Spellcasting tactics

[Atgxtg]

Girls with wings? hmmmm... yum?

"Fly the friendly skies."

[Atgxtg]

Based on what I've seen in the posts, I think rift between Enpeze and myself over SB magic is more literary in nature.

Enpreze appears to be a fan of Howard and that style of fiction.

I'm not. Elric is/was an anti-Conan, so the flavor is different. I'm not a fan of Fritz ieber, either, and he is another popular S&S author. I'm more into authors like Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen and suspect my fantasy RPGing styles are slanted towards that direction.

[Kloster]

Hello,

Another nasty trick is Haste.

It increase the MOV of your adversary, but as long as he is engaged, he can't use his extra speed, but he loses 1 extra FP per round per intensity.

I recomend not using more than intensity 1 or 2, just in case he can disengage.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[badcat]

That is a very interesting insight. I tend to be eclectic in what I read, but very finicky too. There are pieces from all four named writers that I like, and some that I don't. All four were capable of producing stories that I enjoyed, but none of the four are sure things for me. It has been frustrating for my wife at times, as she would point something out because I had talked about the writer, only to have me say 'meh'. I guess there are things I look for outside the setting or general ambience like dialog, coherence, character development, etc (I am not really sure what does it for me; this is just speculation). Although setting is important too...but internal consistency is an absolute must.

So, I like the early Elric stories, but not the rest of the EC story arcs; I like the Dilvish the Damned stories, but not Amber; Empire of the East but not the Swords books; Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser but generally not Lieber's sci fi so much; etc.

Wierd, huh?

In any event, there is some commonality between Elric and Conan that attracts a lot of readers to both; perhaps it is the very fact that they are a yin/yang pairing of sorts.

One big key for all of is that I think we like to emulate the fiction we like in the stories we read, I certainly do. I have always correlated a liking for games like Stormbringer (and BRP in general) with writers like Howard, Wagner, or Shea more than Moorcock or Saberhagen or even Lieber. It's the feel of the stories. A certain darkness, not necessarily sure doom...it is a very fine distinction. When all is said and done, though, probably most everyone on this particular forum have at least similar tastes, don't you think?

[Atgxtg]

I don't this it is that weird at all.

Some of the examples you give of preferences coincide with various times in a author's career, and authors do change is style as tie goes by.

Personally I prefer the early Elric stories to the latter ones too. Moorcock in the 60s wrote differently than Moorcock in the 90s. Likewise I like Changling Earth/Empire of the East but didn't care much for the Swords books (the concept, however could be used to good effect for an RPG).

Early Elric was written to be a sort of anti-Conan, turn what were then the sterotypes of heroic fantasy around. Instead of being a barbarian who wins a throne, Elric is a ruler who loses his. Instead of a warrior who slays sorcerers, Elric IS a sorcerer. Instead of saving his beloved, Elric slays her. For Elric to work, you needed the Conan stuff to play off of.

So I don't think your tastes are that weird. For example, I love the first five (Corwin series) Amber books, but am not fond of the second five (Merlin series).

Then sometimes you can like an author but not like a particular story or idea.

So not that weird at all.

But I think it is our own tastes that we reflect when we GM, at least to some extent.

[badcat]

Yes. Another big factor for me (I thought of it right after that last post, naturally) is that I like stories where the protagonist(s) are not helpless pawns. Such as, there being demons in the Conan stories, but they are killable. I would like the Elric stories much better if he had a chance to divert his fate...this is a VERY important factor in both games and fiction for me. At the same time, the story/game needs to put the protagonist in real peril. BRP fulfills both these items better than anything else I know of.

[Nightshade]

You told to put the haling 2 at the end of the round, after you took damage.

No, I had the _prep_ for it then, not the cast. Once it was prepped, far as I know you couldn't interrupt the prep, just the casting. That was done on the following round (usually because there was no choice; most people couldn't prep _and_ cast a spell after being hit in a round, because the attack would likely land too late. Once in a while you'd have a high Dex type who could pull it off, or it could get done because someone had hit early in the round. But in those cases, usually there was no opposition who could hit anyway, because they'd already done their thing for the round. The only way you'd see otherwise was if someone was doing A's thing of standing around ready to interrupt, and that was a luxury tactic).

What I'm telling is that if you wait for the end of the MR, somebody that declares his action after you (=that has a higher DEX) cal land his attack right in the middle of your preparation and disrupt it.

