Is 3rd ed really new?
Tenzhi the Ti Hsien
interested in what I've seen so far; however, the best way to examine
something is from all directions, so here is a negative skew of my thoughts,
and perhaps others have been thinking them as well. Counterpoints, answers,
and opinions of all variety are welcome.
So the AC now goes up instead of down? that's not new, in fact its very old,
right out of TSR's Gamma World, if anyone remembers besides me.
What about this 'Difficulty Class'? Looks suspiciously like SAGA rules
converted to a dice system to me.
New classes? or are they just classes from first edition?
Attributes go to 50 or higher? ::looks through his Basic D&D Wrath of
Immortals boxed set:: been there, done that.
And then we have the 'cosmetic' features that aren't really new per se, just
little tweaks of the existing rules for example:
6 second rounds instead of 1 minute
No more Racial Class and Level limitations
Minor class tweaks such as Mages getting bonus spells for high INT
In fact, the 'newest' most worthwhile change seems to be the ability to
raise attributes with experience (or through experience, in any case a
system of being able to Raise attributes), although the exact game mechanics
of the 'new' Skills selection process might be useful too.
The Wraith
<tenzhith...@hotmail.com> wrote:
[snip "it's all been done" complaints]
>In fact, the 'newest' most worthwhile change seems to be the ability to
>raise attributes with experience (or through experience, in any case a
>system of being able to Raise attributes), although the exact game mechanics
>of the 'new' Skills selection process might be useful too.
Nope, raising attributes is not new either, nor a skill system (and I
doubt the exact mechanics of the skill system will be revolutionary).
Both have been done before in other systems.
But I think you are missing the point. Everything we have heard about
in 3E has been done before, yes, but that doesn't mean that they will
be put together in the same way to produce the same product. The new
game may well be a new configuration of the individual rules that will
present an improved fantasy RPG (and let's face it, as FRPs go, there
is a lot of room for improvement).
It is like saying, "'The Game of Thrones' will be a boring book. It
has nobles, medieval technology, diplomacy, warfare, magic and
forebodings of dire evil. I have read about all of them before." But
in truth, I found The Game of Thrones to be very interesting and
entertaining reading, as the author put together all the elements in a
new way. (Just to pick a book I really liked recently.)
--
Now, by popular demand, a new .sig!
I still can't think of anything witty to say, though.
The Wraith
Tenzhi the Ti Hsien
> doubt the exact mechanics of the skill system will be revolutionary).
> Both have been done before in other systems.
Actually, Wraith ol' buddy, I was using 'new' in the context 'new to
DnD/TSR', sorry about the mix-up :)
The Wraith
Doesn't matter. The point still remains that there is nothing new
under the sun - well, at least not much. If you go out and buy 3E just
in the hope of finding something new, prepare to miss at least 95% of
the value of the system. Any real improvement will come in the
reconfiguration of elements which have been used before.
BluSponge
(The Wraith) wrote:
> It is like saying, "'The Game of Thrones' will be a boring book. It
> has nobles, medieval technology, diplomacy, warfare, magic and
> forebodings of dire evil. I have read about all of them before." But
> in truth, I found The Game of Thrones to be very interesting and
> entertaining reading, as the author put together all the elements in a
> new way. (Just to pick a book I really liked recently.)
This is off-topic, but...
If you think that book is fun, wait til you read Clash of Kings! It
doesn't hit you *as* hard at the end, but it still has that annoying
quality of making you want to follow each character individually because
you just have to know what's going to happen to them.
Tom
BluSponge's Gray Matter Website (Rants, Greyhawk SAGA...)
http://web2.airmail.net/sponge2
Kendall P. Bullen
>!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
>html>
Turn off the HTML garbage, it just makes your message look like junk.
This is Usenet -- not the web -- regardless of whether or not you use a
web browser to write your postings. . . .
Kendall
--
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E-mail: kendall@-->^^^^^^^
I hate spam & UCE. Please fix my address if you must e-mail me.
But please, NEVER send me COPIES of Usenet postings.
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Lizard
<tenzhith...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Allright, I am in fact looking forward to the new ed. and am quite
>interested in what I've seen so far; however, the best way to examine
>something is from all directions, so here is a negative skew of my thoughts,
>and perhaps others have been thinking them as well. Counterpoints, answers,
>and opinions of all variety are welcome.
(Rest deleted)
They are adding in systems which they know work (from being tested in
older games) while keeping enough of the system recognizable that they
won't alienate their existing audience or render the vast amount of
fan-generated D&D material totally useless.
This is a Good Thing.
If anyone wants a game totally different from D&D, there are dozens
out there. TSR/WOTC published D&D. Publishing a totally different
system with the NAME "D&D" would be pointless.
*----------------------------------------------------*
Evolution doesn't take prisoners:Lizard
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice;
Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue:AuH20
http://www.mrlizard.com
Dragonscroll
very old,
> right out of TSR's Gamma World, if anyone remembers besides me.
A friend of mine said in our game yesterday that he liked this idea
because it was "less confusing than THAC0". I could not help but
ridicule him at the idea that THAC0 is somehow so complex that it needed
improving.
However, from what I've heard, the 3E system will be using some sort of
aggregate combat ratings: AC + Dexterity(?) + Defense skill/level +
difficulty modifiers = total defense value; and Attack roll + attack
skill + weapon modifier + Strength(?) = total attack value. I think
this is a definite improvement over the original.
> New classes? or are they just classes from first edition?
Classes from first edition. They came back with Gary Gygax. In my
opinion, these should have stayed on the "character kit" bandwagon.
> Attributes go to 50 or higher? ::looks through his Basic D&D Wrath of
> Immortals boxed set:: been there, done that.
I think that this change was primarily implemented to allow for a more
uniform increase in ability beyond normal attribute maximums because
more opportunities will be presented to exceed these maximums. This
will allow players to excel without becoming immediately godlike.
> And then we have the 'cosmetic' features ...
> 6 second rounds instead of 1 minute
Changing the combat round to 6 seconds is a nice try, but according to
TSR, combat will still be based on the idea that an attack is "a series
of attacks, blocks, parries ..." and so on. This is the same line that
Shadowrun takes, even though their actions can be as short as 1 second,
and it is just as silly here. I like the 6 second combat round because
it seems like a more reasonable increment for melee combat - but not if
you're still packing 1 minute worth of fighting in there.
One way that they have changed combat to reflect the "many attcks and
blocks" interpretation is to remove weapon speed, which I think would
only become more key in a shorter round.
> No more Racial Class and Level limitations
Definitely a step in the right direction. However, they are now
penalized in experience, I hear. I think this could have seen better
treatment.
> Minor class tweaks such as Mages getting bonus spells for high INT
I like the new unified list of spells. Each spell will have listed
which classes (mage, druid, cleric, bard, etc) can cast the spell and
which spheres (wizardly and clerical) it falls under. This cuts down on
complexity and removes the possibility that one of the classes has a
slightly different version of the same spell than another.
> In fact, the 'newest' most worthwhile change seems to be the ability
to
> raise attributes with experience (or through experience, in any case a
> system of being able to Raise attributes), although the exact game
mechanics
> of the 'new' Skills selection process might be useful too.
Overall, I definitely think that 3rd Edition is an improvement over 2nd
Edition, and plan on getting it myself. If you are playing 2nd Edition
and considering upgrading to 3rd when it comes out, definitely do. But
if you're considering a change in game systems and are looking at 3rd
Edition, play GURPS instead - it's the same thing done better.
James
Dragonscroll
--
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C. CZERNIAK
: On Sun, 22 Aug 1999 05:41:34 -0500, "Tenzhi the Ti Hsien"
: <tenzhith...@hotmail.com> wrote:
: >> Nope, raising attributes is not new either, nor a skill system (and I
: >> doubt the exact mechanics of the skill system will be revolutionary).
: >> Both have been done before in other systems.
: >
: >Actually, Wraith ol' buddy, I was using 'new' in the context 'new to
: >DnD/TSR', sorry about the mix-up :)
: Doesn't matter. The point still remains that there is nothing new
: under the sun - well, at least not much. If you go out and buy 3E just
: in the hope of finding something new, prepare to miss at least 95% of
: the value of the system. Any real improvement will come in the
: reconfiguration of elements which have been used before.
I don't think the idea is to create a new system. I can't think of any
new editions that drastically change the system creating something new and
revolutionary. IMHO a brand new system in a new edition would piss off
more people then please. The AD&D 3rd ed is a catch up to create a more
solid system then 2nd ed which has way too many optional rules. I'm
hoping it is for the better because I personally can't stand AD&D system
but everyone I play with love it.
: --
: Now, by popular demand, a new .sig!
: I still can't think of anything witty to say, though.
: The Wraith
--
Shade and Sweet Water
Chris Czerniak
Tim Dunn
[Something I didn't bother to read]
Please *please* PLEASE turn off the html formatting. [ab]UseNet news
is primarly a text mode medium. I can deal with mime grudgingly, but
HTML parsing is something I do when I have to, not for fun.
Alan D Kohler
wrote:
>In article <rrvd11...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Tenzhi the Ti Hsien" <tenzhith...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> So the AC now goes up instead of down? that's not new, in fact its
>very old,
>> right out of TSR's Gamma World, if anyone remembers besides me.
>
>A friend of mine said in our game yesterday that he liked this idea
>because it was "less confusing than THAC0". I could not help but
>ridicule him at the idea that THAC0 is somehow so complex that it needed
>improving.
As I've said elsewhere: it doesn't take a genius to figure THAC0 out.
But 3e's method is certainly simpler that two subtract and compares
with the additional confusion factor of "a plus AC bonus is better,
but AC goes down with a plus, but you subtract AC from THAC0..."
>However, from what I've heard, the 3E system will be using some sort of
>aggregate combat ratings: AC + Dexterity(?) + Defense skill/level +
>difficulty modifiers = total defense value; and Attack roll + attack
>skill + weapon modifier + Strength(?) = total attack value. I think
>this is a definite improvement over the original.
>
So it is worth improving then IYO?
>> New classes? or are they just classes from first edition?
>
>Classes from first edition.
Sorcerer is new.
> They came back with Gary Gygax. In my
>opinion, these should have stayed on the "character kit" bandwagon.
>
I agree.
>> Attributes go to 50 or higher? ::looks through his Basic D&D Wrath of
>> Immortals boxed set:: been there, done that.
>
>I think that this change was primarily implemented to allow for a more
>uniform increase in ability beyond normal attribute maximums because
>more opportunities will be presented to exceed these maximums. This
>will allow players to excel without becoming immediately godlike.
>
>> And then we have the 'cosmetic' features ...
>> 6 second rounds instead of 1 minute
>
>Changing the combat round to 6 seconds is a nice try, but according to
>TSR, combat will still be based on the idea that an attack is "a series
>of attacks, blocks, parries ..." and so on. This is the same line that
>Shadowrun takes, even though their actions can be as short as 1 second,
>and it is just as silly here. I like the 6 second combat round because
>it seems like a more reasonable increment for melee combat - but not if
>you're still packing 1 minute worth of fighting in there.
>
>One way that they have changed combat to reflect the "many attcks and
>blocks" interpretation is to remove weapon speed, which I think would
>only become more key in a shorter round.
>
>> No more Racial Class and Level limitations
>
>Definitely a step in the right direction. However, they are now
>penalized in experience, I hear. I think this could have seen better
>treatment.
>
I think this is one of the strongest feature with the 3e system,
myself. However, I do have a little heartache with the fact that it
really changes the paradigm for multiclass characters A LOT, which
will make the game genuinely different in some campaigns.
>> Minor class tweaks such as Mages getting bonus spells for high INT
>
Been there S&M. I will continue to use the S&M system and ditch the
sorcerer in all likelihood.
>I like the new unified list of spells. Each spell will have listed
>which classes (mage, druid, cleric, bard, etc) can cast the spell and
>which spheres (wizardly and clerical) it falls under. This cuts down on
>complexity and removes the possibility that one of the classes has a
>slightly different version of the same spell than another.
>
I like the new list. I don't like the way they handle priests now. S&M
did it better, IMO.
>> In fact, the 'newest' most worthwhile change seems to be the ability
>to
>> raise attributes with experience (or through experience, in any case a
>> system of being able to Raise attributes), although the exact game
>mechanics
>> of the 'new' Skills selection process might be useful too.
>
>Overall, I definitely think that 3rd Edition is an improvement over 2nd
>Edition, and plan on getting it myself. If you are playing 2nd Edition
>and considering upgrading to 3rd when it comes out, definitely do. But
>if you're considering a change in game systems and are looking at 3rd
>Edition, play GURPS instead - it's the same thing done better.
Bah! GURPS is woefully unbalanced and tedious IMO.
I think that 3e is more of a improvement on the level of basic
mechanics - saves, attribute bonuses, unified 'd20, high good'
convention, etc. And I will use it for that reason. The other changes
being bantered about on this thread are much more cosmetic and we can
pretty much take 'em or leave them... and some I will take, some I
will leave.
Alan D. Kohler(hawk...@NOSPAM.olg.com)
"I once shot a man in Nepal just to watch him reincarnate." -Wierd Al
Hawkwind's RPG Pages are back at last!
http://members.tripod.com/~hawk_wind/homepage.html
Nightshade
>> And then we have the 'cosmetic' features ...
