06-14-2018, 09:49 PM | #21 |
President and EIC
Join Date: Jul 2004
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Re: Staffs and Quarterstaff talent.
Okay, thought needed. I have never possessed a Codex - it came out long after my time and I thought the darned thing was just an index.
So it had rule changes? That might explain why some things in the original FM Screen were wrong. (Starting over completely on that one anyway - can't legally copy it - but can certainly read it to look for errors.) So shooting from the hip here, what if a staff strike is an automatically succeeding magic blow that's incompatible with any other use of the staff, whatever its shape, at the same time? It would be learned with the Staff spell. Are there any other rules errata'd in the Codex that we should consider real issues? |
06-14-2018, 10:34 PM | #22 | ||||||||
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Re: Occam's razor - just play the game as written.
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Hi Ty. Fair enough. You had asked me to show where it is in the rules and I did so. I do consider the Codex FAQ to be official as most of it was good. However, their rule for the Staff - Q.staff combo was too powerful so I toned it down. Also it is not quite so cut and dry as you say. There is nothing in the base books that allow it, but there is precious little that disallows it. (You have argued that the Staff spell says it does 1 die and not +1 die. Yes. But given the illogic, that never felt authoritative to me, but rather an oversight.) Also the combo is logical to me, which is why I put in some effort to make it work in my campaign. Quote:
If I am a wizard and spend two mIQ to buff my melee combat, it is logical to say that it should be ruled away? That does not make sense to me. If you came up with a reason why the shock damage of the staff did not combine with the impact damage of the club, I would feel better about your argument. In a previous argument you suggested that staffs had to be 'wielded in a certain way' do do magic damage that precluded hitting hard. Well THAT certainly was never mentioned in early TFT. The early TFT said that wizards hit things with their staffs. You have invented a strange, 'welding in a certain way' technique, to bolster your argument. OK. But I'm not impressed with this rather peculiar requirement. Quote:
If Steve Jackson wants to, he can say, "The staff magic makes them brittle, so that you don't want to hit too hard with them," then good for him. But I hardly see the harm in getting a definitive answer. And something like the above, would EXPLAIN why the magical damage and impact damage does not add. Quote:
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-- I do have a special rule (armor stops different types of damage separately). I am done, it is sufficient. -- I didn't fabricate this question. It came up in play in my campaign a few times. Metagaming felt it needed to published an answer to the question. (You are free to ignore those rules of course, but it is not fair to say that I created this from nothing. It has clearly been out there since AT LEAST 1981.) -- "non-existent ambiguity to rationalize it". I'm not sure what you mean by this. It existed enough to go into the FAQ. As for 'rationalizing' it. At what points do my logical arguments become 'rationalizations'? You don't want wizards doing big damage. OK. But given that this troubles me less, I feel my logic is sound. I hardly feel that the word 'rationalizations' (with its negative connotations) is warranted. Quote:
I do think that the each type of damage being stopped separately is a rather elegant solution. <I've deleted a long sections where average damage is worked out using my rules up to 4 armor. All of the math is correct. > Quote:
When my players are in a tough fight, a LOT of the enemies are stopping 5 points or more. How often do you throw a tough fight against your players and have the enemies stop 0 or 1 hits? I see starting bowmen who need every DX point, for two shots a turn, taking little or no armor. But melee fighters tend take a lot, it is too important. Quote:
-- A mace with no metal head is a club, which does a lot less damage. -- You could make a spear with a wooden point but it would penetrate armor more poorly than one with a steel head, so reducing its damage by a couple points is logical. Ditto a javelin. -- ST 8 nunchucks (requires 1 mIQ) do more damage in standard TFT than a ST 9 rapier (requires 2 mIQ) which is pretty silly. However I think that Steve Jackson may be eliminating the special weapons from the new TFT. But the problem is with the nunchuck not the combo. Let us assume that the nunchuck had reasonable damage for its ST and mIQ cost. The nunchuck-staff wielder gets a nice bonus, but he is paying 3 times more mIQ for it. I have seen fighting wizards take weapons like these. I do make all wooden weapons to a point or two less damage than one with steel points, etc. I think you are seeing this as an example of the preposterousness of the rules. But I think it is really cool seeing a wizard with a variety of weapons. Variety is the spice of life. |
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06-14-2018, 10:38 PM | #23 | |||
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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The Staff & Quarterstaff combo.
