Passing Thought: Boolean Encumbrance

It's not news to anyone that most encumbrance systems are too complicated to get much use. Numerous simplifications have been proposed: weight by stone, number of line items, body locations...

Frankly, they're all still a little much for me, so here's what I propose - encumbrance as a simple True/False state.

A number of simple things would make you encumbered:

• Backpack with stuff in it
• Metal Armour
• Exception: Fighters wear chain without penalty, and high Con lets you wear one level higher (i.e. fighter with high con wears plate without penalty)
• Carrying something awkward (chest, five spears, etc.)

The effects would be simple:

• Can't run (jogging only)
• Fight/cast/burgle as one level lower
• Overland movement 2/3 normal
• Double fatigue (if using Spells and Steel)

 

Reach and the Nine and Thirty Kingdoms

Continued from the last two posts, and in response to this post.

Fighting Distances

Two people in a sword fight spend most of the fight about 10' apart - the distance of one step plus an outstretched arm with a sword in it. They only move in to make a blow.

Standing any closer than that is suicide, as you won't have time to parry an incoming blow (and will be forced to try to dodge, likely throwing yourself off balance and getting killed by the continuation of the attack). I talked yesterday about how important *not dodging* is.

Managing Distance

"But on the other hand, are we assuming that combatants are too stupid to try to get inside an opponent's reach? Too stupid to knock the spear aside with their shield? It balances out."

It would seem so, but it doesn't, and here's why.

For the person with the longer reach, it's easy to maintain a longer distance. Any time the opponent gets close, you circle away from them (i.e. step sideways and back). At no point is the long-reach person threatened in this series of actions - they are still too far away to be hit.

Additionally, at any point, the person with the reach advantage can simply step forward and attempt a blow in relative safety- they can strike while they are still out of reach of their opponent's weapon.

However, for the person with the shorter reach, in order to attempt a blow, they have to achieve a tactical advantage which will let them simultaneously catch the other person off balance enough that they can't circle away, control the longer weapon as they close (so they don't die), *and only then* can they attempt a blow. Much, much more difficult.

It's certainly not impossible, but hopefully that illustrates why it doesn't "balance out".

This is also a good argument for buffing spears back up to their full length, by the way.

Shields, Axes, and the Nine and Thirty Kingdoms

Continued from yesterday's post, and in response to this post.

Shields - Not For Blocking

"Also, you'd certainly be better off focusing on dodging an ax than trying to block it with a shield that's going to be hacked to bits."

This seems to be based on a misconception of what a shield is used for. Yes, in a shield wall, you use a shield for blocking.

But in a one-on-one fight, the shield is used to defend you in the same way a weapon is used - by controlling and guiding the opponent's weapon, not by simply "blocking" it. If you're holding your shield out and taking the full brunt of an axe blow with it, you're doing it wrong.

Dodging - A Good Way To Get Yourself Killed

"focusing on dodging"

Dodging is a very small part of combat, and is really more of a last-ditch defense or a way of sweetening a parry than something to be relied on. You always want to be seeking to control the other person's weapon, and you can't do that by dodging. You need to be making contact - either with your weapon or your shield, or by grabbing their hand/arm.

There's a rule of fighting - "Never be uncrossed in distance." That means don't *ever* let your opponent so close they could hit you with just a hand motion, unless you have control of their weapon.

Hollywood depictions of combat are terrible for this - the two fighters stand sword toe-to-toe and slug it out, constantly crossing and uncrossing their swords while they're close enough to punch each other. Well, in real life, both of them would end up dead doing that - being uncrossed in distance tends to lead to double kills.

Furthermore, "dodging" implies (to me, anyway) contorting your body in some way to get out of the way, something you should ideally not be doing, as it breaks your structure and makes you vulnerable. It's far better to use your weapon for defense than to rely on dodging.

But this is getting into the territory I'm going to cover tomorrow, which is Reach, and why more of it is better.

