A brief note to my latest weapon series...
You don't need to practice HEMA (or ANY martial arts, although maybe you should consider it) to know a little bit about fighting. You can watch plenty of examples on YouTube, from the safety of your home. The problem is, the more you see it, the more to "unsee" it. Sure, we don't need "realism" in our games, but we don't want combat to be absurd either. And sometimes, it is.
Daggers are extremely deadly. 1d4 damage barely does them justice. Check the video below to see a bunch of professional or semi-professional fighters get obliterated by knife attackers in a 20-second simulation - over and over again.
Fighting with weapons is brutal stuff...
Of course, had they been armed or armored, the situation would be different. Such videos also exist in the internet. You have simulated medieval combat with "realistic" (but blunt) weapons. While in heavy armor, it comes down to strength, skill and endurance. Wrestling and even punching become much more useful (and a well-placed dagger could STILL be deadly... but it would take more effort). Blunt swords do not deal that much damage, obviously... but they can still hurt if you're strong enough. Imagine using a mace!
The final part of this equation is LARPing combat, since it simulates a single strike causing massive damage. It usually disregards armor (and doesn't require strength), but allows different weapons and even shields. Watch one, and you might see that long weapons rule the battlefield and shields are incredibly protective. Here, bringing a dagger to a spear fight is simply ludicrous.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find good YT examples, but I've watched several games in real life and spears/polearms/etc. rule. Let me know if you have any videos. And watch this spear vs. Longsword compilation instead.
Finally, I usually say that bows are hard to use without training. I think you have to experience this one for yourself. You've seen the damage a dagger can do, and you can play with a stick and a punching bag if you want to. But the only by trying to shoot a target that is 30' away (which is a +1 bonus in B/X) you'll see why I think ranged weapons are just too powerful in D&D.
A pro can do amazing things with a bow, of course. "Fast shooting" is still slower than a dagger however, and requires more concentration (i.e., no one is shooting back or punching you in the face).
Am I willing to go into AD&D levels of detail to reflect every single nuance portrayed here? Certainly not. But at least AD&D gave it a shot! Anyway, here are a few simple things that I'd like to see addressed:
- The possibility of a quick kill.
- The life-saving importance of armor against blades (and other weapons).
- The difficulty of shooting bows and throwing weapons.
- The importance of weapon length/reach.
- The advantages of various weapons (instead "sword is the best, period").
And I'd like to see some reasonable rules on weight and speed. Not necessarily realistic - but not absurd either. Even a 6-pound one-handed sword sounds out of place, as it would be very hard to swing (don't try this at home, you'll hurt yourself). And a minute is just too long to be stabbed to death, as seem above - a few seconds is more likely.
So this is what I where I'm trying to get with my combat system. Not more realism, but more detail, speed and brutality.
P.S.: I'm on Twitter now! I only got in there, still getting the hang of it. Seems to be a bit better than FB so far. Has communities and all. As always, I only talk RPGs. Follow me if you like this stuff!
I am working on something like that for these exact reasons. What I came up to this point - no HP, each attack deals one type of harm (Strain, Injury, Wound or Mortal Wound). Sharp weapons deal by design one step higher harm. Armor besides giving usual bonus to chance of not being hit also allows to lower harm by one step. So you'd be able to mitigate three Mortal Wounds into just regular Wounds before really being stabbed to death. I'd also like to try activity based initiative (so all melee attackers strike at same initiative) which would allow me to make it so first go long weapons, then heavy and then small, with reversed initiative in Tight spaces. And generally I wanted to come up with something for the weapon training, like - you need it for bows and parrying with a sword but the rest is fine. But it is work in progress still (kinda based on Old School Hack)
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting! Making a sensible combat system takes a lot of thought. Reversed initiative in tight spaces is a great idea!
DeleteMakes me think of stress trackers in other games (FATE, PbA).
Delete(Below is me riffing off the idea. It may be too much book keeping for your plans, but would probably work for me)
Perhaps stacked trackers such that a full stress tracker at a lower level 'overfills' to the next injury level?
Might have some odd low level cases, but hey, sufficent number of paper cuts will kill you!
Then have natural recovery downgrade from the lowest injury to the highest.
So you clear out the lower injury tracks, then healing 'downgrades' a higher level injury to a full lower level track.
Now to get _really_ extra, add exhaustion to this as well to have 'pushing too hard while injured' slow down recovery.
I am picturing the stacked track as a pyramid tracking sistym where say 'dying' is a singular state, 'mortally wounded' is two, etc.
On the character sheet you can have a note of penalties with the tracker is full.
There are odd cases of what happens with completely different damage levels (an additional scrape on someone who is mortally injured), but I think it would work in theory. For this case potentially damage type 3 tiers lower than most sever become 'overflow' that doesn't make your condition worse, but makes healing more difficult (since you start from the bottom and move up).
I think some version of Fate had something similar. You had 10 wound levels and it took two or three hits to go to the next, 10 means you're dead. So, maybe it takes 20 wounds of "1" damage to diem, but only two or thee "9" damage. Kult 2e had wound levels too IIRC.
DeleteHP are a simplification... still far from perfect.