Hi Ty.
<snipped a bit that repeated arguments above.> Quote:
TFT wizards have rules for staffs so that they can fight with them. Furthermore TFT is much more open about character doing what they want rather than having tight class restrictions. Perhaps you would never want to make a wizard who can fight well, but I've certainly seen players who do. That said, many wizards who take this combo largely waste the memory. They have bought it in case of emergencies. But in practice they stay behind the fighters and rarely take advantage of the mIQ spent on it. Paying a significant price (2 mIQ) for the ability to defend themselves well in an emergency is actually a cool trade off. Quote:
Certainly a wizard can sacrifice 2 high level spells and get better in close quarter melee combat, but what wizard-king WANTS to be in close quarter melee combat? However, your point is well found. This would give wizards the option to sacrifice a couple spells for melee prowess, and such choices are good for wizards. As I have said before, I do NOT say that Staffs and quarterstaffs are the same. I am saying that the Staff spell can be cast on ANY piece of wood. (As is explicitly allowed in the rules.) Which includes a quarterstaff. If Steve didn't want the Staff spell cast on thick, heavy staves, why not say that they had to be cast on thin little wands like Harry Potter? I have never been unclear as to why you object. You have been clear thru out. I don't mind you objecting, I enjoy the argument. So long as it is polite. I actually figured when I started this, that SJ had a 70% chance to nerf or eliminate the combo. (Hopefully with some explanation as to why the magical shock does not add to a hefty clout.) I still think that it would be smart for this question to be spelled out in the new TFT's rules. Which is why I started this thread. Quote:
Warm regards, Rick. |
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06-14-2018, 10:42 PM | #24 | |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Re: Staffs and Quarterstaff talent.
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If you want to eliminate the staff - quarterstaff combo, I would suggest that you say that the magic makes staffs fragile. (They break on a 14+ say if you use them like a club.) That would explain why wizards tap with staffs rather than clobber people with them. I'll start a new post that discusses the FAQ in the Codex. Warm regards, Rick. |
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06-15-2018, 12:04 AM | #25 | |
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2018
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Re: Staffs and Quarterstaff talent.
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And then decide if such a product as a place and demand within the offeriings of the line; exactly as you have elected to do with their "Fantasy Master's Screen". While there *may* be some rules-concepts of worth contained therein - and understanding that I am not trying to sound like a closed-minded jerk when I say this, or as a slam to the talents of anyone else - but I for one have very little interest in seeing Steve Jackson's 2018 re-write of Howard Thompson's re-write of Kevin Hendryx's re-write of Steve Jackson circa 1980. I'd much prefer just to see Steve Jackson's codified 2018 re-write of Steve Jackson, circa 1980. JK |
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06-15-2018, 01:15 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Tyler, Texas
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Re: Staffs and Quarterstaff talent.
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I had a Codex years ago, but couldn’t find it now if my life depended on it. It was originally printed by the author on a very low quality (even for 1981) dot matrix printer that couldn’t print descenders for lower case letters. So a lowercase “g” looks sorta like the numeral “9”. Metagaming didn’t re-typeset it and produced it in that format. I found it distracting to try to read and didn’t use it much once I had my own PC with a decent printer. |
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06-15-2018, 01:47 AM | #27 | |||||||
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Tyler, Texas
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Re: The Staff & Quarterstaff combo.