>> 6 second rounds instead of 1 minute
>
>Changing the combat round to 6 seconds is a nice try, but according to
>TSR, combat will still be based on the idea that an attack is "a series
>of attacks, blocks, parries ..." and so on. This is the same line that
>Shadowrun takes, even though their actions can be as short as 1 second,
>and it is just as silly here. I like the 6 second combat round because
>it seems like a more reasonable increment for melee combat - but not if
>you're still packing 1 minute worth of fighting in there.
I don't know; even in six seconds, I'd be expecting a single attack
roll to represent more than one _attempt_ in that period, which is
what I assumed they meant. At least in fencing and SCA combat, a lot
of attacks can be attempted in six seconds. Assuming only one will
probably actually do damage (at best) doesn't seem off.
>
>One way that they have changed combat to reflect the "many attcks and
>blocks" interpretation is to remove weapon speed, which I think would
>only become more key in a shorter round.
Not enough to matter, though.
Dragonscroll
Night...@nightdark.com (Nightshade) wrote:
> >One way that they have changed combat to reflect the "many attcks and
> >blocks" interpretation is to remove weapon speed, which I think would
> >only become more key in a shorter round.
>
> Not enough to matter, though.
I disagree. Like you mentioned, you can make several attacks with a
fencing foil in six seconds. However, how many attempts do you think
you could pull off with a battle axe or a pole arm in that time?
mark edward hardwidge
[Is 3rd Edition really new]
Personally, I think 3rd Edition looks like it will be very
good, but I don't see how they'll be able to copyright it! I mean,
geez, all the 'good ideas' that are going to be in it (and they are
good ideas) seem to be things I've been reading on this newsgroup for
years! I saw lots of rules and thought "yeah, that's a good rule, I
remember reading about that as some guy's house rules in rgfd." and
very few rules where I thought "wow, that's a good idea, and I've
never seen anything similar to it before".
--
Mark E. Hardwidge
hard...@uiuc.edu
Lizard
<hard...@ux12.cso.uiuc.edu> wrote:
Because copyright doesn't cover ideas, but the expression of them?
"Someone gets killed, and then the detecive finds out whodunit" cannot
be copyrighted. Any specific mystery novel can be, even if the plots
all boil down to the above.
This exact message is de facto copyright as soon as I post it. But
another message expressing the same ideas, using different words, does
not violate that copyright.
The *mechanics* of D&D are not copyrightable, though many of the terms
used (like 'Dungeons&Dragons') ARE trademarks. The exact wording of
the rules is what is copyrighted (and similair variants...changing
every occurence of the word 'fighter' to 'warrior' will not create an
original work in the eyes of the law).
Before TSR got bought by WOTC, they made a very, very, very, stupid
attempt to claim the raw mechanics of D&D were copyright and that
anyone using terms like 'Armor Class' was a lawbreaker. This was a
blantant attempt to intimidate without any legal ground to stand on,
and law-savvy netizens called them on it. They refused to back down,
and succeeded only in generating ill-will, not in actually stopping
anyone from publishing net.books galore. WOTC online policy is far
saner.
aetherson
Dragonscroll <c...@dragonscroll.com> wrote:
> In article <37c05834.1833945@news>,
> Night...@nightdark.com (Nightshade) wrote:
> > >One way that they have changed combat to reflect the "many attcks
and
> > >blocks" interpretation is to remove weapon speed, which I think
would
> > >only become more key in a shorter round.
> >
> > Not enough to matter, though.
>
> I disagree. Like you mentioned, you can make several attacks with a
> fencing foil in six seconds. However, how many attempts do you think
> you could pull off with a battle axe or a pole arm in that time?
Well, yes, that's an issue, but on the other hand, if you only get one
attack with a foil, we presume that only one of those six attacks has
any chance of hittting the opponent. Who's to say that it will be one
of the first ones? (In fact, it probably won't, since you would
probably be tossing out a few to get your opponent off-balance, then
following through with a trickier one). There's no reason, with an
abstract combat system, that someone with a rapier is likely to strike
before someone with a pole-arm.
You do have a legitimate point that one can attack more often with
smaller weapons, but that's separate from weapons speed.
Now, I at least am pleased to see weapons speed dissapear, because in
AD&D2, small weapons were too damned good. Between a knife and a
two-handed sword, I traded off 3 points of average damage for 8 points
of weapons speed, the ability to throw my weapon, and having a hand
free. For many fighters, large weapons just didn't make sense, and I
never liked that.
Mike (aetherson)
Morgan Vening
wrote:
*snip*
>Now, I at least am pleased to see weapons speed dissapear, because in
>AD&D2, small weapons were too damned good. Between a knife and a
>two-handed sword, I traded off 3 points of average damage for 8 points
>of weapons speed, the ability to throw my weapon, and having a hand
>free. For many fighters, large weapons just didn't make sense, and I
>never liked that.
>
>Mike (aetherson)
>
The problem then is, what advantage will a Short Sword now give in
comparison to a Two Handed Sword? While the degree of advantage may
have been too powerful (to which I don't agree), the concept I felt
was a good one.
In a first blood matchup, your reasoning might be understandable. But
in a fight to the death, between two non-novice (Lets assume level 3)
Fighters, it is most definately more likely for the 2HSword weilder to
win the day.
Both Fighters are identical, with 16 HP. One has a sword, one a knife
(as your initial example). Assume all initiatives are even, all
attacks successful (in the long term, ie, if ne missed, both missed),
and all damage is average. Fighter Knife hits for 2 damage a round.
Fighter Claymore hits for 5.
At this rate, after four rounds, Fighter Knife is dead. Fighter
Claymore has 8HP left. Now, IF there were debilitating effects or loss
of effectiveness from being hit, then your point would be more easily
acceptable to me. But with the format shown in (A)D&D, that concept
isn't utilised.
Now don't get me wrong. I typically prefer the use of small weapons in
AD&D. But it's not for the advantage they give me. It's for the
utility I feel it gives my more common character types. Standard
favourite is a Halfling with Hand Axes(as opposed to ShortSwords or
Daggers). Outside of melee, Hand Axes are one of the most versatile
weapons. But I take no problem taking larger weapons on bigger
characters.
Personally, the weapon I despised most in (A)D&D was the LongSword.
After the initial 'power' phase, I have never taken any character with
proficiency in it. Good speed factor, great damage comparison,
reasonably cheap, and plentiful in both mundane and magical (I believe
60% of Magic Weapons are LongSwords?). There were always significant
numbers of players with this weapon I never felt I had to. They make
good crowbars though.
Morgan Vening
Len Carpenter
> In article <37c05834.1833945@news>,
> Night...@nightdark.com (Nightshade) wrote:
> > >One way that they have changed combat to reflect the "many attcks
and
> > >blocks" interpretation is to remove weapon speed, which I think
would
> > >only become more key in a shorter round.
> >
> > Not enough to matter, though.
>
> I disagree. Like you mentioned, you can make several attacks with a
> fencing foil in six seconds. However, how many attempts do you think
> you could pull off with a battle axe or a pole arm in that time?
>
> Dragonscroll
One advantage of a long melee round system (and perhaps the only one) is
that it makes a slow rate-of-fire weapon like the crossbow more
manageable. Firing a light crossbow once every one-minute round or a
siege crossbow once every two rounds makes the weapon a viable option.
But when combat actions are measured in bursts of seconds, the crossbow
becomes a fire-once-and-toss-away weapon. By the time you manage to
reload the flippin' thing, the fight can be over.
As an aside, I note that the six-second round sounds a lot like the
five-second pulse of the third edition DragonQuest game published by
TSR. When TSR acquired the rights to publish it, I wondered why more
ideas from DragonQuest, superior to AD&D in many ways, weren't then
incorporated into AD&D's second edition.
Len Carpenter
Nightshade
>In article <37c05834.1833945@news>,
> Night...@nightdark.com (Nightshade) wrote:
>> >One way that they have changed combat to reflect the "many attcks and
>> >blocks" interpretation is to remove weapon speed, which I think would
>> >only become more key in a shorter round.
>>
>> Not enough to matter, though.
>
>I disagree. Like you mentioned, you can make several attacks with a
>fencing foil in six seconds. However, how many attempts do you think
>you could pull off with a battle axe or a pole arm in that time?
If all you care about is the final result, not the number of specific
attacks, does it matter? And I've seen someone launch about three to
four in that time with a halberd, actually.
Nightshade
>One advantage of a long melee round system (and perhaps the only one) is
>that it makes a slow rate-of-fire weapon like the crossbow more
>manageable. Firing a light crossbow once every one-minute round or a
For a light crossbow, one minute to reload is pretty long. Way long
in fact. You should easily be able to load a stirrup load crossbow in
six seconds. Heavies and arbalests are a different story.
>siege crossbow once every two rounds makes the weapon a viable option.
>But when combat actions are measured in bursts of seconds, the crossbow
>becomes a fire-once-and-toss-away weapon. By the time you manage to
>reload the flippin' thing, the fight can be over.
I don't see this as a bad thing, if the fight is up close and
personal. If it's not, get behind cover while you reload. It doesn't
matter how fast a self bow fires when there's no one to fire at. If
the problem is they're charging you...well, gee, crossbows aren't an
ideal weapon in small numbers against foes who can close up.
Justin Bacon
>I don't know; even in six seconds, I'd be expecting a single attack
>roll to represent more than one _attempt_ in that period, which is
>what I assumed they meant. At least in fencing and SCA combat, a lot
>of attacks can be attempted in six seconds. Assuming only one will
>probably actually do damage (at best) doesn't seem off.
I, for one, will be quietly ignoring the amalgamation lines (if they exist) and
simply treating the system as an action-by-action breakdown. I've never liked
amalgam system all that much because it makes describing and following combat
far more onerous for me.
If nothing else, however, lowering the combat round time removes the absurdity
of -- for example -- spending a whole minute picking up a book.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Justin Bacon
(Alan D Kohler) writes:
>As I've said elsewhere: it doesn't take a genius to figure THAC0 out.
>But 3e's method is certainly simpler that two subtract and compares
>with the additional confusion factor of "a plus AC bonus is better,
>but AC goes down with a plus, but you subtract AC from THAC0..."
That was never a well put together description. What they *should* have said
was:
THAC0 - AC - Modifiers
Piece of cake.
I have discovered, through reviewing many different game systems, that it is
not just what the rule is, but how the rule is *explained* that makes a big
difference.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Justin Bacon
writes:
>Overall, I definitely think that 3rd Edition is an improvement over 2nd
>Edition, and plan on getting it myself. If you are playing 2nd Edition
>and considering upgrading to 3rd when it comes out, definitely do. But
>if you're considering a change in game systems and are looking at 3rd
>Edition, play GURPS instead - it's the same thing done better.
GURPS and *any* edition of D&D are hardly the "same thing", except insofar as
they are both roleplaying games.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Justin Bacon
Wraith) writes:
>>Actually, Wraith ol' buddy, I was using 'new' in the context 'new to
>>DnD/TSR', sorry about the mix-up :)
>
>Doesn't matter. The point still remains that there is nothing new
>under the sun - well, at least not much.
I think there's plenty of new stuff to be found under the sun, myself, but I
agree with your point: D&D3 doesn't have to be revolutionary in order to be a
really good game. In fact, the last thing I would expect a D&D game to be is
revolutionary -- I am quite happy that they are finely tuning the rules up and
making the game seriously competitive with the other options out there.
Not that TSR is incapable of revolution. In the past decade I have been
impressed with both AMAZING ENGINE (although its primary innovation was one
which only gamists have appreciated) and SAGA. I'd probably be impressed with
ALTERNITY, too, if I could ever gag down the $60 price tag.
Justin Bacont
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Morgan Vening
(Nightshade) wrote:
>"Len Carpenter" <red...@early.com> wrote:
>
>
>>One advantage of a long melee round system (and perhaps the only one) is
>>that it makes a slow rate-of-fire weapon like the crossbow more
>>manageable. Firing a light crossbow once every one-minute round or a
>
>For a light crossbow, one minute to reload is pretty long. Way long
>in fact. You should easily be able to load a stirrup load crossbow in
>six seconds. Heavies and arbalests are a different story.
>
Maybe not 6 seconds for a real crossbow (in the neighbourhood of
100-150 lbs plus), but definately well inside a minute. Remember, it's
not just a matter of cocking the weapon, it is from fire to fire. That
entails
-lowering the weapon, and inserting foot correctly into stirrup.
-bending down and straightening correctly to cock the weapon.
-retrieving a bolt and inserting it correctly.
-raising to the shoulder and preparing to fire.
I have seen people botch each and every one of these while attempting
to fire quickly. Resulting in more time being wasted. Same can be said
regarding standard bows. I'm curious if reload times for them are
going to be changed from their existing two shots a round. I am no
expert, but I've handled enough bows to know that from release to nock
to draw to release, in under three seconds is laughable for a typical
archer to accomplish.
>>siege crossbow once every two rounds makes the weapon a viable option.
>>But when combat actions are measured in bursts of seconds, the crossbow
>>becomes a fire-once-and-toss-away weapon. By the time you manage to
>>reload the flippin' thing, the fight can be over.
>
>I don't see this as a bad thing, if the fight is up close and
>personal. If it's not, get behind cover while you reload. It doesn't
>matter how fast a self bow fires when there's no one to fire at. If
>the problem is they're charging you...well, gee, crossbows aren't an
>ideal weapon in small numbers against foes who can close up.
>
Sort of. Crossbows aren't good in small numbers against numerous foes
(which I think you intended to add). Against equivalent numbers, I
think crossbows will put the fear of deities into their opponent.
