First Session

[Durand Durand]

Well, we had our first session with basic PC's. Ouch, but combat hurts.
There were a number of thing's we noticed people might have commented on before.

Combat was a little confusing... we've decided to use poker chips to represent actions, reactions & bonus actions for off-hand in future, to speed book-keeping, we are mostly old RQers though, and worked things out. Lucky for us the un-armoured PC's made thier parry rolls versus attacks. The armoured guy faild & nearly died in one hit. Parrying is essential. The AP/HP of some weapons we found odd. Dagger has 4AP? As good as a sword to parry with.

This bonus off hand re/action is a little suspicious, I mean, what person wouldn't carry a second sword or dagger? The advantages are high, there is no real penalty. We assumed unarmed skill didn't count as off-hand, though martial arts could, otherwise you'd rely on unarmed skill all the time.

We also thought armour penalties were a little high. Those of us who'd actually worn armour tended to think they were ridiculous... of course the helm is the peice to most inhibit skill, not the hauberk. We thought we'd halve those penalties fo a start, as the penalty for wearing plate armour out-weighed the penalty to finesse past it's AP! Why give your opponent an advantage? I imagine errata is coming.

While we lack the MRQ Companion, we assume cult magic would make healing more readily available, otherwise a high mortality rate is expected in future.

DD

 

[Melkor]

Glad you enjoyed it.

The poker chip thing is a good idea...and I will probably steal it and substitue gaming stones....I think that would visually help the players keep track of what is going on.

We created characters and ran two test combats which proved quite deadly to the characters without much in the way of armor (they were unable to afford much during character creation).

 

[Malakor]

I made up a cheat sheet for GM use to track actions/reactions during combat.

If you want a copy of it, it is available on my wiki in the Runequest Related stuff.

http://leshan.pbwiki.com/

And feel free to let me know if you have any suggestions for changes.

 

[atgxtg]

I was thinking of aplying the armor penalty to the fatigue rolls rather than skills. I've worn mail before, and it didn't lower all my skils, but it did become a bit of a burdern of carry over time.

 

[simonh]

I was thinking of aplying the armor penalty to the fatigue rolls rather than skills. I've worn mail before, and it didn't lower all my skils, but it did become a bit of a burdern of carry over time.

That strikes me as an excellent suggestion.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Lakritsploppen]

I'll probably will use a similar system, but would also give the penalty to athletics & dodge as its much harder to change directions quickly when wearing armour. hmm could even thinking about giving a +1 damage bonus when charging.. if wearing mail or other "heavy armour"

:roll:

 

[atgxtg]

I was thinking of aplying the armor penalty to the fatigue rolls rather than skills. I've worn mail before, and it didn't lower all my skils, but it did become a bit of a burdern of carry over time.

That strikes me as an excellent suggestion.

Simon Hibbs

Oops, I must be on the wrong forum! :wink:

 

[Durand Durand]

I was thinking of aplying the armor penalty to the fatigue rolls rather than skills. I've worn mail before, and it didn't lower all my skils, but it did become a bit of a burdern of carry over time.

Very good suggestion.

I'll probably will use a similar system, but would also give the penalty to athletics & dodge as its much harder to change directions quickly when wearing armour. hmm could even thinking about giving a +1 damage bonus when charging.. if wearing mail or other "heavy armour"

Again, very good. I might consider movement speed reductions too, as running in mail is slower.

DD

 

[atgxtg]

I'll probably will use a similar system, but would also give the penalty to athletics & dodge as its much harder to change directions quickly when wearing armour. hmm could even thinking about giving a +1 damage bonus when charging.. if wearing mail or other "heavy armour"

Again, very good. I might consider movement speed reductions too, as running in mail is slower.

DD[/quote]

Well the fatigue is the reason for slowing down. I've run in a mail shirt and kept my normal speed-at least for the first minute or so. Troop[s do it with field packs. The weight doesn't slow you down direclty, so much as requires you to expend you enegy more quickly.

If someone wants to add the mass of the armorin as a bonus to charging, they might just go ahead and factor in weight carried to the PC's SIZE and just adjust the damage bonus. After all, the SIZ 18 guy doesn't get any more of a charge bonus that the SIZ 9 guy, but he does have a greater DB (STR being equal). A 3ENC=1SIZ coversion would give a suit of plate a +4 to a PCs SIZ. Proably realistic, but a bit cumbersome to run.

 

[RMS]

I like this rule idea too. I finally got my copy of the rules this weekend (trade-off for the cheap Amazon prices apparently), and overall I don't have any complaints about the system. (Outside of the hotly debated halving mechanic. That one has to go!)

However, the equipment lists immediately drew criticism from me. The weapon damages are strange, to say the least. I have some questions about AP and HP for weapons too. The biggest issue though is definitely the exaggerated armor penalties. If penalties were anything like that in real life, no body would bother with armor, and we all know that isn't the case. I like the idea of using the armor penalties only for fatigue rolls.

I would actually argue against using them for dodge or running rolls. IMO the reduced fatigue rolls cover this quite well. Armor doesn't make you run slower. It just wears you out faster when you're running. The same thing is true of dodging. (It might affect both a little, but it'd be much smaller than the numbers in armor tables.)

The skills I'd use those penalties with are any kind of stealth skill and I'd use the helm penalties (maybe even bigger ones) for perception checks.

 

[atgxtg]

The skills I'd use those penalties with are any kind of stealth skill and I'd use the helm penalties (maybe even bigger ones) for perception checks.

Stealth penalties would depend on the armor type. Wearing a double would probably help with steath skills.

THe peception (and swimming!-42% to swimming in a suit of plate is quite generous. ) penalties would be the nasy ones. I've looked through a helm, and quite frankly aperson can see more looking through a mailslot in a door. I could see going so far as to cap off perception rolls to something like 25%+POW in a closed helm with the visor down.

How about:
Dodge Penalty =ENC
Swim Penalty=ENC x 5%