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And since you’d allow it to extend to any other wooden weapons, it makes the wizard far better than a fighter armed with a cutlass or smaller weapon. I consider it profoundly absurd to allow a ST 8 wizard do 2d+1 with nunchuks. Or 1d plus 1d+1. Or allowing a ST9 wizard do 2d damage with a club (which requires no talent to use) paired with the staff spell. And it’s an improvement available to any wizard, not just powerful ones as you imply. As previously noted that strikes me as a poor rule for multiple reasons, game balance being the major one. Quote:
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I see no valid rationale for making wizards even more powerful vis a vis melee fighters. And even if I did, I’d come up with a simpler and less genre-disrupting way to do it. Quote:
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And for future reference, I consider passive-aggression, intentional obtuseness, and intentionally misrepresenting facts or arguments to be very impolite. And I tend to respond impolitely as a result. (I’m making no accusations; I’m just providing my definition of “impolite”). When I come up with a silly idea, I’ll admit it when I realize it’s silly and move on. I’ve done so in this very forum. I do NOT enjoying arguing with someone who doggedly defends an obviously poor idea (or refuses to admit that others might reasonably object to his proposals, especially after they clearly spell out the reasons for the objections). As some point it turns into a Monty Python argument sketch, which I find VERY annoying. Last edited by tbeard1999; 06-15-2018 at 04:09 AM. |
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06-15-2018, 04:08 AM | #28 |
Join Date: May 2013
Location: Tyler, Texas
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Re: Staffs and Quarterstaff talent.
A followup to my calculations. I did them last night by hand and I made a slight error (I failed to consider that the shortsword couldn't do less than zero damage, which understated shortsword damage a bit). So here are the average damages for (a) the staff (1d) + quarterstaff (1d+2) and (b) the shortsword (2d-1) against targets with the indicated armor level:
Armor S&QS Shortsw Diff -0......9......6......3 -1......7......5......2 -2......5.3....4......1.3 -3......3.7....3.1....0.6 -4......2.5....2.3....0.2 -5......1.5....1.6...-0.1 -6......0.5....1.....-0.5 -7......0.2....0.6...-1.4 -8......0.0....0.3...-0.3 Anyhow, this bears out my point - allowing a wizard to cast a staff spell on the quarterstaff and get the benefit of each weapon makes a ST11 wizard markedly superior to a ST11 fighter in many, if not the majority of melee fights. At 0 to -3 hits stopped, the wizard is superior to the ST11 fighter At 4-5 hits stopped, they are about equal At 6 hits stopped, the shortsword averages about 0.5 pts of damage more. At 7 hits stopped, the shortsword averages 1.5 pts more. Beyond that, the difference is effectively negligible as the staff/quartstaff combo does no damage and the shortsword averages 1/4 hit or less. And of course, the proposed rule would also allow a wizard to enchant a long pole and get a two hex jab, yes? That would allow the wizard to deal more damage than the fighter *and* avoid being engaged. I can't imagine ANY wizard not spending 2 IQ points to get that ability. And do we need to get into the implications of a charge attack with a spear that has the staff spell cast on it? I can see no reasonable rationale for giving wizards this kind of melee combat advantage. Last edited by tbeard1999; 06-15-2018 at 04:15 AM. |
06-15-2018, 06:17 AM | #29 |
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2018
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Re: Staffs and Quarterstaff talent.
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06-15-2018, 07:59 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: Coquitlam B.C.
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Re: The Staff & Quarterstaff combo.
Hi Ty,
I got the codex in '85 or so. It said that you could put a staff spell, on wooden weapons, so we did that. My campaign has worked that way since the mid '80s. I found that the combo was too powerful and I tried nerfing it a various ways. Given that the combo was explicitly allowed by the rules this was something I struggled with for a while. I wanted to follow the rules, but to make it logical. While the combo did allow wizard to do high damage, they lacked defensive talents. Most wizard tended to stay back behind the fighters. Now the meta for my campaign is "wear as much armor as you can". Cloth & a small shield is considered dangerously light armor for both PC's and NPC's. When a bastard sword does 2d+1 one handed, and a halberd's charge damage is so high, you really want to stop more than 4 points of damage. I asked you how much armor you typically saw in your campaign in a tough fight, but I didn't get a reply. But I suspect in most TFT campaigns typical armor being 3 or 4 points is not unusual. In a mature campaign, (with Stone and Leather flesh rings, -3 weapon armor / enchantment items, etc.) it is much higher. This combo was a pretty standard part of a combat wizard at first. Then I came up with the idea that different damage types is stopped by the armor twice. Immediate improvement. I could give the staff the full 1 die of damage bonus (logical), but the typical damage was way down. Very often the extra die was