Ah, I see part of the issue; we never paid a lick of attention to declaration. People just did their thing when their strike rank came up. If they needed to change, they just started over from that point in the round.

But if you put the healing 2 at the start of the MR, I agree with you, almost no melee attack can disrupt it.

That was what I was refering to, yes.

[Nightshade]

Trying to interupt the healing with a disruption does not preclude hitting him in melee. It is a complement.

Not unless you had two people who could do it, or one who was very fast. After all, you're talking 3 + Dex SR for the Disruption, plus the melee SR. I'm not going to say there weren't people who could pull that off, but I think it required a Dex SR of 1, a Size SR of 1 or 0, or both.

[Atgxtg]

Yes. Another big factor for me (I thought of it right after that last post, naturally) is that I like stories where the protagonist(s) are not helpless pawns. Such as, there being demons in the Conan stories, but they are killable. I would like the Elric stories much better if he had a chance to divert his fate...this is a VERY important factor in both games and fiction for me. At the same time, the story/game needs to put the protagonist in real peril. BRP fulfills both these items better than anything else I know of.

The irony here is that the reason why the Elric stories have the "weight of doom" on them is becase Moorcock orginally killed the character off early, and later stories were fit into the timeline after the ending was known. That the author was depressed at the time and had just gotten out of a bad relationship also played a factor in the Elric stories.

The Hawkmoon books are nearly so gloom, even though they are set in a post apocalyptic Europe being conquered by deranged Brits.

For me, free will is very important in an RPG, or at least the illusion of it. I chafe at adventures and GMs that Pull the players around by the nose. I consider it heavy handed, poor GMing.

A good GM can motivate the PCs so that they choose to do what he wanted. At least often enough to keep a campaign on track. A great will will have them thinking that it was their idea.

[Nightshade]

We rarely would cast heal on ourselves while in melee. If some is badly injured he would usually pull back or seek help from others. Otherwise he either losses an attack or has a delayed Strike rank and could wind up back where he was before casting.

Pulling back was rarely practical, almost never if you were fighting opponents smart enough for this to be an issue; there was almost always too many of them for it to be doable. It was either Heal yourself or not. Again, keep in mind this was usually done with small Heals, so in practice it was very difficult to get it interrupted. The prep was done at the end of the prior round, and the cast first thing in a new round. That tended to mean that the prep took place after everyone's attack but any remaining archers (who usually had better things to do if there were any in play by the time this happened than focus on someone already in bad enough shape to be doing a healing), and the cast would take place before, again, anyone but archers.

Firing late is sort of a non-issue, thanks to bows going of at DEX SR.

Not if you were firing into melee and wanted to avoid hitting your own side; one of the options for avoiding that was going off at the end of the round.

Speedart and Multimissle both help with the low cancel thing, and also help to ensure that some damage will get through. Speedart was one of the nastiest

Speedart did; Multimissile made firing into melee _more_ of a problem. Even Speedart still left it dodgy, just less so.

Remember, I was talkinng about problems with this tactic when the healer was already in melee.

Nah, I requires a decent missile skill and Multimissle. A high DEX doesn't hurt.

Neither of these prevents you from getting clobbered by a melee attacker while doing it, or another archer, since you're unable to parry the latter, and can only parry the former poorly.

All it takes is multimissle and you have the foes outnumber and control of the battlefield. Unless you are up against some real heavy hitters, your new SMG

No you don't. You still have attackers that can close up an eviscerate you while you're doing it. You might get one set off, but if one set is good enough, you're already fighting downhill, since I watched high level opponents sneer at Multimissiles because they didn't do enough damage to penetrate their Armor plus magical protections.

will do the job. Toss in a few points of Mobility (another often ignored gem) and they can't get you.

That's what I mean by "control the battlefield"; if the area is halfway tight, the only way you can avoid them getting to you is to not have a line of fire.

One thing that helps is the declaration phase. If you know what the other guys are doing you can declare accordingly.

As noted, I actually have never seen anyone bother with declaration--including the author of the game. I'm not going to say whether its commonly done or not, because that I don't know, but I've never actually been in an RQ game where it was.

Of course as with any other tactic, the situation makes a difference. One common tactic in RQ was to break the group up into three man teams with two warriors screening an archer.

