Stormbringer 1e - Attack/Parry Questions

[sgates248]

I'm running a campaign in Stormbringer 1e. So far we've had 2 sessions but one thing everyone seems to really dislike is the fact that every successful attack seems to be thwarted by a parry (I have had a lot of lucky rolls). It has made combat drag out way too long. I realize that the idea is to use multiple PCs on an opponent so that their parry percentage is decreased with each attack but when you have say 5 players and 5 or 6 opponents, that doesn't really work.

I looked all the way through Stormbringer 4e so far and it doesn't look like they had changed the attack/parry rules any. I'm not sure if they changed them after this.

One thing we have thought about doing is bringing in Action Points from RuneQuest. I'm not sure this really helps when a PC or opponent has 2+ APs and the number of attackers and opponents is equal. It seems like combat can still screech to a halt in this case.

Any ideas? Anything you've used in your own game to make this better or is there a later rule I don't know about?

[NickMiddleton]

Remember that each Parry after the first is at -20; that masters can Riposte and that a parry against a critical ALWAYS breaks the parrying weapon.

Having said all that, the stalemate "problem" is a distinctive feature of SB1-4. The attack / parry rules in Elric! / Stormbringer 5th edition (and BRP and Magic World) are somewhat different.

Cheers,

Nick

[sgates248]

Remember that each Parry after the first is at -20; that masters can Riposte and that a parry against a critical ALWAYS breaks the parrying weapon.

Having said all that, the stalemate "problem" is a distinctive feature of SB1-4. The attack / parry rules in Elric! / Stormbringer 5th edition (and BRP and Magic World) are somewhat different.

Cheers,

Nick

Right. If each PC has one opponent though, nobody is parrying more than once so no negatives are suffered until someone is finally dead and 2 PCs can gang up on an opponent.

I haven't looked at Elric!/5e yet but will. I considered buying the BRP gold book as well. I don't own it currently and it seems like it would be good to have to help with rules like this.

[Marcus Bone]

Not

 

Remember that each Parry after the first is at -20; that masters can Riposte and that a parry against a critical ALWAYS breaks the parrying weapon.

Having said all that, the stalemate "problem" is a distinctive feature of SB1-4. The attack / parry rules in Elric! / Stormbringer 5th edition (and BRP and Magic World) are somewhat different.

Cheers,

Nick

 

Not to call you out or anything Nick, but isn't the negative -30 per Parry. Or am I wrong? I don't have my books on me at the moment.

 

Marcus

[NickMiddleton]

..Not to call you out or anything Nick, but isn't the negative -30 per Parry. Or am I wrong? I don't have my books on me at the moment.

 

Marcus

Funnily enough, for entirely other reasons I had my copy of 1e to hand and looked it up - and it is -20! I was surprised too (so much so I I just checked again!) but it's -20 in Hawkmoon and SB 4e as well, so I guess the -30 came with the major rules changes in Elric!/ SB 5e.

Cheers,

Nick

[Baron]

Saved me the trouble of looking. My book is on the shelf four feet away...

[Marcus Bone]

Funnily enough, for entirely other reasons I had my copy of 1e to hand and looked it up - and it is -20! I was surprised too (so much so I I just checked again!) but it's -20 in Hawkmoon and SB 4e as well, so I guess the -30 came with the major rules changes in Elric!/ SB 5e.

Cheers,

Nick

 

Good to know! I guess that for whatever reasons I've always used -30. Interestingly, I think I would have picked that up from my first SB GM who, as far as I can recall, used -30. 

 

Thanks for setting me straight

 

Marcus

[sgates248]

Funnily enough, for entirely other reasons I had my copy of 1e to hand and looked it up - and it is -20! I was surprised too (so much so I I just checked again!) but it's -20 in Hawkmoon and SB 4e as well, so I guess the -30 came with the major rules changes in Elric!/ SB 5e.

