Fighting creatures, and weapon reach

[Lloyd Dupont]

How do creatures defend in your fight?

I am thinking of multiple options:

- big creature (with big armor) don't defend. That seems fine in principle, but with how HP, AP and Damage Bonus scale, it seems dangerous to fight your kin that way... Or perhaps big creatures prefer to wrestle their kins first... then bite?
- Small creature (such as wolf), Evade perhaps? (which is harder than parry, using opposed roll)
- Special (intelligent?) creature / or one with big natural armor, can do parry?

 

Also, about weapon reach, I see it's dropped from Mythras Imperative if I am not mistaken. I have to say I always had trouble using that rule.
Anyway, I am reviewing my NPC and monsters now, and as I am writing the reach down... I am coming up with this alternative rule, what do you think?
- Longer reach weapons always have the initiative against shorter reach weapons
- A (S)mall or (T)ouch weapon is 1-grade harder to defend against.

Edited November 22, 2024 by Lloyd Dupont

[Nozbat]

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

How do creatures defend in your fight?

I am thinking of multiple options:

- big creature (with big armor) don't defend. That seems fine in principle, but with how HP, AP and Damage Bonus scale, it seems dangerous to fight your kin that way... Or perhaps big creatures prefer to wrestle their kins first... then bite?
- Small creature (such as wolf), Evade perhaps? (which is harder than parry, using opposed roll)
- Special (intelligent?) creature / or one with big natural armor, can do parry?

I often have to remind myself what happens in a combat round. No matter what D100 rule system you use, a melee round is a series of feints, parries, dodges, probes and one opportunity to attack to do damage and parry to stop damage. As gamers, we tend to just view it as  the chance to hit and incapacitate the enemy and forget about all the rest.

That said, animals do the same. Watch the way a dog approaches something dangerous. They probe, jump back, circle etc until they see an opportunity to close and bite. Most animals are the same. They are not suicidal and don't attack unceasingly (unless defending their young). Even well trained warhorses with lots of armour won't charge a phalanx of spears. 

I have often been annoyed how players 'game' the system by parrying a natural weapon attack and thus have 'two' attacks. This is not what would happen in real life. Animals use cunning in stalking prey no matter how intelligent or otherwise they are. For example, one will engage from the front while its mate looks for an opportunity to attack from behind. They close on the victim who often finds their longer sword, spear invalidated as they can't bring it to bear for an attack.

I have taken to using a more common sense approach. Animals have at least two actions, one of which is an evade (parry) even those with high levels of armour and justify it by reminding players what a melee round is. Otherwise, animal or monster attacks become negligible and insignificant. Wolves did not gain their reputation as dangerous by conveniently jumping onto a sword or impaling themselves on spears.

I suspect others will have different views but as I tend to do rules lite, I find that even a mundane pack of creatures creates terror and creates narrative.

-"Remember that time we were stalked by the pack of hungry wolves?.

-Oh yeah, we climbed up the cliff and hid in the cave with a fire at the entrance to scare them off. 

-Yeah, and the fire told the bounty hunters where we were

- But we're here still, aren't we? And where are the Bounty hunters?

- Food for the wolves

-So, feed the angry hungry, dogs and get away"

[Runeblogger]

I think I read once Lawrence Whitaker claim that animals do parry attacks with their combat style.

[zifar]

The rules say that most animals can use evade without falling prone so they would just use that action. Of course it can also be applied to flying creatures. Also in the creatures chapters says that for unintelligent  creatures only with "Formidable Natural Weapons" can parry. IMO, maybe some morphologies could parry if tthey have some appendages that could be used to block.

Edited November 22, 2024 by zifar

[zifar]

I think reach rules are okay as they are but anyway I dont think you proposal fit well with the rule set:

- Longer weapon inititiative advantage: this will be clumsy because the character with the longer weapon will have a different initiative value depending on whether he attacks or not.

- Harder to defend against small weapons. In which situations?. If it is in all situations they will be superior weapons; if it is only if the attacker closes in, then you have reintroduced reach rules.