[Nightshade]

I've never understood the underpowered thing. My main problem with RQ magic was the Glorantha angle; it never felt like fantasy magic as in some favorite books. No, a full-fledged Rune Priest I wouldn't call 'underpowered' anywhere. Magic World shouldn't be compared to RQ2 directly, though; it has an entirely different feel, especially when logically expanded.

I suspect its by comparison to things like D&D magic and DragonQuest magic; you could get some fairly heavy-duty Divine/Rune Magic, but it didn't tend to be a reliable killer and it rarely could effect groups; and of course it was very hard to combine some of the most ugly tricks in one caster because it tended to be cult-specific spells that were spread around multiple cults.

[Atgxtg]

Not unless you had two people who could do it, or one who was very fast. After all, you're talking 3 + Dex SR for the Disruption, plus the melee SR. I'm not going to say there weren't people who could pull that off, but I think it required a Dex SR of 1, a Size SR of 1 or 0, or both.

Ah, no. Your view is being skewed by applying the 3SR penalty to everything because you didn't run declarations. By the book, if you wanted to cast a disrupt and attack and declared it, there was no 3SR delay, you just added the 1 POW for disrupt to the SR of your attack.

The same is true for bladesharp and other combat spells, and that is how Chaosium would do it in the examples.

Skipping the declaration phase completely changes the game.

We almost never changed actions in a round to interrupt a spell. More like someone would declare casting something and someone else decided that it was better if the guy didn't complete it. Sometimes we throw a disrupt of people who were going to act after us to stop them from casting, or at least make them delay for a few SR.

[Nightshade]

Ah, no. Your view is being skewed by applying the 3SR penalty to everything because you didn't run declarations. By the book, if you wanted to cast a disrupt and attack and declared it, there was no 3SR delay, you just added the 1 POW for disrupt to the SR of your attack.

Either you're misunderstanding my point, or we don't understand the rules the same way. You don't need to spend the three strike ranks if you already have the spell prepared, but by definition, you can't have a spell prepared and be attacking in melee at the same time. As such, if the attacker hits and then wants to cast the spell, he has to use the three.

The same is true for bladesharp and other combat spells, and that is how Chaosium would do it in the examples.

See above. I don't think we're talking about the same thing. If we are, our understanding is not the same. Can you point me to an example of someone using a melee attack _then_ casting a spell in the round that does not add the three strike ranks?

Skipping the declaration phase completely changes the game.

Probably true, and explains why some of our experiences are so different. Personally, I always found the _combination_ of declaration and strike ranks conceptually silly; at the point you have strike ranks, I don't see what function the declaration is really serving.

[Atgxtg]

Pulling back was rarely practical, almost never if you were fighting opponents smart enough for this to be an issue; there was almost always too many of them for it to be doable. It was either Heal yourself or not. Again, keep in mind this was usually done with small Heals, so in practice it was very difficult to get it interrupted. The prep was done at the end of the prior round, and the cast first thing in a new round. That tended to mean that the prep took place after everyone's attack but any remaining archers (who usually had better things to do if there were any in play by the time this happened than focus on someone already in bad enough shape to be doing a healing), and the cast would take place before, again, anyone but archers.

I think you are assuming that your house rules were the core rules. In RQ you didn't have to prep a spell. You only had to pay the 3SR (5SR in RQ2) penalty for changing an action during a round. So I think a lot of your animosity towards disrupt is due to the 3SR penalty and the ability to "fast draw" an opposing caster with it.

Healing was usually done by a supporting character, rather than the injured one. Retrats were made viable by having a reserve to fill in the gaps. Some could follow the retreating character but then they would get double teams and that was bad news in RQ.

Not if you were firing into melee and wanted to avoid hitting your own side; one of the options for avoiding that was going off at the end of the round.

Most of our spellcasting was done out of melee. So most of our archer was shooting at out of melee targets. Generally if you are evenly number or outnumbered there is always some free target for the archer to nab.

Also, if you were really good (or had Arrow Trance) the risks of firing into melee were reduced greatly.

Speedart did; Multimissile made firing into melee _more_ of a problem. Even Speedart still left it dodgy, just less so.

Depends on how skilled the archer was.

Remember, I was talking about problems with this tactic when the healer was already in melee.

Neither of these prevents you from getting clobbered by a melee attacker while doing it, or another archer, since you're unable to parry the latter, and can only parry the former poorly.

Yes there is. The fact that you are going off first and can strike them at range, long before they reach you. Unless you get surprised at close range, you can beat any melee combatants on the attack.