Cheers,

Nick

Yeah, our group has decided to try the -30 rather than the -20 in 1e. Our next session isn't for a few weeks but we're going to try the following (excerpt from an email I sent out to our group):

 

====

 

This was shamelessly pilfered from RuneQuest 6. I'm not suggesting we completely switch to the RQ6 combat system...just stealing a few rules to hopefully make our game better.

 

Each entity (PC or NPC/Monster) will be assigned Action Points based on their INT and DEX as follows:

 

INT + DEX

12 or Less: 1 AP

13-24: 2 AP

25-36: 3 AP

For every additional 12 points: +1

 

To perform an action in combat, you must spend an action point. Actions include attacking, parrying, etc. The defender will subtract 30% per subsequent parry after the first. We've been using 20% but they upped it to 30% in later editions of Stormbringer. I think it makes more sense.

To fix how dumb it is that an entity can parry an attack from a large weapon using something small like a hatchet, we will also adopt the following rules from RuneQuest 6:

 

Weapons will be give a size category: Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Enormous.

 

If a defender succeeds in parrying, then he can reduce an attacker's damage, if any, according to the comparative Size of the weapons used. This works as follows:

 

- Parrying an attack with a weapon or shield of equal or greater size deflects ALL damage.

- Parrying with a weapon or shield of one size less only deflects HALF damage.

- Parrying with a weapon or shield two or more sizes less fails to deflect ANY damage.

 

Further, I'd like to suggest we modify the crit attack rules slightly. If an attacker rolls critical, one of 3 things can happen:

 

- Defender doesn't parry or fails his/her parry so takes the hit.

- Defender successfully parries and doesn't roll critical. The defender takes only normal damage (NOT double) but their parrying weapon is broken.

- Defender successfully parries with a critical roll. The defender takes NO damage and BOTH the attacking and parrying weapons are broken.

 

I think these rule changes will help combat flow better. We could still have issues with one-on-one combat where every attack is thwarted with a parry for a bit. Aside from lucky rolls, the only way to really remedy this is to gang up on an opponent when possible so they run out of Action Points and can't keep parrying. Also, don't forget you can do things like grapple or disarm an opponent. I will look at any rules for this in Stormbringer and if they don't exist, we can adopt the RuneQuest 6 rules for this, too. A lot of that system can be used in our game if needed.

 

====

 

Thoughts/Comments? I love this game by the way. It's just that the attack/parry rule was slowing our game to a halt.

[Marcus Bone]

 

Yeah, our group has decided to try the -30 rather than the -20 in 1e. Our next session isn't for a few weeks but we're going to try the following (excerpt from an email I sent out to our group):

 

====

 

This was shamelessly pilfered from RuneQuest 6. I'm not suggesting we completely switch to the RQ6 combat system...just stealing a few rules to hopefully make our game better.

 

Each entity (PC or NPC/Monster) will be assigned Action Points based on their INT and DEX as follows:

 

INT + DEX

12 or Less: 1 AP

13-24: 2 AP

25-36: 3 AP

For every additional 12 points: +1

 

====

 

Thoughts/Comments? I love this game by the way. It's just that the attack/parry rule was slowing our game to a halt.

 

 

Oh, I like that rule... especially as I've had players running highly skilled characters break their combat round into multiple attacks (i.e. split their weapon skill). This results in a 'death by overwhelming' against even the most competent adversaries.

[sgates248]

Oh, I like that rule... especially as I've had players running highly skilled characters break their combat round into multiple attacks (i.e. split their weapon skill). This results in a 'death by overwhelming' against even the most competent adversaries.

I liked it, too. We'll see how it plays I guess but I think this and the other changes will help. Also, I clicked on your Unbound Publishing link and it looks like I'll need to spend some time checking that out. I have Cthulhu Dark Ages but never had a chance to play. I've also never found anyone that wanted to play Call of Cthulhu. I might be able to convince our group at some point in the future. The idea of a mini-campaign set in the Great War is intriguing. I'll be following that for sure.