Quote:
Originally Posted by ecz
Nobody ever complained on this since 1987.
|
No disrespect intended, honorable
ecz, but to me, this statement ranks among the least believable I have ever heard with respect to RPGs. I've been playing RPGs for a long, long time. I've never been around a more vocal group of complainers and subjective judges of "fairness" than RPG players. It's a player complaint about this issue that drove me to start this thread, so "never?" I guess your mileage may vary. Mine certainly does!
I'm new to Melee. Before the Kickstarter showed up I think I might have heard TFT (or Wizard or Melee) mentioned once or twice, and I've been playing RPGs and Wargames since about 1979. TFT has long been a unicorn system to me: never actually seen in the wild. I don't have any "experienced" players to guide me on this journey aside from you all. I only know one guy who actually played Melee and Wizard from way-way back, and it was so long ago he didn't remember anything at all. Also, he was a kid then.
Aside from the Squad Leader mention -- and it's been at least 30 years since I've played that game, so I'm taking that poster's word for it -- I don't recall any RPG (war games are different!) where a successful hit could result in no damage without some kind of rule-exception in the form of a power/talent/spell/condition/whatever. But that said, a Zero Damage result rule is very war game-y, and Melee is much closer to a war game than an RPG. If any of that is true, then I can see why this rule exists. What gives me pause is that I would think there would be at least one example in the text of this occurring. It seems pretty significant to me, and all three rulebooks fail to bring this up as an example across numerous examples of combat.
I have another game tomorrow. It's the continuation of the one that prompted this topic. I'm going to present all this information to them, including the statement from
ecz that no one has ever complained about this in 32 years! That'll show 'em. ;-) But seriously, there may be a very good reason that Zero Damage on a successful hit is an expected result and I'm starting to think that it might make the game less deadly. The argument about "lighter" weapons having other advantages is a good one, too.
I need more reflection on this. I'll let you know what the feedback from my group is.