Another archer IS a problem. Especiallyif he is better than you or or has better magic. INe guy with Bow 30% and Multimissle 4 can be a major pain in the side (literally).

No you don't. You still have attackers that can close up an eviscerate you while you're doing it. You might get one set off, but if one set is good enough, you're already fighting downhill, since I watched high level opponents sneer at Multimissiles because they didn't do enough damage to penetrate their Armor plus magical protections.

I don't think so. With an average Dex the Archer will get off shots at SR 3 and SR 9. Since the melee attackers have to move to reach the archer, then their attacks are going to be delayed. Even more so if they are putting up protection before charging. If he has a DEX SR1 he will be shooting at SR1, 5, and 9. All off before the other guys get to attack.

I'd love to run my Elf with Arrow trance against the sneerers. Especially if I have moblity up. Unless the attackers mass charge the archer, they have problems. Can catch me, can hit me with a sword, but I can critical them. If they do mass charge the archer, then they are easy picking for the melee fighter on our side.

That's what I mean by "control the battlefield"; if the area is halfway tight, the only way you can avoid them getting to you is to not have a line of fire.

If the area is tight, move to a narrow section and use the terrain to double team. Naturally, ambushes and other surprise situations throw everything out the window.

As noted, I actually have never seen anyone bother with declaration--including the author of the game. I'm not going to say whether its commonly done or not, because that I don't know, but I've never actually been in an RQ game where it was.

WoW. We used it all the time, as did everyone that I saw play the game. It makes a big difference with the way spells are cast. All the examples of magic Steve Perrin puts in the book used them. That's why a guy can cast Bladesharp 2 on his sword and still get an attack on on SR9, instead of losing his attack for the round.

That works if you've got good enough people and no one on the other side is using longspears; otherwise they just reach right past the warriors and spike the archer.

Only if the archer is an incompetent idiot. Why would he be standing so close to his screen? He can step back another yard or two, get a better field of fire, and be out of spear range. BTW, that is one of the tactics used in RuneLords, so I'm surprised you didn't see it when you were gaming with the author.

[RMS]

IMO alone the word "blast" (if you mean the same than me with it) and magic in one sentence is not what I would want to experience acutally in a game. Many ago I used to play such games where it was usual and important that you magically "blast" enemies away and where poeple rolled with the eyes if you didnt use the magic properly. Magic was considered more as a tool to have fun and to solve adventure plots and not as a (sometimes dangerous) mystical path. But this style of play has changed considerably the last 10 years and for me (and my players) its now a slower but and more satisfying experience. Maybe its one the reasons why I prefer to play in a alternative historical setting with rare (but sometimes powerful) magic and dont care for Glorantha where everybody and his dog has his low magic.

Ironically, what I love about Glorantha is that it's essentially the real world as pictured by ancient people: the world as seen through their eyes, rather than a modern take on the world with magic tacked on. Everyone having some low magic is part of our heritage (the perception thereof - I don't believe they actually had it obviously! ), so there's some substance there not in most fantasy worlds. I draw my inspiration for fantasy worlds from history or mythology, rather than from fiction, so that's probably why I'm drawn to Glorantha so strongly. I have my own homebrew world, but it's very similar in many ways.

[Atgxtg]

Ironically, what I love about Glorantha is that it's essentially the real world as pictured by ancient people: the world as seen through their eyes, rather than a modern take on the world with magic tacked on. Everyone having some low magic is part of our heritage (the perception thereof - I don't believe they actually had it obviously! ), so there's some substance there not in most fantasy worlds. I draw my inspiration for fantasy worlds from history or mythology, rather than from fiction, so that's probably why I'm drawn to Glorantha so strongly. I have my own homebrew world, but it's very similar in many ways.

I know what you mean. Thing like the ward against the evil eye and good luck charms all stem from our ancestor's beliefs in magic.

[Kloster]

...

Ah, I see part of the issue; we never paid a lick of attention to declaration. People just did their thing when their strike rank came up. If they needed to change, they just started over from that point in the round.

...

I think this is the reason why we have different experiences and tactics.

Removing the declaration phase changes completely the game. I have seen the declaration phase in all the RQ campaigns I have seen or played in (and even in some other BRP iterations).

Using the declaration phase makes changes in the MR much rarer, because the cost is VERY high (adding 3 to the current SR before starting to count SR, which means practically nothing can be done). And if it drives you in the following round, you can do it, but loose that round's actions (including parry).

