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Two weapons and multiple parries


Mugen

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26 minutes ago, deleriad said:

The rulebook does seem to forget that fighting with two weapons is pretty much the default in RQ: weapon and shield. 

Yes, but in fairness RQG does acknowledge at the beginning of two weapon ruling, that it does not apply to shield and weapon use. 

Also thinking about it if you attack with a shield in RQG you loose the ability to parry, which echoes the two weapon ruling. This does seem intentional after all. 

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55 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Yes, but in fairness RQG does acknowledge at the beginning of two weapon ruling, that it does not apply to shield and weapon use. 

Also thinking about it if you attack with a shield in RQG you loose the ability to parry, which echoes the two weapon ruling. This does seem intentional after all. 

I managed to skip right over that. That's pretty ludicrous.  So no bashing one enemy with your shield while kicking another in unmentionables I guess.

I presume giving up parry under shield attacks refers to just parrying with the shield. But maybe not. The implication seems to be that you can't parry at all if you're attacking with a shield because two-weapon rules don't apply to weapon and shield.

So, according to the rules you can parry with a shield while doing a knockback attack with a shield but not while doing a normal attack with a shield. 

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3 minutes ago, Mugen said:

And I never said that either. :)

I said there is no benefit in spending all round dodging and not attacking.

Sorry I didn’t mean to imply that you said that.

Just pointing out that the rules as written allow dodge to be used with the  2 weapon rule, using two attacks. Which gives a defensive replacement for the disallowed parry. You can attack twice and dodge an unlimited number of attacks with the culamative - 20% penalty. No need to either attack or dodge, you can do both. 

 

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Bashing with a shield or kicking an opponent while swords are locked are all maneuvers included in the Sword and Shield combat. I do wonder whether a Shield Push attack rather than a weapon attack, as per the hoplite game, would result in the same amount of knockback as in the game.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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8 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Sorry I didn’t mean to imply that you said that.

Just pointing out that the rules as written allow dodge to be used with the  2 weapon rule, using two attacks. Which gives a defensive replacement for the disallowed parry. You can attack twice and dodge an unlimited number of attacks with the culamative - 20% penalty. No need to either attack or dodge, you can do both.

Really ? That's powerful, but considering you need 3 skills (Right hand weapon, Left hand weapon, Dodge) to make it work, and the unreliable nature of Dodge (special attacks are not uncommon), I'm fine with it. :)

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How about this for a houserule:

If you're using one weapon, then you can attack normally and parry with the rules-as-written subsequent parry rules. If you deliberately don't attack and focus on defense (no attacks or spells), any subsequent parries are at a cumulative -10%

If you're using two weapons (or a weapon/shield), you have more options. If you attack with both weapons, you parry with a cumulative -20 to any parry, but can choose which weapon you parry with. If you attack with only one weapon, any parries with your offhand weapon skill inflict a cumulative -10% to any subsequent parries.

It's a big numbers change, but I feel like it's fairly simple and makes two-weapon wielding more distinct.

Edited by Scott A
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15 hours ago, Ian_W said:

Sword and shield is two weapons, and there isnt that much difference at parrying with a shield and parrying with a weapon

Agreed.  Further, isn't a parry (whether with weapon or shield) really nothing more than a reactive usually-offhand attack on an opponent's incoming weapon/blow/attack?

In that sense, I think it's a worthy thought exercise to try to see if we can distill out a consistent set of metarules, thus removing exceptions like how offhands and shields are handled entirely.  Something like:

  • Main hand is full skill.
  • Off hand is half skill (unless otherwise trained to better).  (Shield use then simply becomes a specifically-trained offhand weapon.)
  • In combat you can reactively parry with either hand not more than once per SR.  Subsequent parries after the first are cumulative -20% penalty.
  • You can actively attack with either hand on your designated SR for that held weapon.  If you've parried with that hand previously in the round, any subsequent attack by that hand would also suffer the cumulative -20% penalty thus far (and would accrue another penalty for the attack action, applied to any parries later in the round).

It's not a perfect proposal by any means, but I just get the sense that somewhere under there there's a mechanically-consistent way to approach this.  

