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Post by Roland Hite on Nov 26, 2014 11:13:36 GMT
Hello fellow BITW players, Our narrator asked for a shortlist of houserules to vote on (several borrowed from Southron Ambition - SA)... - Reduce full plate armour penalty to -4 [I don't think any of us own any yet, but this would match SA, real life flexibility and match the breatplate's AR/AP penalty)
- Use the Advanced actions
- Ignore armour penalty on knockdown attempts if using advanced actions (EVERY fight in SA seemed to see this used - knockdown is still very powerful even with this rule added, but mathematically it's almost a no brainer with AP applied to passive agility)
- Use critical hit rules - do we like sudden bloody damage and dramatic swings?
- Use critical fumble rules
- Acrobatic defence can't be used with bulky weapons an/or armour?
- Use fatigue rules
- Require bonus dice in shields to attack with main weapon without penalty dice if shield has 1B or greater training required? [borrowed from SA, if used suggest we allow slight character rejig]
Further suggestions welcome pre voting! Please number them to allow easier voting, although our narrator might make his own approved thread using our lists of suggestions he likes. I'll submit my votes later.
Also - I'd assume we're going with the sensible step of not allowing desting/fatigue (if used) to generate extra attacks? Tends to turn the game in to rocket tag... |
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Post by Ayleth Bartheld on Nov 26, 2014 12:48:28 GMT
1. I am generally a supporter of this as it makes full plate the best heavy armor as opposed to now when splint is clearly the better option.
2. Those are nice.
3. I say remove the +1d against targets knocked down, which will make it an option good for certain tactics, but not be something everyone ought to do on default.
4. Hmm, well, I'd like to add in a house rule where a scene can be made lethal by player request or narrator decision, if made lethal, critical hits apply, and defeat can result in death or other nasty stuff. Defeat in a non-lethal scene is just a defeat.
5. That happens so rarely that I wouldn't care about that.
6. Sure.
7. Those are fun.
8. No, that was one of SA's bad things. That forces knightly types to divert specialties to shields, any knight that also would like to be half decent at courtly business needs those specialties for social stuff.
As for extra attacks, semi-official word from GR on that is that destiny points ought to be powerful enough to allow an additional attack if used to generate an extra action, but fatigue should not.
Anyhow, some personal favorites:
9. Probably too late, and I myself would not be in favor of everyone having to rebuild their characters, but since I like it enough to want to share: Scaling XP costs.
For abilities it costs 10XP to go from 2 to 3, 30 from 3 to 4, 50 from 4 to 5, 70 to 6 and 90 to 7 (I'd advocate a starting hard cap at 5, too).
For specialties it costs new level*5, so 5XP for the first speciality, then 10, then 15 etc..
10. You take -1d on tests in intrigue if your chosen technique is not suitable for your objective, though this would likely also require the removal of the manipulate action.
11. Read Target does not give +1d.
12. Also maybe a bit late, but equipment packages.
13. Lances are at -2d to attack when not used in conjunction with a charge.
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Post by Damon Nettles on Nov 26, 2014 19:26:04 GMT
In general, I would prefer not to use house rules, as it adds to the learning curve (the rulebook is no longer the sole rules source) and it opens up a can or worms where everyone will soon have something they want to see adjusted.
That said, here are my opinions on the individual rules suggestions:
1. Not without adjusting more of the armor list. There's no reason for half-plate to have a worse AP, for instance. (and no, I don't buy the rulebook explanation). Even so, I would at most like to see full plate reduced to AP -5.
2. Yes, but it does add to the learning curve, and the practice thread showed that many of us were making mistakes just using the basic combat rules.
3. I could agree to this.
4. No thanks, this makes combat unbearably swingy and will result in maiming and character death at a greatly accelerated pace.
5. No thanks, critical fumbles are no fun.
6. Nope, I like my character the way he is. And if Acrobatic Defense gets nerfed, then so should Massive (no offense to Talos) and possibly other benefits.
7. Yes.
8. No, this is just needless complexity.
/Damon
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Post by Reynard Camshir on Nov 26, 2014 20:24:42 GMT
Since you guys all seem to be pretty experienced with the rules, I thought at least one n00b should voice an opinion.
1. After the practice combat, I can easily see that there is not a direct correlation between the AR and AP. I can also agree that Half Plate shouldn't have a higher AP than Full. I think Damon's suggestion could be a happy medium.
2. Unless you want each combat to take about a week while those of us that have just barely started to grasp the fundamentals of the simpler combat system, go ahead. Once we get the basics down, I wouldn't have a problem switching over, if it adds to the game.
