Combat actions: the Be all and end all of all combat chars?

It would seem that the ability to misunderstand hyperbole extends beyond the Lizard.

I did not say 'RQ says', I said, attributing a modicum of intelligence to a book, that 'RQ thinks' implying that the misreading I had made was correct when it wasn't and extending the misreading to an incorrect assumption of the reasoning behind the misreading. Which is why I suggested that the end of a thread was a good place to read through before posting.
 
Not really sure hat Strega is getting at apart from he implies that the RQ6 rules seems to imply having 3CAs at base is recommended.
The rest of of Strega's statements kind of confused me.

Anyway, to get 3 CAs you need to be lucky with Dice rolls or focus a lot of your 80 stat points on INT and DEX, probably at the cost of STR and CON, which are important warrior type stats.

Personally I DO feel that having 3 CAs vs 2 CAs at base is a big advantage. I know you can RP and strategically play your character to compensate for this. But from a purely combat perspective, there's no getting away from it, in pretty much all aspects of combat, that extra 1 CA is a BIG advantage.

Fortunately however, Legend is an RPG and not a pure combat game. Another character I generated that HAD 3 CAs was a better combat wombat, but not as well rounded a character as the one who had 2 CAs.
Meaning out of combat the 2 CA character was more versatile.
 
Yeah, adventurers with 2 base CA need to think really carefully about how they handle combat, close combat in particular. Whether that means equipping themselves with a big mother of a weapon, a dual wield or weapon & shield combo for an extra CA and heavy armour or whatever, they really need give it a lot of though or they won't survive very long.

As we all know, in general terms, one-on-one, he with the most CA usually wins.
 
I ran a couple of mini-gaming sessions with my daughter.
She ran a combat orientated character with 3 CAs.
A sort of barbarian character with light armor, dual weapons and a bow.

I NPC'd a character with 2 CAs a Sword+shield combo and a bow and Hard leather armor.
Sort of an ex town guard type character,

I did a small adventure where a small town's windmill was inhabited by some sort of ghost (actually harpies pretending to be poltergeists)

The Barbarian didn't have much in the way of any social skills and a fairly low CHA and not a high DEX, average INT. Enough to get him 3 CAs.
He did have decent survival and outdoor skills. Slightly lower weapon skills than the guard.

I generated the Guard to have skills like streetwise, insight and other useful town skills.
Also he had a decent INT and CHA (around 12-14 ish I think)
His STR was fairly good but a lowish DEX maybe around 10. I know he ended up with 2 CAs anyway.

His actual weapon skills were not too bad, somewhere in the high 60%s
And he ended up with a +1d2 damage bonus, which the barbarian didn't get.
Generally if he could hit, he would do more damage and he had better all round skills, including weapon skills.

Anyway, we set up the characters so the barbarian would lead, sneak around etc.
the guard would follow and be ready with a bow at first.

So barbarian played in a pro-active fashion / offensive
Guard played in a defensive, reactive fashion.

All in all it worked well, a harpy swooped down on the barbarian and the guard did a holding action waiting for something like that, so having more CAs wouldn't have been that useful.

In the wilds, the barbarian was in his element, what with survival skills etc, but actually the guard had a bit of survival as well and his social skills were very good for a starting character due to a decent CHA and a good INT as well.
Also when he hit, that extra 1d2 helped with damage on top of his 1d8+1 for the sword.
That and he had better armor, which slowed him down , but a lower Strike rank is not so important when you're avoiding melee combat.

The difference in CAs showed more when they got inside the windmill and the rounds and actions were still counting off and loads of climbing, evading, hitting and other things that required usage of CAs.
The barbarian outstripped the guard in this regard.

Still, in both cases the guard with his decent to chance hit and higher damage generally got the killing/disabling shots with a bow (which he changed to later) over the barbarian hits, which had slightly lower damage.

All in all, it worked ok for the guard, as long as you don't mind taking a support/reactive role and let those with more CAs get on with it.

Down the track though, the 3 CA barbarian with more experience, meaning more skills increased with advancement points could do the same and probably better than the guard if he wanted.

I would personally conclude, if you want a combat character for Legend, at the end of the day, you really ought to get 3 CAs to be a good combat character. Sure there's ways of compensating with only 2 CAs, but the 3CA character can always do that too and do better.
Especially after character advancement later.
 
danskmacabre said:
I would personally conclude, if you want a combat character for Legend, at the end of the day, you really ought to get 3 CAs to be a good combat character. Sure there's ways of compensating with only 2 CAs, but the 3CA character can always do that too and do better.
Especially after character advancement later.
Click to expand...

Generally speaking I would agree.

However in an adventuring party, most of the time, the party's skills advance at a similar-ish rate. So therefore the guy with 2 base CA will advance at a similar rate as the rest of group. Played cleverly, they can be just as awesome in combat as guy's with 3 or more CA (one of the Melnibonean's ended up with 5 CA, 3 base +1 for axe & shield, +1 for a gift!). The Pan-Tangian I mentioned in my OP was deadly in close combat - he was well armoured, used a great-axe, had good STR, SIZ & CON scores. As we used the closing & disengaging rules the fights didn't usually last long enough for the lack of CA's to become an issue - particularly when he'd stop after hewing some chaps head from his body, to pull out his dagger and collect the unfortunate victims right knee (failed to fail his Pact roll to avoid acting on his compulsion)! At that sight, with a Karasim and a couple of angry looking, well armed, Melnibonean's advancing towards them and a Mhyrrn dropping vials of Alchemist's Fire from above, most combatants turned and fled! Who could blame them!

He struggled when outnumbered but judicious use of Outmaneuver saved his backside more than once.
 
