3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

I would like to discuss and get your opinions on how to use the new 3 hex charge rule. That is, in order to gain the extra die of damage upon charging, what do you see as being a valid charge. As you will see there are aspects to this rule that are obvious and then some that are questionable. See ITL page 111.

A) How many hexes is a charge? I know it says 3, but does that include the hex you are starting in? "the attacker moved three hexes... in a straight line".

Examples:

Started turn in hex 1, move to hex 2, move to hex 3. Is this a 3 hex charge? The attacker moved only 2 hexes but he went through 3 different hexes that turn.

vs

Start in hex 1, move to hex 2, move to hex 3, move to hex 4. Is this a 3 hex charge? This is definitely a charge as the attacker moved 3 hexes or is this setting the bar too high, as the diagram showed 3 hexes and this essentially requires 4 hexes.

I had a game master rule that it had to be 4 hexes MOVED through (second example), even if the first move was backwards.

For A, I believe the first example to be the best answer but want to hear others.


B) Does facing matter? When you are moving 3 hexes in a straight line, it implies you are charging a hex you are headed towards, but this is not stated. If so, it would be yet another condition to meet.

This has not come up in a game but it will:

Say your character, Bob, runs three hexes in a row and then changes facing. There is nothing in the charging rules to prevent changing facing. Say during the same turn his foe was pursuing him and runs up and engages Bob. If Bob had not changed facing and the foe moved in a front hex, that would be a charge everyone would agree with. But Bob changed 3 hexsides (facing the direction he ran from) and the foe moved into one of these three hexes. Is it still a charge even through Bob is charging (moving) away? He met all the requirements on pg 111 (moved 3 hexes in a straight line).

The thing about this question is if you disallow it, then you have a lot more shades of gray to rule on: Was it changing facing that broke the charge? Should it only be directly ahead? or any front 3 hexes without changing facing? Or only 1 hex side change? What about when doing a "straight line against the grain" now which are the hex to be charged? It starts to get messy.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

These are all really excellent questions!

My own solution is to ignore the entire straight-line requirement, since it wasn't in original TFT and we didn't need it, it especially seems to me not to need it now that the pole weapon charge bonus damage is only +1 die, it doesn't feel right to me, isn't congruent with defensive charge damage, and as you point out, is not really well defined anyway, nor do I think it is easy to fix the definition holes.

I think the intention is probably that 3 hexes of movement means B, since that would be the usual meaning of moving three hexes.

However, Steve went to the trouble to include diagrams of the "3-hex" charge... but he left out counters, and normally I would say those diagrams actually show TWO hexes of movement. Even if it means three hexes of movement, what hex in that diagram does the figure need to START in? Any adjacent to the tail of an arrow, I'd guess.

If I were trying to play strictly rules-as-written, I'd say B, but the start hex can be any adjacent to the tail of an arrow. I'd say yes the charger can change facing, because it doesn't say they can't and it would require more complex rules to explain what the limits are. (But I agree with you it's unclear and doesn't seem to make sense.)

However I'd prefer A), but mainly because I don't like the straight-line requirement anyway. I do think it's possible though that the diagram is right and the rule should read it's really a two-hex straight line requirement, but in that case the figure needs to start IN the hex where the tail of the arrow is.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Turn 1: Human spearman Bob "The unbright" pokes Draco "The disastrous" in the tail while avoiding the tail swipe.

Turn 2: Draco spins in place and pushes Bob back a hex. Draco's head has therefore moved three hexes while Bob has been forced back one hex, but again makes the save on DX 13.

Bob declares a standing pole arm defense against the three hex charge of the dragon he has remained adjacent to.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

I think it is unnecessarily restrictive to insist that a charge be in a straight line with constant facing, simply because movement and facing on hex map force geometric relationships that would artificially prohibit a lot of polearm charge targets. I.e., you could avoid a polearm charge from a foe by just stepping a hex to a location that would require them to zig-zag on their approach. It is imaginable that someone could 'game' the lack of constraints into something that seems counter-intuititive, but that bothers me less than the alternative.

And I concur that '3 hexes' should mean 3 newly entered hexes, not 2 new hexes plus the one in which you started

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Agreed, but if stepping to a hex was to get behind an object (a tree trunk or column) that forced the charger to zig-zag, I'd call that a natural rather than artificial strategy, and would want to allow it.

I'm with Skarg on this though, better to drop the entire 3 hexes in a straight line rule, which then avoids all this ambiguity. The original rules were good enough for me.

I'm also sorely tempted to revert to the original double damage effect. I liked that wide range of possible results, and always found that damage roll to be exciting. +1d6 seems a little too tame for my taste.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

The 3 hex requirement is only for the attacker, Bob would get the pole arm defense bonus regardless of how far the enemy moved.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Gargyole: Literacy, Humanish, Pole Weapons, Staff, Magic Fist.