Which brings me to another problem I had with (A)D&D was that a Light
Crossbow did d4+1 damage (yes?), and a Longbow did d6. I can tell you,
after seeing what the weapons (a 45/60lb Compound Bow, and a 150lb
Crossbow) can do in a hunting environment, if I ever had to be shot
with either, it would be the bow every time. While both will put the
hurt on you, I have seen the crossbow multiple times imbed itself
almost to the fletching. Powerful weapons, sadly underrated in AD&D.
Morgan Vening
The Wraith
<red...@early.com> wrote:
>Dragonscroll wrote:
>> In article <37c05834.1833945@news>,
>> > >One way that they have changed combat to reflect the "many attcks
>and
>> > >blocks" interpretation is to remove weapon speed, which I think
>would
>> > >only become more key in a shorter round.
>> >
>> > Not enough to matter, though.
>>
>> I disagree. Like you mentioned, you can make several attacks with a
>> fencing foil in six seconds. However, how many attempts do you think
>> you could pull off with a battle axe or a pole arm in that time?
(Sorry to piggyback, but my server seems to have missed a post.)
Well, I used to be able to strike considerably faster than once a
second with my glaive. (Six foot of hardwood plus a foot or so of
steel blade - no rattan.) Precisely how many would be considered an
attack in AD&D terms is debatable - but really, the rate of
strikes-to-attacks will largely depend on the length of the combat
round you wish to justify. I don't consider six seconds too short,
because I know I could have used my glaive to kill someone in less
time than that (when I was still in training, which is some time past
now). Several people, if they hadn't had proper training to at least a
basic level.
>One advantage of a long melee round system (and perhaps the only one) is
>that it makes a slow rate-of-fire weapon like the crossbow more
>manageable. Firing a light crossbow once every one-minute round or a
>siege crossbow once every two rounds makes the weapon a viable option.
>But when combat actions are measured in bursts of seconds, the crossbow
>becomes a fire-once-and-toss-away weapon.
True, but that is basically what crossbows were like in skirmish-level
combat without obstacles separating the combatants. I'll quite happily
sacrifice the increased utility of the crossbow in the game for the
extra realism, especially when it is realised that the crossbow does
have its advantages, which should also be modelled in the game.
Mike Short
> I can tell you,
> after seeing what the weapons (a 45/60lb Compound Bow, and a 150lb
> Crossbow) can do in a hunting environment, if I ever had to be shot
> with either, it would be the bow every time.
Er, I wouldn't be too eager to make that sort of choice. One day, having
screwed up a shot with a 55lb recurve bow, I overshot the target and hit a
6" thick concrete post. The post shattered on impact.
The other thing you have to take into account is the relative weildiness of
the weapons. Given the tech level and training, don't forget that a bow was
a lot lighter than a crossbow. Also, many crossbows were not as powerful as
bows. It took some time to develop limbs that could take the extreme
pressures which we are casually able to use today.
Modern archery favours accuracy over firepower. This was not always the
case. It is also interesting to note that when the Mary Rose was recovered
from the sea bed, they found longbows on boards. The estimated pull of
these bows was between 150 and 200 pounds (depending on how the wood had
been treated/seasoned and the string length.
Cheers
Mike...
James A & Tarren Y Renn
> Modern archery favours accuracy over firepower. This was not always the
> case. It is also interesting to note that when the Mary Rose was recovered
> from the sea bed, they found longbows on boards. The estimated pull of
> these bows was between 150 and 200 pounds (depending on how the wood had
> been treated/seasoned and the string length.
You're forgetting the big advantage of crossbows over bows: training time. In
the real world it takes years to train a longbowman. You can train a crossbowman
in a few weeks. Well within the time a levied army would have. As far as the
power of crossbows? The early ones weren't any more powerful than bows.
Especially if they are using wood, bone or composite prods (the bow). But if
your campaign has full or field plate in it, it has the technological level for
iron and true steel prods. And if you have steel prods... you have *real* power
at your disposal. Five hundred, seven hundred or more pounds of force can be
had. Such crossbows are very slow to load, but nothing short of firearms beats
them for penetrating power.
Seeing as 3E is going to have six second combat rounds, crossbows are going to
not be very popular again. I see a light crossbow firing once every three
rounds, medium maybe every four or five and a heavy every six to eight rounds.
I'm hoping that they make the damage high enough to have *some* justification
for learning to use a crossbow. Special penetration rules like C&T had would
also be good. You can also have a crossbow readied more easily than a longbow.
Though I wouldn't want to be the guy riding in *front* of the crossbowman with a
readied weapon. :)
If you haven't noticed I love the crossbow. I just hope that 3E does them no
disservice. In the real world they helped change the face of warfare.
James
--
James A. & Tarren Y. Renn (t...@mediaone.net)
Please specify to whom mail is directed, thank you.
Jason Gorringe
no
>disservice. In the real world they helped change the face of warfare.
>
Where ?
Please give examples.
Frank T. Sronce
>
> You're forgetting the big advantage of crossbows over bows: training time. In
> the real world it takes years to train a longbowman. You can train a crossbowman
> in a few weeks. Well within the time a levied army would have. As far as the
> power of crossbows? The early ones weren't any more powerful than bows.
> Especially if they are using wood, bone or composite prods (the bow). But if
> your campaign has full or field plate in it, it has the technological level for
> iron and true steel prods. And if you have steel prods... you have *real* power
> at your disposal. Five hundred, seven hundred or more pounds of force can be
> had. Such crossbows are very slow to load, but nothing short of firearms beats
> them for penetrating power.
> Seeing as 3E is going to have six second combat rounds, crossbows are going to
> not be very popular again. I see a light crossbow firing once every three
> rounds, medium maybe every four or five and a heavy every six to eight rounds.
> I'm hoping that they make the damage high enough to have *some* justification
> for learning to use a crossbow. Special penetration rules like C&T had would
> also be good. You can also have a crossbow readied more easily than a longbow.
> Though I wouldn't want to be the guy riding in *front* of the crossbowman with a
> readied weapon. :)
> disservice. In the real world they helped change the face of warfare.
>
I seem to recall that the last time I ran AD&D, I upped the crossbow
damage and gave 'em all an innate bonus to hit to represent how much
easier they were to aim than a bow. Didn't make 'em any faster, though.
Kiz
-of course, I still remember the one-handed crossbow-firing warrior from
that old movie... was it "Hawk the Slayer?" Anyway, that guy could fire
3 shots per round, easy... for some reason he never had to reload.
Must've been a Crossbow Kensai, or something. :-)
john v verkuilen
>> If you haven't noticed I love the crossbow. I just hope that 3E does them
>no
>>disservice. In the real world they helped change the face of warfare.
>>
>Where ?
>Please give examples.
Read William McNeill's Pursuit of Power (I forget the exact page but there is
an index). He has a lengthy discussion of the importance of the crossbow.
Suffice to say the Pope attempted to ban their use against Christians.
Jay
--
J. Verkuilen ja...@staff.uiuc.edu
Matt Madsen
Dragonscroll <c...@dragonscroll.com> wrote:
>Changing the combat round to 6 seconds is a nice try, but according to
>TSR, combat will still be based on the idea that an attack is "a series
>of attacks, blocks, parries ..." and so on. This is the same line that
>Shadowrun takes, even though their actions can be as short as 1 second,
>and it is just as silly here. I like the 6 second combat round because
>it seems like a more reasonable increment for melee combat - but not if
>you're still packing 1 minute worth of fighting in there.
Reality check: a trained boxer can land six blows in one second.
Landing one blow per six seconds is far more accurate than one
blow per minute -- even with a halberd.
Matt Madsen
Dragonscroll
t...@mediaone.net wrote:
> If you haven't noticed I love the crossbow. I just hope that
> 3E does them no disservice.
I always thought crossbows got the fuzzy side of the lollipop in D&D.
They do the least damage of any manner of ranged weapon except a rock
(unless you are using a sling), given their reload times. Despite the
fact that their reload time is accounted for in attacks per round (or
rounds per attack), they still have terrible weapon speeds. And as far
as game mechanics go it is just as easy to learn a bow instead and do a
d8 damage twice per round.
IMC our GM went so far as to say that the crossbow was never used in
warfare in his world. The only place you see them is in traps or other
automated devices.
James
Dragonscroll
--
Dragonscroll is your source for fantasy, sci fi and RPGs at 20-40% off!
http://www.dragonscroll.com
Dragonscroll
tria...@aol.com (Justin Bacon) wrote:
> GURPS and *any* edition of D&D are hardly the "same thing",
> except insofar as they are both roleplaying games.
Well, that's the point I was trying to get across. AD&D 3rd Edition is
heavily skill-based and is headed toward a point-based system. While 3E
is not as far down the road as the Hero system, it is looking more like
GURPS the more I hear about it.
Bryan J. Maloney
> In article <37c05834.1833945@news>,
> Night...@nightdark.com (Nightshade) wrote:
> > >One way that they have changed combat to reflect the "many attcks and
> > >blocks" interpretation is to remove weapon speed, which I think would
> > >only become more key in a shorter round.
> >
> > Not enough to matter, though.
>
> I disagree. Like you mentioned, you can make several attacks with a
> fencing foil in six seconds. However, how many attempts do you think
> you could pull off with a battle axe or a pole arm in that time?
At least three.
--
BATF agent Dan Curtis defined a "cult" for the court as "a group of
people who live together differently than the rest of society."
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/bjm10/
Bryan J. Maloney
<aeth...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> following through with a trickier one). There's no reason, with an
> abstract combat system, that someone with a rapier is likely to strike
> before someone with a pole-arm.
Although, in the real world, that is a major advantage of a thrusting
weapon vs. a cutting--time of thrust is shorter than time of cut. This is
true if the weapons are of identical weight, length, and balance.
Taylor Walston
>
>Well, that's the point I was trying to get across. AD&D 3rd Edition is
>heavily skill-based and is headed toward a point-based system. While 3E
>is not as far down the road as the Hero system, it is looking more like
>GURPS the more I hear about it.
>
>James
>Dragonscroll
>
Where do you come to that conclusion? You don't purchase race, you don't
purchase class abilities, you do not purchase attributes.. its a long shot
from a point based system. 3E is very clearly a continuation of the Class
based system and offers a new set of rules to improve on the class system as
it stood in the past.
Patrick M. Berry
> Personally, I think 3rd Edition looks like it will be very
> good, but I don't see how they'll be able to copyright it! I mean,
> geez, all the 'good ideas' that are going to be in it (and they are
> good ideas) seem to be things I've been reading on this newsgroup for
> years!
One does not copyright ideas, only specific arrangements of words.
James A & Tarren Y Renn
> -of course, I still remember the one-handed crossbow-firing warrior from
> that old movie... was it "Hawk the Slayer?" Anyway, that guy could fire
> 3 shots per round, easy... for some reason he never had to reload.
> Must've been a Crossbow Kensai, or something. :-)
I remember that guy, had one hand, right? He was in Max Headroom I think too. FYI,
there really is a repeating crossbow. It's Asian, mostly Chinese but used by the
Japanese as well. It did require two hands to operate though. It had a "clip" or box
over the bolt groove. As the weapon was cocked a bolt would fall into the groove and
push back the bowstring. I think they held ten bolts at a time. They were very light
though. The increased speed of firing was paid for by a lose of poundage. I'd be
surprised if they had much more than 50 pounds of force. A novel idea but not overly
practical in the real world. I could see small races liking them though. Just think
of a squad of gnome crossbowmen armed with repeating crossbows... :)
I've got a picture if anyone wants one.
Eric Tolle
> That was never a well put together description. What they *should* have said
> was:
>
> THAC0 - AC - Modifiers
Nicely put. Of course in order to simplify things, they could have
expressed swords and other items that make hitting easier in terms
of negatives: "Sword -1, -4 vs. giants". Of course the damage bonus
would have to have been the reverse of the to-hit bonus...oh bother.
But really, I think there's some psychology involved here-I think
gamers (like most people) tend to see bonuses in terms of plusses
to a stat, equate higher numbers with "better", and intuitively
are a bit more comfortable with adding over subtracting. An additive
system gives a more visceral feel for when someone's better at
something- compare "I have a THACO of 20", vs. "I have a 4 THACO".
Regardless of the rules, which _sounds_ better?
> I have discovered, through reviewing many different game systems, that it is
> not just what the rule is, but how the rule is *explained* that makes a big
> difference.
Exactly. Like in other forms of technical writing, clarity can be
damned difficult.
>
> Justin Bacon
> tr...@prairie.lakes.com
--
Eric Tolle sch...@silcom.com
Information does not want to be free. Information wants to be
folded, spindled, mutilated, and used to make funky children's
party hats.
John Bailey
really should not try it against the extra reach of the pole arm.
The battle axe probably has reach as well and weight of attack, and a hit
from a battle axe is likely (in real world) to be fatal.
You would spend most of your time dancing around trying to find a clean
opening. So, In these cases at least, the speed factor is negated.
Dragonscroll <c...@dragonscroll.com> wrote in article
<7pprso$s98$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>
>
> I disagree. Like you mentioned, you can make several attacks with a
> fencing foil in six seconds. However, how many attempts do you think
> you could pull off with a battle axe or a pole arm in that time?
>
> James
> Dragonscroll
>
> --
John Bailey
over the rapier /foil. Give me a halberd any day of the week <g>
Bryan J. Maloney <bj...@cornell.edu> wrote in article
<bjm10-23089...@potato.cit.cornell.edu>...
Craig Barkhouse
Roy Windom <xq...@thevision.net> wrote in message
news:37C01499...@thevision.net...