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

...

Probably true, and explains why some of our experiences are so different. Personally, I always found the _combination_ of declaration and strike ranks conceptually silly; at the point you have strike ranks, I don't see what function the declaration is really serving.

Declaration phase is WHAT you do.

SR measure WHEN you do it.

You can be fast to prepare, but slower to act, and the order is not necessarily the same.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

...

I don't think so. With an average Dex the Archer will get off shots at SR 3 and SR 9. Since the melee attackers have to move to reach the archer, then their attacks are going to be delayed. Even more so if they are putting up protection before charging. If he has a DEX SR1 he will be shooting at SR1, 5, and 9. All off before the other guys get to attack.

...

IIRC, you count DEX SR only once, so the DEX SR 3 archer fires at 3, then 6, then 9. The DEX SR 1 archer fires at 1, 4, 7, 10.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Kloster]

...

WoW. We used it all the time, as did everyone that I saw play the game. It makes a big difference with the way spells are cast. All the examples of magic Steve Perrin puts in the book used them. That's why a guy can cast Bladesharp 2 on his sword and still get an attack on on SR9, instead of losing his attack for the round.

...

Exactly.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Atgxtg]

IIRC, you count DEX SR only once, so the DEX SR 3 archer fires at 3, then 6, then 9. The DEX SR 1 archer fires at 1, 4, 7, 10.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Rate of Fire, 1/SR (RQ missile weapons table p.66): Use the weapon on the adventurer's DEX stirke rank., then on his DEX SR+3+Dex SR again.

Example: Arcos the Archer has a DEX SR of 2. He can fire a composite bow on SR2, then he must take 3SR to get another arrow ready and notch it, then fire the second arrow at his DEX SR after than. Thus he will fire at SR1, then at SR 7.

So you get:

DEX SR 3= SR 3/9

DEX SR 2= SR2/7

DEX SR 1= SR1/5/9 (the third shot wasn't expressed stated in RQ3 like it was in RQ2, but is in supplments for high DEX archers.)

[Kloster]

Rate of Fire, 1/SR (RQ missile weapons table p.66): Use the weapon on the adventurer's DEX stirke rank., then on his DEX SR+3+Dex SR again.

Example: Arcos the Archer has a DEX SR of 2. He can fire a composite bow on SR2, then he must take 3SR to get another arrow ready and notch it, then fire the second arrow at his DEX SR after than. Thus he will fire at SR1, then at SR 7.

So you get:

DEX SR 3= SR 3/9

DEX SR 2= SR2/7

DEX SR 1= SR1/5/9 (the third shot wasn't expressed stated in RQ3 like it was in RQ2, but is in supplments for high DEX archers.)

Point taken. My mistake.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[Nightshade]

I think you are assuming that your house rules were the core rules. In RQ you didn't have to prep a spell. You only had to pay the 3SR (5SR in RQ2) penalty for changing an action during a round. So I think a lot of your animosity towards disrupt is due to the 3SR penalty and the ability to "fast draw" an opposing caster with it.

Not really. I still have no sign that you didn't need to prep a spell if you did something else in the round already, and even under our interpetation, it was quite possible for someone to prep at the end of the round if he wanted to try and interrupt the Healer. But was it a useful thing to do? Keep in mind that spirit spells weren't automatic; someone with a 12 Power had a 60% chance minus encumbarances of getting the spell off in the first place, then had to overcome the targets magic points, and the target then had to fail an Int x 3% roll. For fairly middle of the road targets, this meant that on the whole you had maybe one chance in five of actually successfully interrupting his healing, then had to restart your strike ranks to do anything else. Was this really a useful thing to do? Under normal circumstances, my answer would be "no".

Healing was usually done by a supporting character, rather than the injured one. Retrats were made viable by having a reserve to fill in the gaps. Some could follow the retreating character but then they would get double teams and that was bad news in RQ.

You must have had very large groups of followers; reserves were usually a non-starter in our experience because everyone present was _already_ in the middle of the fight, one way or another, and that usually included any of the few followers that might be present.

Most of our spellcasting was done out of melee. So most of our archer was shooting at out of melee targets. Generally if you are evenly number or outnumbered there is always some free target for the archer to nab.

But at least in our case, not the people doing the healing; it was extremely rare for us to have the luxury of having someone retreat to do that.

Also, if you were really good (or had Arrow Trance) the risks of firing into melee were reduced greatly.

