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strike ranks explained visually, and questions


radmonger

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Agreed @soltakss flexibility aligned with feeling real is my guideline too. However try to avoid overpoweredness just coz you are fast, fast is mostly about acting first, which in RQ combat is a big advantage anyway. Number of actions should stay limited to two. Of course defensive actions are unlimited except get harder the more you try to do, minus 20% each time. Also in my game sr helps define simultaneous actions, which cannot happen, example sword and board better than one weapon coz you can attack and parry on same sr, cannot with a single weapon, you have to delay to parry.

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20 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Since the bandits would not get to you before SR 5 (at 3m per SR movement), you could cast a spell, throw a weapon of shoot your bow as long as you are quick enough to do it before they reach you. 

You didn't read the scenario properly. 

Our group has a bunch of people. There are two enemy bandits. My interest is to mindblast whomever charges me, because I'm a priest wearing towel, bedsheet and a pair of sandals to a swordfight. 

The way @French Desperate WindChild s first post reads, you cannot mindblast the bandit that charges you if there is one, because he doesn't allow complicated conditional statements of intent as RQG RAW does: When the charging starts and targets are picked, you must have already selected your target and committed to Mindblast.

The way he solves it is also the way our group solves it, which is, doing statement of intent as a kinda group negotiation, instead of the vague and conditional statements as in RAW. 

(Because the RAW way of doing it is... clumsy.)

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9 hours ago, Aurelius said:

You didn't read the scenario properly.

I clearly did not.

9 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Our group has a bunch of people. There are two enemy bandits. My interest is to mindblast whomever charges me, because I'm a priest wearing towel, bedsheet and a pair of sandals to a swordfight. 

The way @French Desperate WindChild s first post reads, you cannot mindblast the bandit that charges you if there is one, because he doesn't allow complicated conditional statements of intent as RQG RAW does: When the charging starts and targets are picked, you must have already selected your target and committed to Mindblast.

Within the context of what they describes, I understand your question better. However, what they describe is not how we manage SoI. Thus my confusion.

9 hours ago, Aurelius said:

The way he solves it is also the way our group solves it, which is, doing statement of intent as a kinda group negotiation, instead of the vague and conditional statements as in RAW. 

(Because the RAW way of doing it is... clumsy.)

I am unsure what you mean by that. We have always played that everyone would state their intent with as much or as little detail required, in no particular order (i.e. during SoI players can adjust their statement based on info given by GM and other players) - I suspect this is what you mean by negotiation.

RAW is not really prescriptive (so I always considered our approach pretty much RAW). How is RAW clumsy?

Edited by DreadDomain
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Even Steve Perrin himself was against the use of Strike Ranks during the playtests of Mongoose's first RuneQuest !

The one thing that works very well in Strike Ranks is how spells Strike Ranks are calculated. Everything else is overly complicated.

On 10/18/2024 at 12:20 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

For exemple, I m thinking as playing combat with cards. Each player build the pc own deck. 

I have bad memories from playing with cards in D&D 4th edition. More than anything, cards are what made the game look like a tactical boardgame for me, as players focused only on the cards in their hands and didn't try to be imaginative.

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1 hour ago, Mugen said:

Even Steve Perrin himself was against the use of Strike Ranks during the playtests of Mongoose's first RuneQuest !

I'd love to hear more, in great detail! 

I'm always a sucker for how designers think behind the scenes, particularly when they are critical of their own past work. 

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1 hour ago, DreadDomain said:

RAW is not really prescriptive (so I always considered our approach pretty much RAW). How is RAW clumsy?

Well, my problem with RAW SoI is that it assumes that everyone plans their combat in 12-second increments starting at the same time, and that's how it creates weird artifacts in how the combat flows, which need to be managed by either vague SoI:s or playing around the RAW system. 

The clumsiness in this case is that even though you desire to defend yourself by casting a 1-second spell (Mindblast) at whomever runs towards you, the time to charge and skewer you is shorter than the decisionmaking interval. 

Another weird artifact is that when two rune lords fight, every 12 seconds they both blast a Rune Spell and then focus the rest of the time on fighting. Its still weirdly common that the Storm Voice and the Scimitar go down on the same second, as their Thunderbolt and Sever Spirit have a weird tendency to hit simultaneously. 

Other initiative systems cause this kind of artifacts as well. SR:s just do it with a lot more complexity and math. 

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12 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Our group has a bunch of people. There are two enemy bandits. My interest is to mindblast whomever charges me, because I'm a priest wearing towel, bedsheet and a pair of sandals to a swordfight. 

The works cleanly in the linked rules, as you sort out engagements (who is fighting who)  _before_ you decide what to do.

 

image.png.32db73466fb4e3ff0d1478083c15c9ae.png

So the secuence becomes:

  • 'You are being charged by two bandits; what do you do??
  • I Mindblast one, parry the other.

