IMO, if there is a crossbow bolt flying at your head, Sword Fighting is not a relevant skill. XX and shield would be but with at least -5. Run Away would be but with -10 or so.
My players are getting a hefty respect for that happy bowman on the hilltop when he lets fly with Archery 5w and they have to reply with Dodge 13.
The one player with a ranged magical attack still gets turned into a pin-cushion because I don't allow "Fire bolt" as a defense against an arrow. He uses Dodge when the NPC is bidding and the NPC uses natural magic resistance when the player is bidding. In a simple contest I go straight ranged vrs ranged.
This works well, it works quickly and it makes ranged weaponry useful again.
W.
www.celtic-webs.com/glorantha
Check out the Knights du Vaillant in the Campaigns section.
~~~^~~~
Wesley Quadros
wquadros_at_...
(:)-)
> -----Original Message-----
> 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...
>
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