety of other games.
  • Give a passive defense bonus to any defense rolls (so even if you're parrying), just because you have a shield there. Say, between 10% and 40% depending on the shield. People might still parry with their sword, but they have incentive to have a shield on the other arm.
  • Give a penalty to both attacking and parrying on the same turn. The OP suggested this.
  • Give a time-based penalty to parrying: you can attack less often because you spent time parrying with that same arm/weapon. This could have worked very well with RQ's SR system but sadly it has always fallen short of its (supposedly mistaken) action-point-economy role. Still, one could add this as a house rule without disrupting too much... like, say: parrying offsets your next action's SR by +3, for example.
• Skill rules: miscellaneous rules I've seen in a variety of other games:
  • For games with skill learning difficulties or skill point spending, the shield skill is often just plain easier/cheaper to increase than the weapon skill. There's none of that in RQG so I'm not sure if we can do anything there. Everything I can think of seems finicky (modifiers to the experience roll, modifiers to the increase roll, modifiers to the money cost for training, etc.)

I hope this helps.

[BlindPumpkin]

I might have missed it, but I don't think I've seen anyone recommend the simplest solution yet in the thread: RQ6/Mythras style Locationg Warding. By RAW you can only do it against missiles in RQG, but extend the benefit to ANY attack against the covered location and bam, a simple solution that makes shield extremely useful and doesn't require any further tinkering with advancement rules and skill numbers.

It's the most obvious and practical solution in my opinion, and I have a hard time thinking why this ISN'T the core way shields are handled. It's always a little awkward when you hit someone's left arm after they missed a weapon-parry and the player goes "but isn't my large shield covering that location?".

[GAZZA]

I'm inclined to go with the separate Attack/Parry skills myself. IIRC, one of the reasons they were combined was because nobody trains only with Attack or only with Parry; however, at least in RQ3... nobody did. If you trained your Attack skill you automatically trained Parry as well, either in the same weapon or in a shield (presumably, you used whichever of the two was highest to determine how long it took, but that's no longer an issue with the RQG training rules). I'm somewhat sympathetic to the Combat Style idea - games like GURPS, for example, with more complicated skill trees acknowledge the fact that (e.g.) a master of one weapon is not going to be a complete novice at another - but it isn't really how BRP works, so I'm not sure it's a good fit for RQG.

[BrentS]

10 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Maybe.  But wouldn't professional training in lying also include the facet of detecting lies?  In other words, why aren't Fast Talk and Insight combined?  Or Hide and Spot?

I see your analogy but I think it's somewhat specious. Training with the manual application of a tool is totally different to the soft skills  you've cited, which require divergent capabilities and aptitude. My own profession requires empathy and reading of the broad array of human emotions and intent (what would be covered by Insight) and nobody would expect that thereby enables me to sell ice to Eskimos with Fast Talk. If I was being taught guitar, however, I wouldn't expect to learn how to strum independent of chord structure with my fretting hand, nor would I expect to learn to drive a manual car (stick shift for those in some countries?) by steering alone without also learning to clutch and shift gears. 

I think the relationship between the tangentially related soft skills you've mentioned may be covered by augments. Professional training in the manual use of a tool or instrument, muscle memory and all, is different. I'm not married to the combined attack and parry skill. I come from a background of RQ II and as I stated initially, I think it's the reason shields have lost their oomph. I do, however, think that there's a logic to combining attack and parry skill and as my stated intention was not to get more complex and go back to splitting them, but trying to work within the new system, I was looking for a solution that would give players more agency and choice in play. I'm not suggesting my initial solution was the best answer, but the simplest and most logical for my Glorantha.

 

Brent.