Tenzhi the Ti Hsien wrote:
>>6 second rounds instead of 1 minute
>(Basic) D&D used 6 second rounds.
Wrong, original D&D used 10 second rounds (and 10 minute turns).
>>No more Racial Class and Level limitations
>There wasn't any before Ad&d
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but if you are referring to original D&D
again, then clearly there were racial class and level limitations.
Non-human races did not have a choice of class (i.e. the race *was* the
class), and they had level limitations far below humans. Even humans were
limited to level 36.
Nightshade
>In article <37c05834.1833945@news>, Night...@nightdark.com (Nightshade)
>writes:
>
>>I don't know; even in six seconds, I'd be expecting a single attack
>>roll to represent more than one _attempt_ in that period, which is
>>what I assumed they meant. At least in fencing and SCA combat, a lot
>>of attacks can be attempted in six seconds. Assuming only one will
>>probably actually do damage (at best) doesn't seem off.
>
>I, for one, will be quietly ignoring the amalgamation lines (if they exist) and
>simply treating the system as an action-by-action breakdown. I've never liked
>amalgam system all that much because it makes describing and following combat
>far more onerous for me.
>
>If nothing else, however, lowering the combat round time removes the absurdity
>of -- for example -- spending a whole minute picking up a book.
The problem is, if you assume single attacks, almost any round length
longer than 1-2 seconds is too long. And then you have to set things
up so the majority of attacks are unsuccessful (as they are in real
life) to represent realistic combat times, which in practice leads to
a lot of pointless dice rolling.
Nightshade
>In article <19990823025839...@ngol05.aol.com>,
> tria...@aol.com (Justin Bacon) wrote:
>> GURPS and *any* edition of D&D are hardly the "same thing",
>> except insofar as they are both roleplaying games.
>
>Well, that's the point I was trying to get across. AD&D 3rd Edition is
>heavily skill-based and is headed toward a point-based system. While 3E
>is not as far down the road as the Hero system, it is looking more like
>GURPS the more I hear about it.
>
I hardly think I'd call any class-and-level system 'like GURPS'.
That's not even true of Alternity, and Alternity is a heck of a lot
more in that direction than anything I've heard about D&D3.
Nightshade
>On Mon, 23 Aug 1999 06:40:09 GMT, Night...@nightdark.com
>(Nightshade) wrote:
>
>>"Len Carpenter" <red...@early.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>One advantage of a long melee round system (and perhaps the only one) is
>>>that it makes a slow rate-of-fire weapon like the crossbow more
>>>manageable. Firing a light crossbow once every one-minute round or a
>>
>>For a light crossbow, one minute to reload is pretty long. Way long
>>in fact. You should easily be able to load a stirrup load crossbow in
>>six seconds. Heavies and arbalests are a different story.
>>
>Maybe not 6 seconds for a real crossbow (in the neighbourhood of
>100-150 lbs plus), but definately well inside a minute. Remember, it's
>not just a matter of cocking the weapon, it is from fire to fire. That
>entails
>-lowering the weapon, and inserting foot correctly into stirrup.
>-bending down and straightening correctly to cock the weapon.
>-retrieving a bolt and inserting it correctly.
>-raising to the shoulder and preparing to fire.
Admittedly not under combat stress, but I used to recock a modern
stirrup hunting crossbow in rather less than six seconds. I probably
was capable of doing it in three or four, though that involved a
particularly dangerous corner cutting manuever that I'd not do today
and paid for once. I think I'll still stand by being able to do it in
taht time with a light.
>
>I have seen people botch each and every one of these while attempting
>to fire quickly. Resulting in more time being wasted. Same can be said
Sure. But the same thing can be done with loading a clip, nocking an
arrow, or any number of other load processes.
>regarding standard bows. I'm curious if reload times for them are
>going to be changed from their existing two shots a round. I am no
>expert, but I've handled enough bows to know that from release to nock
>to draw to release, in under three seconds is laughable for a typical
>archer to accomplish.
Here, I agree.
>>I don't see this as a bad thing, if the fight is up close and
>>personal. If it's not, get behind cover while you reload. It doesn't
>>matter how fast a self bow fires when there's no one to fire at. If
>>the problem is they're charging you...well, gee, crossbows aren't an
>>ideal weapon in small numbers against foes who can close up.
>>
>Sort of. Crossbows aren't good in small numbers against numerous foes
>(which I think you intended to add). Against equivalent numbers, I
>think crossbows will put the fear of deities into their opponent.
Well, outside a variable hit point system. In a D&D style system, the
problem is no mundane weapon will do that, as with a reasonable level,
they're simply unlikely to do enough to characters above 1-3rd levels
to be that much concern.
>Which brings me to another problem I had with (A)D&D was that a Light
>Crossbow did d4+1 damage (yes?), and a Longbow did d6. I can tell you,
>after seeing what the weapons (a 45/60lb Compound Bow, and a 150lb
>Crossbow) can do in a hunting environment, if I ever had to be shot
>with either, it would be the bow every time. While both will put the
>hurt on you, I have seen the crossbow multiple times imbed itself
>almost to the fletching. Powerful weapons, sadly underrated in AD&D.
Though it heavily depends on what they mean by a 'light' crossbow.
That could describe a world of different weapons. 1D4+1 does sound
more like a light hunting crossbow than a war crossbow, but then, 1d6
doesn't sound like a longbow to me, either.
Nightshade
>Mike Short wrote:
>
>> Modern archery favours accuracy over firepower. This was not always the
>> case. It is also interesting to note that when the Mary Rose was recovered
>> from the sea bed, they found longbows on boards. The estimated pull of
>> these bows was between 150 and 200 pounds (depending on how the wood had
>> been treated/seasoned and the string length.
>
> You're forgetting the big advantage of crossbows over bows: training time. In
>the real world it takes years to train a longbowman. You can train a crossbowman
>in a few weeks. Well within the time a levied army would have. As far as the
>power of crossbows? The early ones weren't any more powerful than bows.
>Especially if they are using wood, bone or composite prods (the bow). But if
>your campaign has full or field plate in it, it has the technological level for
>iron and true steel prods. And if you have steel prods... you have *real* power
>at your disposal. Five hundred, seven hundred or more pounds of force can be
>had. Such crossbows are very slow to load, but nothing short of firearms beats
>them for penetrating power.
And as an extension, the heaviest crossbows made with modern materials
are actually compareable in punch to all but the heaviest rifles.
They're just much slower firing.
> Seeing as 3E is going to have six second combat rounds, crossbows are going to
>not be very popular again. I see a light crossbow firing once every three
>rounds, medium maybe every four or five and a heavy every six to eight rounds.
As I've said, unless you're defining a light crossbow much differently
than I am, that seems quite slow for a stirrup loaded crossbow.
They're slower than bows, but once per six seconds doesn't seem that
far off from my experience.
>I'm hoping that they make the damage high enough to have *some* justification
>for learning to use a crossbow. Special penetration rules like C&T had would
>also be good. You can also have a crossbow readied more easily than a longbow.
>Though I wouldn't want to be the guy riding in *front* of the crossbowman with a
>readied weapon. :)
Not a problem if cross carried to point off at an angle. Though
people in the neighborhood may be nervous. :)
> If you haven't noticed I love the crossbow. I just hope that 3E does them no
>disservice. In the real world they helped change the face of warfare.
They're sadly underestimated in many game systems.
aetherson
mor...@vic.bigpond.net.au (Morgan Vening) wrote:
>
> The problem then is, what advantage will a Short Sword now give in
> comparison to a Two Handed Sword? While the degree of advantage may
> have been too powerful (to which I don't agree), the concept I felt
> was a good one.
You can wield it one handed. It's cheaper. It's more concealable.
It's lighter.
> In a first blood matchup, your reasoning might be understandable. But
> in a fight to the death, between two non-novice (Lets assume level 3)
> Fighters, it is most definately more likely for the 2HSword weilder to
> win the day.
>
> Both Fighters are identical, with 16 HP. One has a sword, one a knife
> (as your initial example). Assume all initiatives are even, all
> attacks successful (in the long term, ie, if ne missed, both missed),
> and all damage is average. Fighter Knife hits for 2 damage a round.
> Fighter Claymore hits for 5.
>
> At this rate, after four rounds, Fighter Knife is dead. Fighter
> Claymore has 8HP left. Now, IF there were debilitating effects or loss
> of effectiveness from being hit, then your point would be more easily
> acceptable to me. But with the format shown in (A)D&D, that concept
> isn't utilised.
By the way, average damage on a d4 is 2.5, and average damage on a d10
is 5.5.
Your example is good as far as it goes... The problem is, I haven't
seen any AD&D combats which look like that in the recent past.
First of all, I tend to see specialization in fighters. So +2 to
damage with each of their weapons. And generally at least another +1
to damage from strength.
So now we're looking at average damages of 5.5 vs 8.5. The two-handed
sword wielder still has an advantage, of course, but it's gone from
220% (in the case of no modifiers) to 154% (in my example). Which is
still significant, but it starts to look a lot less good in comparison
to the 8 points of weapons speed, the ability to throw your weapon, the
concealability and legality issue, etc.
If we get up to a damage bonus of +8 (on the high end, but not
unreasonable for more higher level games I've seen), then the damage of
the two-hander is 128% of the dagger.
Then let's throw in the clincher: 2-weapon style, one of the most
horribly abuseable, wrong, evil, and sick ideas in the history of AD&D.
With two-weapon style, the knife guy uses one dagger at full skill, and
the off-handed dagger at -2 (so, 10% less likely to hit, so for
statistical purposes, we'll just presume that it does 90% damage). The
dagger-wielder is essentially doing 190% his previous damage. So, in
the +3 to damage case, we're looking at 10.45 damage, on average, from
the knife-wielder compared to 8.5 damage, on average, from the two-
handed sword. And this is /still/ on top of cost, legality,
concealability, and the ability to throw your weapon.
I have a longer discussion of this issue at
http://wso.williams.edu/~msulliva/campaigns/fixit/strength.html, if
you're interested. Obviously, the chief culprit here is two-weapon
style. The problem is that, unlike many of the cases where we can
dismiss two-weapon style abuse, two daggers, or a shortsword and
dagger, are actually perfectly legitimate, real world fighting styles.
So it doesn't feel right to me to just dismiss using two-weapon style
here.
One of the basic issues on hand is that AD&D provides no mechanism to
simulate the length of a weapon, and, in the case of a fight of two-
handed swords versus daggers, that's an incredibly important issue.
Mike (aetherson)
aetherson
bj...@cornell.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) wrote:
>
> Although, in the real world, that is a major advantage of a thrusting
> weapon vs. a cutting--time of thrust is shorter than time of cut.
This is
> true if the weapons are of identical weight, length, and balance.
Of course. But that's not relevant here.
Nightshade
'm not sure what you mean by this, but if you are referring to
original D&D
>again, then clearly there were racial class and level limitations.
>Non-human races did not have a choice of class (i.e. the race *was* the
>class), and they had level limitations far below humans. Even humans were
>limited to level 36.
I suspect you are refering to a later game than him because true
Original D&D (OD&D) did not have races as classes. That was the later
game called (at the time) simply D&D.
Nightshade
>mor...@vic.bigpond.net.au (Morgan Vening) wrote in
><37c1cf2e.39915078@news-server>:
>>The problem then is, what advantage will a Short Sword now give in
>>comparison to a Two Handed Sword? While the degree of advantage may
>
>It's easier to conceal, it's cheaper, and you can actually swing/stab with
>it indoors without requiring a largish room to do it in?
It's largely a myth that greatsword technique requires huge amounts of
space. Most two handed weapons are useable quite effectively in
suprisingly small amounts of space.
Phelix Bruner
the era of heavily armored knights charging down on a skirmish line of foot
soldiers.
The advent of gunpowder the "Gunne" put the icing on the cake.
Jason Gorringe <ja...@canis-publ.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:7prn4a$4...@newstoo.ericsson.se...
> > If you haven't noticed I love the crossbow. I just hope that 3E does
them
> no
> >disservice. In the real world they helped change the face of warfare.
> >
>
Phelix Bruner
the fastest punches in the world was clocked at 7 punches in 1 second, the
average heavy weight fighter might throw 2 or 3 punches in 1 second. But if
you watch some fights, both boxing and PKA or kick boxing you will see that
even a 16 round fight only has 100 to 200 punches thrown per fighter with
about 1/3 or less actually landing.
Matt Madsen <mma...@netcom.com> wrote in message
news:7prvhr$4...@dfw-ixnews6.ix.netcom.com...
Deathdog The Assassin
>the fastest punches in the world was clocked at 7 punches in 1 second, the
>average heavy weight fighter might throw 2 or 3 punches in 1 second. But if
>you watch some fights, both boxing and PKA or kick boxing you will see that
>even a 16 round fight only has 100 to 200 punches thrown per fighter with
>about 1/3 or less actually landing.
Having boxed as an amateur for a while, I can safely say that one second
is plenty of time to throw six blows. Granted, they will be poorly thrown
and most will not have a chance of connecting against a good opponent.
Three or four punches as part of a combination is very realistic, with
most of them landing, albeit on someone who is covering up. If you
actually want to hurt someone, you could probably punch twice a second, as
twisting your waist requires quite a long time to do.
Just remember that trained fighters will feint and circle, looking for
openings. Averaged out, you're maybe punching once every 5 to 6 seconds,
and most of them aren't doing much besides testing the opponent.
I can't say much about combat with weapons, but I'm guessing there is a
similar pattern.
