02-11-2018, 02:51 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
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So the prices make sense, for some levels of sophistication of the ambient culture. And less sense for other levels. Maybe some guidelines on how to address that would be helpful. An issue with making weapons expensive is that after most battles you can expect the heroes to walk home with quite a few that belonged to the recently deceased. I've sometimes tried to guess when TFT technology is supposed to represent and I'm thinking maybe the 1300s, but in some ways it can sound earlier and later. The Mnoren setting implies Cidri is heir to a society far more sophisticated than ours, so they'll have a lot of things the mediaeval period didn't, like the germ theory of disease. And scholars at least will know what makes lightning. I think it's a nice effect because of course the players know those things and can't forget, so their characters might as well too. Probably there are dusty tomes in Cidri that record information about faster than light travel, and immortality, and other things our culture has no clue about. |
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02-11-2018, 09:06 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Jun 2012
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
One issue I see with simply raising the cost of arms and armour as a control mechanism is the dominant paradigm in RPG adventuring of "kill it and take its treasure." Adventuring characters have a tendancy to become wealthy, if not outright rich, fairly quickly. Defeat a foe with better equipment? Take it and upgrade yourself. Otherwise pawn it.
Higher costs for better equipment will limit beginning adventurers, but it won't be long before they are walking tanks. |
02-11-2018, 11:17 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
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And yeah, it was very common in our TFT campaigns for the party to travel with a wagon which would tend to get stacked with a growing arsenal of weapons and armor and other loot stripped from the bodies of brigands and so on. So no matter what the cost of non-fine weapons, there tended to be plenty of non-fine weapons available to a party that was regularly defeating armed opponents. What was wanted however were guidelines for what it takes for a bunch of adventurers returning from mayhem and off-road travel with a wagonload of bloody used weapons and armor to manage to sell it off, and what prices they might expect for it. "What do you mean, you don't want to buy 23 bloody hacked suits of Lower-Class Clothes! They only need a bit of wash and mending!" |
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02-11-2018, 11:59 AM | #34 | |
Join Date: Jan 2018
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
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In fact : - swords and armor of the deceased, with all due exceptions, were low quality items very cheap and/or rather used and/or damaged; - it's hard find someone interested to buy second-hand weapons/armor of a died orc or bandit. This is a time-consuming activity that requires weeks and IQ/tests, with the risk to attract unwanted attention; - where is easy find someone interested (in a big town, for example), it's also easy to find someone that could dislike a new commerce of weapons begins next his door, like the local Armourer and his noble friends... - carrying a large amount of weapons while not in war and without a permission is often prohibited. In any case is very incautious (again attracts unwanted attention). Thus, most times the PCs sold off any captured equipment as soon as possible for very low prices being this the best option. notable items apart, of course. |
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02-11-2018, 12:47 PM | #35 |
President and EIC
Join Date: Jul 2004
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
An in-story way around this might be a local noble who offers a bounty on bandits - but he doesn't just want heads, because those could come from anywhere. He wants to see a set of hacked lower-class clothing, shoddy armor, and a cheap weapon; for THAT he will pay a bounty. Then the clothes are discarded or go to the poor, and all but the worst weaponry goes into his armory for militia use in emergencies.
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02-13-2018, 04:20 AM | #36 |
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
That would be a solution if the objective was to make sure the party was well-recompensed. But the previous posters were actually asking for either (a) a way to prevent the party getting too much money from this revenue stream or (b) for the system to provide guidelines so that the decision as to how much they should get wasn't thrown onto the GM.
A solution might be to add rules support for what ecz's first bullet point does ad hoc. Introduce weapons at the other end of fine, that are less effective than regular ones and very, very cheap. Player characters are always attacked by enemies with slings, clubs, inferior spears and wooden flails. (Numbers of enemies are increased to compensate.) From any battle you might get one decent weapon carried by the leader while everyone else has something it's hardly worth carting to the next town. But it wouldn't work for every campaign or story: some enemies logically should be well-equipped. |
03-16-2018, 06:00 PM | #37 |
Join Date: Mar 2018
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
I love pole weapons. I have a whole campaign going on with my two kids where the overall objective is for them to hunt down and kill a big orc with a spear that has killed their previous characters. Last time they caught him, he came out of nowhere with a charge attack and stabbed one of them unconscious, and then escaped while the other one was engaged with the other orc that was with him. It was great.
However I agree they are too strong. In the original melee rules, you had to move 3 straight hexes to get the charge attack advantage, so maybe going back to that would do the trick. Or maybe give the pole weapon user a DX penalty if he is confined somehow (next to a wall, or another figure, friend or foe). This might make combat more interesting as players strategize where to force the pole weapon user, while the pole weapon user tries to stay in the open. |
03-16-2018, 10:16 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Feb 2018
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
I don't believe this is accurate. I have the original 1977 Melee booklet and I do not ever remember seeing this 3 hex charge rule. I do know it was added someplace in some subsequent suggested rules or perhaps even in a later edition which I do not own.
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03-17-2018, 12:36 AM | #39 | |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
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It's kind of a lopsided nerf though since it only applies to certain conditions, and IIRC it doesn't have any corresponding explanation for whether or how to limit the effects of pole weapons defending against Charge Attacks, which is inconsistent. Another adjustment many people have mentioned liking/using over the years, which AFAIK wasn't ever an official rule even in later Melee printings, was simply to change the double damage effect to be a +1 die of damage. In the article on Pole Weapon rules in Interplay #7, Codex editor William Gustafson discusses the advantages and disadvantages of polearms and his thoughts about them and he offers a couple of tweaks. One is a DX penalty for using one against a target one hex away if the hex on the opposite side of you is blocked. |
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03-17-2018, 02:38 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: New England
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Re: Fantasy Trip Pole Weapons and Charges
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I believe there were also laws against commoners wearing heavy armour. But I may be wrong. And I doubt any peasant could save up much money anyway. Most of their wealth was in rights to common land for grazing and a portion of the harvest. There was very little need for money, as I understand it, other than paying for the gabelle and similar taxes. |
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