Diversifying Fighting Styles (was: One-Handed Fighting)

[Clovenhoof]

Let's look at the typical character outfit for fighter-types:
Typically, we choose a fighting style that makes use of both hands: either a Two-Handed weapon - by RAW the by far most powerful, and hence most popular fighting style; or Dual Wielding, which still needs a number of houserules to be roughly on par with THF; or finally the good ole D&D-esque "Sword-n-Board" for increased defense.

And WWCD (What Would Conan Do)? As far as I know, nothing of the sort. In his adventuring days, he seems to use a Broadsword or War Sword (or whatever weapon he can grab), and nothing else. Very rarely a big, two-handed bruiser, much less a shield.

So a single one-handed weapon seems to be the most genre-appropriate, at least for heroic, barbaric adventurers. Followed by TWF I'd say, but that doesn't matter now.
While "coolness factor" for OHF is definitely there, IMHO there should be some hard and crunchy incentive for players to try out (and possibly stick to) this style of fighting.

So what do we have already, and what could be added?

- we get 1,5x Str bonus for wielding a OHW two-handed. Some OH-weapons are also finessable if wielded two-handed, like the broadsword or war sword.
Tip: it would be mainly a flavour choice to allow these benefits also for one-handed use, provided the off-hand is free.

- there is the "Fling Aside" combat manoeuvre. It is a nice manoeuvre and certainly useful, but also terribly difficult to access: you need no less than four feats, which is damn lot for any Non-Soldier. Improved Unarmed Strike, Improved Grapple, Combat Expertise, Improved Trip.
I consider this especially nasty, since three classes (Barb, Nomad, Pirate) are unlikely to take those "Improved" feats, as they mainly serve to avoid AoOs which aren't a concern to a character with Improved Mobility. So in short, 40% of a character's total feat allowance just for a single combat manoeuvre is way too much.
Last not least, the mechanics are very cumbersome, with three rolls necessary (melee touch attack, grapple opposed check) to determine the outcome.
Tip: if this manoeuvre were easier to obtain, and quicker to carry out, it would help the attractiveness of OHF quite a bit.

That's all existing rules I can come up with atm anyway. Are there other feats in splatbooks that help OHF? Or do you have any other ideas?

Current ideas (but not thought out yet) include:
- special Dodge bonus for an OHW fighter wearing no or light armour, since he is less encumbered than a THF, TWF or SNB fighter;
- Combat manoeuvre permitting to switch hands quickly, i.e. tossing the weapon from right to left hand, and attacking from an unexpected angle;
- more combat manoeuvres making use of the free hand somehow, maybe in conjunction with Tumble skill or otherwise.

Fire away!

 

[InsomNY]

I disagree with your premise; while the weapons Conan most often uses are one-handed, there's no indication that he isn't swinging them two-handed. In fact, that's what I always pictured. He has the option of going one-handed if he needs to grapple, punch, or do something else, or can crank the damage by doubling up.

Sword and board is highly appropriate for soldiers, for battlefield-oriented nobles, and for certain barbarians as well (I'm thinking of Nordheimir and some of the Black Kingdoms tribes).

Fighting with a one-hander works great if you take the Intricate Swordplay feat; it requires you go one-handed, but gives you fantastic Parry Defense.

 

[Clovenhoof]

That's a matter of personal interpretation then; if the story just mentions a broadsword, I'm imagining Conan as wielding it in one hand, unless the text describes otherwise.

Every fighting style has its place, as you mentioned for SnB. Likewise, the big two-handers are typically for some extra-tough brutes that stand between our hero and the final encounter, is my impression. And TWF seems to be favoured by sleek and agile types.

Fighting with a one-hander works great if you take the Intricate Swordplay feat; it requires you go one-handed, but gives you fantastic Parry Defense.

Barbarians mustn't take the Intricate Swordplay feat as it's on their "taboo" list, but they don't lose much since they have crappy Parry bonus anyway. But they could have something similar for Dodging.

 

[Krushnak]

well one thing i've thought of doing for a one hand weilding character is to take improved unarmed(none of my fighter characters leave creation without it) and two weapon defence. this allows me to give up the offhand attack to gain a DV bonus.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Yeah, that would be 2 feats for a +2 Parry bonus. That doesn't help the Barbarian or Pirate much, who are better at Dodging. But it gives a good precedence for a new feat. Something that gives you a Dodge bonus.