--
Brad Everman aka Deathdog
Personal: http://www.io.com/~deathdog or http://deathdog.home.dhs.org
Business/Hobby: http://www.realrankings.com
"Caskets $299 and Up! Daily blow outs! 1-800-CASKET" - Sign on Loop 410
ed
Mon, 23 Aug 1999 16:47:02 -0400:
>Frank T. Sronce wrote:
>
>> -of course, I still remember the one-handed crossbow-firing warrior from
>> that old movie... was it "Hawk the Slayer?" Anyway, that guy could fire
>> 3 shots per round, easy... for some reason he never had to reload.
>> Must've been a Crossbow Kensai, or something. :-)
>
> I remember that guy, had one hand, right? He was in Max Headroom I think too.
If it was W. Morgan Shepherd, which it probably was, he was in
EVERYTHING.
"Babylon 5", as a Soul Hunter and as a Narn
"Werewolf" as a very old pre-Ice Age Werewolf
"Star Trek" as a the Governor of the Klingon Prison Planet in VI
AND loads more besides/
ed
--
edh...@equus.demon.co.uk | Dragons Rescued | _////
http://www.equus.demon.co.uk/ | Maidens Slain | o_/o ///
For devilbunnies, Diplomacy, RPGs, | Quests P.O.A. | __\ ///__
Science-Fiction and other stuff | | <*>
James A & Tarren Y Renn
> As I've said, unless you're defining a light crossbow much differently
> than I am, that seems quite slow for a stirrup loaded crossbow.
> They're slower than bows, but once per six seconds doesn't seem that
> far off from my experience.
Actually I was trying to phrase that time interval in "game designer speak". A
strange foreign tongue, where-in reality is oft forgotten in pursuit of the elusive
"game balance". :) I could cock my Barrett Wildcat (150 lb. pull) in just over six
seconds. Mostly because I'm a dumpy gamer boy. :) A fit person could do it in less.
I feel that crossbows should do great amounts of damage, greater than a longbow, but
be slower. I think they should have slightly better penetration than a longbow also.
> They're sadly underestimated in many game systems.
Here's some data from Sir Ralph Payne-Gallway (author of the truly great book
-Crossbow-) being quoted in The Diagram Group's book -Weapons-:
"Comparative potential
Being compared are the English longbow and the crossbow- rivals in European warfare
in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Rate of shooting
a) Longbow, about six aimed arrows per minute (or twelve with less accuracy)
b) Crossbow with windlass, about one bolt per minute (or four using a belt and
claw)
Extreme range
c) Longbow about 280 yds. (255m)
d) Crossbow about 380 yds. (360m)
(The effective tactical ranges were of course less.)
Power
Both were capable of piercing plate armor at tactical ranges with a correctly
tempered arrowhead."
Juris Baidins
Phelix Bruner <pbr...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Between the crossbow and the English longbow they helped to pretty much end
>the era of heavily armored knights charging down on a skirmish line of foot
>soldiers.
Do not forget to add in that by the time the longbow and crossbow came
into full effectiveness, the foot soldier was not running away anymore.
Long spears (even pikes) to fend off the horsemen; halbards and two-handed
swords for dealing with the knights who avoided the pikes.
Dismounted English knights keeping French knights off the longbowmen and
Swiss pikemen keeping the crossbowmen in the square safe. Without them
the cavalry could just eat the archery losses, close with the archers
and its all over.
--
Juris Baidins
bai...@udel.edu
Ben Nicholls
<sorry, had to cut one newsgroup as it was unknown>
> >Uh....I think this is a slight exaggeration. Bruce Lee, admittedly one of
> >the fastest punches in the world was clocked at 7 punches in 1 second, the
> >average heavy weight fighter might throw 2 or 3 punches in 1 second. But if
> >you watch some fights, both boxing and PKA or kick boxing you will see that
> >even a 16 round fight only has 100 to 200 punches thrown per fighter with
> >about 1/3 or less actually landing.
>
> Having boxed as an amateur for a while, I can safely say that one second
> is plenty of time to throw six blows. Granted, they will be poorly thrown
> and most will not have a chance of connecting against a good opponent.
> Three or four punches as part of a combination is very realistic, with
> most of them landing, albeit on someone who is covering up. If you
> actually want to hurt someone, you could probably punch twice a second, as
> twisting your waist requires quite a long time to do.
>
> Just remember that trained fighters will feint and circle, looking for
> openings. Averaged out, you're maybe punching once every 5 to 6 seconds,
> and most of them aren't doing much besides testing the opponent.
>
> I can't say much about combat with weapons, but I'm guessing there is a
> similar pattern.
Its pretty similar for the weapons i've used at least. IMHO with most
weapons, combinations of blows & smooth parries can be made very quickly
while still maintaining balance and the ability to defend yourself from
counterstrokes.
With long swords, you can make about a blow every second in a good rythm,
like <eg> head shot, mid left, upper right, lower right </eg> a bit of a
favorite of mine if a person always tries to block with a shield. This
takes about 4-5 seconds. Usually though, people will circle each other
looking for weaknesses, putting in a few blows now and then to try to find
them before they try a combination of shots/barge/running away in terror.
So yeah, similar pattern, but a bit slower (even though most weapons like
sords are remarkably well balanced and quick)
Justin Bacon
<red...@early.com> writes:
>But when combat actions are measured in bursts of seconds, the crossbow
>becomes a fire-once-and-toss-away weapon. By the time you manage to
>reload the flippin' thing, the fight can be over.
That's rather true to the technology, though.
>As an aside, I note that the six-second round sounds a lot like the
>five-second pulse of the third edition DragonQuest game published by
>TSR. When TSR acquired the rights to publish it, I wondered why more
>ideas from DragonQuest, superior to AD&D in many ways, weren't then
>incorporated into AD&D's second edition.
Or, quite frankly, why a decent version of DragonQuest was not kept in print.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Justin Bacon
>The problem then is, what advantage will a Short Sword now give in
>comparison to a Two Handed Sword? While the degree of advantage may
>have been too powerful (to which I don't agree), the concept I felt
>was a good one.
The Short Sword can be used in conjunction with a shield; a Two-Handed Sword
cannot.
Although I have little doubt that there is a comparative difference between
Short Swords and Long Swords, I seriously question if there is a need to really
compare them in game of D&D's nature -- simply create a One-Handed Sword and a
Two-Handed Sword and be done with it.
(Although as a DM it might be worth having a distinction, so that I could foist
off a bunch of short swords on people.)
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
aetherson
tria...@aol.com (Justin Bacon) wrote:
>
> The Short Sword can be used in conjunction with a shield; a Two-Handed
Sword
> cannot.
Though, sadly, shields aren't very useful in AD&D unless the GM's giving
out magical weapons and armor, in which case they're quite handy as a
place to hang more plusses.
> Although I have little doubt that there is a comparative difference
between
> Short Swords and Long Swords, I seriously question if there is a need
to really
> compare them in game of D&D's nature -- simply create a One-Handed
Sword and a
> Two-Handed Sword and be done with it.
One of AD&D's chief problems is that it can't decide what level of
abstraction it wants to use -- So you not only have shortswords and
longswords, you have:
knives vs. daggers
and
shortswords vs. longswords vs. khopesh swords vs. rapiers vs. sabers vs.
scimitars vs. cutlasses, and I probably forgot a few.
Morgan Vening
wrote:
>In article <37c1cf2e.39915078@news-server>,
> mor...@vic.bigpond.net.au (Morgan Vening) wrote:
>>
>> The problem then is, what advantage will a Short Sword now give in
>> comparison to a Two Handed Sword? While the degree of advantage may
>> have been too powerful (to which I don't agree), the concept I felt
>> was a good one.
>
>You can wield it one handed. It's cheaper. It's more concealable.
>It's lighter.
And it is also faster in combat. If a man armed with a Short Sword
gets in close against a man armed with a Two Handed Sword, the fight
is over fairly quickly. Getting in is the problem. Having participated
in an equivalent of SCA (and proving primarily incompetant), I was
still capable of defeating large weaponed opponents with smaller ones
(straight up even weapons I sucked). Again, relative skill matters,
but within the system, it is always in the warriors best interest to
use Two Handed Swords. Even if something as simple as exhaustion were
incorporated, it might give a reason. It doesn't need to be hugely
complex. But the thought that a man wielding 4-5' of steel, and a man
with a glorified dagger, tiring at the same speed is very funny to me.
>> In a first blood matchup, your reasoning might be understandable. But
>> in a fight to the death, between two non-novice (Lets assume level 3)
>> Fighters, it is most definately more likely for the 2HSword weilder to
>> win the day.
>>
>> Both Fighters are identical, with 16 HP. One has a sword, one a knife
>> (as your initial example). Assume all initiatives are even, all
>> attacks successful (in the long term, ie, if ne missed, both missed),
>> and all damage is average. Fighter Knife hits for 2 damage a round.
>> Fighter Claymore hits for 5.
>>
>> At this rate, after four rounds, Fighter Knife is dead. Fighter
>> Claymore has 8HP left. Now, IF there were debilitating effects or loss
>> of effectiveness from being hit, then your point would be more easily
>> acceptable to me. But with the format shown in (A)D&D, that concept
>> isn't utilised.
>
>By the way, average damage on a d4 is 2.5, and average damage on a d10
>is 5.5.
Actually, we were discussing a Knife, so 2 is the correct average(d3).
The 5.5 I dropped to 5 just out of simplicity and benefit of the
doubt.
>Your example is good as far as it goes... The problem is, I haven't
>seen any AD&D combats which look like that in the recent past.
>
>First of all, I tend to see specialization in fighters. So +2 to
>damage with each of their weapons. And generally at least another +1
>to damage from strength.
>
>So now we're looking at average damages of 5.5 vs 8.5. The two-handed
>sword wielder still has an advantage, of course, but it's gone from
>220% (in the case of no modifiers) to 154% (in my example). Which is
>still significant, but it starts to look a lot less good in comparison
>to the 8 points of weapons speed, the ability to throw your weapon, the
>concealability and legality issue, etc.
>
>If we get up to a damage bonus of +8 (on the high end, but not
>unreasonable for more higher level games I've seen), then the damage of
>the two-hander is 128% of the dagger.
It depends on what the bonuses are applied to. I remember seeing a
rule that stated that Strength Bonuses (or maybe all bonuses) could
not increase the damage to more than double the actual roll. So a +4
modifier to a Knife (d3) will only result in a maximum of +3 to the
dice roll. And then, only on a maximum hit. This stopped the IMO
laughable situation of "I hit with my Longsword. Darn, I rolled a 1.
That's 9 damage." So if this rule is used (and I cannot quote page
reference, or even confirm beyond doubt it exists (I sold my AD&D
collection to finance a vacation), but would mitigate a lot of the
advantage of a Damage increase applied above.
>Then let's throw in the clincher: 2-weapon style, one of the most
>horribly abuseable, wrong, evil, and sick ideas in the history of AD&D.
Agreed.
>With two-weapon style, the knife guy uses one dagger at full skill, and
>the off-handed dagger at -2 (so, 10% less likely to hit, so for
>statistical purposes, we'll just presume that it does 90% damage). The
>dagger-wielder is essentially doing 190% his previous damage. So, in
>the +3 to damage case, we're looking at 10.45 damage, on average, from
>the knife-wielder compared to 8.5 damage, on average, from the two-
>handed sword. And this is /still/ on top of cost, legality,
>concealability, and the ability to throw your weapon.
The big problems started coming down when you had Elven Rangers (if
Specialization was permitted for them, the Rules changed several
times) with paired Longswords.
>
>I have a longer discussion of this issue at
>http://wso.williams.edu/~msulliva/campaigns/fixit/strength.html, if
>you're interested. Obviously, the chief culprit here is two-weapon
>style. The problem is that, unlike many of the cases where we can
>dismiss two-weapon style abuse, two daggers, or a shortsword and
>dagger, are actually perfectly legitimate, real world fighting styles.
>So it doesn't feel right to me to just dismiss using two-weapon style
>here.
The problem being, is that typically the advantage (or more accurately
the penalty) applied to the off hand is not severe enough. Two weapon
style is typically used in one of two ways. Defensively, in which case
the off weapon is used to protect the body. Or offensively, in which
case the off weapon is used primarily to allow for an opening. Rarely,
in my experience, have I seen two weapons both used on the attack.
Sometimes a thrust is made with the off hand, but is the result of the
prime hand being retracted to fulfill the off hand's duties. (Parry
with the prime, follow with the off).
And representive strength is reduced when wielding two blades. even an
exceptionally strong and ambidexterous man weilds two blades, he will
not be able to apply as much force to both blades, as he would to the
single blade. Simply because of momentum and leverage.
Add to that point control, the increased difficulty of being able to
control two independant weapons simultaneously, and you start to see
the problems inherent. A lack of precision co-ordination will
typically allow more accuracy with a single blade than with two
weapons. The advantages of having two weapons at hand, and the
defensive posture are usually enough. Offensively it's a crock.
>One of the basic issues on hand is that AD&D provides no mechanism to
>simulate the length of a weapon, and, in the case of a fight of two-
>handed swords versus daggers, that's an incredibly important issue.