Edited November 22, 2024 by zifar

[lawrence.whitaker]

Mythras has plenty of guidance on how creatures fight. Try the RAW - see how it works at the table.

As for weapon reach, the length of a weapon doesn't influence initiative, but it does determine engagement distance, which is crucial in any fight. We left them out of Imperative because they do make things crunchier, and seem to be rules that many GMs don't necessarily use. But if you want to use the Reach rules, then why not try them out as RAW from Mythras? Again, see how it works at the table before house-ruling.

[Lloyd Dupont]

Well... I had trouble making the raw rule work...

for one thing it doesn't make very much sense enemy charging with shorter weapon... (I mean why they have to stop their charge suddenly?)
And also what if the protagonist have a range of different weapon size combo (like sword and shield, or sword and dagger), I get confused...

now, reading it again.. I see it's 2 rank difference that is significant.. so it only happen every now and then, I guess I could try...
 

As to why I was think to make short weapon harder to defend against.. it's just that knife fights are know to be very lethal .. (despite only doing D4 damage), because apparently, it's hard to see and react in time in such close range to such lethality...
Sure you could say a shield would help without problem hey? but I was just trying to have an expedient solution that make small weapon more interesting with a hint of real world inspiration...

Edited November 23, 2024 by Lloyd Dupont

[Atgxtg]

On 11/22/2024 at 7:11 AM, Lloyd Dupont said:

How do creatures defend in your fight?

I am thinking of multiple options:

- big creature (with big armor) don't defend. That seems fine in principle, but with how HP, AP and Damage Bonus scale, it seems dangerous to fight your kin that way... Or perhaps big creatures prefer to wrestle their kins first... then bite?
- Small creature (such as wolf), Evade perhaps? (which is harder than parry, using opposed roll)
- Special (intelligent?) creature / or one with big natural armor, can do parry?

I think this should have less to do with the creature's size and more to do with it's function in the ecosystem. For instance a white shark might be a big predator but it attacks in ambush and will swim away to let the victim bleed out, or if things are going bad.

If a big creature doesn't tend to defend it's probably because it's attacks are so devastating that it never needed to. 

A wolverine might be small, but it probably won't run away but instead attack all the more ferociously.

Rhino's and Hippos are usually aggressive while elephants are larger, but usually more laid back.

So it think it's not so much a matter of size, but of type. 

 

On 11/22/2024 at 7:11 AM, Lloyd Dupont said:

 

Also, about weapon reach, I see it's dropped from Mythras Imperative if I am not mistaken. I have to say I always had trouble using that rule.
Anyway, I am reviewing my NPC and monsters now, and as I am writing the reach down... I am coming up with this alternative rule, what do you think?
- Longer reach weapons always have the initiative against shorter reach weapons
- A (S)mall or (T)ouch weapon is 1-grade harder to defend against.

It was working on a D100 variant where Initiative was handled with an opposed skill roll and  weapons granted a skill bonus equal to their reach in centimeters. 

• if one character had a shortsword with a 60cm reach, he'd get +60% to his skill for initiative. 
• In another character was wielding a spear with 1 meter reach, he'd get +100% to his skill for initiative. 
• A knife with 30cm reach would grant +30%, and so on.
• Movement would subtract 100% for the roll per meter moved. (Running, being mounted was less severe but had other restrictions)
• Missile Weapons got a modifier based more of the speed of the weapon than the actual reach. Reloading applied a modifier. 
• Magical spells got a penalty per Magic Point expended (I think it was -30% per MP but I'd have to dig through my notes). 

This was working out pretty good in playtests. The tedious bit was determining reach values for the various weapons, but that wasn't going to badly. You had the option of using  a slightly longer or shorter weapon, trading off skill for reach at a 2:1 ratio. The idea was to combine all the initiative factors (skill, reach, attributes) into one score to roll against. It was  evolving into a Strike Rank system without strike ranks.