Meanwhile, I have looked again at the Fling Aside manoeuvre, and it looks even worse than before. In short, the advantage over plain Improved Trip is that a failed attempt doesn't have any negative consequences (i.e. your opponent can't try to knock you prone). Still it's hard to attain and complicated to carry out.

Before my mental eye, I see a strong fighter using his bare hand to knock an opponent prone between dishing out sword strikes. But there are no rules resembling exactly that. There is Overrun, which requires you to move into your opponent's square to bear him down. There is Trip, which is designed more as a "finesse" move, because of the Int prereq for the Improved feat. There is Fling Aside as described above, which is more like grabbing and hurling the opponent.

What I'd like to have is an unarmed, Strength-based combat move that knocks your opponent prone. It could be either a feat or a manoeuvre based on feats, but prerequisite should be Power Attack or Improved Unarmed Strike rather than Combat Expertise. All in all it should not require more than two feats to pull off.

 

[Ichabod]

I'm not terribly concerned with what Conan would do. Given insanely high stats and the Versatility ability of a barbarian, I think a character could get by, switching to a superior fighting style when there's a need for it, which wouldn't be that often with insanely high stats and assuming some nonidiotic feat choices.

However, you touch on a general problem with simulating fantasy fiction. The common portrayal of the protagonist swordsperson is someone with either a one-handed sword or something akin to a bastard sword. Shields are unusual. Two-handed swords are unusual. Two weapon fighting is unusual.

FRPGs, meanwhile, encourage the unusual because they are more combat effective. One problem is that the stars of fiction routinely find themselves in social situations where having a hulking weapon, a shield, or obvious armor would be incongruous, in man vs. nature situations where holding on to a dagger and not drowning from metal armor are desirable, in situations where equipment is taken away. Even if some fighting style were better for a slugfest, they'd still have reasons to go the one-sword route.

One of the best things about Conan to me is that there are real reasons to not wear the "best" armor or to not implausibly have a shield at all times, that characters can be divorced from their equipment and not be crippled. But, by the same token, this is why I'm so annoyed by how much better two-handed fighting is. Not to get too much into this old topic, but some of your ideas for reducing the effectiveness of 2H fighting are probably not the way I would go - I would think more about how to make everything else more deadly since I want to keep the basic concept that everything should go down quick so that combat is fast.

Anyway, you may want to look at some of the stuff in Argos and Zingara, since that book tries to throw a bone to one-handed, non-sneak attack fighting. I don't think it goes nearly far enough since 2H fighting doesn't depend overmuch on feats, while K: Zingaran Fencing School is most useful when you already have plenty of sneak attack or another way of dealing large amounts of damage and the feats require spending feats just to be inferior to the existing ways of dealing damage, nevermind that those feat slots could be spent on "You Explode" and "Cleave Other Dimensions".

Barring hefty rewrites, seems to me the way to encourage the mental image is to have environmental conditions change the combat math. Cutlass is supposed to be good on a ship (and theoretically elsewhere) because of limited space; how often are the rules for that enforced? Maybe fighting underground, in people's houses, et al gives such massive penalties to running around with 2H weapons or shields or even 2W that people use 1H. Problem is trying to have the situations not feel like the GM trying to fix balance problems in the game.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Hey Ichabod, thanks for the detailed reply.

However, you touch on a general problem with simulating fantasy fiction. The common portrayal of the protagonist swordsperson is someone with either a one-handed sword or something akin to a bastard sword.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at. Environmental reasons are one thing, and they do have their place in the game, but if you overdo it, the players will feel that the GM is just harassing them. But it's certainly always worth remembering that a TH weapon gets -2 in confined spaces.

I would think more about how to make everything else more deadly since I want to keep the basic concept that everything should go down quick so that combat is fast.

And that's also what I am trying to do. Making the non-THF styles more effective, _without_ requiring a dozen feats to be spent just to come close to out-of-the-box THFing.

Mind you, as a GM I am so fortunate that my players go at it with fiction images in their minds, so they prefer OHF and sometimes TWF over THF and SNB. I don't take that for granted, and I want to reward them for that.