Agreed most wholeheartedly. I remember seeing a system whereby winning
initative, after a successful attack, whereby your opponent missed,
allowed for a change in distance. It was a really cool system even if
it was clunky(especially in multiple combats). So a man with a Two
Handed Sword had a Reach of 3. The man with the Knife had a reach of 1
(Bite attacks, or torso mounted weapons were Reach 0). Assuming both
participants started knowing of the opponent, (no ambush), combat
begins at range 4(or outside the range of the weapons). On the first
combat round, range becomes 3 (the largest Reach. The man with the
2HSword is at +0 to hit. The man with the knife is at -2 to hit (the
difference in Reach being applied). If the man with the Knife hits,
and the 2HSword misses, the new round begins. If the Knife wielder
wins initative, he may chose to close. Reach becomes 2. This applies a
-1 to hit to each combatant (as the difference in Reach is applied as
a negative, always). If the Knife Fighter hits, and the Claymore
fighter miss, and the knife fighter wins initative again, (note,
smaller weapons gave advantage to initative, but combat results were
applied simultaneously). then he can close to Reach 1. meaning he will
be at +0 to hit, and his opponent will be at -2. On the next round, if
everything goes well, he can reduce the Reach to 0, which will apply a
-1 to his own roll, (it's too close, to even use a knife properly),
but a full -3 to his opponent. It was really an impressive system, and
I can't for the life of me remember it's name. It used d10's, (so the
mods were very significant), and was the first system I saw to use an
opposed roll for attacks (most systems used one roll, and applied a
defensive modifier, but this compared two rolls with the attacker
needing to beat the defender).
>Mike (aetherson)
Morgan Vening
Nightshade
>> As I've said, unless you're defining a light crossbow much differently
>> than I am, that seems quite slow for a stirrup loaded crossbow.
>> They're slower than bows, but once per six seconds doesn't seem that
>> far off from my experience.
>
> Actually I was trying to phrase that time interval in "game designer speak". A
>strange foreign tongue, where-in reality is oft forgotten in pursuit of the elusive
>"game balance". :) I could cock my Barrett Wildcat (150 lb. pull) in just over six
Heh.
>seconds. Mostly because I'm a dumpy gamer boy. :) A fit person could do it in less.
I might not be able to do it in the 4-5 I could do when i was younger
any more either, so there you go. On the other hand, I'd like to
think regular users of it as a weapon would be at least in a _little_
better shape than me.
>I feel that crossbows should do great amounts of damage, greater than a longbow, but
>be slower. I think they should have slightly better penetration than a longbow also.
I'm not sure I'm convinced that lights would do better damage than a
longbow. They were easier to learn to use, and crossbows have the
virtue of a pretty flat trajectory, but I'm not sure the damage is
that much superior. On the other hand, if you base it simply off
poundage, they'd almost have to be.
> Rate of shooting
> a) Longbow, about six aimed arrows per minute (or twelve with less accuracy)
> b) Crossbow with windlass, about one bolt per minute (or four using a belt and
>claw)
Bet those were different sized, too.
>
> Extreme range
> c) Longbow about 280 yds. (255m)
> d) Crossbow about 380 yds. (360m)
> (The effective tactical ranges were of course less.)
Yeah. That flat trajectory for you. And those are _definitely_ heavy
crossbows.
>
> Power
> Both were capable of piercing plate armor at tactical ranges with a correctly
>tempered arrowhead."
>
>James
Sounds about right.
Clay Dreslough
>openings. Averaged out, you're maybe punching once every 5 to 6 seconds,
>and most of them aren't doing much besides testing the opponent.
Thus enforcing the idea that a one-minute combat round, with about a 50%
chance of landing a significant blow (one that could kill a normal human),
is about right.
I co-authored an RP system in the 80's with 1-second mini-rounds (it was
called One Step Beyond). It got a bit tedious, and when I later actually did
some mock fighting, I learned that the exactness of something like 6-second
rounds really doesn't apply to the chaos of combat.
I've also done about a decade of simulated sword-fighting (while in armor,
such as the SCA) in combat situations, and found that more time is spent
getting in position and either chasing or retreating than is actually spent
throwing blows that could cause damage.
Short rounds might make sense for handguns, but in HTH, longer rounds make
much more realistic sense. It also improves gaming fun (IMHO), because
player actions aren't limited by some second-by-second clock.
Gygax, believe it or not, pretty much had it right back in the 1970s (IMHO,
again).
:)
Clay
Nightshade
>One of AD&D's chief problems is that it can't decide what level of
>abstraction it wants to use -- So you not only have shortswords and
>longswords, you have:
>
>knives vs. daggers
>
>and
>
>shortswords vs. longswords vs. khopesh swords vs. rapiers vs. sabers vs.
>scimitars vs. cutlasses, and I probably forgot a few.
In the Bad Old Days some of this made real difference, as there was a
table crossindexing the effect of armor versus various armor types,
which meant that some times a weapon that did less damage 'hit'
better, so it could still be a meaningful choice. By the time I saw
the game again, this was only abstracted down to, I think,
plate/chain/leather mods, and I'm told not many people even used
those.
Justin Bacon
writes:
>The problem is, if you assume single attacks, almost any round length
>longer than 1-2 seconds is too long. And then you have to set things
>up so the majority of attacks are unsuccessful (as they are in real
>life) to represent realistic combat times, which in practice leads to
>a lot of pointless dice rolling.
>
If I cared about real life, D&D wouldn't be my first game of choice.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Justin Bacon
writes:
>Justin Bacon wrote:
>
>> That was never a well put together description. What they *should* have
>said
>> was:
>>
>> THAC0 - AC - Modifiers
>
>Nicely put. Of course in order to simplify things, they could have
>expressed swords and other items that make hitting easier in terms
>of negatives: "Sword -1, -4 vs. giants". Of course the damage bonus
>would have to have been the reverse of the to-hit bonus...oh bother.
THAC0 is a "roll high" system -- you add the bonus to your attack roll.
>But really, I think there's some psychology involved here-I think
>gamers (like most people) tend to see bonuses in terms of plusses
>to a stat, equate higher numbers with "better", and intuitively
>are a bit more comfortable with adding over subtracting. An additive
>system gives a more visceral feel for when someone's better at
>something- compare "I have a THACO of 20", vs. "I have a 4 THACO".
>Regardless of the rules, which _sounds_ better?
True, but all inconsequential. You subtract positives, so your bonuses are
still positive. Your THAC0 numbers don't change. The system was already
subtractive, it just wasn't clearly stated as such.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Justin Bacon
writes:
>In article <19990823025839...@ngol05.aol.com>,
> tria...@aol.com (Justin Bacon) wrote:
>> GURPS and *any* edition of D&D are hardly the "same thing",
>> except insofar as they are both roleplaying games.
>
>Well, that's the point I was trying to get across. AD&D 3rd Edition is
>heavily skill-based and is headed toward a point-based system. While 3E
>is not as far down the road as the Hero system, it is looking more like
>GURPS the more I hear about it.
There are still classes, attributes are randomly generated, there is no point
system in the GURPSian sense of the term, and action resolution is d20-based.
It ain't GURPS. It ain't even close.
Justin Bacon
tr...@praririe.lakes.com
Len Carpenter
Hey! I actually managed to start an on-topic thread! Do I win a prize?
Clearly, there's a lot that would need to be redressed in 3E to better
represent bows and crossbows--ROF, training times, bow damage values,
and the theory of hit points. These issues have been criticized in 1E
for years, and neither GURPS Fantasy nor Fantasy Hero have gotten them
all quite right, in my view.
Here's another question for those who know their arse from their
arbalest. Assume a fantasy world where gunpowder was never discovered.
The crossbow is adopted as the standard infantry arm, and is used much
like the arquebus and musket were--Spanish tercios, the linear
formations pioneered by Gustavus Adolphus, that sort of thing. Over the
centuries, as much effort is put into perfecting crossbows in this world
as was put into firearms in ours.
As a purely technical issue, excluding the use of magic and advanced
materials science, what would the pinnacle of the military crossbow look
like? What would be the optimum combination of range, stopping power,
and rate of fire that is possible with a machine constructed of wood and
steel? What would be the best and most efficient reloading
mechanism--integrated cranequin, screw device, pulley system?
James A. Renn mentioned the Chinese repeating crossbow, a weapon that
sacrificed poundage for speed. Could such a weapon be perfected to
approach the lethality of 19th Century firearms?
I look forward to both the speculations and the facts.
Len Carpenter
The Wraith
wrote:
>In article <37bfc837...@nntp.powerup.com.au>, wra...@powerup.com.au
>(The Wraith) wrote:
>
>> It is like saying, "'The Game of Thrones' will be a boring book.
>
>If you think that book is fun, wait til you read Clash of Kings!
Already have. I hope the next one comes out soon.
>It doesn't hit you *as* hard at the end,
It was a different sort of an ending. I found it had just as much
emotion and power, but in a more subtle way, and clearly intending a
different effect.
>but it still has that annoying
>quality of making you want to follow each character individually because
>you just have to know what's going to happen to them.
Yeah. So many stories, all in the one book. (Well, two books now.)
--
Now, by popular demand, a new .sig!
I still can't think of anything witty to say, though.
The Wraith
The Wraith
>
>: Doesn't matter. The point still remains that there is nothing new
>: under the sun - well, at least not much. If you go out and buy 3E just
>: in the hope of finding something new, prepare to miss at least 95% of
>: the value of the system. Any real improvement will come in the
>: reconfiguration of elements which have been used before.
>
>I don't think the idea is to create a new system.
Precisely.
The Wraith
D Kohler) wrote:
>
>Sorcerer is new.
Actually, from what I have heard of it, perhaps not. It seems quite
similar to the shamans from the Shamans book. (And now I'll have to
find that book before I'm asked to back that up. :) )
>>> Minor class tweaks such as Mages getting bonus spells for high INT
>
>Been there S&M. I will continue to use the S&M system and ditch the
>sorcerer in all likelihood.
Or perhaps, use S&M in combination with the sorcerer (and a few
tweaks, of course). That's what I am inclined to do, without having
seen the sorceror class.
>I like the new list. I don't like the way they handle priests now. S&M
>did it better, IMO.
S&M didn't really change the concept. It just tweaked the spheres.
back...@my-deja.com
Night...@nightdark.com (Nightshade) wrote:
> lha7...@kyamk.fi (Sami Kivela) wrote:
>
> >mor...@vic.bigpond.net.au (Morgan Vening) wrote in
> ><37c1cf2e.39915078@news-server>:
> >>comparison to a Two Handed Sword? While the degree of advantage may
> >
> >it indoors without requiring a largish room to do it in?
>
> It's largely a myth that greatsword technique requires huge amounts of
> space. Most two handed weapons are useable quite effectively in
> suprisingly small amounts of space.
Very true - it is the untrained use of a weapon whichj usually requires the
space
--
Wilf K. Backhaus
Taylor Walston
Morgan Vening wrote in message <37c217ab.124020988@news-server>...
>
>The problem being, is that typically the advantage (or more accurately
>the penalty) applied to the off hand is not severe enough. Two weapon
>style is typically used in one of two ways. Defensively, in which case
>the off weapon is used to protect the body. Or offensively, in which
>case the off weapon is used primarily to allow for an opening. Rarely,
>in my experience, have I seen two weapons both used on the attack.
>Sometimes a thrust is made with the off hand, but is the result of the
>prime hand being retracted to fulfill the off hand's duties. (Parry
>with the prime, follow with the off).
>
>And representive strength is reduced when wielding two blades. even an
>exceptionally strong and ambidexterous man weilds two blades, he will
>not be able to apply as much force to both blades, as he would to the
>single blade. Simply because of momentum and leverage.
Check out a martial arts class that teaches knife fighting. Leverage is not
an issue when you use your opponents motion against him. Timing and
accuracy are more important. The traditional block with a hook motion at
the end becomes very nasty when you are holding a knife.
As you are pressing the knife against their wrist or forearm its a simple
matter of pulling out and away or even their trying to pull away that
results in a very nasty cut. Fighting with two knives just increases the
damage you can do. While you are on one hand locking up your opponents
attacking limbs the other hand is free to pick targets.
The key here is the fighter with the larger weapon being adept enough to
keep the person with the shorter weapon off of him. AD&D as it stands does
not allow for this. Maybe 3E with its integrated skill system will be more
flexible. I have faced similar situations sparring with Tae Kwan Do
practitioners. Their kicks are absolutely beautiful and if they get your
timing down they are very good at keeping you off of them. Once you break r
hythm or get inside their kicks the fight becomes a different story. Most
of the Tae Kwan Do practitioners I have dealt with have not trained in
infighting. Their key to success has ultimately resided in their ability to
keep me off of them while setting up their weapons to catch me.
>Add to that point control, the increased difficulty of being able to
>control two independant weapons simultaneously, and you start to see
>the problems inherent. A lack of precision co-ordination will
>typically allow more accuracy with a single blade than with two
>weapons. The advantages of having two weapons at hand, and the
>defensive posture are usually enough. Offensively it's a crock.
Controlling two swords, two maces, etc does pose a problem. Again.. there
are a few styles of martial arts that exclusively teach two stick, two
knife, etc techniques. While its granted that every step of an engagement
will not include a double strike there are many cases where an opening can
be made that either encourages a double strike or allows a combination of
strikes that are effectively the same thing. An escrima fighter is
particularly nasty if you try to follow the motion of his sticks. Pretty
soon you are reacting to things that are not there any more and your
reflexes have dropped to almost nothing. I say.. "shoot the guy" if you
have the chance. (-:
Tim Dunn
>I actually managed to start an on-topic thread! Do I win a prize?
Sure, collect your no-prize at the door! =)
>James A. Renn mentioned the Chinese repeating crossbow, a weapon that
>sacrificed poundage for speed. Could such a weapon be perfected to
>approach the lethality of 19th Century firearms?