You could avoid it completely, but only at the price of a massive cut in your attack value or a delay until the end of the round. The latter is obviously useless for spell interruption.

Depends on how skilled the archer was.

I never saw it likely to happen until post 100% skill, since you had at least a divisor of one half, and possibly more. No one felt like dealing with fifty percent or more of their hits hitting the wrong target.

Yes there is. The fact that you are going off first and can strike them at range, long before they reach you. Unless you get surprised at close range,

You can't do much to prevent them from closing unless you can reliably put the target down every time. If you can do that, you're already fighting inferior opponents in the first place, since, all things being equal, an archer just can't generate the penetration damage a melee attacker does, as his attacks don't have a strength based damage bonus on them, and any magical bonuses can be just as easily matched by the armor of the defender.

I don't think so. With an average Dex the Archer will get off shots at SR 3 and SR 9. Since the melee attackers have to move to reach the archer, then their attacks are going to be delayed. Even more so if they are putting up protection before charging. If he has a DEX SR1 he will be shooting at SR1, 5, and 9. All off before the other guys get to attack.

Sure. And he's probably doing maybe a D8+4 or 5 in most case unless you're talking runic levels, which is unlikely to put most targets in the same weight class down. Then they're on him and he has a problem. This is different in wide fields of fire, or course, but at that point its likely moot because the whole fight turns into either an archery exchange or a cavalry charge/archery exchange (and if it turns into a cavalry charge, he sure as hell _better_ put them down before they close, as a lance charge is about the last thing anyone in RQ without a shield wants to be on the recieving end of).

I'd love to run my Elf with Arrow trance against the sneerers. Especially if I have moblity up. Unless the attackers mass charge the archer, they have problems. Can catch me, can hit me with a sword, but I can critical them. If they do mass charge the archer, then they are easy picking for the melee fighter on our side.

And with Arrow Trance the moment someone does close, you're pretty much dead because your can't defend worth a damn, or even heal yourself; and that's even if its an option, since its a Gloranthan spell, and one available to only a small subset of cults at that. Though it increases your to hit dramatically, it doesn't intrinsically make you do any more damage unless you're already so good you can count on impales (and if you are that good, your opponets are probably good enough that a single impaling arrow isn't a killer)

If the area is tight, move to a narrow section and use the terrain to double team. Naturally, ambushes and other surprise situations throw everything out the window.

That's nice if you get the choice of making the fight come to you. You don't always. Sometimes that's just an invitation to get surrounded slowly or have people use longspears and archery to concentrate fire on you. Other times, it makes the whole thing moot because you're on the assault.

WoW. We used it all the time, as did everyone that I saw play the game. It makes a big difference with the way spells are cast. All the examples of magic Steve Perrin puts in the book used them. That's why a guy can cast Bladesharp 2 on his sword and still get an attack on on SR9, instead of losing his attack for the round.

I have to point out Steve wrote very few of those examples. As to the rest--they can do it our way, too; they just prep the spell the prior round. What I don't see anywhere is an example where someone attacks and _then_ casts a spell without prepping. You certainly couldn't do that in RQ2, and I have no real evidence it changed.

Only if the archer is an incompetent idiot. Why would he be standing so close to his screen? He can step back another yard or two, get a better field of fire, and be out of spear range. BTW, that is one of the tactics used in RuneLords, so I'm surprised you didn't see it when you were gaming with the author.

I don't recall every seeing a battle Steve ran where we had enough forces to be able to provide a screen for much of anyone. If you did, chances are you either got multiteamed something fierce, or the archer had no targets that weren't already in melee.

[Nightshade]

Declaration phase is WHAT you do.

SR measure WHEN you do it.

And as I said, I see no point in declaration other than to tell everyone else what you're doing when in fact, I see no reason why they'd know. If you're going to cast a spell then switch to your crossbow and fire, just how does anyone but you know about the latter at the start of the round?

As I said, it serves no valid purpose that I can see and over favors Dexterity, which hardly needs more benefits in RQ.

[Nightshade]

IIRC, you count DEX SR only once, so the DEX SR 3 archer fires at 3, then 6, then 9. The DEX SR 1 archer fires at 1, 4, 7, 10.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I vaguely recall that being correct, though its been a lot of years. However, note prepping an arrow took three strike ranks, so you wouldn't be able to do that on following rounds. You could pretty much go 4-3-4-3 with that high a Dex, though.