Edited July 3, 2020 by BrentS

[BrentS]

4 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Good stuff in this thread but holy shit, people, four pages in less than a day? You people seem passionate about all this  

I've got zero practical experience of armed melee combat so I'm not gonna speak about the verisimilitude of this or that rule, but I do have extended experience GMing a bunch of different rule systems, so this is my 2 cents for making shields more useful or interesting (some of these points have been made already but forgive me for adding my +1 here):

• Narrative incentives: no rules, just the GM designing situations that make having a shield more effective than not having a shield.
  • More thrown and missile weapons coming at the PCs, especially as the first enemy attack of a combat
  • Having PCs be less "murder-tourists" and more "part of their community", by having them fight in shield walls, protect other people, etc.
  • Encourage having different loadouts by giving ample opportunities to "come back to base" (probably their clan tula or whatever).
• Combat rules: these are rules I've seen in a variety of other games.
  • Give a passive defense bonus to any defense rolls (so even if you're parrying), just because you have a shield there. Say, between 10% and 40% depending on the shield. People might still parry with their sword, but they have incentive to have a shield on the other arm.
  • Give a penalty to both attacking and parrying on the same turn. The OP suggested this.
  • Give a time-based penalty to parrying: you can attack less often because you spent time parrying with that same arm/weapon. This could have worked very well with RQ's SR system but sadly it has always fallen short of its (supposedly mistaken) action-point-economy role. Still, one could add this as a house rule without disrupting too much... like, say: parrying offsets your next action's SR by +3, for example.
• Skill rules: miscellaneous rules I've seen in a variety of other games:
  • For games with skill learning difficulties or skill point spending, the shield skill is often just plain easier/cheaper to increase than the weapon skill. There's none of that in RQG so I'm not sure if we can do anything there. Everything I can think of seems finicky (modifiers to the experience roll, modifiers to the increase roll, modifiers to the money cost for training, etc.)

I hope this helps.

Thanks for some very useful thoughts and suggestions here. Thanks to all, in fact, for some stimulating discussion. Most of it went beyond what I was aiming for (being minimising complexity, not Aftermathing it up 🤪) but it's been interesting reading different informed viewpoints. I think the fact that it generated so much discussion is an indication that there might be a case for modifying shield function in the game for some players.

I do think undue weight is put on missile defense in respect to shields. This is not to trivialise the danger of missile fire at all but people are talking about RQ shields like they're pavises. Even the large shield, to which this argument constantly skews, only protects 2 designated adjacent locations.....I'll assume head and chest in most instances (how do you see?). Large shields are prohibitive in ENC terms for many characters and so they should be. Carrying around the equivalent of an aspis in open order skirmishing is not standard and shouldn't be seen as default (300 has a lot to answer for). The medium and small shield provide negligible missile defense and just don't fit this argument, yet should be more common than large shields due to their greater accessibility and utility in melee. The passive use of a shield for missile defense also completely bypasses skill and RQG has shield skills....I'd like to see them mean something in my game.

I've modified my initial thought slightly, which you've highlighted. My idea is to ask the player at statement of intent what they intend to do with their primary weapon, prioritise attack or parrying...whichever they don't optimise would be at 50% skill level. This is simple, gives players agency and in play tactical decision making (always good), doesn't diverge too far from the RAW or require additional laborious weapon and shield re-stating, has some logic (at least to my mind),  makes an unmodified shield skill more useful and meaningful in defense and further incentivises players to take damage to their shield rather than their precious primary weapon (which is another frequent justification for shield use in these discussions).  

It may not be right, it may not work as intended, but I'm going to give it a trial.

 

Brent.

 

Edited July 3, 2020 by BrentS
Typos

[BrentS]

3 hours ago, BlindPumpkin said:

I might have missed it, but I don't think I've seen anyone recommend the simplest solution yet in the thread: RQ6/Mythras style Locationg Warding. By RAW you can only do it against missiles in RQG, but extend the benefit to ANY attack against the covered location and bam, a simple solution that makes shield extremely useful and doesn't require any further tinkering with advancement rules and skill numbers.

It's the most obvious and practical solution in my opinion, and I have a hard time thinking why this ISN'T the core way shields are handled. It's always a little awkward when you hit someone's left arm after they missed a weapon-parry and the player goes "but isn't my large shield covering that location?".