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3 hours ago, deleriad said:

I presume giving up parry under shield attacks refers to just parrying with the shield

Yes it does - just the shield 

 

3 hours ago, deleriad said:

So, according to the rules you can parry with a shield while doing a knockback attack with a shield but not while doing a normal attack with a shield. 

Knockback is refered to in the section on shield attacks p219, which implies that it is an attack -  meaning you can’t knockback and parry with the shield in the same melee round. 

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2 hours ago, Scott A said:

How about this for a houserule:

If you're using one weapon, then you can attack normally and parry with the rules-as-written subsequent parry rules. If you deliberately don't attack and focus on defense (no attacks or spells), any subsequent parries are at a cumulative -10%

If you're using two weapons (or a weapon/shield), you have more options. If you attack with both weapons, you parry with a cumulative -20 to any parry, but can choose which weapon you parry with. If you attack with only one weapon, any parries with your offhand weapon skill inflict a cumulative -10% to any subsequent parries.

It's a big numbers change, but I feel like it's fairly simple and makes two-weapon wielding more distinct.

I like that house rule - Though not to forget there’s now potential for augments in combat with passions and runes (+20%,  or -10% is you mess up) So a few more tools to give you an edge in combat

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2 hours ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Yes it does - just the shield 

 

Knockback is refered to in the section on shield attacks p219, which implies that it is an attack -  meaning you can’t knockback and parry with the shield in the same melee round. 

Except that the rulebook explicitly states that "The adventurer must then make an attack with the weapon, shield, or part of their body they are intending use for the knockback attempt.... the knockback attempt always happens on strike rank 12. The attacker may not attack in any other way, but may parry or Dodge normally during this round."

To be less pedantic, it looks like legacy rules and wordings have slipped through in different places so until RAW is clarified it's going to be a case of using your favourite interpretation.

Personally I would just use the RQ3 formulation where a person dodging can do so instead of an attack or a parry. If you decided to forgo the attack in order to parry and dodge then the first parry and the first dodge would be at full value. I would also treat shields (and natural weapons) just like any other weapon - again as is done in RQ3. 

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2 hours ago, styopa said:

Agreed.  Further, isn't a parry (whether with weapon or shield) really nothing more than a reactive usually-offhand attack on an opponent's incoming weapon/blow/attack?

In that sense, I think it's a worthy thought exercise to try to see if we can distill out a consistent set of metarules, thus removing exceptions like how offhands and shields are handled entirely.  Something like:

  • Main hand is full skill.
  • Off hand is half skill (unless otherwise trained to better).  (Shield use then simply becomes a specifically-trained offhand weapon.)
  • In combat you can reactively parry with either hand not more than once per SR.  Subsequent parries after the first are cumulative -20% penalty.
  • You can actively attack with either hand on your designated SR for that held weapon.  If you've parried with that hand previously in the round, any subsequent attack by that hand would also suffer the cumulative -20% penalty thus far (and would accrue another penalty for the attack action, applied to any parries later in the round).

It's not a perfect proposal by any means, but I just get the sense that somewhere under there there's a mechanically-consistent way to approach this.  

Wouldn't it be more simple to say 1 base action (attack or parry) per weapon, and a cumulative -20% per subsequent action with this weapon ?

I would give 2 base actions to 2-handed weapons.

But wouldn't it be a problem that characters with 2 weapons can attack twice ? (Yes, I know I said it was harsh to forbid parries for characters attacking with both weapons...).

 

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On 6/26/2018 at 1:15 PM, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

It doesn't feel like its  been properly integrated with the new ruling on parries, as the wording is the same as it was in RQ2, when parries were limited to one attempt per round. There is now no limit to the number of parries per melee round. In light of this I see no need to state how many parries are possible with 2 weapon use, as RQG allows multiple parries with each weapon ( per attack) Perhaps the wording needs to be changed?  Maybe @Jason Durall could comment?