Mechanical Problems

"That's a minor in-game justification, but since the goal is something minimalist that's in between the traditional Weapon vs. AC system and "all weapons are the same", it seems reasonable."

I respect the goal, but I think that any mechanic that encourages players to have their characters behave irrationally is broken.

You would most certainly be better off facing someone with an axe with a sword and shield than with just a sword. I think that really should be obvious.

I can see, if you want to give axes something special, maybe you could have them just negate the shield bonus (i.e. +1 vs. shield). There's no real-world justification for that, but it fits with the system you're building, and doesn't encourage bizarre character behaviour (i.e. "The orc has an axe? I quickly drop my shield and charge!).

A better approach might be something like, "unbalanced weapons count for twice their length", where unbalanced means any weapon with most of the weight at the end - mostly the mace and axe.

This would serve to model unbalanced weapons main function - dealing with armour.

Spears, Weapon Mechanics, and the Nine and Thirty Kingdoms

In response to this post.

Talysman very kindly wrote a lengthy and detailed reply to my comments on his search for a middle-ground between a cumbersome weapon vs. armour table and no weapon differentiation. I was going to comment on his response, but I got a little carried away, so I'm putting it here. Quotations are from Talysman, unless otherwise noted.

The Goal

 As he so often does, Talysman perfectly encapsulates one of the central problems of designing a combat system (and I quote):

1. Weapons seem different,
2. Each is good at different times,
3. There are hardly any rules specifically implementing 1 and 2, and
4. They're easy to remember.

That's sort of the holy grail, and a particular bugaboo of mine, so I'm always delighted to see other people chipping away at this problem. Now, the spear became sort of a central issue to the discussion, and I think it merits discussing the spear a little more in depth.

The Problems

Now, there's a few problems I see with Talysman's approach, some logical, some verisimilitous, and some mechanical.

• Pole Weapons Nerfed
• Shields Can Hurt Your Defense
• Longer Reach Not Always Advantageous

I'm going to address these in a series of posts, starting with the first - nerfing the spear.

King of Weapons

There's a couple of reasons why the spear was the most popular weapon right up through the early gunpowder era - one is that it's cheap, and the other is that it is really, really good. Like, really good. There's a reason the spear is known as "The King of Weapons", and it's not because it wears a crown.

Now, for dungeoneering, the spear is essentially useless unless you're forming a mini shield wall. So there's good reason why everyone doesn't just use spears all the time. I talked about that here before.

But in one-on-one combat in an open space, the spear is peerless.

Spears - This One Is Supreme

"Tom Hudson said almost the exact opposite on a previous post about this. "poleaxe = good against plate, but spear = not so much"."

With respect to Tom Hudson, he's wrong. I would point to the Italian Master Fiore dei Liberi's opinion on the subject, from the end of his section on the spear in his 1400-ish combat manual:

And here ends the art of the spear, / With harness and without, this one is supreme.

What he's saying is that the spear is awesome, whether or not your opponent is wearing plate.

Fiore also specifically depicted plate armour in the illustrations for the spear section in the Getty MS, which he only does for the halfsword (i.e. using a sword like a spear to defeat armour, with one hand on the blade), the poleaxe (essentially a spear with a hammer on it), and the spear (noticing a spear-theme here?):
Spears and Plate Mail, c. 1400

So, no offense to Tom Hudson, but I'll defer to a man who literally lived by the sword and was one of the great masters of the art of combat.

Spears - Massive Force, Tiny Point

"And my gut instinct is: a spear is a knife on a stick. Stabbing/slashing weapons don't have increased force if attached to a longer shaft; they just have a longer reach. It's the hacking/bashing weapons that have increased force."

The problem with gut instincts is that they're so often wrong.

A spear delivers a great deal more force than a dagger, as you can put both arms on it and thus get much more of your body weight behind the blow as well as double the arm strength. I've worked with swords and spears doing pell drills (i.e. hitting a wooden target), and I can definitively say that a spear packs many times more wallop than a single-handed thrust.

