Octopus vs starting human in HTH

[phiwum]

Shostak makes good points, but there's always a tension between realism and simplicity. I may be persuaded that RAW doesn't work for many situations, allowing a goblin to hold a very strong human pinned for two turns, but I'd probably fix that with an ad hoc rule for that situation or perhaps use the ST difference as a modifier.

Some ad hoc rules are obvious. You won't pin a three hex figure, for instance. Others are fairly complicated. Should an ST 17 human have to wait two turns to break free from a goblin? Doesn't seem like it, but I can just make that up on the fly and keep playing.

Since pinning hasn't happened in my campaign yet, I won't sweat these rules too much. To be sure, this from a guy who just wrote a 13 point list with cross-references and helpful diagrams for how to drop a stupid lantern, but I guess we all make our choices about what's important. My ad hoc rule for pinning an octopus? Long as he has a tentacle free, he can punch, perhaps with a DX penalty. Just try and stop him!

Anyway, I realize I forgot to include a glossary and index for my lantern supplements, which I will submit to Hexagram #37 to the adulation of RPGers everywhere. With some effort, perhaps I'll spin it off to a self-contained game. (Have I mentioned that no one has even lit a stupid lantern in my campaign yet?)

[Skarg]

The Unarmed Combat adjustment as written is one of the worst aspects IMO, as I house-fixed, along with a few other Pin issues, here.

Just because some people haven't seen anyone try something in play, doesn't mean it isn't very broken as soon as someone uses it in a broken way. And, having more Unarmed Combat than your opponent practically guaranteeing a pin, seems pretty broken to me.

Originally Posted by hcobb

TFT is cinematic (we don't haggle over the physics of dragons, gargoyles or octopi), and the movies are full of rather scrawny types using leet martial arts to pin huge foes.

Ironic, as you're the only TFT player I've seen since the 80's who does get into proposing formulae for ST to weight.

I wonder what scrawny types pinning huge foes in films you are thinking of. None come to mind.

When something that seems wrong in a film comes up, my reaction is pretty much always "that's wrong and is ruining my interest in this film". It is never "yay I want a game that is also wrong like that".

[larsdangly]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Tackling someone is quite different than bashing into them to try to knock them down. The end result of a successful shield rush is a standing rusher and a prone rushee. The end result of a successful tackle is both combatants on the ground--essentially in HTH.

Ah; I misinterpreted your original comment because it didn't mention tackling. Anyway, there are several ways to way to tackle a faster person in TFT: enter through their rear hex (I house rule that you can do this from the side also but that's a detail). Or engage them, which stops them dead in their tracks; if they disengage you may be able to re-engage them (depending on the details); if they shift in an effort to get around you, you may be able to enter from the rear hex side; while this jostling goes on someone else comes along and enters their hex. Both of those scenarios are actually pretty similar to how lots of tackles work in football. Also, remember that any successful entry into a foe's hex is not just a tackle attempt - it is a successful tackle because they automatically fall to the ground. Broken tackles would be interpreted in Melee as an unsuccessful attempt to enter HTH - either because your 1d6 roll failed or because you were not in the right position and MA match up to enter through the front. Anyway, for a game that has nothing whatsoever to do with football, it doesn't do that badly.

[larsdangly]

I don't think of TFT as particularly cinematic in the sense implied above. Yes, there are magical creatures and so forth, but your ST is supposed to mean your physical strength (and generally also mass). And it is hard to think of many games less cinematic than TFT when it comes to the scales of PC power in combat. You could carefully develop a character for years and still be vulnerable to a quick death if you were surrounded and outnumbered by mundane foes.

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Just because some people haven't seen anyone try something in play, doesn't mean it isn't very broken as soon as someone uses it in a broken way. And, having more Unarmed Combat than your opponent practically guaranteeing a pin, seems pretty broken to me.

Totally fair point.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

Anyway, there are several ways to way to tackle a faster person in TFT: enter through their rear hex (I house rule that you can do this from the side also but that's a detail). Or engage them, which stops them dead in their tracks; if they disengage you may be able to re-engage them (depending on the details); if they shift in an effort to get around you, you may be able to enter from the rear hex side; while this jostling goes on someone else comes along and enters their hex. Both of those scenarios are actually pretty similar to how lots of tackles work in football.

With all respect, I'll maintain that real world tackles generally don't result in a would-be tackler running up to their target, stopping adjacent to them for several seconds, and then getting around to actually tackling if and only if they manage to outflank them. Real world tackles typically involve someone running up and grabbing someone else and pulling them down to the ground as one unified act that takes a second or two. TFT's modeling of this is just inaccurate to my mind.

[larsdangly]

I think you may be asking for the wrong level of granularity from TFT's combat system, and an approach to the time frames of events that can't be compatible with a game (at least not a playable one). Consider that you could also complain the opposite point: that throws and pins are resolved far too quickly in TFT. Go watch a judo or greco-roman wrestling match and you'll see many 'turns' worth of jostling for position are needed to set up even a tentative attempt at a throw or pin. A 2 minute round might include just a few significant events. So how do you create a game that treats both an instantaneous collision and a minute of jostling for position, but where only one meaningful event need be resolved? Through abstraction, of course.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I think you may be asking for the wrong level of granularity from TFT's combat system, and an approach to the time frames of events that can't be compatible with a game (at least not a playable one). Consider that you could also complain the opposite point: that throws and pins are resolved far too quickly in TFT.

No, I'm opining that pinning favors the faster combatant in an unfun way.

Go watch a judo or greco-roman wrestling match and you'll see many 'turns' worth of jostling for position are needed to set up even a tentative attempt at a throw or pin. A 2 minute round might include just a few significant events. So how do you create a game that treats both an instantaneous collision and a minute of jostling for position, but where only one meaningful event need be resolved? Through abstraction, of course.

Tackling and grappling are different things in the house rules I've adopted, though both still connected to HTH. Those rules are, admittedly, more granular, but I think they still stay simple enough to be in the spirit of TFT.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Tackling and grappling are different things in the house rules I've adopted, though both still connected to HTH. Those rules are, admittedly, more granular, but I think they still stay simple enough to be in the spirit of TFT.

You should post those to the house-rules forum when you have a chance.

[tomc]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Once you've pinned someone, how do use RAW to go about using the advantage you have over your foe in a one-to-one fight?

I've always thought of pinning as a way to subdue your foe without doing any damage. Your arms and legs are occupied with the pin so you don't have a free hand to kill them with. But if you have a friend with a knife it's a good time for them to use it...

I'd treat pinning and killing them as already covered by a very successful regular HTH attack.