minor actions, major actions

[Daxos232]

My friends brought up an interesting idea when we were last playing. It started when they thought it was lame that it took 1 combat round to reload a longbow to be able to fire it the next round. We talked about the way D&D does it with minor/major actions and moves. Looking at the book I can't see why it couldn't be implemented for our games. Just wondering if anyone has done this with their games and if there are any issues to making it work.

[Thalaba]

We use the strike ranks option, which come from RQ. I'm not 100% sure they're the same in BRP, but in RQ you would knock your first arrow and fire on your dex strike rank (2 or 3 usually), then reload and fire again on your dex SR+3. In effect most people can fire two missiles in a round, either on ranks 2 and 7 or on 3 and 9 (out of 10 in a round).

[NickMiddleton]

My friends brought up an interesting idea when we were last playing. It started when they thought it was lame that it took 1 combat round to reload a longbow to be able to fire it the next round.

Note sure about "lame", but it's not entirely accurate. Under the Volley Fire spot rule a Long Bow can (in most characters hands) shoot more often than once per round - admittedly the rule is a rather unclear blend of the Call of Cthulhu "unaimed shots" rule and the Elric! Volley Fire spot rule (see previous discussion here). If using the optional Strike Rank rules, most humans will manage two shots per round with a Long Bow.

And, from a "historically plausible" starting point an effective clothyard arrow per six (or even 12) seconds is quite an achievement and quite devastating against targets without adequate armour and about right for the Long Bow. I've seen skilled archers push their rate of shot higher, but only against a fixed target and with the arrows prepped specifically to hand (e.g. stuck in the ground directly in front of the archer) and even then not much beyond 15 - 18 arrows per minute...

We talked about the way D&D does it with minor/major actions and moves. Looking at the book I can't see why it couldn't be implemented for our games. Just wondering if anyone has done this with their games and if there are any issues to making it work.

Hmm - not tried it exactly - but I'd be more tempted to first try simply upping the rate of fire of Long Bows.

Cheers

Nick

[threedeesix]

My friends brought up an interesting idea when we were last playing. It started when they thought it was lame that it took 1 combat round to reload a longbow to be able to fire it the next round. We talked about the way D&D does it with minor/major actions and moves. Looking at the book I can't see why it couldn't be implemented for our games. Just wondering if anyone has done this with their games and if there are any issues to making it work.

In the revised version of Classic Fantasy I added an action based miniatures combat system. Each action equates roughly to 5 DEX ranks and a character has 1 action per 5 points of DEX (round up).

Readying an arrow takes 1 action as does attacking with a bow. So in one combat round, an average character (10 DEX) could draw and attack. Note: You are still limited to the normal number of attacks per round allowed.

Now, fast drawing an arrow takes 0 actions but requires an average difficulty Bow skill roll, with a failure resulting in the arrow being dropped.

What this means is that when a character gets 100% in Bow and could make two attacks per round, he could fast draw, shoot, fast draw, shoot. He will only drop an arrow on a roll of 96-00.

Rod

[gtrevizo]

I can accept that a long bow takes a full combat round to release an arrow at normal accuracy, but I can't accept that it takes 24 seconds to fire and chamber a new round with a bolt-action rifle at normal accuracy without any special attention paid to aiming. Well-trained soldiers could fire muskets at a higher rate of fire than amounts to roughly 2 rounds per minute.

[threedeesix]

I can accept that a long bow takes a full combat round to release an arrow at normal accuracy, but I can't accept that it takes 24 seconds to fire and chamber a new round with a bolt-action rifle at normal accuracy without any special attention paid to aiming. Well-trained soldiers could fire muskets at a higher rate of fire than amounts to roughly 2 rounds per minute.

This is an easier problem to fix. The 12 second round was just a length of time decided on by the author to base his combat round on. If it seems too long, just say a combat round is 6 seconds, or 3 seconds. What ever best fits the feeling for your campaign. It wont really make a lot of difference game wise.

Rod

[gtrevizo]

This is an easier problem to fix. The 12 second round was just a length of time decided on by the author to base his combat round on. If it seems too long, just say a combat round is 6 seconds, or 3 seconds. What ever best fits the feeling for your campaign. It wont really make a lot of difference game wise.