Just to clarify, as I feel I may have sown a few seeds of doubt:

Having reread the rules I feel this earlier observation of mine is wrong. It’s apparent there’s a design decision to balance out two weapon fighting by not allowing a parry if you make attacks with both weapons, and  It’s also consistent with the other ruling on attacks with shields. So I retract that earlier criticism. 

It all makes sense! 

 

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20 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Just to clarify, as I feel I may have sown a few seeds of doubt:

To be fair, I've seen this same sort of thing happen several times in different threads on different points on this forum with the same results. Someone posts something that seems to suggest the rules are broken or ambiguous or not clear. I wonder how anyone could have printed such rules and get wound up all on my own.

And then I go look into the rules of RQ:G, see how all the pieces fit together, and either realize the rules are fine as they are, or the ambiguity isn't really there, or, if I stop a bit to think about what the designer might have meant I can see how the rules will play well. (I think the fact that I have no knowledge of prior editions of RQ rules is helping me on this front. I can't make any assumptions about how different parts of the rules work or fit together. I have to dig in and look at all the pieces and see how they work as a whole within the pages of this particular rules set.)

Edited by creativehum
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2 hours ago, creativehum said:

(I think the fact that I have no knowledge of prior editions of RQ rules is helping me on this front. I can't make any assumptions about how different parts of the rules work or fit together. I have to dig in and look at all the pieces and see how they work as a whole within the pages of this particular rules set.)

Yup. That is a huge plus. The rest of us have to sift though the rules we know then remember which version of a rule applies here, and so on. Often it's the stuff that "we know cold" that's doing us in, because it doesn't apply in RQG. We are tossing out most of 40 years worth of the changes! I think that is also true of the designers, and might be partly responsible for the ambiguity. There are probably cases where they know how something works, but that wasn't how it worked in the text that they copied from RQ2. 

This here could be the classic example. RQ never had a riposte rule, but had limits on the number of attack and parries you can attempt. Stormbringer had a riposte rule, but no limit of the number of attacks and parries you could make. Hence the conflict.I suspect that since the riposte rule is new, it should override the previous limitation on parries and attacks. But that's just my way of thinking. 

 

If you want a real headache, consider the effect the riposte rule is going to have with splitting attacks. If my skill is at 100% and I split it in half, and then parry, is my riposte attack at 80% (100%-20%=80%) or  30%(100%/2=50%-20%= 30%)? 

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36 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

This here could be the classic example. RQ never had a riposte rule, but had limits on the number of attack and parries you can attempt. Stormbringer had a riposte rule, but no limit of the number of attacks and parries you could make. Hence the conflict.I suspect that since the riposte rule is new, it should override the previous limitation on parries and attacks. But that's just my way of thinking. 

Question:

I just did a search of RQG for "riposte." I could not find the word.

Can you tell me more about what rule you are referring to? Do you have a page number?

(I'm finding that if people reference page numbers I can understand the conversations a lot faster.)

Edited by creativehum
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"But Pendragon isn’t intended to be historical, just fun.
So have fun."

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1 hour ago, creativehum said:

Can you tell me more about what rule you are referring to?

Yeah. It was a rule in Stormbringer and Magic World where if you made a Critical/Special Parry you could make a free attack, possibly with a reduction to skill (depends on which version of the game). Now, since the rule of making multiple parries with a weapon originated in Stormbringer along with the riposte rule, I assumed that they ported that over too. My bad.

BTW, This serves as a great example of how not knowing the rules is an advantage, and knowing the rules a disadvantage. My "knowing" the parry & riposte rules and using them for years worked against me, and is interfering with my ability to grasp the "new" rules, because they "aren't new". 

If this were a D&D or Pathfinder site I wonder how most players would react to a monster that had a -4 Armor Class?

 

 

 

 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Now, since the rule of making multiple parries with a weapon originated in Stormbringer along with the riposte rule, I assumed that they ported that over too. My bad.

And you know what ? Until 2 minutes ago, when I opened up my HawkMoon booklet for the first time in 30 years, I thought that the multiple parries rule was from Elric!, not SB... 

Just like I didn't remember dodge applied to all attacks from the same character in RQ3...