AFAICS there is no reason not to adopt that rule even if you don't use the other parts.

 

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14 hours ago, Aurelius said:

The way @French Desperate WindChild s first post reads, you cannot mindblast the bandit that charges you if there is one, because he doesn't allow complicated conditional statements of intent as RQG RAW does

by the way, I m not sure that what I do is houserules and not raw 🙂 What I understand from the raw, is that players declare the actions with the information they have. That's all. My (maybe house) rules is to keep the fight as fluent as possible is to determine "when" the round starts (aka once players know what they should know to decide) that's not a question of "negociation"

 

so maybe I houserule, maybe not. An other option I just have is :

if one player says "I will mindblast the one who attacks me" then GM has options  1) you see no one attacking you, what is your intention ? 2) ok this one attacks you (even if it is not the GM's plan, the point is to avoid a list of if if if) 

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11 hours ago, Aurelius said:

I'd love to hear more, in great detail! 

I'm always a sucker for how designers think behind the scenes, particularly when they are critical of their own past work. 

I'm sorry, I just remember this. 🙂

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12 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Well, my problem with RAW SoI is that it assumes that everyone plans their combat in 12-second increments starting at the same time, and that's how it creates weird artifacts in how the combat flows, which need to be managed by either vague SoI:s or playing around the RAW system. 

It doesn't assume that your whole 12 second will be precisely planned and specifically mention it doesn't have to be precise. The only reason a SoI phase exist in RQ is that intiative is fuild and depends on what you choose to do. SoI only need to have enough information from everyone so a) people generally know what is going on and b) the strike rank of the first intended action by everyone can be figured out. 

12 hours ago, Aurelius said:

The clumsiness in this case is that even though you desire to defend yourself by casting a 1-second spell (Mindblast) at whomever runs towards you, the time to charge and skewer you is shorter than the decisionmaking interval. 

Unless I misunderstand your statement, no it's not. That is exacty what the SoI covers. 

GM "ok, two bandits armed with swords run down the hill towards your group. At the start of the turn they are 12 meters away, so won't get to you before SR 4. A third one is cocking his bow"

Player 1 "I will cast mindblast towards whomever runs towards me"

GM "Ok you can act as early as SR 1 but at that point, they are both running towrads your group. it's hard to know if one of them is running towards you specifically. Do you want to delay to figure this out. You could wait until SR 4 and still be safe. Don't forget the bowman will likely shoot before that. By the way, what do you do after the mindblast?"

Player 1 "Good points, I will mindblast the bowman and draw my axe ready for melee"

GM "Mindblast at SR 1 and your axe will be drawn be SR 5 which is fine since the bandits won't attack before SR 4 plus their attack SR"

Player 2 "I will draw my sword and run towards them to attack. They might not even reach player 1..."

Unless the tactical situation is complex, or we have a big group, that is pretty much as long and as detailed a SoI I ever had. 

12 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Another weird artifact is that when two rune lords fight, every 12 seconds they both blast a Rune Spell and then focus the rest of the time on fighting. Its still weirdly common that the Storm Voice and the Scimitar go down on the same second, as their Thunderbolt and Sever Spirit have a weird tendency to hit simultaneously. 

I'm with you here. I have never been super keen on rune spells going on 1 but this is still how we play it.

12 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Other initiative systems cause this kind of artifacts as well. SR:s just do it with a lot more complexity and math. 

To each their own. I do not find them complex and don't see math playing a significant role here. 

Another side comment about SoI. Coming from other systems, back in the days we did play without it to "speed up combat". We discovered that going through the SoI, all had a much better understanding of the situation and made it more interesting/visual to all. The MR were much smoother because there was way less interruption caused by people trying to understand what was going on. 

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11 hours ago, radmonger said:

The works cleanly in the linked rules, as you sort out engagements (who is fighting who)  _before_ you decide what to do.

 

image.png.32db73466fb4e3ff0d1478083c15c9ae.png

Just a nitpick, even in the unengaged lane, characters could still by bound by SRs if it matters relative to the people engaged (movement and ranged attacks are example of this).

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In these rules, enagement includes ranged and spell attacks. So during a combat round, you cannot attack an opponent ypu are not engaged with. And strike ranks are only used for attacks.

You would need it if you were trying to work out the exact casting time of heal spells or something. But I don't think it adds much to gameplay to say 'ok, you died because your healer was 14m away with a DEX of 13, making them unable to cast the required Heal 4 in time'. If you are going to fudge something if you get an answer you don't like, might as well not do the calculatiuon in the first place.

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One overlooked, but critically important advantage to a "hard" old school mechanism like this is....

 

.....you get to break it later.

 

First the Rune level characters get an Allied Spirit or a fetch, effectively allowing them to cast, attack, and defend (because the spirit is actually the one casting).

