First game experience

[RosenMcStern]

Thanks for your reply Rosen.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear- We're just testing out the combat system at the moment, it's not a "proper" game. I was just experimenting with as much variety in foes as I could against starting characters with a bare "It's all a dream" excuse. All but one of the PC's died in the fighting.

Nostalgic comment: I get the point. We did something similar in (ick!
:shock: ) 1987 when we learned RQ3 and had only used TFT before. We made inter-PC arenas though.

Rurik suggested a good way to improve PCs with seasoning rules. But don't worry, a standard starting PC party <i>kicks ass</i> once you know how to use the rules. Get acquainted to the system and let them play with starting skills only - they'll become fighting machines earlier than you think if the game goes smoothly.

 

[RosenMcStern]

I agree with your interpretation of charge - it requires 5 meters is how I have always read it. What I do is allow a close and attack as one action. You may move up to full move and attack as one action - it still draws a free attack which you must defend against as you close and before you attack, but assuming you survive you get to attack in the same action, rather than have to close with one action and then wait until your next action to attack.

Another bug that must be fixed. The rules state that you need five meters, but there is no reason why you should get a free attack, or be unable to attack yourself, if you move less than five meters.

Maybe this needs an official fix, Mongoose?

 

[GoingDown]

I agree with your interpretation of charge - it requires 5 meters is how I have always read it. What I do is allow a close and attack as one action. You may move up to full move and attack as one action - it still draws a free attack which you must defend against as you close and before you attack, but assuming you survive you get to attack in the same action, rather than have to close with one action and then wait until your next action to attack.

And we allow moving half of your movement rate and still attack without drawing a free attack.

 

[Deleriad]

We had to introduce a "Cautious advance" combat action to get people into fights other than charging which made things work alot cleaner. Has anybody else got a similar thing or an alternative?

I call it "Engage" - lets you close with an enemy within your normal move rating without drawing a Free Attack. You don't get to attack as part of the action so you have to time it well but that's part of learning to play the game.

Charge, in my book, is exactly what it says on the tin: you need enough room to get up to speed and attack on the run.

I do allow players to attack anyone within reach plus about 1m as a simple attack. Reach depends on the weapon size.

I figure these three options give players enough choice to be going on with.

 

[master of reality]

We had to introduce a "Cautious advance" combat action to get people into fights other than charging which made things work alot cleaner. Has anybody else got a similar thing or an alternative?

I call it "Engage" - lets you close with an enemy within your normal move rating without drawing a Free Attack. You don't get to attack as part of the action so you have to time it well but that's part of learning to play the game.

Charge, in my book, is exactly what it says on the tin: you need enough room to get up to speed and attack on the run.

I do allow players to attack anyone within reach plus about 1m as a simple attack. Reach depends on the weapon size.

I figure these three options give players enough choice to be going on with.

I agree. I created a combat action that I call "combat advance" that allows a character to close in for combat without charging or suffering a free attack. It's basically the reverse of "combat retreat". The character can move up to half his movement allowance and attack any opponent in an adjacent hex, or one hex away when using a long weapon, without being attacked first. Each hex is a meter.
Overall, the combat system is fine. I tweaked it to suit the tastes of my gaming group, but the updated version works well enough.

 

[master of reality]

You might want to check out Pete Nash's "Opposed Roll" combat system at
www.mrqwiki.com. I use it for parries. If a character chooses to dodge, I use the updated rules. That's what's nice about the combat rules. It's easy to tweak them to reflect varying degrees of "realism" versus playability without fundamental changes.