So if I do that, do I then have to increase the rate of fire for all other weapons? And do the same thing with the Movement rules? So, to allow someone to fire a bolt-action rifle in 1 round, you can now fire 6 shots in 1 round with a light pistol, and can walk 20 meters per round. I'd essentially have to rewrite most of the rules.

[threedeesix]

So if I do that, do I then have to increase the rate of fire for all other weapons?

Nope, most if not all of the weapons on the tables fire way too slow anyway.

And do the same thing with the Movement rules?

The movement rules are far from realistic as they are now. I'd leave them as is.

So, to allow someone to fire a bolt-action rifle in 1 round, you can now fire 6 shots in 1 round with a light pistol, and can walk 20 meters per round.

No, a light pistol would still fire 3 shots per round, its just that now a round is 3 seconds long (for example). I'm sure the gun enthusiast on this forum would say that is much more realistic. The bolt action rifle would still fire every other round, but now that would be one shot per 6 seconds (1/2 ROF). I'm sure that's better than 1 shot every 24 seconds.

I'd essentially have to rewrite most of the rules

Nope, just tell all your players that a round is now 3 seconds (or whatever) and your done. My point is that if you set the length of a round to what you want your weapons to fire at, there really is very little else to change, far from re-writing the rules.

Rod

Edited March 18, 2010 by threedeesix
too confusing

[Nightshade]

I can accept that a long bow takes a full combat round to release an arrow at normal accuracy, but I can't accept that it takes 24 seconds to fire and chamber a new round with a bolt-action rifle at normal accuracy without any special attention paid to aiming. Well-trained soldiers could fire muskets at a higher rate of fire than amounts to roughly 2 rounds per minute.

The problem is that, like most games, BRP is generally pretty kind to the accuracy of in-combat ranged weapons fire; a rifleman who actually hit an opposing target 50% of the time (barring some special cases with sniper fire) is an astounding level of skill in the real world, let alone the same issue with handgun fire (the typical rounds to target in police related fire fights has been estimated at 1 in 6).

So if you up the rate of fire without applying much more severe penalties for the situations in combat than BRP does, you effectively make things unrealistically lethal, via realistic rates of fire and unrealistic levels of accuracy. But if you do things to correct the accuracy, you spend a lot of time slinging dice around to no real purpose, since most shots will miss.

[SDLeary]

We use the strike ranks option, which come from RQ. I'm not 100% sure they're the same in BRP, but in RQ you would knock your first arrow and fire on your dex strike rank (2 or 3 usually), then reload and fire again on your dex SR+3. In effect most people can fire two missiles in a round, either on ranks 2 and 7 or on 3 and 9 (out of 10 in a round).

This also gives high-DEX types like elves the potential to be able to fire three times per melee.

I can't remember which BRP game it was, but we also did DEX, and second shot on DEX-10. This may have been a house rule for Stormbringer, but it gives similar results to RQ III.

IIRC, way back when, some stuff was added to the Wiki with regards to missile fire.

SDLeary

Edited March 18, 2010 by SDLeary

[gtrevizo]

So if you up the rate of fire without applying much more severe penalties for the situations in combat than BRP does, you effectively make things unrealistically lethal, via realistic rates of fire and unrealistic levels of accuracy. But if you do things to correct the accuracy, you spend a lot of time slinging dice around to no real purpose, since most shots will miss.

On the other hand, you can have folks sitting around the table with nothing to do, as they feel like they're moving unrealistically in slow motion, while someone with a light pistol is attacking or at what feels *by comparison* to be an unrealistically high rate of fire, or explaining why one character can walk 20 meters in the time it takes you to rechamber your Lee-Enfield.

There are a lot of options in BRP to decrease lethality on the damage end without creating unrealistic restrictions on firearm data, especially restrictions that force players to sacrifice an action just to shoot their gun. My preference would be to simply increase the RoF of bolt-action firearms to 1 per round, as that deals with the issue rather than create further issues with other elements of the game.