All of this force is concentrated into the point of the weapon, and that point can do some serious damage.

Critical Hits Revisited

I really like the crit system I have for Spells and Steel - getting a crit means you've gotten an advantage in close combat that will let you do something nifty, like disarm, throw, or hold the enemy.

But I'm moving away from the idea of Fortitude checks at the moment, and away from armour as damage reduction.

With that in mind, I think I'm leaning towards exploding damage dice in addition to the existing system.

A roll of 6 on your damage die means you get to roll another damage die - keep rolling as long as you get 6's!

Your first roll goes to the foe's Armour HP, and the second and subsequent rolls go to the foe's normal HP.

Idea: Armour HP

Instead of reducing damage or making you harder to hit, what if armour had its own HP?

Any non-critical hits would first be taken from the armour's HP. Crits do two dice of damage - one to armour, one to the character's HP. I've been thinking recently about having two kinds of crits - one for 20's on d20, and one for 6's on damage dice, so this would be for rolling max damage. More on this in a later post...

Just like a character, the armour would be able to be "healed" - but in the case of armour, it would require time and tools.

This would give an advantage to the lighter armours - as the armour gets heavier, so does the repair kit! At the high end, you're not going to be making much in the way of repairs to your plate without a set of hammers and an anvil - hardly typical adventuring gear!

Thinking out loud here, but let's toss some numbers together:

Armour as HP

Armour	Armour HP	Repair time (max HP without proper tools)	Tools Required	Max HP with lighter tools
Cloth	12	3 hours	Scissor, needles, thimble, strong thread	3
Leather	12	3 hours	Sharp knife, scissors, heavy needles, awl, thimble, strong thread	3
Chain	18	24 hours	As Cloth, plus: Wire, wooden core, wire cutters, pliers (Optional - mechanical wire winder, specialised pliers and snips, premade rings and rivets)	14
Plate and Chain	36	48 hours	All of the above, plus: Several hammers, heavy snips, steel plate, files, anvil (Optional: spare plates, straps, buckles, etc., planishing stakes, dishing stump)	27

Repairs

Without proper tools, you can't repair the armour.

If you have the proper tools for a lighter armour (i.e. have Cloth tools but Chain armour), you can repair the armour to the level shown in the last column.

If you have the optional tools, knock 25% off the time.

All of these times are for field repairs - expedient, but probably not pretty.

Unbalanced Weapons

Unbalanced weapons would always do 1 point to the character's HP, even on non-critical hits.

Credit

I thought of this after re-reading this post on Untimately:
http://untimately.blogspot.com/2012/06/evasion-armor.html 

The 0-Level Man-at-arms

For some reason, D&D has gotten it into its head that men-at-arms would be 0-level. This trope dates back pretty far, and is taken as canon by many.

Let's examine this for a minute, though.

The historical term "man-at-arms" was used to denote a professional cavalryman in full armour. Knights would be an example of a man-at-arms, but many men-at-arms were not knights. In D&D, however, the term tends to be used to refer to any professional soldier, regardless of equipment.

In either case, though, the term refers to a professional.

The idea that a professional solder has the same odds of hitting in combat as an untrained peasant is, frankly, laughable. This professional, in fact, has lower odds of hitting in combat than your fresh-faced 1st-Level Fighter with 0 XP.

In an older edition like BECMI (my old stand-by), a professional soldier with training and experience should probably be around level 3 - greater odds of hitting, and much more survivable than an untrained peasant.

On average, a peasant (AC 9, 1-6 HP, Attack +0) will take around 5 rounds to kill a Level 3 fighter (AC 9, 3-18 HP, Attack +3). The Level 3 fighter will only take around 1 or 2 rounds to kill the peasant. The difference swells, obviously, if you give the man-at-arms armour.

Conclusions? City watchmen, mook guards, anyone with no real training - 0-level or Fighter 1.

Serious men-at-arms, with training and experience? Probably Fighter 3-5.