Javelin - 1H Spear or Thrown?

[RosenMcStern]

11 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah Rosen's right about RQ3. Weapon skills were more broadly defined, and stuff like 1H Sword or Spear applied to all such weapons. So the skill was 1H Sword, not Broadsword or Shortsword.

Not true. Shortsword was a different category in RQ3  Never made much sense to me, in truth.

 

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It also kinda made a joke of different starting percentages, since you could take the best on in the case to get your skill, then pick up a related weapon.

It almost never happened, as you would normally use the "cultural skills" for weapons in RQ3.

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  It was a big departure from RQ2. In RQ2 you'd get dropped to half skill just for using somebody else's Broadsword!

And again, there was a rule in RQ3, too, which said that you had a termporary disadvantage for using an unfamiliar weapon (not weapon category). Never really used it, but the rule was there.

[Furry Fella]

Adapting to a new balance does have a significant initial impact as all your "muscle memory" instincts are off. It can sort its self  out some times quite quickly but not instantly. I can attest to this from "actual re-enactor experience". Amongst the worst harm I did was accidently  reshaping someone's mouth using a "safer lighter" substitute for the warhammer I normally used - swung as I was used to and buggered the timing missed the choreographed strike and hit him in the mouth. It might not have been metal but it was hard wood and moving as it had much less inertia. We needed a couple more hours with the substitute weapons.

[PhilHibbs]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah Rosen's right about RQ3. Weapon skills were more broadly defined, and stuff like 1H Sword or Spear applied to all such weapons. So the skill was 1H Sword, not Broadsword or Shortsword. It also kinda made a joke of different starting percentages, since you could take the best on in the case to get your skill, then pick up a related weapon.  It was a big departure from RQ2. In RQ2 you'd get dropped to half skill just for using somebody else's Broadsword!

That's not how RQ3 works. Different weapons with different bases have different skill levels, so your Dagger skill will always be 5 points higher than your Main Gauche, and your Hoplite Shield skill will always be 10 points higher than your Buckler skill. At the moment I can't find the RQ3 rule for off-handed weapon use, there doesn't seem to be any modifier that I can find. I should know this because I had a two-sword Humakti for quite a while.

Edited June 21, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[PhilHibbs]

He he he, I just found the RQ3 rule for offhand weapons and it's hilarious.

Player's Book p51:

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A weapon used in the off-hand (usually the left) begins with a 0.5% base chance.

That's right - half a percent! Since you can never gain a half percent through experience or training, you're stuck with it!

GM: Ok, what's your off-hand broadsword skill?

Player: Sixty-two and a half percent!

GM: FFS, just add a half percent for free and stop being stupid!

Clearly a typo, and should be 05%. But it doesn't answer the question of separate skills - lots of weapons have different base chances within the same category. Experience is stated to apply to all skills in the same category, so presumably left-hand and right-hand skills will only be a few percent apart, or exactly the same if the weapon has a 05% base.

Well, that's RQ3 so it's a bit of a distraction. Interesting to note that no edition has ever made it clear, though!

Ah, it also goes on to say "...use of a weapon with one hand does not give experience in using it with the other hand."

Edited June 21, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[styopa]

23 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Why? There have always been weapons that can be used in different ways with different skills. Short Spear, Long Spear, Bastard Sword, Battle Axe, Heavy Mace could all be used 1H or 2H. Having something that can be thrown or used 1H is no different. It's only a problem to me because I am trying to automate the population of my character creation spreadsheet.

edit out error

Edited June 21, 2018 by styopa

[PhilHibbs]

8 minutes ago, styopa said:

It seems logical that if we're hand-waving away +shield skill as "naturally, they would train this too", we would do the same for javelins as both thrown and melee.

Not sure what you are referring to there. RQ3 had a rule that if you're training a 1H weapon then you can train shield parry at the same time. I don't see such a rule in RQG but I'd allow it. Has that already been discussed here?

[styopa]

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Not sure what you are referring to there. RQ3 had a rule that if you're training a 1H weapon then you can train shield parry at the same time. I don't see such a rule in RQG but I'd allow it. Has that already been discussed here?

My error, disregard, was reacting based on an earlier version of the rules.