[SDLeary]

I'd suggest you look at THIS entry from the Wiki. This was discussed some time ago, this was one proposal to fix the situation.

SDLeary

[gtrevizo]

I'd suggest you look at THIS entry from the Wiki.

It's an interesting solution, but... if I get this straight, I can fire a bolt-action rifle on my DEX rank, then fire again at the same target in the same round at the DEX -10 rank (provided I have a DEX of 11 or higher); but, if I fire my rifle at one target, I can't rechamber and fire at a different target until 2 rounds later (because the weapon still has the RoF of 1/2 per round and I have to wait a round to reload). Is that how it's supposed to work?

If that's how it works, it just seems easier to change the RoF of bolt-action weapons to 1 per round.

This was discussed some time ago, this was one proposal to fix the situation.

I did search on "bolt action" and came up with a few threads, but nothing that specifically discussed this issue. The closest was this one, where you posted the above solution. I found Jason Durall's post immediately before that very telling, especially this:

Given carte blanche I'd have shortened the combat round to three seconds and completely done away with Strike Ranks... but I was trying to maintain the integrity of the system.

The 12-second combat round really breaks down applied to anything beyond melee combat (where you can use the D&D handwave of "there's a lot more going on than just a single attack"), and is utter abstraction when dealing with firearms.

Please understand, I'm not some gunfondler who desires absolute verisimiltude at the cost of playability. I want a system that's fun and coherent much moreso than anything "realistic." That said, I have run a game where this exact issue has come up (someone was working a bolt-action rifle, others were doing other stuff) and it was maddening to try to make sense of within the rules as written.

[cjbowser]

Personally, I changed the ROF on bolt-actions to 1/1. It didn't appreciably change combat balance and, more importantly, it gave players the opportunity to do something every round.

[NickMiddleton]

I can accept that a long bow takes a full combat round to release an arrow at normal accuracy, but I can't accept that it takes 24 seconds to fire and chamber a new round with a bolt-action rifle at normal accuracy without any special attention paid to aiming. Well-trained soldiers could fire muskets at a higher rate of fire than amounts to roughly 2 rounds per minute.

Err - I think there's a glitch in the description / tables. The Bolt Action is listed as having an "Attacks per Round" of 1/2, but a Strike Rank of 1/SR AND a magazine of 5. Since this means (per my earlier post re the long bow) that a typical human firing under the SR system would get TWO shots per round, I can't see how that squares with 1 shot every 2 rounds under the DEX rank system - but I CAN see unclipping and replacing a magazine taking a round or two under typical combat conditions.

Further, see page 254 - the sections of Reloading Firearms and unaimed fire should supersede what's on the weapon table I'd suggest, as that's clearly a hang-over from the rather inconsistent Call of Cthulhu firearms table (where there are Bolt-Action rifles listed with RoF's of 1 and 1/2...). I'd just come up with revised stats for the specific weapon.

Cheers,

Nick

[Daxos232]

Ok, threedeesix, i really like that idea. That sounds like a simple system that works. I am wondering how that affects spell casting. How many actions would a spell be? I take it that movement would cost an action, as would using a skill in combat such as picking a lock. That also reminds me of another question I was thinking of. I had pretty much the same idea for movement rates. Right now my characters can move 5 spaces on a board. For every 5 Dexterity above 10 they would get to move one more space, but I wondered if that would be too overpowering for high Dexterity characters. Also when you said "round up" does that mean a character with a Dexterity of 19 would have technically 4 actions because 19 is closer to 20, while a character with Dexterity of 16 would have 3 actions because 16 is closer to 15 than 20?

[SDLeary]

It's an interesting solution, but... if I get this straight, I can fire a bolt-action rifle on my DEX rank, then fire again at the same target in the same round at the DEX -10 rank (provided I have a DEX of 11 or higher); but, if I fire my rifle at one target, I can't rechamber and fire at a different target until 2 rounds later (because the weapon still has the RoF of 1/2 per round and I have to wait a round to reload). Is that how it's supposed to work?

My understanding is that if you change targets, then you would have to wait till the next round to fire, not two rounds later.