rolled and stopped completely. I saw the number of times this combo was used by wizards drop steadily. Now sometime wizards take it, but often they don't. I was very happy with this rule. It fixed a long running problem. I've been using this rule for ages now. Since ~2005 maybe? It took me a a lot of experiementing to find a solution I liked, and so I started this thread and suggested that SJ make an explicit ruling. I also suggested my solution. Why not! It has been working in my campaign for a long time! I quickly went thru the posts in this thread. I made 6 posts on talking about this combo (counting a double post to you as one), and in 5 of them I said my goal was to have this addressed in the rules. Save the new players the long time it took me to find a solution. In about half of these posts I said I wouldn't mind if the combo was stoped completely, but I thought that there should be a ruling. *** Now when we started arguing, we seemed to lock on to two poles. I was not worried about the edge case of extremely low armor which you repeatedly brought up. The rules have been working well in my campaign for ages, and the combo just was not that popular any more. Where as you gave example after example with low armor. You were also very bothered that the wizards could fight in melee. My wizards have been hitting hard in melee for a long time. They don't do anywhere near as well as the fighters (my fighters have kick ass talents by the time they are in the mid levels), but yes. If a wizard who has this combo, hits a goblin with 2 points of armor, that mook will be in for a world of hurt. *** I have a mature campaign. Currently players are in the mid to high 40's attributes. Most have ~2 to 4 points of magical armor of some sort or another. There is one wizard who has a Staff but didn't take the Quarterstaff combo. (But let us say he did.) The players are lords of a small town and are fighting a Urr Lich who has cursed the whole area with infertility (low human populations), and has some sort of giant calling spell that has brought in tonnes of monsters. Very often their tough opponents have 4 or 5 points of armor (occasionally MUCH higher). Major conflict is not fighting monsters but trying to puzzle out how an adventuring party from 80 years ago beat the Urr Lich. To liven things up, two nasty kingdoms are thinking of invading. (Good land and low population to defend it.) Often two or three sessions will go by with out a fight. The Staff is would do minor damage compared to the Quarter Staff vs, tough foes. But when they do get into a fight, they have been recently fighting a fair number of low level zombies. Now this is where this combo would shine. Is this a huge problem? Not really, when I put 40 zombies down on the map, people being able to blast thru them quickly is not a great concern of mine. *** As I've said before, if you don't like these rules, don't use them. If you have a campaign where people have low armor, these rules are especially not suited for you. But the purpose of this thread is to suggest that a ruling be made. The Staff spell specifically says that it can be cast on ANY wooden object so I am not the first person, and I doubt I will be the last, who thought up the idea of combining a Staff with a wooden weapon. I do think that it is logical that a Staff's shocking damage should be added to a quarterstaff bash. David and Skarg agreed earlier in this thread, but worried that the combo would be too powerful. If the three of us felt this was logical, (and the FAQ from Metagaming felt it needed to deal with the question), then others will think of it, certainly. Why not have the problem nipped in the bud by a ruling in the new TFT? If Steve says that Staff's brimming with arcane energy are fragile and wizards don't want to smash them hard (which I suggested, twice in this thread), then LOGICALLY people won't go down that path. Quote:
Now a few of the specific arguments in your post above (which I cut out), I take issue with. If you care I'll go over them. Your argument has made it clearer to me that a low level campaign with very light armor is especially unsuited for my rule. But I really am in no mood to 'admit' that my rule is silly, it has served me well for too long. As for, "passive-aggression, intentional obtuseness, and intentionally misrepresenting facts or arguments to be very impolite", I agree. I have strived to be pleasant and show a sense of humour in this argument, especially as it heated up. I don't think any of those fit me very well. I have on a couple of occasions called out somewhat rude behaviour on your part. But that is hardly passive aggressive. If I make a strong argument and it is 'some minor point that you didn't bother to quote' (not exactly what you said but the gist), and I bring it up again in later posts, perhaps that seems to be intentional obtuseness to you. It seems to me that if it is important to my argument, and you don't see it (or fail to acknowledge it), then it should be emphasized. Anyway this rule fits my sense of logic, works well in my mature campaign, and I am untroubled if anyone uses it or not. I have tried repeatedly to explain why it works, perhaps this post has done a better job. Regards, Rick. Last edited by Rick_Smith; 06-16-2018 at 08:08 PM. Reason: Spelling error. |
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Tags |
damage, nerf, quarter staff, staff, staff spell |
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