Quote:
Originally Posted by A Ladder
Heroic Charge + Flurry of blows for two to three enemies? Did you let him do more than 2 attacks with Rapid Strike? If so, did you make him pay the FP for that? Heroic Charge (1 FP) + Flurry of Blows (1 FP per attack, p. B357) for two attacks costs 3 FP...he should be down to half move/dodge in about two or three turns.
Yeah, I wouldn't allow the Eye stabbing technique personally but YMMV. IMO, you need to send enemies that don't have eyes or eye vitals: Slimes, Oozes, Ghosts, Worms, Electric Jellies, Zombies, Skeletons, etc. are your friends. Give enemies Nicitating Membrane (DR on the eyes).
Take a look at the parrying large weapon rules p. B376. His rapiers are going to snap if he tries to parry an ogre's club, any type of polearm, or other large object (thrown boulders perhaps?).
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mlangsdorf
What did he do after the did the Heroic Charge, stabbed two guys in the eyeballs, and then was attacked by a couple of crossbowmen with meteoric iron bolts? Can't parry at that point. You were also letting him break the rules twice: You can't Flurry on a Heroic Charge (MA 131) or make multiple attacks on a Move and Attack (Basic 370) . . . .Targeted Attack (Rapier Thrust/Eye) sounds like it was the biggest offender, and it's a pretty big offender: essentially +5 to hit a valuable target for 6 CP. DF is certainly a game where you can easily justify sending waves of foes that don't have eyes (or brains) at the swashbuckler, but not having it in the rules is also a good solution. Alternately, limit the amount of penalty you can buy off to -3 or the normal limit - poking eyeballs at -6 is less appealing.
I personally don't like Heroic Charge, and don't use it in my games. But I don't think bring OFWT or even the DWA technique into your game is necessarily going to break it.
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I didn't let him use Heroic Charge and Flurry of Blows on the same turn or more than two attacks with Rapid Strike, and I made him pay the full FP. Usually, he'd open up combat with a Heroic Charge (1 FP). Once he was in, he would use Flurry of Blows (2 FP) when he felt it was necessary, and mix in Rapid Strikes and All-Out Attack (Double) as appropriate. He burned through FP, but that's what the cleric with Lend Energy was there for (from his perspective).
I allowed TA (Rapier Thrust/Eye) without really considering the repercussions. "I mean, how much of a difference could that
really make," I thought to myself.
If he encountered something Big and Nasty, he generally stabbed it in the eye (if it had eyes) and then ran away and let the knight take all the damage.
Once I wouldn't let him do that stuff any more, he took Ambidexterity and Trademark Move (Attack with a rapier thrust to the eye) and bought Rapier-26. (Why 26 and not 24, given his Trademark Move? I don't know.) So he's back to his obnoxious eye-stabbing ways, but at least he can't parry arrows and it takes him a little longer to get into the fight. Some of my other players have actually been able to kill some monsters, which is nice.
I have considered making it so that anyone who
sees him use the Trademark Move twice in the same battle gets +1 to defend against his third and later uses - basically the same as with Targeted Attacks (MA, p. 68), except that it would affect anyone who
saw him do it, not just the foes he used it on. (Those foes are probably dead anyway.) I feel like it would be pretty obvious that the swashbuckler is repeatedly stabbing people in the eyes.
But that shows what I am worried about, I think - essentially, he was using out-of-genre stuff in order to ruin the fun for others. I am also worried about overwhelming the new player by introducing the G4e rules, especially the
Martial Arts rules, wholesale. She has never played
any paper-and-dice RPG before, so the DFRPG seemed like a good way to ease her in.
If I reintroduced Techniques, I would probably reintroduce them as Advantages, not Techniques (e.g., the Two-Weapon Fighting Advantage in DF11, p. 13). Techniques kind of clutter things up. Targeted Attack would
not be one of the Techniques I reintroduced in any form beyond Trademark Move.
My biggest fear is infringing on the rapid, dynamic nature of the combat. I don't want to bog things down with too many options or spend time flipping through books to find the right rule. It becomes a balancing act: introducing the rules that will be helpful without slowing things down vs. overburdening the system.
I feel a lot more comfortable with bringing in Shapeshifting; it's already eluded to with the Beast Flight Druidic Ability in
Adventurers, so I don't think it is likely to break the game.