New combat manoeuvre

[Vagni]

Hi folks

I'm new here on the forum but I've been playing RQ for over 20 years now, I'm a big fan of the new RQII.

I have a new combat manoeuvre I use in my house rules and thought I would share it here.

Unseat Horseman – (Bill, Glaive, Halberd or Poleaxe, Critical Success Only) – The attacker attempts to hook and pull the horse man from his saddle. The defender must make an opposed test of his Ride skill vs. the original attack roll. Failure results in him being pulled from the horse, taking 1D6 falling damage to a random location and ending up prone. He must also make a Resilience test or be stunned for 1D3 Combat Actions. If the horseman was charging then he takes 2D6 falling damage and the Resilience test is now classed as Difficult (-20%).

Any comments welcome.

 

[Deleriad]

Hi folks

I'm new here on the forum but I've been playing RQ for over 20 years now, I'm a big fan of the new RQII.

I have a new combat manoeuvre I use in my house rules and thought I would share it here.

Unseat Horseman – (Bill, Glaive, Halberd or Poleaxe, Critical Success Only) – The attacker attempts to hook and pull the horse man from his saddle. The defender must make an opposed test of his Ride skill vs. the original attack roll. Failure results in him being pulled from the horse, taking 1D6 falling damage to a random location and ending up prone. He must also make a Resilience test or be stunned for 1D3 Combat Actions. If the horseman was charging then he takes 2D6 falling damage and the Resilience test is now classed as Difficult (-20%).

Any comments welcome.

I would just use the trip CM and allow the rider to use their Ride skill instead of Evade. If the attacker had a hooked weapon I would probably rule that as a negative (probably -20%) to the target. Falling from a horse and taking damage is just falling from a horse. Counts as something like a 3m fall.

In my opinion it's generally better to see the current CMs as a list of generic options that can be tweaked to fit the circumstance rather than generate large numbers of narrow, specific CMs. 20 CMs is already a reasonable number of options. Having more makes me think of feat bloat in other games.

Don't forget as well that Critical CMs require the target to make a critical success just to have a *chance* to resist. In the CM above, the rider probably has no more than a 3-4% chance of resisting the CM.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Don't forget as well that Critical CMs require the target to make a critical success just to have a *chance* to resist. In the CM above, the rider probably has no more than a 3-4% chance of resisting the CM.

I don't get your point. Restricting it to crits doesn't make it any more powerful, because if you crit and choose Dismount, that's just as hard to resist as if you crit and choose a "crit-only" Dismount manoeuvre.

Also, it's 3% if they have base skill only in riding. If they have put 30 Free Skill points into it, then it's 6%. *Update* Actually you're right, a 6% crit chance versus someone else's crit is only around 3% chance since it has to be 6 or less and higher than the other guy's roll.

 

[Vagni]

Good point on using the existing trip CM with ride as the opposed skill, I'd not really considered that. It does make it a bit easier to try and unseat the horseman but then you have to risk standing your ground and getting clobbered first, so it balances out I'd say.

Once I get our RPG group back to RQ for a bit I reckon these things will start to fall in place a bit more.

Cheers for the suggestions and comments.

 

[Deleriad]

Also, it's 3% if they have base skill only in riding. If they have put 30 Free Skill points into it, then it's 6%. *Update* Actually you're right, a 6% crit chance versus someone else's crit is only around 3% chance since it has to be 6 or less and higher than the other guy's roll.

Slightly OT but one of the interesting things about critical CMs is when you get a crit but your opponent gets a normal. This happens a lot more often once you have combatants around 90%. In fact it becomes more common than a normal CM vs a fail.

Thing is, crit CMs like maximise damage or bypass armour are nearly always useless when the attack has been parried (unless big weapon vs small) so it becomes much better to use things like trip and disarm which, because you criticalled, are extremely hard to resist. It makes for an interesting dynamic in highly skilled fights.

 

[ThatGuy]

I still have to say one of my favorite table top unlisted CMs is the "taunt". It makes for great, in character yuk-yuks at the table.

Players have to come up with a good taunt (the rest of the table decides if it is good or not, with the GM having final say).

A successful taunt gives a -10 mod to the recipient's next combat roll.

I'm telling you, people will be sitting in their chairs thinking of their next insult for the trollkin. It's great.

I think it was called "Demoralize" in almightyGM's list of additional CMs, but I tweaked it a little to make it humorous. I had to scale down it's effectiveness, because people were picking it just because they "thought of a good one," but it was causing a lot of havoc when I included the Critical component (-10 to every enemy that can hear you). But even that made sense...it was just a little too effective.

 

[Chronos]

That's a good point, Deleriad. I think all too often players will get wrapped up in using the more direct CMs like Bypass Armour, Maximise Damage, Choose Location, etc. I know I can be guilty of it.

This reminds me that there's a lot of wholesome goodness to be found in some of the less direct CMs and I should remind myself to consider them more often.

 

[ThatGuy]

Disarm and Bleed can be particularly useful.

Bleed becomes a HUGE factor in any duel...quickly. 2 rounds and the -20 mod has the bleeder praying for a crit that is less and less likely to show up...

 

[Deleriad]

I still have to say one of my favorite table top unlisted CMs is the "taunt". It makes for great, in character yuk-yuks at the table.

That is one of the ones I would add to a list of generic CMs. My flavour of it goes something like
Taunt: the recipient must make a roll of their Persistence versus the original attack (or parry) result. If it fails it is 'taunted' until the end of the next Combat Round. The taunter can choose to either intimidate the recipient (treat as demoralised as per the spell) or enrage the recipient (treat as fanatic).

 

[PhilHibbs]

Taunt: the recipient must make a roll of their Persistence versus the original attack (or parry) result.

I'd say "attacker rolls Influence vs target's Persistence". Being good with a sword doesn't mean you're good at winding people up. My concern with this, though, is that it makes it harder to do - you have to win the attack, and win the Influence contest.

 

[Vagni]

Thanks for the comments on my new combat manoeuvre. I've modified my house rule as follows, basically it's the same as the Trip CM but the rider gains a bonus for being seated, higher up etc:

Unseat Horseman (Attack and Defence) - The opponent must make an opposed test of Ride at +20% vs. the original attack roll (if the attacker won) or the original parry roll (if the defender won). If the attacker is using a hooked polearm such as a bill, poleaxe or halberd, then the horseman does no gain the +20% bonus to his Ride roll. If the opponent fails, he falls or is pulled from his mount taking 1D6 fall damage to a random location and is now prone. Unseated horsemen who were charging will also be stunned for 1D3 Combat Actions.

I like the Taunt idea as well...

Thanks again.