Re: Questions (re archery)

From: flynnkd2 <flynnkd_at_...>
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2004 23:12:28 -0000

• In HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com, "Mike Holmes" <homeydont_at_h...> wrote:
  > >From: "flynnkd2" <flynnkd_at_p...>
  >
  > > > How do people in general handle missile fire?
  > >
  > >They dont. HQ and HW do not handle missile fire well at all.
  ... ... ...
  >
  > And, in the end, if you can't or don't want to think of an answer,
  just say
  > that the opponent gains instead. So I can't see the problem.
  >
  > Mike
  >
  >
  

I was trying to make it a discussion, so I was in part answering my own questions... ))

You dont have my players.... a recidivist bunch of 35+ year old D&D players... they pick up a bow and want it to do something to the enemy, not to them. ))

One of my players was a hunter, he thought he would sit back and shoot things (it always worked in D&D...), he put skill points into shoot AND melee. Another player was a Humakti, he put everything into melee.

They ended up having close to a mastery difference after augments etc. To combat the Humakti I had to use combat creatures with similar levels of combat skill, or better. So when the archer went to shoot at them he nearly always lost (and in a simple contest it was just quicker)... well 75% of the time...

He whined and eventually just gave up on using his bow. This is not good that a game system would cause him to do this.

I tried using lots of weak archers at various points, they simply became an AP battery for the target. My players would run out and yell "Shoot ME, shoot ME!!!" So I stopped doing that.

Explaining this away in a narrative fashion is easy, yes I can make up some story, but it ISNT reality. Reality is that an archer reasonably happy with his safety (defended position) is quite effective. An archer behind a wall is in heaven. Lots of archers shooting at targets in the open should be effective...

Thinks of the classic ending to "1001 Spartans" where the persians get sick of trying to melee them and stand back and mow them down with arrows... the sky turns black...

Multiple attack penalties are one way around this, shoot lots of archers at a single target and wear them down, bidding 1AP each till they are weak... works fine.

But a single (player) archer seems to have serious problems within the game. Duplicating Legolas is very hard in HQ. So we made some rules up about 'missing', where unless there WAS a good narrative reason they suffered no negative effects.

Archery is a lot to do with morale... a happy archer is a better archer. Unhappy archers tend to run away... so from a narrative point of view you can always say "You missed and it discouraged you, you feel defeated..." But then you are starting to use morale modifiers, so my players would start asking for positive benefits... "I am behind a wall, can I get something etc etc"... I dont want to have to go that far if i can avoid it... and there is no distinction in HQ for 'defensive' modifiers, any bonus becomes aggressive as it is all subsumed into your skill rating... although I suppose you could allow a wall to count as a -^20 AP or something...