If that's how it works, it just seems easier to change the RoF of bolt-action weapons to 1 per round.

That would be an option. A marksman familiar with his weapon though could still get off more shots at the same target than a RoF change would give. Combine the two, and only force next round penalties if targets are changed.

I did search on "bolt action" and came up with a few threads, but nothing that specifically discussed this issue. The closest was this one, where you posted the above solution. I found Jason Durall's post immediately before that very telling, especially this:

Please understand, I'm not some gunfondler who desires absolute verisimiltude at the cost of playability. I want a system that's fun and coherent much moreso than anything "realistic." That said, I have run a game where this exact issue has come up (someone was working a bolt-action rifle, others were doing other stuff) and it was maddening to try to make sense of within the rules as written.

Do a search for Firearms. Bolt actions were only a part of the discussion.

SDLeary

[threedeesix]

Ok, threedeesix, i really like that idea. That sounds like a simple system that works. I am wondering how that affects spell casting. How many actions would a spell be?

I made sure that every action was the equivalent to 5 DEX ranks, therefore a spell casting action allows up to 5 spell levels of a specific spell to be cast. But see "interrupting an action" below.

I take it that movement would cost an action, as would using a skill in combat such as picking a lock.

Each move action allows your character to move a number of squares on the battle grid equal to his or her MOV score. You are limited to a maximum of 2 move actions per round, and a square on the grid is equal to 1.5 meters. Therefore each round assumes an average human can move 30 meters.

Picking a lock in combat takes a full round. This is how long it took in BRP so remains unchanged. If I could find a reference as to how many DEX ranks something took to do I just converted the information from DEX ranks to actions to remain consistent. Picking a pocket takes 1 action.

That also reminds me of another question I was thinking of. I had pretty much the same idea for movement rates. Right now my characters can move 5 spaces on a board. For every 5 Dexterity above 10 they would get to move one more space, but I wondered if that would be too overpowering for high Dexterity characters.

As I noted above, a character can move 1 space on the grid per point of MOV for each move action expended. Originally I didn't limit it to a maximum of 2 move actions. The problem was that humans have a MOV of 10 and elves a MOV of 11, meaning that elves are supposed to be "a little" faster than humans. If you had a human with a DEX of 16 (4 actions) and an elf with a DEX of 15 (3 actions), without a limit the human could move 40 squares (60 meters) to the elves 33 (49.5 meters) in a combat round. We tossed it around during playtesting but the majority didn't think it "felt" right, so I changed it.

Also when you said "round up" does that mean a character with a Dexterity of 19 would have technically 4 actions because 19 is closer to 20, while a character with Dexterity of 16 would have 3 actions because 16 is closer to 15 than 20?

The first part is correct, in all cases you round to the next largest number. A better way to look at it is that you get 1 action for every 5 points of DEX, or fraction there of.

I did change one thing in an attempt to keep the action moving at an exciting clip. Originally, we went around the table with each character taking 1 action, then went around again with each taking there next action until everyone was out of actions. This represented the core BRP rules where you would take your action on your DEX rank, but if you had additional actions you would perform them 5 DEX ranks later. The action system handled this nicly. But after playing around with the system for better than a year, we decided to try it with each player taking all of his actions before moving of to the next. This sped up play considerably and it fealt way more exciting.

For example, when his turn to act arrives, a ranger with 3 Actions could state aim, aim, fire. This would normally take three trips around the table as he first aims, then 5 DEX ranks later, aims again, and finally 5 DEX ranks later fires. It was just so much funner that we opted to keep with it. Allowing him to take all three actions when his turn to act comes up.

Now, obviously, the other way would allow the archer to be interrupted, so something had to be done to keep that chance. For that I added an action called burst of adrenalin. This allows you to interrupt any other character, regardless of where they fall in the initiative. The down side is that it uses 2 actions and causes the loss of a fatigue level. Of course there is also the delay action, which allows you to hold your actions until later, but this would require you to have a higher initiative than the ranger to be effective.

There is obviously a lot more to it, but it's hard to summarize 14 pages in one post. So I hope it was a little useful.

Rod

Edited March 19, 2010 by threedeesix