TWF can be expanded quite easily, since you can just attribute additional uses to the TWC feat/ability. For instance, I'm allowing Two Weapon Strike as basic combat manoeuvre for anyone who can do TWC.

So, without having seen the Zingara feats, I presume that the whole thing would be more proper if you'd convert them to common manoeuvres. Any examples?

 

[Ichabod]

Can't help with precise wordings as I don't own that book (or most of the books). I borrow them. I suppose I could borrow A&Z or whatever this weekend when we play next. But, in theory, someone who posts here has A&Z ... though, it doesn't seem like a lot of people have it since it's hardly ever referenced when it could be.

 

[Voltumna]

So, without having seen the Zingara feats, I presume that the whole thing would be more proper if you'd convert them to common manoeuvres. Any examples?

Knowledge (Fencing: Zingaran School) teaches a number of techniques you can learn with the first and fifth ranks, and every 5 total points thereafter. So you learn the abilities as you improve on your skill. The Balance skill plays a relevant role in this fencing style, the mechanics of which were ommited in the book, but you can look them in this forum, and basically amount to this: in one on one combat, the more balanced character has an edge that grants him a bonus to attack and defence depending on how big a difference there is between balnce scores. One of the techniques teached by the school for instance is Knock him off balance, you make a knowledge check vs the opponent's balance or knowledge, and if you win, you impose a -10 penalty to balance to your opponent, so this improves your bonuses. Another technique: if you make it on a skill check, you can use the Intricate Sword Play feat even if you don't meet the prerequisites. I really liked the fencing rules.

Regarding the feats, there are three, and basically aid in improving finesse fighting skills, for instance: Master fencer adds 1d6 to all finesse attacks you deliver, and you can take it several times, stacking the benefits. Since intelligence and skill ranks play a role on the level of skill you can attain, it seems like a good option for a combating scholar, their lousy defence could be somewhat improved using ISP, and there's a feat that allows you to use your base willpower save instead of dexterity or strength modifieres for attack rolls, which on the long run, kind of equalizes the attack bonus between a soldier and a scholar without adding any other feats.

I think they work well as feats, or allow access to them as advanced or secret techniques of the school at higher rank levels. I think they don't quite fit as just combat maneuvers, since there is a very special mistique arround swordsmanship in Zingara.

Swordsmanship in Zingara is a way of life, a philosophy and a mark of prestige known as the "True Art". Swordsmanship is elevated to a science, and combined with art, philosophy, experience and spirituality. Zingaran sowrdsmen are taught a frightening command of timing, distance, space and movement. Detachment and logical evaluation creates cold and calculating swordsmen.

 

[Timestheus]

One could create a feat that improves ones defense when fighting with one handed weapons based on the dueling style where one stands sideways facing a foe and thus has a narrower profile for the enemy to strike at.

This would at least grant some bonus to using one handed weapons. Unfortunately it might be limited to more finesse style weapons that you dont really put your weight and mass behind when slashing and which would still benefit from your mass even when standing sideways when lunging for a stab.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Just poring through some old threads here, and spontaneously had a simple idea for this combat style:

Feat: Move Like Water
You are an expert at not being where your enemies' blows land, due to your agile, unencumbered combat style.
Prerequisites: Dodge, Base Dodge Bonus +3
Benefit: when you use a Light or One-Handed weapon, carry nothing in the off hand, and wear light or no armour, you gain +2 to your Dodge Defense.

 

[Ichabod]

Just poring through some old threads here, and spontaneously had a simple idea for this combat style:

Feat: Move Like Water
You are an expert at not being where your enemies' blows land, due to your agile, unencumbered combat style.
Prerequisites: Dodge, Base Dodge Bonus +3
Benefit: when you use a Light or One-Handed weapon, carry nothing in the off hand, and wear light or no armour, you gain +2 to your Dodge Defense.

The problem with this is that it's too situationally useful. Killing stuff faster is way better defense than any actual defense in most cases as anything challenging to a party is going to hit almost all of the time and is going to dish out large amounts of damage. You can try to create a defense first character, but how does that help the party? Kill everyone else first, especially the characters who deal the most damage, then attrit the defensies in good time.

In other words, this character is just taking up space in combat. Just as most of our characters do in our campaign. We just wait until the barbarian kills everything because we don't run around with two-handed weapons (even though we could). One character is a huge damage sponge (assuming, of course, you don't one shot him with massive damage), but why even bother attacking him when he isn't killing anything?