Stand with silver halberd staff. If the enemy moves next to you spin in place to face them declare standing response at DX 11+2, roll three dice of damage which knocks the intruder down.

Next turn take one step back as they stand up.

Rinse and repeat.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

My reading is that the pole-arm defender against a short (1-2 hex) charge gets the +2 bonus to adjDX but not the 1d damage bonus. Do people agree with this or not?

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Disagree. The 3-hex straight line condition only applies to attackers getting a damange bonus. The defensive damage bonus is listed as applying to charge attacks, which the same section defines as someone moving from non-adjacent to adjacent.

Hcobb's "gargoyle" above is correct, as it did in original TFT, and applies to any halberdier with DX 11.

If it were otherwise, I doubt anyone would intentionally choose to move 3 hexes in a straight line towards a polearm unless they had some special reason they needed to do that.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Octopus with a Reverse Missiles ring and three Pike Axes against a party that doesn't have any magic will force retreats and knock the humans down to force the humans to always have to make "charge attacks" every turn until they're all dead.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Looks like an off-topic lure to the Sidetrack Swamp. I'm not taking the bait.

"The caustigus, the caustigus...
once you're in, you're lost to us..."

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

TBH, I don't think a one or two-hex move (followed by an attack) should be considered a 'charge' at all. Having a 3-hex minimum, straight line or not, just makes sense to me.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Yeah, me neither. The rules said 'move one hex and attack' or 'move up to half MA and charge attack', and we always took this to mean you could move one hex and not be charging. Or to put it another way, you had to move more than one hex to get charge bonuses. This seemed sensible as the damage bonus presumably worked off some kind of momentum. It worked fine for us and pole weapons were still dangerous, albeit they were doubled on a charge.

I have been roundly told we had it completely wrong tho. :)

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

A one-hex charge only works in football or rugby.
;)

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Here's the wording I'm going to use.

A charge attack occurs when the attacker and defender entered three or more new hexes during movement. A multi-hex figure doesn't count any movement spinning in its own hexes for this. Only hexes newly moved into during the current turn count. (If the attacker backed up a hex and the defender entered a starting empty hex then the attacker's old hex and was therefore engaged this would be three hexes moved into.)

Any melee attack used when the charge attack totaled eight or more hexes does +2 damage.

Pole weapons used in charge attacks strike before other melee weapons. This is resolved at the adjDX of the attacker or defender, whichever is higher.

If the attacker entered no new hexes during movement then she gets +2 DX for her pole weapon charge charge attack.

If the attacker entered no new hexes or moved the last three hexes in a straight line she adds one die of damage for a pole weapon attack.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

I actually disagree with the 3 hex minimum charge rule (i.e., to get the 1d damage bonus). I think it both nerf's pole weapons and isn't physically accurate. But it is what it is, and I prefer to play meat-and-potatoes rules in a way that is consistent with what the rest of the community is doing unless there is some compelling reason to go off in a different direction.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

I don't imagine the extra polearm damage being about momentum from running.

I imagine it being about leverage with a long pole. If someone has a long pole and is holding it pointed at someone outside the pole's reach, and the other person tries to move (at whatever speed) towards the pole-weapon holder going right up the firmly-held pole (i.e. on a hit), they're going to either be stopped, skewered, or else have to shove the pole-holder back using whatever body part was hit by the pole, and if the pole is sharp... well, to me that's obviously a very damage-risking thing to do, even with no particular speed.

The "normal" (i.e. lower than other weapons of the same ST) pole weapon damage, on the other hand, is (to me) about hitting someone inside the reach of the pole, where it's not geometrically possible to get your whole weight behind it.

I would encourage people to (safely) horse around with two people and a long (at least 4-feet) pole. Start 10 feet apart, and have the guy with the pole point it at the other guy while the other guy tries to get at the guy with the pole. My experience of doing this makes it pretty clear that even on a slow approach, the guy with the pole has a very threatening and encroachment-denying situation to work with as long as the other guy doesn't get past the point of the pole.

If you remove bonus damage from defensive polearms unless the attacker obliges you by doing certain movements, it basically removes from the game system any representation of this ability to stand people off with a pole.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Anyone who has trained with a range of medieval/renaissance weapons knows that all pole arms get radically under-rated in most games, in several ways but particularly when it comes to damage. It is ludicrous that a 1-handed sword and a halberd do nearly the same base damage, in TFT and most other games. Particularly in a game where armor reduces damage rather than to-hit (i.e., you could argue 1E AD+D gets things about right by way of increasing the halberd to-hit through the weapon vs. armor type table). A 2H spear jab is much more powerful than a sword thrust - enough so that there is basically no way to safely free-spar with an inflexible spear or staff simulator, even in heavy gear.

