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Old 10-23-2020, 10:25 PM   #1
phiwum
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
Default Swinging from the sidelines

The rules are pretty clear. If, say, two baddies are in HTH with one good guy, a yellowbelly hero on the sidelines can swing into the hex. Because everyone is prone, he's +4 DX to hit the baddie he's aiming at. If is DX is 11, this is a roughly 5% chance to miss. If it's ten, then roughly 10% chance to miss.

If he misses, he rolls the same odds against the second baddie.

If he misses the second baddie as well, he has the same odds to accidently hit his ally.

With DX 10, then, the odds of accidentally hitting your ally in this situation is roughly one in a thousand. (If there's only one baddie and one good guy, the odds increase to one in a hundred.)

Seems to me this is a bit nuts. I'd think there should be some significant risk of hurting one's ally when attacking into a brawl. A simple solution would be to lower the odds for each die roll, with the obvious choice being to take away the DX bonus for attacking a prone target.

Otherwise, the comment that "When you're surrounded by foes, sometimes the best thing you can do is jump on one of them!" is inapt. If you do that, the other foes just start mauling you from the safety of the sidelines.

Have these odds struck anyone else as unrealistic? A one-in-a-hundred chance for a person of average DX to accidentally strike his buddy in the brawl really is inconsequential.
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Old 10-24-2020, 07:19 AM   #2
Shostak
 
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Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
Default Re: Swinging from the sidelines

You could just use the rules for loosing missile weapons into an HTH pile. That definitely increases the odds of hitting a friend unintentionally.
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Old 10-24-2020, 07:34 AM   #3
phiwum
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
Default Re: Swinging from the sidelines

It certainly does. But I'm not sure if I wanted to go from a 1% chance of hitting your buddy to a 50% chance each time you hit.

I think we could go about this scientifically. That is, watch a bunch of movies and count the number of times an ally is accidentally hit in a brawl and divide by the number of punches thrown, estimate whether the guy hitting the ally is average (DX 10) or a hero (DX 13) and figure out what the odds should be.

Now, we'd have to choose our source material carefully. The Three Stooges would really swing the estimates hard.

More seriously, one way to make it a more significant threat is to change the order in which we roll. In RAW, you roll to hit each enemy before rolling to miss your friends. If we'd simply randomize the order, then when striking into a one-on-one brawl, a DX 10 character has a roughly 5.5% chance of striking his ally and a DX 11 or higher goes to a bit less than 4%, if my kitchen table calculation is correct.

The odds of hitting an ally using RAW but taking away the +4 DX bonus would be 25% for DX 10 and 14% for DX 11.
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Old 10-24-2020, 08:45 AM   #4
Terquem
 
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Idaho Falls
Default Re: Swinging from the sidelines

three people on the ground, grappling each other, is not as chaotic as one might image. I have been a grade school recess volunteer parent, and reaching into this sort of melee and getting hold of the one you want to get hold of is pretty easy. I think the rules are good the way they are
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Old 10-24-2020, 09:19 AM   #5
TippetsTX
 
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Default Re: Swinging from the sidelines

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terquem View Post
three people on the ground, grappling each other, is not as chaotic as one might image. I have been a grade school recess volunteer parent, and reaching into this sort of melee and getting hold of the one you want to get hold of is pretty easy. I think the rules are good the way they are
Although, aren't you effectively a giant in that scenario?
;)
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Old 10-24-2020, 09:50 AM   #6
Terquem
 
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Idaho Falls
Default Re: Swinging from the sidelines

true

But the chaos element remains the same, three people in a grapple isn't really all that chaotic
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Old 10-24-2020, 10:33 AM   #7
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Swinging from the sidelines

What if you imagine it as a cartoon grapple, sort of like the Tasmanian Devil in HTH with Tom and Jerry?
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Old 10-24-2020, 10:57 AM   #8
Terquem
 
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Idaho Falls
Default Re: Swinging from the sidelines

the swirly cloud with lightning bolts coming out of it...we need a counter that looks like that
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Old 10-24-2020, 12:37 PM   #9
Axly Suregrip
 
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Durham, NC
Default Re: Swinging from the sidelines

I second the motion: we need a cartoon brawl counter for HTH

To Phiwum,
I agree with you that the original system seems a little off. I agree with how it starts (DX+4 vs intended target). If you miss your target I don't see why you would be having options to strike foes you never initially intended. At this point it should just be random. At this point switch to the missile weapon into HTH rules.

But since this does not come up often and I prefer to stay with the rules unless I really hate it, I would not change this in my house rules.
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Old 10-24-2020, 02:54 PM   #10
phiwum
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
Default Re: Swinging from the sidelines

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terquem View Post
three people on the ground, grappling each other, is not as chaotic as one might image. I have been a grade school recess volunteer parent, and reaching into this sort of melee and getting hold of the one you want to get hold of is pretty easy. I think the rules are good the way they are
I'm not thinking that there's a huge chance to hit the wrong person, but enough of a chance that it should cause some consideration. Swinging a battleaxe isn't as precise as pulling kids apart. I can't think that there's literally a 1% chance for an average person to hit the wrong guy.
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