To make OH fighting useful, you have to have a means to deal a minimum of 20 damage on a consistent basis. This can be done, of course. Reckless Attack is an absurd way to deal even more damage than the ubiquitous Power Attack, but since it requires PA, you might as well use any old 2H weapon and get the strength bonus and PA bonus for doing so, again, making 2H fighting optimal.

Meanwhile, the other way to efficiently (by not requiring a bunch of feats) dealing damage in the game - gobs of Sneak Attack - is essentially weapon irrelevant.

Substantially changing the game would necessitate seeing more feats like:

Speed Kills
Prereq: None
Benefits: When attacking with a one-handed weapon or light weapon, deal an additional amount of damage equal to 1.5x your Dexterity bonus (rounded up).

Note that I wouldn't limit the additional damage to only things that can be critted as that still makes Strength far more reliable.

Let's see, this would mean a Dex 20 character would deal 8 additional damage with something as big as a war sword, or 14.5 damage on average, way below the 20 needed to effectively kill things plus with no Cleave just around the corner. A shortsword would be 12.5. A first level character with an 18 Dex would deal 10.5 damage with two attacks of shortswords. A first level character with a bardiche and an 18 Str would deal 16.5 damage, 18.5 if PAing for 1. PA scales better and the latter character will either have Cleave or will get it by 3rd level. The former does also get STR damage increases. Oh well.

The Fast And The Furious
Prereq: Speed Kills
Benefits: Each of your successful attacks with a one-handed or light weapon is a critical hit.

Not that either of these helps OH fighting a tremendous amount in comparison to 2W fighting. But, I assume you get the idea - that it isn't sufficient to just toss out junky feats with a bunch of requirements that don't actually put damage over the all important 20 pt. threshold. That way lies the path of "Why even bother making the game more complicated, let's all just play PA, Cleave, Great Cleave, Reckless Attack."

 

[Clovenhoof]

Thanks for your feedback and analysis, Ichabod. I agree.

I have already nerfed THF in my game, by a) reducing the two-handed weapons' damage dice by one step (2d10 becomes 2d8 etc.), and b) simply eliminating the double bonus for TH Power Attack. The double bonus may work great in a regular D&D game, but in a game with armour giving DR, it shifts the balance too far towards THF.
With these rule modifications, you still need a good damage roll and good strength, or score a crit, to hit the MDT.

Also, I upped TWF a little by making the Two Weapon Strike (feat from Hyboria's Fiercest) available as a combat manoeuvre to anyone who meets the prerequisites, so you don't have to spend a feat on it. And I removed Power Attack from the Prereqs, because PA is a wasted feat for TWFers as it won't work with Light weapons.

The main defensive style, Sword'n'Board, still works as usual. It's like you said, a SnB char is very hard to hit but doesn't deal a lot of damage. Not a popular style in my group. So far nobody has ever used a shield.

So now for giving OHF a little boost.

Meanwhile, the other way to efficiently (by not requiring a bunch of feats) dealing damage in the game - gobs of Sneak Attack - is essentially weapon irrelevant.

Actually that works best for TWF, so it's not quite weapon irrelevant, but rather favouring Light weapons. However, Thief of course doesn't get TWF by default. MCing with Borderer helps.

Speed Kills
Prereq: None
Benefits: When attacking with a one-handed weapon or light weapon, deal an additional amount of damage equal to 1.5x your Dexterity bonus (rounded up).

I quite like that idea. You also get your Str bonus, and can combine it with Power Attack. Let's compare a Str 18, Dex 18 char with a War Sword (d12) using it either One-handed (exotic or versatility) or two-handed:

OH: d12 + 4 + 6 ~ 16,5
TH: d12 + 6 ~ 12,5

Note that these are _average_ damage rolls. Power Attack (in my houserules) adds to both styles equally, nd you can still crit. Suddenly, OH becomes _a lot_ better, putting the Exotic feat or Class feature to some actual benefit.
Under these circumstances, maybe even x1 Dex mod would be an appropriate bonus.

The Fast And The Furious
Prereq: Speed Kills
Benefits: Each of your successful attacks with a one-handed or light weapon is a critical hit.