Re advancing at the same rate, that's true, the 2Ca guy will probably advance at the same rate, but the 3Ca guy will always have that 3CA advantage.
Also, the 3Ca guy could also wear heavy armor and get a big axe and still get 1 more CA.

But yeah, to counter that, you said he had a good CON, SIZ and STR as opposed to a high INT and DEX. So when he hits, he hits HARD.

But then the 3 CA guy will get a chance to hit again and if against the 2 CA guy, that attack if it hits, will be unopposed, as by then the 2CA will have run out of actions.

It's an interesting point you make though about if you're part of a decent sized and powered group, it won't matter as much.
 
Don't worry Dansk, he did alright. When I GM, the majority of opponents, think minions, are a good 15-20% lower in skills than the average of the party. Most of the time he only had to hit once and that guy was incapacitated, if not out right dead. I think he had a DM of 1d4, add that to a great axe, unless you're wearing heavy armour you're stuffed. Even more so if he had CM!
 
Just a quick thought.....

I think the intention of both Legend and RQ 6 was always to have 2 Combat Actions per round as the standard and restrict 3 Combat Actions per round to characters who are quick-witted and agile. Because the attribute spread is built around an implied 3d6 bell curve maybe a better progression would be:

6 or less = 1 CA
7–15 = 2 CAs
16 –21 = 3 CAs
For every additional 6 points +1 CAs

This isn't as neat from a mathematical perspective, but it follows the standard 3d6 bell curve better. (Yes, I realise that human adventurers generate INT using 2d6+6 and this increases the chance of getting 3 CAs per round if you roll up your character randomly).

Under this proposal most characters will have 2 CAs per round - if you are generating NPC attributes using an unmodified 3d6, only around 4% of the general population will have reflexes fast enough to get 2 CAs per round (compared with around 26% of the population under the normal rules). Under the published version, roughly a third of all characters with randomly-generated characteristics will receive 3 CAs per round once you take into account the effects of the 2d6+6 roll for INT. And if you allow point buy, most experienced players are smart enough to min-max things to ensure that they receive 3 CAs per round for obvious reasons.

Is modifying the table slightly to tone down the chance of getting more than 2 CAs a good idea - or would it change the flavour of the combat system too much?
 
I thought about armor penalty having an impact on CA as opposed to initiative but can't figure how to make this balanced.
Any thoughts or ideas?
 
superc0ntra said:
I thought about armor penalty having an impact on CA as opposed to initiative but can't figure how to make this balanced.
Any thoughts or ideas?
Click to expand...

That occasionally gets mentioned as an idea. One way is to base the number of CAs on your actual Strike Rank. For example: 1 CA per 6 SR or fraction thereof.
So SR 1-6 = 1 CA, SR 7-12 = 2 CAs, SR 13-18 = 3 CAs and so on.
Note that RAW this exactly replicates how many CAs a character will have but if you calculate it based on SR after deductions for armour and plus additions for d10 then there's a lot more variability.

E.g. an optimised speed merchant SR 18+1d10 and no armour could get up to 5 CAs per round.
an average human mini-maxed for 3 CAs (SR 13 i.e. INT 13 DEX 12) will find that if they wear 3-4 or less APs then their SR is likely to remain at 3 CAs while wearing more than that increases the risk of only getting 2 CAs. Personally I think this puts too much weight on the Initiative roll but it's always seemed like a viable house rule; especially for those who are allergic to mini-maxers.
 
That's actually pretty neat Deleriad, I like that. The only issue I have is with the randomness of adding in the D10, I'm not sure how that would go.
 
It's not my idea, I've just seen versions of this floating around. As you say it adds a relatively large random element. Probably too large in this case. Then again it makes mini-maxing for CAs virtually impossible.
 
A few possible ways to change this in order of ascending complexity:

1: Give everybody the same number of CA's, ignoring INT and DEX.

2: Only allow characters 1 attack per round - any excess CA's may only be used reactively or for non-attack actions.

3: Switch to a tick-based system. Instead of CA's, everybody gets an Action Quickness equal to 8 minus their normal CA's. Strike Ranks go away here. Roll initiative on 1d6 plus AQ at the beginning of combat (lower is better). Start in Tick 1 and count up. When you get to somebody's Initiative, they get to act. An action adds the character's AQ to their current initiative in order to determine their next initiative. A reaction adds 1 to a character's initiative. Rounds are no longer a thing. For effects that have a duration in rounds, add 10 times that duration to the Tick # in which they began to determine the Tick # in which they end.
This is less complex than it looks as you'll only have a single initiative score to track for each combatant and (unlike CA's and SR) it doesn't reset at the beginning of every round - it just keeps counting up. The ability to defend at a much lower cost than attacking, means slower characters won't be quite as much at the mercy of quicker ones.
 
Does anyone prefer the old MRQ1 combat action system? Where you got a number of Combat Actions and Reactions based on your INT and DEX. With MRQ2 and Legend the number of Combat Actions/ Reactions really shrank. I think it hit Sorcerers the hardest. They don't have any free Combat Reactions to evade attacks.
 
p_Clapham said:
Does anyone prefer the old MRQ1 combat action system? Where you got a number of Combat Actions and Reactions based on your INT and DEX. With MRQ2 and Legend the number of Combat Actions/ Reactions really shrank. I think it hit Sorcerers the hardest. They don't have any free Combat Reactions to evade attacks.
Click to expand...
I have thought about trying that but I'm not sure what effect it would have other than to negate the gritty realism of combat - after all, if you pick 3 as an average number of CA that's quite a bit of stuff (including movement) you can do in 5 seconds. Re the point about Sorcerers, I get where you're coming from but a magic specialist that allows himself to get into a situation where he needs to defend against attacks is not being particularly wise :wink:
 
So a round is roughly five seconds? I couldn't find that in the main book. Good to know, I'll try to work that into my automobile rules.
 
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