To the OP, I'd leave it to the player to decide, either they could take the skill as 'Javelin, thrown' OR as 1h spear.  Someone who just got +1h Spear wouldn't have that option.  And in use, I'd treat them as related - ie if your higher skill is thrown Javelin, then you'd have 1h spear at half; if the higher one was 1h spear, and your cultural background had offered you javelin, this would give you thrown javelin at half.

[Atgxtg]

11 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

Not true. Shortsword was a different category in RQ3

Your right, I should have said Bastard Sword or Scimitar. 

11 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

 Never made much sense to me, in truth.

Probably becuase the old RQ Broadsword was a bronze age style cutting sword, wheras the RQ shortshword was a thrusting sword. But since RQ# went with a more advanced cut & thrust broadsword...

11 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

It almost never happened, as you would normally use the "cultural skills" for weapons in RQ3.

At least to start, since they were so much better, and covered most categories. I did see characters diversify a bit for "backup" weapons. But that was when they had the money and time for training. A week's training in RQ3 (50 hours) could bring a starting weapon skill up quite a bit- so much so that the difference in starting % didn't really matter much. After a week the guy who was at 5% could catch up to the one who was at 10%. 

11 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

And again, there was a rule in RQ3, too, which said that you had a termporary disadvantage for using an unfamiliar weapon (not weapon category). Never really used it, but the rule was there.

Yes, but it was't as common, or spelled out as half skill. 

[Atgxtg]

49 minutes ago, styopa said:

To the OP, I'd leave it to the player to decide, either they could take the skill as 'Javelin, thrown' OR as 1h spear.  Someone who just got +1h Spear wouldn't have that option.  And in use, I'd treat them as related - ie if your higher skill is thrown Javelin, then you'd have 1h spear at half; if the higher one was 1h spear, and your cultural background had offered you javelin, this would give you thrown javelin at half.

That might be the intent. I've been going through my copies of RQ3, thanks to some of the posts here, and discovered that Cultural Weapons skill points could be divided among weapon of the given category. So that might be what they meant. 

[SDLeary]

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Probably becuase the old RQ Broadsword was a bronze age style cutting sword, wheras the RQ shortshword was a thrusting sword. But since RQ# went with a more advanced cut & thrust broadsword...

You would think, but "short sword" was both Gladius (cut and thrust), and Kukri ("normal" usage); and while it can, its not really designed for thrusting. Also, "broadsword" was more a "migration/frankish/viking" type blade with a point, or an arming sword. Remember the time period that Fantasy Europe was occupying.

SDLeary

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, SDLeary said:

You would think, but "short sword" was both Gladius (cut and thrust), and Kukri ("normal" usage); and while it can, its not really designed for thrusting. Also, "broadsword" was more a "migration/frankish/viking" type blade with a point, or an arming sword. Remember the time period that Fantasy Europe was occupying.

SDLeary

So it must of been a length thing. 1ft blade (knife, dagger), 2 foot blade (shortsword, kukri), 3 foot blade (broadsword, scimitar, bastard sword)

[soltakss]

For odd little things that maybe didn't work in RQ2/RQ3, we used a little thing called Common Sense. It worked wonders.

[Claudius]

On 6/20/2018 at 8:42 PM, PhilHibbs said:

There is no "1H Spear" skill now, it's a category. You have a skill in a specific weapon, which gives you half chance in other weapons in the same category.

Thank you for the info! Sometimes, comments like this are way more informative, and tell you more about a game, than certain reviews.

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

For odd little things that maybe didn't work in RQ2/RQ3, we used a little thing called Common Sense. It worked wonders.

Amazing how "uncommon" that is though. It's really only as good as the person using it. In my experience, most of the times that GMs have used "common sense" answers to things they've been dead wrong. 

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Claudius said:

Thank you for the info! Sometimes, comments like this are way more informative, and tell you more about a game, than certain reviews.

Yeah, Basically to get the hang of RQG you have to default to RQ2 thinking, not RQ3. So every weapon is now a separate skill, but similar weapons default to one another at half skill. 

[drablak]

The Atlatl mentions that using it "... makes a javelin slower to use ..." but the Atlatl has the same SR as the javelin. So there is no real downside? Atlatl with javelin does 1D10+1D6 damage and 30 range and a SR of 1/MR?