That would help a whole damn lot, but I see the problem on a different matter: it castrates the Barbarian Versatility as well as the regular Improved Crit chain. You may buy 2 feats or level straight through Barb 20 to gain a triple Threat range, and that's not even vaguely on par with "every hit crits".

But maybe something similar could be devised, maybe like adding an extra d6 to damage on a crit, or increasing the crit multiplier, or something like that.

 

[Style]

Killing stuff faster is way better defense than any actual defense in most cases

I've found this to be true in nearly every RPG I've played. In the end, high damage fighters (i.e. using two handed weapons) out perform finesse fighters.

Likewise, in most games making yourself harder to hit (i.e. improving your parry) is not as good as improving your damage reduction.

The good news is only one of my players has figured this out. So we only have one character using the biggest weapon he can find, wearing the most armor he can find, while the rest all look quite different.

 

[Ichabod]

Killing stuff faster is way better defense than any actual defense in most cases

I've found this to be true in nearly every RPG I've played. In the end, high damage fighters (i.e. using two handed weapons) out perform finesse fighters.

Likewise, in most games making yourself harder to hit (i.e. improving your parry) is not as good as improving your damage reduction.

The good news is only one of my players has figured this out. So we only have one character using the biggest weapon he can find, wearing the most armor he can find, while the rest all look quite different.

For a while our group used all sorts of different fighting styles. Still, only one character uses a bardiche or greatsword. We like being spearchuckers, I guess.

Totally off point, but heavy armor would be suicidal in our campaign.

What I really wanted to address is that I think the idea of offense first in RPGs, which is quite unlike a lot of fiction where the hero avoids every blow, comes from two? sources. One is that a lot of opposition is supposed to be slain and there's no "I will show my true power by blowing up the army you held back for three rounds" tactics that justify doing anything besides killing as much crap as fast as possible nor are there enemies you ever want to let live. Second is that there's a party. A single hero who goes down has rather severe problems, especially in making plot progress unless being captured is part of the plot. Having a group which fights slow and safe is not terribly exciting. In fact, because of the numerous combatants, anything to speed up combat is desirable, further putting the emphasis on offense.

I don't mind how brutal Conan can be. I don't mind that it's easy to do massive damage with a 2H weapon backed up with PA. What I find discouraging is that PA/Cleave is so much better than anything else (even SA, at least in our campaign) that you either do what everyone does, don't play a combat character (and I'd argue that a pure thief is not a combat character), or suck at combat.

Actually, if it becomes incredibly easy to take out a PC in one shot, then there's an increased desire for defensive abilities. Something our campaign has started to see in the past few months. Our barbarian way overuses Reckless Attack which has gotten him brutalized unnecessarily at least twice. Well, I guess we are all stupid.

But, really, what I care more about is not having every PC look the same or, if they don't look the same, having the ones who try something different being gimps.

 

[Style]

But, really, what I care more about is not having every PC look the same or, if they don't look the same, having the ones who try something different being gimps.

There is a fantastic thread about this very subject on the PEG boards. It's actually inspired by the Conan movie. The Conan RPG gets some love latter iin the thread as well. Check it out:

http://www.peginc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17256&postdays=0&postorder=asc

 

[Clovenhoof]

I don't mind how brutal Conan can be. I don't mind that it's easy to do massive damage with a 2H weapon backed up with PA. What I find discouraging is that PA/Cleave is so much better than anything else (even SA, at least in our campaign) that you either do what everyone does, don't play a combat character (and I'd argue that a pure thief is not a combat character), or suck at combat.

Exactly. Gory combat is cool. Massive Damage and One-Hits are cool. But there ought to be more ways to skin a cat.
"Nerfing" 2HPA the way I did (=no double bonus) means you need some other way to boost the damage output in order to beat the MDT. (The alternative would have been allowing PAx2 for all weapons, which would have made PA an even more powerful feat.) That can be SA or expanding the Threat range, for instance. Especially Improved Crit works well in conjunction with PA, because the extra PA damage is also multiplied.
On the other hand, SA is restricted to certain situations; so after a possible surprise round, your best bet is to flank your opponents, which requires good teamwork. This is of course desirable and makes combat more interesting.

