MRQII Questions

[Verderer]

Just proceed in the SR order, then rince and repeat until all CA have been spent. It's not really complicated, and furthermore it's pretty important to track who moves before who.

What caused me some pause on my first read was when you use a CA for a parry or evade, do you lose your NEXT CA, or just a CA from the total? That would make a big difference, but I now assume you just reduce one CA, from the total number available, and stop acting when you run out. The rest takes care of itself.

How you interpret combat styles is up to you, some people use them very broadly (legionnaire combat style which covers many weapons), and some very narrowly (broadsword). You might even separate parrying and actual weapons skill. I am kinda in the middle in this. As you said, it makes sense to take sword&dagger over simple sword or dagger. In our campaign pistol&sword is pretty popular.

About giving bonuses, I wouldn't give a bonus if you use the combat style as per description, but I would give a penalty if you start using it in the 'wrong' manner. So if you use just a sword with 'sword&shield', or sword and shield with 'sword' combat style, I'd give a penalty.

 

[sdavies2720]

Ok, heres the annoying new guy again. I was hoping to jump in here with the first of many inane questions.

1. In running combats, do you normally have each player spend all their CA's before going on to the next player in a typical combat round? I mean, say an enemy soldier with 3 CA's is fighting two players, and has the highest Strike Rank. So the enemy soldier attacks player 1 with a CA, and player 1 spends 1 of his CA's to parry. Player 2, though, has a higher SR than player 1, so do you make player 1 wait on spending more CA's since technically it's player 2's turn? My mind is about to explode just thinking of four soldiers against a party of three adventurer's and so on. Baby steps I guess, eh?

No, you run through in Strike Rank order, and on each player's/NPC's strike rank they use one CA. When it's their turn, they have to use a CA. If it's not your turn, you might want to use a CA (e.g. to Parry), but you don't have to. Keep going around the ring until everyone is out of CAs. We found it easiest to give everyone poker chips, one per CA (this was someone else's idea, and it works great). We're getting to the point where we don't need this as much, but it's really easy.
Some of the combat strategy comes from when to use CAs or not -- if you have an extra one in a round, you basically get a free shot at your opponent.

2. Maybe the simplicity of combat styles is causing me issues, but the way I read it, someone can take Sword and Shield, and be just as competent at using the sword even without their shield. Why would I ever take, say, 1H sword as a style then, unless it's a rapier or some such. Even then, I would take Sword and dagger to get a free skill so to speak. If that is correct, I would think fleshing out a style more would make more sense. For example, if you have the 1Hand Sword style, you get a 10% bonus on parrying with it, because you have trained to defend yourself without the need of a shield. I don't know, it just seems dodgy.

Yeah, the combat styles are a little loose. Your approach would work, or I penalize them when they don't have the other component (You are used to using your dagger to keep the opponent's weapon from sliding up your sword and hitting you, so you're -20% on your skill when you don't have a dagger in hand).

Any and all help welcome! Thanks guys.

The system works well. Having been listening or involved in conversations since the system came out, I can attest that Loz and Pete (the authors) have really thought through everything. In some places the rules are 'loose' but you'll find that in those places there really isn't a 'one size fits all' rule that will cover all bases without being horribly complex. One of RuneQuest's enduring characteristics is a relatively small set of rules that do a really good job of simulation.

Steve