[styopa]

18 hours ago, drablak said:

The Atlatl mentions that using it "... makes a javelin slower to use ..." but the Atlatl has the same SR as the javelin. So there is no real downside? Atlatl with javelin does 1D10+1D6 damage and 30 range and a SR of 1/MR?

I'd lower the atlatl rate to 1/2MR or maybe even 1/3MR.  Personally, I'd have issues with both the damage bonus (much too high) and the range bonus (much too low).  

I'm not an anthropologist, but all the atlatl I've seen used essentially lengthy darts, not fullweight javelins.  Personally, I think the 1d10 javelin is more of a pilum, which is CERTAINLY not representative of even the heaviest atlatl-tossed spears.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, styopa said:

I'd lower the atlatl rate to 1/2MR or maybe even 1/3MR.  Personally, I'd have issues with both the damage bonus (much too high) and the range bonus (much too low).  

Have you ever used an atlatl? I have. Fire rates should be similar to bow and arrow.

The atlatl "javelin" is really a somewhat oversized arrow that is accelerated beyond normal javelin tossing because of the artificial extra arm length. Those aren't normal javelins or pili that are propelled that way. Those beasts are five to six foot long and may be fletched. I wouldn't call that darts, though:

1 hour ago, styopa said:

I'm not an anthropologist, but all the atlatl I've seen used essentially lengthy darts, not fullweight javelins.  Personally, I think the 1d10 javelin is more of a pilum, which is CERTAINLY not representative of even the heaviest atlatl-tossed spears.

If you have a clunky apparatus for accelerating your ordinary javelin, then I might agree about the lowered fire rate.

Atlatl damage is higher than the missile weight would suggest when hand tossed because of the way higher speed of the missile. Not quite on par with a strong bow, but the greater weight of the atlatl arrow gives a good compromise in between.

 

[Atgxtg]

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Atlatl damage is higher than the missile weight would suggest when hand tossed because of the way higher speed of the missile. Not quite on par with a strong bow, but the greater weight of the atlatl arrow gives a good compromise in between.

 

Except in RQ it ends up being superior to a strong bow, as javelins do more damage than bows to begin with, and an alt-alt even moreso. 

If an Alt-alt is more of an oversided arrow, maybe it should do lower base damage to begin with? 

 

[styopa]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Have you ever used an atlatl? I have. Fire rates should be similar to bow and arrow.

Not seriously; I fooled around with them in high school.   I'd concede the speed (maybe) on the basis that with an atlatl you're basically not going to have more than 2-3 shots (ie no 'quiver' of atlatl sticks).

My opinion of them is based on practicality - AFAIK no culture continued to use them once they figured out how bows could be made reliably...this would lead me to suspect that this is inferior to a bow in basically every respect except ease of manufacture.

I think in use they're certainly less wieldy than a bow, in pretty much every circumstance.  I did just check RQG and it does have a 1/MR rate vs S/MR so that's enough penalty.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

The atlatl "javelin" is really a somewhat oversized arrow that is accelerated beyond normal javelin tossing because of the artificial extra arm length. Those aren't normal javelins or pili that are propelled that way. Those beasts are five to six foot long and may be fletched. I wouldn't call that darts, though:

Both wiki and several videos refer to them as darts, which is probably misleading.  They're certainly neither spears nor javelins, either. (shrug) I don't know what reasonably to call them.

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Except in RQ it ends up being superior to a strong bow, as javelins do more damage than bows to begin with, and an alt-alt even moreso. 

If an Alt-alt is more of an oversided arrow, maybe it should do lower base damage to begin with? 

Right now it's Javelin (1d10)+1d6 (plus, ostensibly, Strength damage mod).which is crazy - 2x the damage of a bow? 

No, basically I'd say that since the "javelin" used with the atlatl is pretty much useless (like a long flexible arrow without a bow), I'd just call the atlatl a weapon in & of itself. 

I'd give it a damage of 1d6+1 (comparable with a selfbow, but you can add 1/2 your dmg mod of course), a range of 40 (half that of a selfbow). 

The javelin proper is then an entirely different weapon (I still think 1d10 is pretty flippin high for that, but that's another conversation).

[Atgxtg]

 

 

23 minutes ago, styopa said:

My opinion of them is based on practicality - AFAIK no culture continued to use them once they figured out how bows could be made reliably...this would lead me to suspect that this is inferior to a bow in basically every respect except ease of manufacture.

