Re: To fight or not... with what?

From: KYER, JEFFREY <jeff.kyer_at_...>
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 09:30:48 -0400

Unfortunately so, but its not uncommon mistake -- its hard to see on the first go round inthe rules. When you get any sort of combat skill, its considered a technique of your Close or Ranged combat skills.

And you get close/ranged combat at the best of your various keywords. I think it should have been red-flagged in character creation. The sample character in HW shows how these would look on a character sheet.

For example, a Heortling Vingan Warrior gets the following abilities. (this is off the top of my head so its fast and dirty)

Heort: Spear and Shield Fighting 13
Warrior: Sword and Shield Fighting 17
Vingan: Javilin 17

These are all Combat skills so she would have Close Combat 17 (Spear and Shield, Sword and Shield) Ranged Combat 17 (Javilin)

If she were to try to wrestle or dodge a blow, that would be improvised Close Combat and be at a 17-3 = 14

Any new techinques she learned would remove the improv penalties. There are variant rules for raising the combat techniques individually as abilities.

If she were to use on of her 1w or the 5w skill she got on one of the above abiltiies, she would have that combat skill with all the related techniques (all Close Combat or all Ranged Combat) -- barring Improv penalties of course.

A useful thing to check its the faq and some of the sample characters out there -- Wesley Quatros's site has some interesting starting characers (and some damned odd older ones that are kinda variants).

> Strangely enough she hadn't any!

She had Close combat (see above)  

> Then I looked at the character sheet and in the box about combat
> abillities I found "close combat" and "ranged combat". Since these
> are on the character sheet I began wondering about adding these two
> combat abillities to the warrior keyword (or heortling cultural
> keyword?) and then using the "fight with spear and shield" as a
> speciality within "close combat" instead. Strangely enough, a Vingan
> will have "spearfighting" from the cultural keyword, the warrior
> keyword /and/ from the magic keyword...
>
> My way all warriors will have a generic "close combat" abillity. As
> it stands right now it looks kind of odd I think.

Yes, that's how it works.

Think of it as an Affinity with Close Combat with the various techniques being feats.  

> Reactions? Have I missed anything important?
>
> /andreas

Jeff