Doubtful, if it's the same weapon I'm thinking of. First off, the
one I saw (a picture and description of in a book about weapons, not
IRL) was designed to be wall-mounted (think pintle mount). The
cocking arm was also the magazine. The firing cycle went something
like this:
0) start with a discharged weapon. The cocking arm is a long lever
that pivots near the prod along the x-axis, from the pov of the
user. The magazine is a gravity-fed box that in turns pivots
off the cocking arm.
1) Crank the cocking arm all the way forward. The cranking arm
will end up far forward of the prod itself, while the magazine
drags along the bolt track drops to engage the bowstring.
2) Crank the cocking arm back. I suspect you can play with the
pivot points between the cocking arm and the prod as well as
between the cocking arm and the magazine to maximize leverage.
Anyhow, this is drawing the bostring back.
3) There is no trigger. Somehow (insert mechanical handwaving here)
At the end of the travel of the cocking arm, the bowstring notches
a bolt and lets fly, much like a double-action trigger pull.
On a more modern note, Barrow offered a 'break-open' crossbow some
time ago that hinged near the handgrip (think a double-barrel shot-
gun open for extraction / loading), with the break open action
causign a claw to draw back the bowstring. Perhaps that? A
magazine isn't too hard to do, IMPO -- it's the draw mechanism.
tim
James A & Tarren Y Renn
> As a purely technical issue, excluding the use of magic and advanced
> materials science, what would the pinnacle of the military crossbow look
> like? What would be the optimum combination of range, stopping power,
> and rate of fire that is possible with a machine constructed of wood and
> steel? What would be the best and most efficient reloading
> mechanism--integrated cranequin, screw device, pulley system?
Well... a fantasy world such as this might invent the compound crossbow
and bow. In S. M. Stirling's books -Island in the Sea of Time- and -Against
a Tide of Years- he has a crossbow that is cocked with a ratchet. It takes
six "pumps" to fully engage the crossbow and it's in the 300 lb. range. This
might work in a fantasy world. Under mounted bolt "clips" might be
developed. Don't forget pelletbows. In the real world they experimented with
using rifled barrels with a pelletbow. Just think of a rifled barreled
breechloading pelletbow with a 500+ lbs. of force... can you say lethal? I
knew you could... :) We didn't create this weapon because there was no need,
we had gunpowder. But if we didn't... who knows... :) That's all I can
think of off the top of my head. Time to go hunt breakfast.
Craig Barkhouse
> Original D&D (OD&D) did not have races as classes. That was the later
> game called (at the time) simply D&D.
My apologies. I was referring to D&D (the one with basic, expert, etc.) and
used the term "original" to distinguish it from the upcoming 3rd edition,
which will also just be called D&D. I know there were several printings of
the original D&D rulebooks; the basic set I have was printed around 1981.
Were demi-human classes not in the first printing of the D&D rules? If does
OD&D refer to something else entirely, before D&D came about in the form we
all knew?
Peter Meilinger
: One of AD&D's chief problems is that it can't decide what level of
: abstraction it wants to use -- So you not only have shortswords and
: longswords, you have:
: knives vs. daggers
: and
: shortswords vs. longswords vs. khopesh swords vs. rapiers vs. sabers vs.
: scimitars vs. cutlasses, and I probably forgot a few.
See, I think that's one of the cool things about AD&D. It could be
handled better - the long sword is clearly better than any other
one-handed sword I can think of - but I like having a lot of variety
to choose from.
Pete
Kendall P. Bullen
<cr...@group.com> wrote:
>My apologies. I was referring to D&D (the one with basic, expert, etc.) and
>used the term "original" to distinguish it from the upcoming 3rd edition,
>which will also just be called D&D. I know there were several printings of
>the original D&D rulebooks; the basic set I have was printed around 1981.
>Were demi-human classes not in the first printing of the D&D rules? If does
>OD&D refer to something else entirely, before D&D came about in the form we
>all knew?
Dungeons & Dragons started in . . . what, 1974? That game is the
predecessor to AD&D. The Basic D&D is a totally different game, which
came after the truly original Dungeons & Dragons game the Gygax & Arneson
wrote.
Cheers,
Kendall
--
Kendall P. Bullen Web: http://www.his.com/~kendall/
E-mail: kendall@-->^^^^^^^
I hate spam & UCE. Please fix my address if you must e-mail me.
But please, NEVER send me COPIES of Usenet postings.
Join Gaylaxicon 1999! http://www.lambdasf.org/gaylaxicon1999/
Mike Short
> >In the real world they helped change the face of warfare.
> >
> Where ?
>
> Please give examples.
>
Crossbows have been around in Europe since the 3rd or 4th century. They began
to see common use in armed conflict from the 11th century and remained in use
until the late 17th century.
The military use of the xbow was probably brought to the UK by the Normans in
the 11th C. and although most european countries favoured the xbow in the 15th
and 16th centuries, England was pretty much alone in favouring the use of the
longbow.
The Swiss were famous for their infantry/archer squares with halberdiers at
the edges and xbows at the centre and the Burgundian mercenaries of France
made quite a name for themselves with their xbow companies.
The French xbowmen did a good deal to mitigate the disastrous defeat at Crecy
which although it is touted as a victory that proved the power of the longbow,
was more of a testament to the shift towards ranged combat.
Mike...
Mike Short
> Admittedly not under combat stress, but I used to recock a modern
> stirrup hunting crossbow in rather less than six seconds. I probably
> was capable of doing it in three or four, though that involved a
> particularly dangerous corner cutting manuever that I'd not do today
> and paid for once. I think I'll still stand by being able to do it in
> that time with a light.
As you say, not under close combat conditions which is where you usually are
in D&D combat. I have done a lot of target archery and a fair amount of
field and LARP archery too. IME, the target archery firing speeds are about
half that for field events. (For those that don't know, field archery
consists of running through a (wooded) course with a bare (no sights) longbow
and loosing a single shot at a number of targets. No ranges are marked and
you are timed on the course as well as marked for accuracy)
LARP archery is a nightmare and most closely coincides with what I think of
as D&D style. Reloading is a tricky proposition when you can't take your eye
of the opposition to make sure you don't get whacked. Then there's the small
matter of keeping the bolt/arrow where it's supposed to be while you try to
line up a shot, /still/ keeping an eye on the opposition to make sure you
don't get whacked. Finally, there's the need to make sure you don't take out
your own people whilst firing into melee. from experience, I'd say you'd be
a /very/ good archer to get of more than one shot every 10-12 seconds with a
bow and around 30s for a crossbow. That said, the crossbow is *much* easier
to aim in close combat than a bow.
> Well, outside a variable hit point system. In a D&D style system, the
> problem is no mundane weapon will do that, as with a reasonable level,
> they're simply unlikely to do enough to characters above 1-3rd levels
> to be that much concern.
And there's the rub. I agree entirely.
Mike...
Mike Short
> >I feel that crossbows should do great amounts of damage, greater than a longbow, but
> >be slower. I think they should have slightly better penetration than a longbow also.
>
> I'm not sure I'm convinced that lights would do better damage than a
> longbow. They were easier to learn to use, and crossbows have the
> virtue of a pretty flat trajectory, but I'm not sure the damage is
> that much superior. On the other hand, if you base it simply off
> poundage, they'd almost have to be.
>
the point where they overcome the armour, pass through the body and exit the armour on
the other side. The amount of damage they can do is limited by the piercing nature of
the attack. Untipped wooden missiles against unarmoured (or softly-armoured) targets
is another matter.
> > Power
> > Both were capable of piercing plate armor at tactical ranges with a correctly
> >tempered arrowhead."
>
> Sounds about right.
>
Don't forget that when fired at extreme range, longbow damage barely tapers off if shot
on a high arc. There is anecdotal evidence from Crecy and Agincourt that some poor
wretches were wounded or killed by longbow arrows that had already passed entirely
through a fully armoured knight.
Mike...
Mike Short
> You're forgetting the big advantage of crossbows over bows: training time.
And you seem to be overlooking the four- or five-to-one differential in firing
rates against what (in real terms) is near parity of damage potential.
> In
> the real world it takes years to train a longbowman. You can train a crossbowman
> in a few weeks. Well within the time a levied army would have.
That's true as far as it goes. But how did England maintain such a huge number of
yeomen? Simple, they basically made the entire middle class practice archery. By
law. A little drastic, perhaps, but it worked well for several centuries.
> As far as the
> power of crossbows? The early ones weren't any more powerful than bows.
> Especially if they are using wood, bone or composite prods (the bow). But if
> your campaign has full or field plate in it, it has the technological level for
> iron and true steel prods. And if you have steel prods... you have *real* power
> at your disposal. Five hundred, seven hundred or more pounds of force can be
> had. Such crossbows are very slow to load, but nothing short of firearms beats
> them for penetrating power.
It's not just about pounds of force though. As I have said elsewhere, sure the
armour defeating potential of a crossbow /can/ be greater than that of a bow but
the through-damage potential is almost identical. In practical terms, there are
very few forms of armour that would not be routinely penetrated by a longbow and
almost none that could ward off attacks from a truly heavy crossbow.
In D&D, the armour defeating properties of a weapon and it's damage are dealt with
separately. I agree that the damage levels are generally too low, but I would
have thought that purely in comparative terms, only the heavier crossbow damages
need to be raised.
> Though I wouldn't want to be the guy riding in *front* of the crossbowman with a
> readied weapon. :)
Nor would I want to be the owner of a crossbow that is kept continually cocked.
There is no surer way to wreck the limbs and drag the mechanism out of alignment
than leaving it fully cocked and loaded for prolonged periods.
Mike...
Craig Barkhouse
and
> >used the term "original" to distinguish it from the upcoming 3rd edition,
> >which will also just be called D&D. I know there were several printings
of
> >the original D&D rulebooks; the basic set I have was printed around 1981.
> >Were demi-human classes not in the first printing of the D&D rules? If
does
> >OD&D refer to something else entirely, before D&D came about in the form
we
> >all knew?
>
> Dungeons & Dragons started in . . . what, 1974? That game is the
> predecessor to AD&D. The Basic D&D is a totally different game, which
> came after the truly original Dungeons & Dragons game the Gygax & Arneson
> wrote.
Right, D&D started in the early 70s. There were several printings of the
rulebooks, and the one I own was around 1981. I believe that was the final
printing. This is the game I referred to as original D&D. As far as I was
aware, there was only D&D and AD&D (not sure exactly when AD&D came about...
late 70s or early 80s?). Now people are talking about "OD&D" and "Basic
D&D" -- what are there, 3 or 4 different games out there? I haven't played
for the last decade so there very well could have been some new products
printed, maybe a simplified D&D that they called "Basic", I don't know.
Maybe someone can clarify the situation.
Having said that, let me refer to the game whose rules were stable
throughout the 80s, whose rules were distributed in boxed form consisting of
five sets (basic, expert, companion, master, immortal) as "D&D". D&D used
10 second rounds, not 6 second rounds. 10 seconds vs 6 seconds is not a big
difference, but I thought I'd point out the error just for the sake of
correctness. Either duration is a lot different from 1 minute. Nightshade:
D&D as described in the ~ 1981 rulebook *did* have races as character
classes (Dwarf, Elf, Halfling). You couldn't have a Dwarven thief or
anything like that; a Dwarf had a class "Dwarf". Only humans could choose a
class. All *races* had a specific level limitation in D&D.
If there is a third or fourth D&D game that I don't know about, then can't
comment on how long its rounds are, whether it separated races from classes,
or whether races have level limitations. Also, it could be that the game
changed so much from the early 70s to the early 80s (when the rulebooks
stabilized) that the game I played in the 80s could not truly be called
"original D&D". Maybe the game in the 70s did not have races as classes. I
don't go far enough back to comment.
Nightshade
>> I suspect you are refering to a later game than him because true
>> Original D&D (OD&D) did not have races as classes. That was the later
>> game called (at the time) simply D&D.
>
>My apologies. I was referring to D&D (the one with basic, expert, etc.) and
>used the term "original" to distinguish it from the upcoming 3rd edition,
>which will also just be called D&D. I know there were several printings of
>the original D&D rulebooks; the basic set I have was printed around 1981.
>Were demi-human classes not in the first printing of the D&D rules? If does
>OD&D refer to something else entirely, before D&D came about in the form we
>all knew?
Original D&D was the very first version of the game published; in it's
original form it was three digest sized books published in a similar
sized box. It did not include the thief until it's first suppliment
(Greyhawk) but had races as seperate issues from classes (though with
the same general kinds of restrictions later applied in AD&D).
Nightshade
>> >It's easier to conceal, it's cheaper, and you can actually swing/stab with
>> >it indoors without requiring a largish room to do it in?
>>
>> It's largely a myth that greatsword technique requires huge amounts of
>> space. Most two handed weapons are useable quite effectively in
>> suprisingly small amounts of space.
>
>Very true - it is the untrained use of a weapon whichj usually requires the
>space
Similar to the way untrained users tend to swish fencing swords around
in pretty much unnecessary and counterproductive way.
Nightshade
If you don't care at all about real life, then any round length
whatsoever and any specs on weapons and armor whatsoever are
acceptable.
Nightshade
>>Just remember that trained fighters will feint and circle, looking for
>>openings. Averaged out, you're maybe punching once every 5 to 6 seconds,
>>and most of them aren't doing much besides testing the opponent.
>
>Thus enforcing the idea that a one-minute combat round, with about a 50%
>chance of landing a significant blow (one that could kill a normal human),
>is about right.
