Re: Many-onto-one combats

From: Kevin Blackburn <kevin_at_...>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 23:17:18 +0100


In article <3F1C57BB.5060003_at_...>, Benedict Adamson <yahoo_at_...> writes
>Kevin Blackburn wrote:
>...

[snip]
>
>...
>> It also offers a many-to-one penalty of -3
>> for each defence after the first, with no impact on the attack of the
>> One onto one of the Many. These seem implausible even in a heroic game,
>
>I don't think so. Imagine the One's descrtiption of his action is 'I
>ignore the others and concentrate my attack on one of them'. That tends
>to be the implied default when an attack is described in our group. e.g.
>'I hack at his [note the singular] neck, trying to chop his head off!'

But then the GM sort of has the right respond - "... and then the rest of them attack you while you concentrate on Rurik, against your default resistance of 12, as you were ignoring them" and it then all gets very messy.

>If a player said 'I lay into the shield wall, cutting left and right,
>trying to cut them all down.' we would probably agree that the action
>was risky and therefore requires a high AP bid.

Yes, but a high AP bid is no particular risk according to the mechanics if the rating differences are too great - the mighty hero laying into Fyrdmen, for instance, with a mastery and hero points to spare.

>> This is really a little too detailed for the rather free flowing Hero
>> Wars rules, but if something is going horribly wrong in what the rules
>> say and what feels right to happen, then pulling out the above rules
>> might help.
>
>I don't think we've had any major problems with the HW rules for
>followers in extended contests. The only related problem was that the
>TN's of followers, being linked to the bast ability of their leader,
>advanced too rapidly. I believe this is fixed in HQ.

I'm GMing a game that's run over 96 sessions now, with pretty much no PC deaths - one PC can scrape into W4 for Close Combat in special circumstances - pit that against an enemy clan using the rules as written, probably with their clan champion out of the combat due to that PC's friend's effects, and it does not go how it feels it ought to go.

>In particular, the rules do not distract from what really matters:
>evocative descriptions of what the player characters are doing.

Indeed - these musings of mine are for when the GM wants to follow the rules but they don't seem to be working, not for normal use in a game.

-- 
Kevin Blackburn                         Kevin_at_...

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