It's inferior in terms of range , space needed to use , and the ability to "hold" a shot. That's probably the reason. If you had to relying on hunting for your food, you'd probably want the bow. 

And if you are a leader going to war, you want your people to use the weapon they have the most skill with. 

 

23 minutes ago, styopa said:

I think in use they're certainly less wieldy than a bow, in pretty much every circumstance.  I did just check RQG and it does have a 1/MR rate vs S/MR so that's enough penalty.

Sounds about right to me. Maybe a skilled user can hit S/MR, but I'd have to see it to believe it. Maybe for two or three shots but not sustained.

23 minutes ago, styopa said:

Both wiki and several videos refer to them as darts, which is probably misleading.  They're certainly neither spears nor javelins, either. (shrug) I don't know what reasonably to call them.

I think back when they wrote them up for RQ the thought was that the alt=alt could be use to boost a regular javelin. hence the add on stats.

 

23 minutes ago, styopa said:

Right now it's Javelin (1d10)+1d6 (plus, ostensibly, Strength damage mod).which is crazy - 2x the damage of a bow? 

Yes, it crazy. Either the Javelin/Alt-alt should be reduced or the Bow increased. Even if we look at bows in the variant RQ games, such as the Melniboean Bone Bows or the normad bows in Wind of the Steppes, we don't get near 1D10+1D6. That's crossbow territory. 

 

23 minutes ago, styopa said:

No, basically I'd say that since the "javelin" used with the atlatl is pretty much useless (like a long flexible arrow without a bow), I'd just call the atlatl a weapon in & of itself. 

I'd give it a damage of 1d6+1 (comparable with a selfbow, but you can add 1/2 your dmg mod of course), a range of 40 (half that of a selfbow). 

I'd probably go with 1D8 instead of 1D6+1, but either way it's an improvement.

23 minutes ago, styopa said:

The javelin proper is then an entirely different weapon (I still think 1d10 is pretty flippin high for that, but that's another conversation).

Yup, although some other BRP games reduce the Javelin to 1D8. 

 

Personally I think I'd prefer 1D6 for javelin (not quite as good as a self bow, unless you have a db) and 1D8 for Alt-alt.(comparable to a self bow, but not quite as good as a long bow, again unless you have a db). 

 

As it stands now Alt-atl with speeddart (1D10+1D6+3, average 12 points of damage) or multimissle rules missle combat. If you can get close enough. 

 

 

[Darius West]

On 6/21/2018 at 7:38 AM, Furry Fella said:

 I just wish I had more than reading to judge the practical effect of Atlatl.

Atlatls are pretty much the same as the woomeras used by Koorie tribes in Australia.  They lengthen the throwing arm's arc, adding leverage and force.  When you get good at it, you can throw a spear like a jai-alai ball.  There are quite a few YouTube videos on the subject.  It is also super-easy to make one.  Given an hour you'll be launching broomsticks across your rugby oval like a pro (until the police see you).  They take a little getting used to for aiming, but aren't much of a handicap considering the force and range they offer.  Many ancient cultures developed a variant of them.

Edited December 11, 2018 by Darius West

[Pentallion]

They weren't replaced by the bow because of damage capability.  They have immense damage capability.  They were replaced because of range and encumbrance.  Humans hunt by marathon running the prey until it drops.  Having a lightweight bow and being able to hit from a distance at an exhausted animal is easier than keeping the long javelin from striking the ground while you ran and also carrying the atlatl.  Besides, once mega fauna became extinct, the extra penetrating power is pretty much wasted.

[PhilHibbs]

You can carry a lot more arrows than javelins.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

You can carry a lot more arrows than javelins.

You're also bound to lose a lot more of them, whereas it is harder to fail to find a javelin after use (in hunting).

For the supposed weapon of the light rune, arrows have an unholy affinity with soil and vegetation when fired at short or medium range, and arrows that missed are quite likely to go AWOL for good. Spears are unlikely to penetrate completely, and hence are more likely to stick out.

Any archer who wants to return with as many of his arrows as possible best had a "detect substance" spell and use that highly specific substance somewhere in the making of his arrows. Possibly a sliver of silver, with the detect magic doubling as a "find coins" spell that also works as an indirect "detect civilized rich people".