Just a couple questions guys, if you don't mind. I ran a game last night and a couple of things came up, which I resolved with, I hope, just common sense.
When someone has run out of CA's to defend, and the attacker hits them with a normal success, this is considered just one level of success, correct? This happened frequently and I assumed it was just an automatic one level of success.
I had one player last night, and sold him on Legend (the rest of the group couldn't meet last night, and normally plays Gurps). He really enjoyed the mechanics. One thing he kept doing (his character was trying to free slaves from a well guarded caravan during the night) was luring guards into the dark and ambushing them. I read up on how surprise works, but my understanding is that the person surprised still gets to defend, which I don't necessarily agree with. The player had an npc companion who would get the guards attention and the player would come up behind, successfully using stealth, and so I just gave him a free CA, and didn't allow the bad guy a defense.
This leads me to the next situation! So there were times when the npc's and player took on a handful of guards, and when the player killed his guard, he turned to help his friend, running up behind to give a whack at the other guard, who had his full attention on the npc. I am not sure how to do this, unless maybe allow the guard a perception roll to notice, but I didn't allow the guard to defend against it, ruling that he didn't even know the player was coming up on him.
Sorry for the long post, but I am curious as to how this is normally handled. I feel I did alright with it, and the player in question had a blast! He can't get over the tactical choices in the combat; he loves his great sword, mind you, but he has been weighing how important another ca (for his sword and shield style) is to defend with. I was pretty happy with how he handled things, because he realized real fast that this is was a very gritty, realistic game where you can't wade into an army and chop them up. He had to come up with a strategy, run away at times, and ambush without mercy. BTW, he ended up freeing a bunch of slaves by setting diversionary fires (flaming arrows into command tents!) in the wee hours of the night, after secretly unlocking many of the caravan prison wagons and telling them to wait for the signal.....good stuff.
When someone has run out of CA's to defend, and the attacker hits them with a normal success, this is considered just one level of success, correct? This happened frequently and I assumed it was just an automatic one level of success.
I had one player last night, and sold him on Legend (the rest of the group couldn't meet last night, and normally plays Gurps). He really enjoyed the mechanics. One thing he kept doing (his character was trying to free slaves from a well guarded caravan during the night) was luring guards into the dark and ambushing them. I read up on how surprise works, but my understanding is that the person surprised still gets to defend, which I don't necessarily agree with. The player had an npc companion who would get the guards attention and the player would come up behind, successfully using stealth, and so I just gave him a free CA, and didn't allow the bad guy a defense.
This leads me to the next situation! So there were times when the npc's and player took on a handful of guards, and when the player killed his guard, he turned to help his friend, running up behind to give a whack at the other guard, who had his full attention on the npc. I am not sure how to do this, unless maybe allow the guard a perception roll to notice, but I didn't allow the guard to defend against it, ruling that he didn't even know the player was coming up on him.
Sorry for the long post, but I am curious as to how this is normally handled. I feel I did alright with it, and the player in question had a blast! He can't get over the tactical choices in the combat; he loves his great sword, mind you, but he has been weighing how important another ca (for his sword and shield style) is to defend with. I was pretty happy with how he handled things, because he realized real fast that this is was a very gritty, realistic game where you can't wade into an army and chop them up. He had to come up with a strategy, run away at times, and ambush without mercy. BTW, he ended up freeing a bunch of slaves by setting diversionary fires (flaming arrows into command tents!) in the wee hours of the night, after secretly unlocking many of the caravan prison wagons and telling them to wait for the signal.....good stuff.