Later, the characters can heroquest for abilities or quest for items that break this paradigm, allowing them to, for instance, cast a Rune spell, attack, and then Parry.  Or recover a spear that casts its own lightning every turn if activated, that sort of thing.

 

 

 

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For me most annoying part of SR system is fact that most of the PCs and NPCs have the same 5-7 SR. If most combatants are attacking simultaneously anyway, why bother with a strike rank system at all?

Why only 12 strike ranks? Everything in RQ tends to be percentile, why not Initiative? It should be a skill. Hey, RQ already has too many skills, why not make another one?

Initiative should reflect your overall combat experience, knowledge of typical enemy behaviors and patterns, and the ability to react quickly to the situation, decide how to attack, and quickly implement that decision.

And, as a rule of thumb, after action your Initiative is halved for the rest of the round. If your current initiative is less than 50, it will be your last action in this round.

You can even apply delay of every weapon (1SR = 10%). But I would prefer to treat bypassing an opponent's longer weapon as the combatant's first action, and not bother with any other difference between weapons.

This way, very experienced characters could do many more things in a round than amateurs. And the need to consider attacks as simultaneous would become much rarer.

jar-eel_crimson_bat.png

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1 hour ago, narsilion said:

Initiative should reflect your overall combat experience, knowledge of typical enemy behaviors and patterns, and the ability to react quickly to the situation, decide how to attack, and quickly implement that decision.

And, as a rule of thumb, after action your Initiative is halved for the rest of the round. If your current initiative is less than 50, it will be your last action in this round

the issue I see with this optionis that you have the same initiative regardless of the weapon(s) you use. You may master one weapon and don't know at all another one, the result is the same. You may use a very light blade or a very big hammer, the result is the same

The system of skill is based on one skill  and that's all.

However I agree that the notion of "combat experience" should be interesting, but it should be in addition with the "weapon skill". So more complexity.

actual system "manages" the weapon skills (>100% = 2 attacks if you have enough "time"), the weapon "enc" (SR different) but not the experience of the warrior (there is a skill for that, battle, but we don't have any meta rule about two skills for one action)

So why not an initiative, with your idea of /2 after action (or maybe minus something ? that allows move "cost") , but, in my opinion, not with a initiative skill, more with a combination (to determine) of weapon skill*    , battle, weapon "ergonomy"

 

* but then, we face of a lot of other questions :  which skill if you use more than one weapon (2 weapons, a shield, a dodge, a move ...)

that will lead me to an "action point" system. Your battle skill = your actions points, then every action has a cost (depending on weapon skill, weapon ergonomy, potentially type of action, for a weapon, and for a move, depending on dex or str, the type of ground, type of action, etc...)

 

I m not sure there is one obvious system that overpower other systems

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17 hours ago, narsilion said:

Initiative should reflect your overall combat experience, knowledge of typical enemy behaviors and patterns, and the ability to react quickly to the situation, decide how to attack, and quickly implement that decision.

The problem with "realistic" RPG systems is that in real reality, there are endless circumstances, situations, and considerations, but any reasonable design can only accommodate some of them. 

Runequest seems to be very much designed with barbarians fighting phalanxes in mind. 

If it was designed for brawls in crowded taverns, longest weapons would have the slowest SR:s and daggers would have the fastest.

And yes, a competent guy with a dagger can probably poke me before I will even realize what is happening, no matter whether I'm wielding a spear or a broadsword. 

To me realism is just another -ism, yet another aesthetic preference among the others. Its good to have a lot of it in your cocktail, so that the system makes sense between your choices and consequences (particularly for new players) -- you could play your Glorantha game on a chessboard but it would be quite weird to learn that you are doomed if you stand two meters away and one meter to the side of a knight.

But no playable game will ever be realistic, as in actually simulating the conditions of the physical world with historical accuracy. We can see some glimpses of realism here and there, but interpolating from those glimpses is unreliable, and extrapolating gets very weird very fast. And since those glimpses are so scarce, we are extrapolating much if not most of the time.

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17 hours ago, narsilion said:

For me most annoying part of SR system is fact that most of the PCs and NPCs have the same 5-7 SR. If most combatants are attacking simultaneously anyway, why bother with a strike rank system at all?

That's because most Adventurers and NPCs are humans.

Stick a big, quick troll in with a maul and you are looking at an attack of SR1 or 2. Aldryami with long spears and a high DEX come in quicker. Zombies have lower DEX so tend to come in slater, even poleaxe-wielding zombie pixies come in fairly late as the small SIZ and lower DEX counter the faster poleaxe.

Add in spell casting, or delayed actions and it spreads things about a bit.

 

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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On 10/22/2024 at 6:20 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

However I agree that the notion of "combat experience" should be interesting, but it should be in addition with the "weapon skill". So more complexity.