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17 minutes ago, Mugen said:

And you know what ? Until 2 minutes ago, when I opened up my HawkMoon booklet for the first time in 30 years, I thought that the multiple parries rule was from Elric!, not SB... 

LOL! We're all doing it. Like Yoda said, we have to "unlearn what we have learned". In my case I was Lucky. Stormbringer 1st edition was the first Chaosium/D100 RPG I picked up and so I have fond memories of high skill characters doing a quick exchange of attacks and parries. It was actually quite cinematic. 

17 minutes ago, Mugen said:

Just like I didn't remember dodge applied to all attacks from the same character in RQ3...

They did? I don't even feel guilty about that one. Most the characters in our games used dodge as a defense of last resort. Parry was usually much higher, and not so much of a gamble. 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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I plan that I will play with the following rules until the correct rules are published from Chaosium.

Parry and Parry/Dodge option

  • Parry and Parry can be selected if you have different weapons for each hands.
  • In this case you can decide, for each blow by enemy, which weapon is used for parry.
  • If it is the first parry attempt by the weapon in the round, it can be tried by full skill and not subject to cumulative penalty.
  • If it is the second and subsequent parring attempts by the weapon, it is subject to cumulative penalty. The cumulative penalty is -20% each for parry attempts (excluding the first attempt of each weapons) and the cumulative penalty is the sum of both weapon.
  • Parry and Dodge can be selected if you have weapons on at least one hand. In this case, the cumulative penalty of Dodge and parry is added eath other.
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34 minutes ago, hanataka said:

 

I plan that I will play with the following rules until the correct rules are published from Chaosium.

 

Having been one of the voices of criticism at the beginning of the thread, I now don’t think there is anything incorrect about these rules or the way the have been written.

There’s a lot of thinking through and house rules here for sure but, I don’t think we can say that there is anything incorrect about the rules in this context. They appear to be written consistently - if I was to criticise the two weapon ruling, it would be that perhaps the rules should repeat for clarity how ruling for the cumulative parry penalty  is applied - to both weapons together or each weapon individually? 

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I've dug into the rules several times now.

As far as I can tell:

  • If you are using one weapon it can attack and parry in a given round (p. 197)
  • If you are using a weapon and a shield you can a) attack with the weapon and parry with the weapon, as well as parry with the shield; b) attack with the weapon and parry with the weapon, as well as attack with the shield but not parry with the shield (p. 219); c) parry with both weapons but not attack (though there is no penalty for attacking with the weapon and then parrying, so this would by a choice in special circumstances) (again, p. 197)
  • If you are using two weapons you can use them to a) have one attack while the other can parry throughout the round; b) both be used to attack ; c) both be used to parry throughout the round (p. 224)
  • Each parry with a weapon or a shield after the first time incurs a stacking -20% penalty for each particular weapon or shield (not a cumulative penalty for each parry)
  • Dodge can be used in a round instead of parrying ("Dodge may be used to avoid an attack instead of attempting to parry." p. 201)
  • Each Dodge in a round after the first incurs a stacking -20% penalty 
  • Dodge penalties do not stack with other parry penalties.

Thus, a character in a given round could parry twice and then dodge, all at no penalty to the skills. If the character were to then parry with each weapon and dodge again later in the round, each attempt would suffer a -20% penalty.

These rules explain why a 2H is not the default. (To answer another question in another thread). The character with a weapon and shield or two weapons has more flexibly in a combat situation. 

While these rules might not be what people want, they do seem seem clear to me. I'm not seeing anything that needs to be corrected.

Edited by creativehum
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"But Pendragon isn’t intended to be historical, just fun.
So have fun."

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9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

This serves as a great example of how not knowing the rules is an advantage, and knowing the rules a disadvantage....

I'm not trying to be a dick, but I don't think this is merely a matter or "knowing the rules and not knowing the rules."

If I'm not mistaken, you have yet to read a copy of the new rules, and yet you comment on them as if they are broken and flawed based on several previous editions you have read. 

I'd say in some cases the key thing might be, "This serves as a great example of how not reading the rules is a disadvantage..."

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So have fun."

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