Parry { And various other questions }

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Redbeard78

Right, Flight as a skill would only be for doing things other than just flyilng in an essentially straight line, Acrobatics and things of that nature would be for doing fancy things or evasive maneuvers. Thanks everyone for everything so far, it helps to illuminate some of the things that I'm finding murky.

Kind of. The Flight skill takes the place of the Running and Hiking skills - you roll against it to avoid FP loss when running and to increase travel distance (see B354 - that is, Basic Set page 354 (Basic Set being Characters+Campaigns - in this case, Campaigns)). Aerial acrobatics actually uses the Aerobatics skill.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Sorry, this one's completely off. The Melee Weapons and Fencing Weapons sections in the book are just categories of skills, grouped for convenience. You can't buy skill in the whole category, you still have to buy the skills individually.

As a house rule, some people do let you by the skill categories, as one stage higher, so you can buy Fencing Weapons [P/H]. Since all the skills in a category have generous defaults to each other and you generally get diminished utility for knowing how to use multiple similar weapons, it's an interesting trade-off - do you want Rapier-16 or Rapier-15 and Saber-15 for the same amount of points?

But that's a house rule and not Rules as Written.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

do you want Rapier-16 or Rapier-15 and Saber-15 for the same amount of points?

Most of my characters (and Players) would happily go for the broader category that was that cheap.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Most of my characters (and Players) would happily go for the broader category that was that cheap.

Well, give them the option and see if it feels overpowered to you. I found that it made staff/spear specialists an entire 4 points cheaper and that didn't break my games. It does make samurai a lot cheaper (Sword Weapons at DX+2 is 12 points, Broadsword, Shortsword, and Two-Handed sword at DX+2 is 16-24 points depending on how you handle the Weapon Adaption perk) but again that's not breaking my games.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Well, give them the option and see if it feels overpowered to you. I found that it made staff/spear specialists an entire 4 points cheaper and that didn't break my games. It does make samurai a lot cheaper (Sword Weapons at DX+2 is 12 points, Broadsword, Shortsword, and Two-Handed sword at DX+2 is 16-24 points depending on how you handle the Weapon Adaption perk) but again that's not breaking my games.

Not sure I want combat skills being cheaper, it only makes them more likely to always want to use a hammer.

[corwyn]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Not sure I want combat skills being cheaper, it only makes them more likely to always want to use a hammer.

It doesn't make characters much more powerful, IME, but it does make them a bit more versatile. I'm okay with that.

I've actually been considering making skill defaults techniques. What generally happens is that defaults from skills rarely get points put into them unless the governing skill is low (4 points or less) since it's generally more effective to just increase both by putting points into the governing skill.