Unless you have only one melee combat skill, which represent that combat experience, and specialists of each individual weapon have a bonus to that skill.

For instance, Melee 47 and Short Sword +25 would result in a 72% effective skill.

I'm not sure anyone would want an initiative specialty, though.

Changing initiative based on the weapon used can easily be done with an initiative modifier.

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1 hour ago, Mugen said:

Unless you have only one melee combat skill, which represent that combat experience, and specialists of each individual weapon have a bonus to that skill.

For instance, Melee 47 and Short Sword +25 would result in a 72% effective skill.

yes you may reduce the complexity (a little bit, because at the end of the day, you still have the addition) however you reduce too the model :

should all people who use short sword have +25 ? Is it only binary ?  Or a master should have more than a trainee ?

At the end, if you want to modelize a range of situation (oh we forgot the great master, the hero, etc...)  you determine different levels (+10 +25 +50, etc...)

If there are different values, what is the game system to progress from 0 to +10, from +10 to  +25 ? how many seasons must you train ?

So you may have to define one more system of training.

If you use skill, at least, there is nothing more to add thant how do we combine two skills.

I m not defending this conbination in particular, what I say is if we want to propose something "better", fixing issues that people may have (sometimes contrary issues) that cannot be a simple answer. A simple answer may fix one table's issues, true, but probably not all tables issues

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I'd be curious -- anyone got a video link that would show an example of a well-researched understanding on how fighting with sandals and bronze looked like back in the actual history? Like a full-speed re-enactment video based on good archeological understanding? 

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56 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

I'd be curious -- anyone got a video link that would show an example of a well-researched understanding on how fighting with sandals and bronze looked like back in the actual history? Like a full-speed re-enactment video based on good archeological understanding? 

Iron age and not bronze age, but as far as I remember what an History prof in Geneva University told me at that time, 1st episode of Rome (The Alesia battle) gives a quite good show of Roman armies movement, tactics and organisation.

For bronze age, I remember having seen a BBC doc showing Alexander's battle at Gaugameles, but I don't know if it is realistic.

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1 hour ago, Aurelius said:

I'd be curious -- anyone got a video link that would show an example of a well-researched understanding on how fighting with sandals and bronze looked like back in the actual history? Like a full-speed re-enactment video based on good archeological understanding? 

I can’t look for it now, but there was a recent example of modern Greek Marines exploring combat with recreations of the Dendara Panoply. Should be able to see them on YouTube; some of the sparring got pretty involved.

SDLeary

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I am gearing up to run RQG for the first time ever, so I don't have the experience some of you obviously have.

However, especially after reading the similar-but-simplified rules for "DEX Rank" initiative in Magic World, I have come to an understanding that seems to simplify Strike Ranks a lot more than I initially thought.

However, most of you folks with the actual play experience seem to have a different understanding, so maybe I am entirely wrongheaded on this. See what you think.

Like many people seem to be, I was very confused by the way the rules first insist that Strike Rank is not counting each second in a round, and then turn around and mention some things (movement adding 1 SR/unit moved and potentially being able to do a second missile attack) that suggest you absolutely are counting seconds in the round.

But what if we took the first statement completely seriously? Strike Rank is just a way of ordering actions (specifically, spells and attacks that affect other people). It is not tracking every second of a round.

So if you move 2 units and then attack, you have to add two to the (predetermined) SR of your attack. But don't picture that as "I'm moving during these Strike Ranks, and then attacking on this one." Your final Strike Rank is just "the order in which you go." It can be delayed by movement, but the movement (per RAW) happens in a whole separate phase that has nothing to do with Strike Rank. Drawing a weapon adds 5 Strike Ranks, but again it's not that you are drawing during these five seconds, it's just a modifier to the final number that tells you when you get to take your action.

So, how would that understanding manage to screw everything up in a whole new way?

 

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On 10/17/2024 at 6:23 AM, radmonger said:

- is it actually allowed to cast a Rune spell after making an attack?

- is the intent of the focus rules to say 'if you haven't worked all this out in advance and written it down on your character sheet, you can't do it?'

 

1) Once you are engaged, attacking and casting spells seem to be mutually exclusive. If your attack is from range or you have eliminated your opponent so you are no longer engaged, I suppose that makes sense, since Rune spells are super fast to cast. (Normally it seems to be assumed that the Rune spell is your action for the round, and probably goes off first, though spells that augment an attack can be combined with the attack.)

2) The only "focus" I can recall has to do with having a physical focusing tool for spirit magic spells. Do you mean something different?

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1. You can't attavk twice, but there doesn;t seem to be any rule that either does or doesnl;t say you can attack then cast a Rune healing or buffing spell.

2. yes; spirit magic spells with a focus can be cast in combat, those without have their own timing rules that make them slower than sorcery. 

 

 

 

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