No. The problem is, it can all too easily happen much faster than
that. Given what hit points are supposed to represent (which is, in
part, defensive ability) 6 seconds is about right. A minute is way
too long because it means low level fighters can all too easily fight
for a long time without doing anything to each other, and that's just
not in practice the way it works. Not with melee weapons at least
(missile weaponry can be a different story).
>I've also done about a decade of simulated sword-fighting (while in armor,
>such as the SCA) in combat situations, and found that more time is spent
>getting in position and either chasing or retreating than is actually spent
>throwing blows that could cause damage.
That's true, but consider how very fast a disabling blow can occur,
too. I've watched a rather large number of SCA combats, and I've
rarely seen one drag on the way a low level combat with halfway well
armored opponents does.
>
>Short rounds might make sense for handguns, but in HTH, longer rounds make
>much more realistic sense. It also improves gaming fun (IMHO), because
>player actions aren't limited by some second-by-second clock.
>
>Gygax, believe it or not, pretty much had it right back in the 1970s (IMHO,
>again).
I think you're not really thinking about how long a fight can take at
low levels in D&D here. I've seen SCA duels that took a while, but
they were among people who were very good or where no one wanted to
commit. But it's all too easy for a fight between two first level
fighters to take eight minutes under the AD&D2 system, and that's much
longer than the routine combats I saw with compareable armors.
Nightshade
>That's true as far as it goes. But how did England maintain such a huge number of
>yeomen? Simple, they basically made the entire middle class practice archery. By
>law. A little drastic, perhaps, but it worked well for several centuries.
It's the same solution the Swiss take to their military in the modern
world, essentially. They want a good sized force but don't want to
support a big standing army, so every adult male is pretty much in
what in the U.S. we'd consider the Army Reserve.
>It's not just about pounds of force though. As I have said elsewhere, sure the
>armour defeating potential of a crossbow /can/ be greater than that of a bow but
>the through-damage potential is almost identical. In practical terms, there are
>very few forms of armour that would not be routinely penetrated by a longbow and
>almost none that could ward off attacks from a truly heavy crossbow.
Given I've seen a reconstructed light ballista penetrate a piece of
salvaged 1950's era tank armor, that's no supprise.
>
>In D&D, the armour defeating properties of a weapon and it's damage are dealt with
>separately. I agree that the damage levels are generally too low, but I would
>have thought that purely in comparative terms, only the heavier crossbow damages
>need to be raised.
Well, part of the problem is that the missile weapons damages in
general may be understated, at least among the better ones.
>Nor would I want to be the owner of a crossbow that is kept continually cocked.
>There is no surer way to wreck the limbs and drag the mechanism out of alignment
>than leaving it fully cocked and loaded for prolonged periods.
Though this is less true of some of the ones made of modern materials.
But yes, it's the same reason you don't leave autoloader magazines
loaded continuously if you can help it. Ruins the spring.
Nightshade
>In article <37c7bd6d.6807349@news>, Nightshade wrote:
>> Admittedly not under combat stress, but I used to recock a modern
>> stirrup hunting crossbow in rather less than six seconds. I probably
>> was capable of doing it in three or four, though that involved a
>> particularly dangerous corner cutting manuever that I'd not do today
>> and paid for once. I think I'll still stand by being able to do it in
>> that time with a light.
>
>As you say, not under close combat conditions which is where you usually are
>in D&D combat. I have done a lot of target archery and a fair amount of
Actually, during the days when we played D&D, no one pretty much used
bows while they were in melee range. It was counterproductive on many
grounds. At worse you'd be within spell and other missile ranges, and
since people reload guns at speeds that don't differ appreciably in
and out of combat on occasion in the real world, I don't see any real
reason to make the distinction for crossbows and bows. You either let
the situation distract you or you don't; but I don't see incoming
arrow fire as being any more distracting than being shot at.
Nightshade
>
>Hey! I actually managed to start an on-topic thread! Do I win a prize?
>
>Clearly, there's a lot that would need to be redressed in 3E to better
>represent bows and crossbows--ROF, training times, bow damage values,
>and the theory of hit points. These issues have been criticized in 1E
>for years, and neither GURPS Fantasy nor Fantasy Hero have gotten them
>all quite right, in my view.
Since the Hero System doesn't really deal with ROF very well, that
latter is no suprise.
>As a purely technical issue, excluding the use of magic and advanced
>materials science, what would the pinnacle of the military crossbow look
>like? What would be the optimum combination of range, stopping power,
>and rate of fire that is possible with a machine constructed of wood and
>steel? What would be the best and most efficient reloading
>mechanism--integrated cranequin, screw device, pulley system?
I think that's an issue that partly turns on material science and
engineering issues I don't feel qualified to comment on. But the
question is almost impossible to address without dealing with what
assumptions are present on how troops are armored routinely in the
world involved. The heavier the armor, the less viable light, rapid
firing crossbows are.
>
>James A. Renn mentioned the Chinese repeating crossbow, a weapon that
>sacrificed poundage for speed. Could such a weapon be perfected to
>approach the lethality of 19th Century firearms?
Define '19th Century firearms'. That covers quite a range of weapons
lethality.
OmniTechnica
Nightshade wrote in message <37c7df3e.2830340@news>...
<lots snipped>
>I think you're not really thinking about how long a fight can take at
>low levels in D&D here. I've seen SCA duels that took a while, but
>they were among people who were very good or where no one wanted to
>commit. But it's all too easy for a fight between two first level
>fighters to take eight minutes under the AD&D2 system, and that's much
>longer than the routine combats I saw with compareable armors.
Honest question: How exhausting would an 8 minute fight, (for your life, in
armour etc) be? Is this covered in AD&D?
Jim Davies
(Nightshade) wrote:
>I'm not sure I'm convinced that lights would do better damage than a
>longbow. They were easier to learn to use, and crossbows have the
>virtue of a pretty flat trajectory, but I'm not sure the damage is
>that much superior. On the other hand, if you base it simply off
>poundage, they'd almost have to be.
Bear in mind that the energy of a bow is half the pull force times the
square of the draw length (assuming a simple non-compound bow and
ignoring other complications such as the mass of the prod).
So while a crossbow might have a 400 lb pull against the 150 lb of a
longbow, it's only pulled back by about 15" compared with 30" for the
longbow.
So in that sense, the longbow has about 50% more energy.
It comes down to accuracy, strength and training requirements. While a
ongbow can do a lot of damage very quickly, that's only valid for a
high-strength fighter of significant skill.
Jim Davies
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Jim Davies
>tria...@aol.com (Justin Bacon) spake on the day of 24 Aug 1999
>02:46:30 GMT:
>
>>The Short Sword can be used in conjunction with a shield; a Two-Handed Sword
>>cannot.
>
>Depends on the balance and your strength. I've held at least four
>re-enactment steel claymores. Three of them were well enough made that I
>could use them single handedly, at least for a while.
In that case, it's a bastard sword.
More to the point, a D&D shield gives an unrealistically low benefit.
Unless it's magic, it's just -1 to AC. Assuming a typical to-hit roll
of 13 or so, that's only a 14% difference.
In my rubber-sword LARP days, I found that a shield was far, far more
effective than that. In RQ terms, most people seemed to have shield
skills in the 80% range...
As for two weapon use, one must consider that simply holding two
weapons does not allow one to attack twice as fast. I fence foil
(mostly). If I were given a dagger as well, I doubt I would be
attacking much with it. And as for two foils...
A second weapon is far more use for parrying than for attacking. It's
fine for a second attack once the first attack has drawn the parry,
but (IMLE) it's going to be a) a distraction b) in the way and c) in
the wrong place.
For unarmed combat, a) and b) above don't apply, but c) still does.
Obviously, training will alleviate these problems, but this is shown
in very few game systems. It is, in most cases, a completely separate
Paul King
"Craig Barkhouse" <cr...@ariel.hq.group.com> wrote:
>
>Right, D&D started in the early 70s.
OD&D did. The set starting with Basic D&D is later, I think late 70s -
certainly around the same time as AD&D which started to appear in 1977 and
was completed in 1979. Certainly I thought it would have been around in
1980.
There were several printings of the
>rulebooks, and the one I own was around 1981. I believe that was the final
>printing. This is the game I referred to as original D&D. As far as I was
>aware, there was only D&D and AD&D (not sure exactly when AD&D came about...
>late 70s or early 80s?). Now people are talking about "OD&D" and "Basic
>D&D" -- what are there, 3 or 4 different games out there? I haven't played
>for the last decade so there very well could have been some new products
>printed, maybe a simplified D&D that they called "Basic", I don't know.
>Maybe someone can clarify the situation.
OD&D was printed as three booklets, "Men and Magic", "Monsters and
Treasure" and ?. It had 4 supplements the first of which (Greyhawk) was
all but essential (although apparently the Chainmail skirmish rules were an
alternative).
The character class rules were much like AD&D first edition apart from
having fewer races and only three classes (Fighter Magic-User and Cleric).
Elves were allowed to multi-class Fighter/MU. Without the thief character
class IIRC there were no other multi-class options - although Greyhawk
changed that.
>
>Having said that, let me refer to the game whose rules were stable
>throughout the 80s, whose rules were distributed in boxed form consisting of
>five sets (basic, expert, companion, master, immortal) as "D&D".
That's the version often called "Basic" as for a while only that Basic
rulebook was available.
Mr. Tines
On Tue, 24 Aug 1999 12:13:49 -0400, in <rs5h3f...@corp.supernews.com>
"Craig Barkhouse" <cr...@ariel.hq.group.com> wrote.....
> Right, D&D started in the early 70s. There were several printings of the
> rulebooks, and the one I own was around 1981. I believe that was the
final
> printing. This is the game I referred to as original D&D. As far as I
was
1974 - Original D&D (3 books - Men&Magic, Monsters&Treasure,
Underground&Wilderness); Races - human, elf, dwarf, hobbit and
maybe half elf. Severe race limits on class (e.g. hobbit fighters
maxed out at 4th level). Classes Figher, MagicUser, Cleric.
Bare skin AC = 9, Hit dice d8 fighters, d6 Clerics, d4 mages
1975-6 Supplements Greyhawk (added thief - d4 hp/level - and different
damages
for different weapons), Blackmoor (monk, assassin, ?paladin classes),
Eldritch Wizardry (druid class and psi powers), Gods, GemiGods and Heroes
(Original Legends and Lore)
1977-9 AD&D, which was a significantly tidied up version of the above;
added many new spells, classes from TSR magazines (ranger, illuionist,
and the completely rewritten bard); increased hit-die sizes one step
for non-MUs and bare skin AC = 10
1980 Basic D&D - Simplified and not entirely compatible version
covering levels 1-3, race-as-class idea first introduced.
Retained OD&D small spell lists, small hit dice and AC9 for bare skin.
1981-4ish - Expert, Companion, Masters sets building BD&D up to
36th level in a different manner from AD&D
Subsequently the B/E/C/M D&D was referred to just as D&D,
yielding continual confusion with the original 1974 system.
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Nightshade
I can't answer for the SCA folks; I only watched from time to time,
was never a member or fighter. It's hard to model from my experience
as a fencer, because fencing are a lot of short bursts of activity
altenrating with a lot of, well, tense standing around. I know I was
pretty bushed by the end of a session, but then, even then I wasn't in
tip top shape. On the other hand, I wasn't wearing armor or doing it
in incliment conditions.
There are certainly historical incidents of battles that took hours,
but the question is how much of that was actual combat and how much
was simply manuevering around (which I imaging could be tiring
enough...)
Nightshade
>On Tue, 24 Aug 1999 04:33:05 GMT, Night...@nightdark.com
>It comes down to accuracy, strength and training requirements. While a
>ongbow can do a lot of damage very quickly, that's only valid for a
>high-strength fighter of significant skill.
Whereas someone with fairly minimal training, and only so-so shape can
make a nasty hole through someone with a crossbow. Yes.
Fitz
(Nightshade) wrote:
>I think you're not really thinking about how long a fight can take at
>low levels in D&D here. I've seen SCA duels that took a while, but
>they were among people who were very good or where no one wanted to
>commit. But it's all too easy for a fight between two first level
>fighters to take eight minutes under the AD&D2 system, and that's much
>longer than the routine combats I saw with compareable armors.
Bear in mind that the rules enforced by SCA duels are quite
artificial. An SCA duel is not much like a real-life fight to the
death - the prohibitions on attacking the hands and the legs below the
knees are a glaring example. Many of the so-called "killing" blows
I've observed (and experienced) in SCA combat would do little more
than irritate an armoured warrior.
I'm not saying that your point is in error - eight or ten minutes for
an average fight is way too long - but using the SCA as a yardstick
for reality in combat is a mistake.
Fitz
<t...@mediaone.net> wrote:
> Well... a fantasy world such as this might invent the compound crossbow
>and bow. In S. M. Stirling's books -Island in the Sea of Time- and -Against
>a Tide of Years- he has a crossbow that is cocked with a ratchet. It takes
>six "pumps" to fully engage the crossbow and it's in the 300 lb. range. This
>might work in a fantasy world.
This is exactly the sort of system used on late medieval heavy
crossbows. The ratchet device was called a cranequin, and used a
ratchetted screw turned by a rotating side handle (imagine an egg
beater, or a hand drill, if anyone still uses non-electric ones) to
draw the bow. It's still not particularly quick, but it allowed
stupendously powerful crossbows to be drawn. There's one example in
the Tower of London Armoury with a draw weight of 850 pounds.