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Old 07-19-2018, 07:07 PM   #1
Dalin
 
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Default Crippled leg

We had a great combat yesterday where Sir Yvor Gryffyn (one of the pregens from Delvers to Go) critically missed, hit his own leg, and crippled it. This felt believable in the story because the floor was wet and we imagined his foot sliding forward as he swung his sword downward at his foe (a dungeon lobster thing). Because of the crippling injury threshold, Sir Yvor was still doing fairly well and wanted to stay in the fight. The book says he can still fight from a seated position at -2, which hardly crimps his style at all. The rest of the battle raised two questions for us:
  1. The "seated" posture says that you can't move. Does this mean you can't use the normal step of an attack maneuver? We figured it did and just had other characters drag him over to the remaining monsters. I was thinking of house ruling that he could drag himself one hex instead of attacking. Sound reasonable?
  2. His attacks were still at full strength. This stretched believability for us (yes, even while fighting dungeon lobsters and dodging weird laser traps). None of us know squat about real martial arts, but it seems like your legs are probably a factor in striking strength... no? We were thinking that in future we might just apply the -2 to damage as well as skill.
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Old 07-19-2018, 07:22 PM   #2
Mister Negative
 
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Default Re: Crippled leg

You may be getting a bit too detailed for DFRPG, but you might consider -2 or -1 per die of damage (whichever is higher). Alternatively, you might just forbid All-Out Attacking for higher damage, which would 'feel like' the time when a fighter would really use his whole body on the strike.

I like the idea, however, even if it's just situational, rather than a flat house rule.
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Old 07-19-2018, 09:01 PM   #3
Tom H.
 
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Default Re: Crippled leg

I have some interpretations.

Combat Move:

I would not allow a step while sitting.

However, Exploits p. 35 indicates that you can spend your whole move to move one hex while lying down "(belly crawl or rolling)." I think rolling in this case is appropriate to get into position. Of course, then you would have to change posture to sit to attack at -2 instead of -4.

Reduced Damage:

It definitely seems that legs would be important to damage in positioning and distributing body weight. However, there doesn't appear to be any penalties to attacking a melee opponent above you where the legs seem much less likely to contribute to power than versus a level foe.
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Old 07-19-2018, 09:12 PM   #4
Tom H.
 
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Default Re: Crippled leg

Damage:

How about this compromise:

Keep the -2 to damage unless:

You can do full damage, but then the fighter becomes unready and needs to spend a ready maneuver to recover his position from awkwardly throwing his torso into the blow.

In this interpretation, the legs are more useful for repositioning the combatant quickly than contributing strength.
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Old 07-19-2018, 11:37 PM   #5
evileeyore
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Default Re: Crippled leg

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dalin View Post
(a dungeon lobster thing)
Was it... was it, a lobstrosity?
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Old 07-20-2018, 06:22 AM   #6
Bruno
 
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Default Re: Crippled leg

If you want to move around while seated, you're going to have to free up your hands of your shield and sword, particularly if you only have one leg left. Otherwise there's no real way to do it while seated.

As others have pointed out, you don't have to stay seated, you can still lie down. Getting back up to sitting again with one less leg than you're used to might be quite awkward (but once you've lived with one leg for a while I doubt it'll slow you down). I might require two Change Postures (one on a successful Acrobatics check) if I cared that much about detail - but I confess I usually don't when I'm actually at the table.
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Old 07-20-2018, 07:54 AM   #7
Kromm
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Default Re: Crippled leg

Others have addressed movement: You can move, but you have to change from sitting to lying to do so. Lying allows you to move at one yard per second; see Exploits, p. 99. So you'll be wasting a lot of time on Change Posture maneuvers to switch between sitting and lying, and vice versa, and you'll be wasting more time rolling around at Move 1.

Damage reduction is way, way, way below the resolution of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. If you really want it: Kicking damage is +1 relative to punching because you can use the power of the legs. That corresponds to +1 to thrust and thus +2 to ST. So it wouldn't be wrong to say that without the power of the legs, you're at -2 to ST and thus -1 to thrust damage and -2 to swing damage with all melee attacks.
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Old 07-23-2018, 11:13 PM   #8
dcarson
 
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Default Re: Crippled leg

You should be able to move backwards while in a sitting posture at one yard a turn, maybe even two. Say two straight back, one into the two rear side hexes but not into any of the three forward hexes.

This would allow the Retreat bonus on Defense so you can keep someone occupied.
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