3. Huh? (see #2)
4. Character death is one thing, buckets of blood pouring out of people's heads based on a single lucky roll? Not so much. Not without some form of house rule on confirmation and then it everything starts to grind to a halt and become unwieldy.
5. No real opinion on this.
6. Bulk is bulk (Sorry Damon). I can also see not eliminating it entirely. Perhaps something like have 1 bulk cuts the bonus in half. In general, I'm not a fan of nerfing anything and unless we were going to revisit several benefits and rewrite the whole rulebook, we should probably avoid it.
7. I could get behind this.
8. I'm siding with the Barthelds on this one.
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Post by Ayleth Bartheld on Nov 26, 2014 20:43:26 GMT
Commentary on knockdown: The big thing about it is that it is a non-attack lesser action that gives you +1d to attack and limits opponent's movement. In most cases, the opponent is going to knock you down too, and in the case of heavily armored people, they'll both be knocked down and both have +1d, and it's not worth spending a round getting up, because you'll go flailing back down again...thematically I see all sorts of wrong with that. And with armor penalties to agility (including passive agility which knockdown is tested against), most knights will go down flailing.
However, the point going for it is that lightly armored, high agility folks will find themselves staying on their feets more often than not if a knockdown is attempted against them (unless they are facing a guy with plenty athletics), so it favors that kind of fighters. Though I think knockdown will be more fun if it's used to temporarily immobilize an opponent. Want to do catch breath action? Knock down your opponent so that he'll spend actions on getting up while you can recover health. Or heck, if all you want is to run away, knockdown will give you a head start.
The thing I have against the +1d is the commentary I made someplace else about how defenses struggle to cope with offenses, and that +1d can turn an otherwise interesting fight that seems like it could get exciting awfully short, and awfully dependent on who goes first.
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Post by Symon Kytley on Nov 26, 2014 21:06:15 GMT
Honestly, given that we have already started and people have built their characters around certain abilities working certain ways I don't think adding post-hoc house rules are a good idea, and I don't think there will be much consensus. However, some things hae yet to affect anyone in-game, so could be adjusted. I am all for adjusting the AP of various armors, but it would need to be done judiciously. The problem as it stands now is that plate armor gives away more than an entire degree of success (as well as making it that much easier to be hit at all). Unless the attacker has base damage of 4 or less you are better off with lighter armor. However, 5 is about average for a typical trained warrior (4 athletics w/longsword). Add in the various ways to increase your base damage (higher damage weapon, powerful weapon, charging, etc). Thus plate is a net negative to the character. Given that there are more effective armors, why would anyone wear plate? Oh, there are societal reasons, but the society would not have favored plate if it were not effective. Proposed solution: set a fixed ratio of AR:AP (say, 2.5:1). Fractions round up. Advanced combat actions range from overpowered to ridiculously bad. Allowing them would necessitate house ruling them (as is evidenced by the option to adjust knockdown). Commentary on knockdown: The big thing about it is that it is a non-attack lesser action Wait, it's not an attack??? Make it count as your attack for the turn at minimum! Critical hits can help low-fighting characters overcome high AR, but also magnify the effectiveness of high fighting and make heavy armors even worse. I like the idea, but the implementation is terrible. Critical misses are worse: they almost never happen. Also it's actually possible to have a hit and a fumble in the same roll. Adjusting acrobatic defense is a minor nerf at most, but there are other ways to defeat it (attack and move away). Massive is ok, it's the powerful weapon feature that needs to be nerfed. +1 damage total, not per degree of success! Fatigue, eh, whatever. I can take it or leave it. Adjusting shield proficiency... neh, it just becomes an XP tax. |
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Post by Ayleth Bartheld on Nov 26, 2014 21:24:37 GMT
Oh, knockdown is an advanced action? Oh, well, the rest of them are pretty nice though. How about allowing all the advanced actions except knockdown?
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Post by Corrigon Malath on Nov 27, 2014 6:57:42 GMT
I'd say acrobatic defense working up to the point bulk affects your speed so -2 or-3
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Post by Ayleth Bartheld on Nov 28, 2014 13:02:24 GMT
14: Specify that training requirements (p 155) applies to bonus dice from specialties alone (so you calculate training penalty before taking into account any other bonus dice), the rule is somewhat ambiguous, and the strictly legal interpretation is that if you get bonus dices from elsewhere (like riding a horse and getting animal handling rank as bonus dice), then you need no specialties invested to avoid the penalty dice. However, the text makes it very clear that the intentions of the writers is that should go on the specialty dice, and it seems to me on the forums and with everyone I've played with that is how that rule is interpreted.
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Post by Luke Seldon on Nov 28, 2014 17:11:12 GMT
1. I prefer there to be a drawback to having the best AR in the game, and am completely find with Full Plate staying as written. 10 AR is awfully hard for some people to get through, and the combination of mail, cloth, and steel plates should make it terribly difficult to move in.