If you want to have a real alternative to PA, you need something that increases damage output by itself, but doesn't work together with PA. Right now, the only attack modes that don't work with PA are Finesse and/or Light weapons. But IMHO there should be something in between brute force and finesse. However, if you don't mind PA being able to improve all hits except by Light weapons, you can just as well leave it as it is.

Light weapons can shine when using them in pairs together with Sneak Attack. Twinked maximum would be 8 attacks per round at 8d8 SA damage, if you mix your classes right. However, I doubt anyone needs more than 5d8 SA.

For a single one-handed weapon, it would be nice to have something completely different. Maybe like adding the Dex bonus to damage (in addition to Str bonus), or maybe an increased crit multiplier. Let's try the latter:

Feat: Fast and Furious (redux)
Prereqs: ?
Benefit: whenever you are fighting with a single Light or One-Handed weapon, you increase the crit multiplier by one.
(If you combine this with "Speed Kills", you might want to make this incompatible with PA. Voilà, completely different fighting style.)

 

[Ichabod]

It's been a while, but I believe that one of the changes in d20 Star Wars, latest version, is that you do additional damage as you go up in levels. While that's not what I'm looking for since it doesn't in any way encourage diversity, there is something intriguing about the concept.

The more ways there are to elevate damage, the less any one way is going to dominate. So, even something like "Feat: Deal an additional amount of damage equal to +(1+BAB)" might have a desirable effect, though probably not game changing enough and very possibly with some unintended negative effect.

But, whatever. It's not like the rules are going to get changed to fix all of the major problems in the game and, if our group cared, we could always adopt house rules to change things we don't like. Ultimately, it's because our players would rather play out of the book (even though they don't bother reading the book) than put effort into improving the rules.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Here's an option that might help to fix some of the problems, though it may aggravate others:

Power Attack feat damage bonus:
Two-handed weapon: 2x attack penalty
One-handed weapon: 2x attack penalty (*)
Light weapon: 1x attack penalty

Caveat:
*) You may want to make a restriction that you must not be wielding an off-hand weapon to benefit from this bonus. Otherwise, the new top-tier damage dealer will be a TWFer with War Sword, Short Sword, Power Attack and Two-Weapon Strike (d12 + d8 + 1,5xStr + 3x PA), which actually may be fine if you use TWS as feat (and not as manoeuvre as I do).

Advantage: removes extreme weightedness towards THF. One-handed weapons can now beat the MDT without criticals as well. TWFers with Two Weapon Strike can achieve a similar damage output as THFers. In short, damage-aware players can chose whichever weapon they favour and not lose out.

Disadvantage: makes Power Attack an even more basic feat; a must-have for anyone who expects to kill stuff, so while the weapon choice can be more varied, the feat choices will be more straightforward than ever.

 

[Style]

Disadvantage: makes Power Attack an even more basic feat; a must-have for anyone who expects to kill stuff, so while the weapon choice can be more varied, the feat choices will be more straightforward than ever.

Just tossing this out there. When designing a system, any system, if you have one option that is so good that everyone is going to take it, it's no longer really an option, and as such it really shouldn't be one. So in this example where PA is pretty much mandatory, you would just make it a feature of your game that all character get the power attack feat for free.

Did anyone even glance at that thread I posted on the Riddle of Steal? It was truly a fantastic discussion of this "problem". The end result that I took from the thread was that if you want choice of weapons and fighting styles to all be equally good, so that everyone doesn't "look the same" b/c one way is clearly better than the others, then remove damage as being a function of weapon and fighting style. Make it depend on level, abilities, or whatever, but it's not dependent on equipment and whether you have two hands on your sword or not.

"Well, this makes two weapon fighting the best route" you say? No, it doesn't. Again, it makes no difference what style you fight with. So how you would handle two weapon fighting in a system like this would be you still make one attack roll, two weapons or no, and you still make one damage roll, the same roll you would make if you were using one weapon. In effect, a successful hit would mean both weapons hit. If you wanted to flavor text it that on a low damage roll only one hit, you could, but it really doesn't matter.

In a system like this, players make choices of equipment and style based on only what they think is cool for their character. Of course, the trade off is realism. Let's face it, some equipment truly is superior than others. There's a reason why swords became so popular, it's b/c they're quite good at killing people.

Anyway, solutions like that and many more are discussed in detail in that thread.