'Hawkmoon' NPC Combat Abilities

[Lord High Munchkin]

Dear All,

Has anyone else noted the combat abilities of listed NPCs in the new 'Hawkmoon' rules?

For example: Dark Empire Foot Soldiers have 70% halberd in 'Mongoose Hawkmoon', in 'Hawkmoon Nouvelle Edition' they have broadsword 75%, long spear 68% and the weapon of their order at 50%, while in 'Chaosium Hawkmoon' they start at around 50% in their main weapon.

That's all fine and dandy - no issues so far.

However in 'MH', there is the issue of armour skill penalty. This is listed as -35% for their Standard Granbretanian armour - so either they have 35% chance of actually using that halberd, or if that's 70% after the skill penalty, they are actually only 5% less skilled than Hawkmoon himself (if Hawkmoon uses an average sword and takes off his armour). Not bad for mere grunts!

Regards

 

[Nickbergquist]

Maybe I just like assuming stuff, but I figure they wouldn't modify the skill chance of something without letting you know....otherwise, we'd be facing the reverse question: the granbretan trooper has a 35% halberd skill, so does that mean they are at 0% after armor penalty? Naaah, it seems obvious that the skill is given unmodified, and the armor penalty specifically mentioned so it can be applied as needed.

Which means that a granbretan foot soldier is at 35% in armor with the halberd, and since he has no mentionable skill in sword, we'd have to assume then that they might only have a 26% base chance, which means that they really, really suck in sword combat.

By contrast, even after armor Hawkmoon has an 80% attack with the sword.....but he might want to avoid halberds :wink:

As for the other Hawkmoon editions.....I am just not up to speed on them these days, been too long, and I don't have the cash to fork out on outrageous ebay prices :shock:

 

[Mongoose Gar]

All the weapon skills are given pre-armour penalties. In later books, we've started adding the modified scores in brackets after the skill, so it'd be "Halberd 70% (35%)" and so forth. I'm assembling an errata document for Hawkmoon (nothing significant so far, just footnotes pointing to the wrong Armour Quality in the tables and so forth.)