2. I like advanced actions. Those make combat interesting.
3. Knockdown should keep the AP and be used as written. It makes people think twice before putting on the heavier indestructible armors while at the same time encouraging people to contemplate lighter armors that allow them to be more agile. You shouldn’t be doing backflips in full plate.
4. I think that the game is deadly enough without critical hits. Plus, I’m not really sure how the dice rolling thing works and I’m not sure how people couldn’t simply roll a half-dozen or more times to get the results they want without manipulating the system.
5. See #4
6. It’s written to not allow bulky armor, and adding bulky shields seems to be included with that already. With bulky weapons, I think we’re getting into the realm of restricting creativity too much, but would be okay with it if the narrator wanted to include any bulk. Perhaps the narrator could rule that a bulky backpack or other item would also restrict the movement?
7. There are already destiny points… why use fatigue rules?
8. It’s a shield… if you’re attacking with it, you’ll take a penalty without bonus dice. If you’re not attacking with it, you won’t. I don’t see why attacking with your strong arms is going to hurt you just because your shield is hard to attack with.
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Post by Roland Hite on Nov 29, 2014 20:42:05 GMT
I'll do my own voting.
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes - without this change mathematically it makes knockdown almost always the rational strategy, making combat less interesting.
4. Yes.
5. No - too rare to be worth the time.
6. Yes - I lean towards Disallow bulky shields but not weapons?
7. No - fatigue makes combat drag a bit.
8. Yes, but probably too late for this.
Also - how are we running mounted combat? There's one mention in the rulebook of adding animal hailing dice as bonus dice if riding a war trained mount, but the core rules are very confused on this and we didn't use this rule in Southron Ambitions (and the characters in the campaign guide seem to be designed without all these extra bonus dice in mind). I lean towards not using them.
I like Ayleth's suggestions too - we could always apply the experience rule towards any further XP spent?
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Post by Ayleth Bartheld on Nov 29, 2014 21:13:37 GMT
Scaling XP post-creation will reward players that started out with 5's, so it's a do it from the start or not at all thing.
RAW it's rather clear that you get those as bonus dice, and my experience from trying not having them in SA makes me very much prefer keeping them.
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Post by Symon Kytley on Nov 29, 2014 21:42:05 GMT
The further into the game we get, the more dice rolls have been made; if you change how something works now, people are going to want to adjust their characters to make them still fit their concepts, which may affect abilities already rolled, which gets messy.
1-5 and 7 could probably be changed without too much of an impact, but once you start messing with costs or penalties of common things (like shields and mounted combat) the adjustments will get messy.
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Post by Stranger on Dec 2, 2014 17:13:53 GMT
Ok, so it's time I compile this and get some straight yes or no answers to better determine which of these to implement. Below is the list of the items that I deemed applicable at this time. I left out the scaling XP costs, as it's too late to implement such a change, as well as the equipment packages for the same reason. As for the rest of these, simply reply to the post and list the item numbers with a simple yes or no beside it so I can determine your vote. I will be voting as well. At the end of the week, or at the time of the first actual combat (whichever comes first) we'll close the topic and tally the votes. - Reduce full plate armour penalty, as well as adjusting other armors
- Use the Advanced actions
- Ignore armour penalty on knockdown attempts if using advanced actions
- Use critical hit rules
- Use critical fumble rules
- Acrobatic defense can't be used with bulky weapons and/or armour?
- Use fatigue rules
- Require bonus dice in shields to attack with main weapon without penalty dice if shield has 1B or greater training required?
- You take -1d on tests in intrigue if your chosen technique is not suitable for your objective, though this would likely also require the removal of the manipulate action.
- Read target does not give +1D
- Lances are at -2d to attack when not used in conjunction with a charge.
- Specify that training requirements (p 155) applies to bonus dice from specialties alone (so you calculate training penalty before taking into account any other bonus dice)
- Acrobatic Defense can be used with with bulk weapons but not shields
EDIT: Added option 13 as a compromise option to number 6. |
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Post by Stranger on Dec 2, 2014 17:30:37 GMT
My votes are not the end all beat in this instance so if something I vote no on has more yes votes than no's, then we'll work on trying to implement it unless I specifically say otherwise. My votes are as follows:
1. No, simply because I feel like it'll be a pain to get everyone to agree to the changes on so many sets of armor and then pass the info on to the other players
2. Yes
3. No
4. No
5. No
6. No
7. Yes
8. No
9. No
10. No, keep the +1D
11. No
12. Yes
13. Yes
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It's set just before the historic Blacks v Greens period