Thank you, this is interesting. I'm not familiar with Mythras but I think what you're suggesting is that in melee, as against missile fire, the shield will provide passive defense against designated hit locations. This seems very logical and I really like it. Again, the only issue I have with promoting shields as passive defense is that it ignores shield skill, and the game has shield skills that should mean something.

 

Brent.

[Mugen]

4 hours ago, BrentS said:

I see your analogy but I think it's somewhat specious. Training with the manual application of a tool is totally different to the soft skills  you've cited, which require divergent capabilities and aptitude. My own profession requires empathy and reading of the broad array of human emotions and intent (what would be covered by Insight) and nobody would expect that thereby enables me to sell ice to Eskimos with Fast Talk. If I was being taught guitar, however, I wouldn't expect to learn how to strum independent of chord structure with my fretting hand, nor would I expect to learn to drive a manual car (stick shift for those in some countries?) by steering alone without also learning to clutch and shift gears. 

Of course, you won't be as good with that second instrument as you are with guitars, but still you'd be better than if you never practiced any other instrument. And it's the same for every possible human activity.

I firmly believe that a model with few broad skills (Melee, Communication, Athletics, ...) and specializations on on top of those is the best (or the least bad) solution both in terms of verisimilitude and playability. Question is : how much should go to skill, and how much to specialization ? My feeling is both should be roughly equal.

Edited July 3, 2020 by Mugen

[Lordabdul]

3 hours ago, BrentS said:

Again, the only issue I have with promoting shields as passive defense is that it ignores shield skill, and the game has shield skills that should mean something.

The other issue is that the attacker might get annoyed at this: a successful roll means you found an "opening", and unless the opponent successfully rolls their defense, you hit. If you then realize (upon rolling for hit location) that the "opening" was hitting the shield, and that it ends up not doing much, that may be considered illogical, and/or may create frustration with the attacking player.

3 hours ago, BrentS said:

I think the fact that it generated so much discussion is an indication that there might be a case for modifying shield function in the game for some players.

I think it's also the fact that we gamers love to debate combat rules, and that's multiplied by our love to debate different versions of combat rules

3 hours ago, BrentS said:

My idea is to ask the player at statement of intent what they intend to do with their primary weapon, prioritise attack or parrying...whichever they don't optimise would be at 50% skill level. This is simple, gives players agency and in play tactical decision making (always good), doesn't diverge too far from the RAW or require additional laborious weapon and shield re-stating, has some logic (at least to my mind),  makes an unmodified shield skill more useful and meaningful in defense and further incentivises players to take damage to their shield rather than their precious primary weapon (which is another frequent justification for shield use in these discussions).

Sounds good to me -- I look forward to hear back from your playtests.

I looked at some more games and supplements, and here are a few additional ideas:

• Increase the penalty for subsequent parries (say, -30% or -40%). This gives incentive for people to use the Shield as, at the very least, a secondary defense method. When defending against multiple attacks (multiple attackers, or attackers who can split attacks), it will be better to parry one attack and block the other, rather than 2 subsequent parries.
• Add shield-based maneuvers, with some potentially interesting tactical choices. For example, some one-two "beats" you can achieve in one turn:
  • Block-and-deflect-wide with the shield to create an opening and immediately attack with the other hand. This would be achieved by waiting for the incoming attack, successfully blocking with the shield, and getting a bonus (based on shield skill success level) to your following attack a couple SRs later (or a penalty to the opponent's defense).
  • Use the shield to "jab" at the opponent, against giving yourself an attack bonus (or the opponent a defense penalty) in the same round for a following attack.

(this might be a bit too crunchy/house-ruley for you though)

 

Edited July 3, 2020 by lordabdul

[Akhôrahil]

Battle Brothers, an excellent computer game clearly inspired by BRP, does it like this:

Attacker has an attack skill in percent.

Defender has a (usually quite a lot lower) defence skill, which is subtracted from the attacker's Attack skill. Shield increases the defence skill, but if it’s the shield that matters, you take damage to it (and both the defence and HP value of shields vary).

While simple, this works out great in practice.

Edited July 3, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Thaz]

Battle Brothers is indeed excellent.  As I've said before in response to akhôrahil