So, as I see it the charge damage bonus is just getting pole arms up to where they really should be all the time.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

My take on it preserves the damage if the halberd user has room to back up.

Turn one: Swordsman closes to two hexes away and gets poked by halberd.

Turn two: Halberd user backs up a step while swordsman advances two hexes. Total of three hexes moved so counts as a charge attack.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Yes, I quite agree.

Compare:
ST 13 DX 11 Bastardsword 2d+1 Small Shield stops 1 per attack
ST 13 DX 11 Halberd 2d, no protection

The halberd is disadvantaged 1 point of damage and 1 point of protection. If a charge can happen, it gets +1d but that averages +3.5, maybe (only on a hit), usually just once.


This is only one possible way a situation might possibly play out, and not even I think the most common one, even with a proposed movement requirement for charge damage.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Im interested how you rationalize or imagine the lack of any additional damage when the pole weapon user charges (but only two hexes) at someone and they don't move?

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Anyway, I find all this irritating when I contemplate the details, but in practice I just play RAW and it works out reasonably well. The game stats out various weapons, shields and armor to be balanced, not realistic. It is kind of amazing that the end result has at least as much versimilitude as other games. Pole arms have nerfed damage, but then again they can deliver a normal attack at 2 hex range, which is very helpful in skirmish fights (i.e., where there are more than 2 people on the battle field). And their extra die of damage on a charge is often a difference maker, just because the outcomes of damage in TFT has some very sharp thresholds. Your odds of scoring a knock down on a halberd charge are significantly better than on a bastard sword hit. Basically, pole weapons are valid choices and work differently from other weapons in a way that is interesting, but in the end they don't have game-changing advantages over other weapons. I think that was really the design goal.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

I've never liked the 3-hex straight line idea, and prefer to not use that rule at all.

If I had to rationalize it, I'd say it's an abstract limit that requires some space to do an offensive charge attack effectively. It seems to me that a pole-weapon user has a clear advantage against someone else who is trying to close with them past the tip of their polearm, but if the polearm user is trying to close the range on someone else, that potentially gives up that situation - the target isn't moving their body towards the polearm, so the pole-arm user has to move their body towards the target to get solid leverage for a good skewering, which is harder.

But even if I thought that was important to represent, I don't think the 3-hex straight requirement works well anyway, because TFT has a shared movement phase for an entire side, that doesn't require a side to explain how they coordinate their movements at all. With enough MA and open ground, any number of polearm users are allowed to say they are making 3-hex straight-line charges through the same space. I.e. It seems like a weak/weird way to try to apply a space/movement requirement.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

From my first gaming group, my fellow GM and I brought up this very debate with an arms instructor we met at a SCA event in the late eighties. He had just given a demonstration on swords and shields when we cornered him, and he was very polite and helpful.

We laid out the TFT pole weapon rules for him, explaining the damage bonus for charge attacks, and got his opinion on how realistic this would be.

He shook his head no, then gave us a personal demonstration on how to use a halberd. He explained that to maximize damage, you would never want to level it at an enemy and run at them to attempt skewering them. Impalement is not the goal.

The real business end of all pole axes is the blade, and it is most effectively used from up close and adjacent. He taught us to hold the halberd across our bodies, while facing slightly sideways to the target. You grip the pole with your hands about 3 feet apart, and using your hip as the fulcrum you pivot the pole across your body with a rolling motion. This snaps the blade towards the enemy with considerably greater force and speed than you could muster any other way. "Now this" he said, "is what will give you your double damage -- charging would be just silly."

Despite my friend and me being completely convinced, we went back to our group and stuck to the RAW because that was easier :)

Actually the RAW may well still be realistic for the spear and javelin, neither of which can do any real damage without impaling, but the heavier pole arms and any pole axes really work differently than a spear. In regular combat they should probably do more damage than they do, and in charge attacks less then they do.

Just having read the wikipedia article on the halberd, there's reason to question the defensive bonuses we give to pole arms as well. They did have a neat trick though that isn't reflected in the rules anywhere: that "hook" on the opposite side of the axe blade was apparently quite effective at pulling horsemen off their mounts.

I agree though that realism is not the only goal in game design. Lumping all the pole weapons into one "class" that all follow the same rules has its advantages when it comes to playing the game. If TFT didn't lump things together, it wouldn't play anything like it does. The rules are a set of clever compromises all to enhance playability.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Nice story, Steve. I'd like to hear what he'd say about spears.

That's more like how halberds work in GURPS. You can use them like spears, but the most damaging attacks are swings. The reach still applies, and the situation can end up being tactically similar to a TFT charge attack or defense in that someone with a sword needs to somehow get past the halberd's reach without getting destroyed before they'll be able to attack.

In any case, I think what is not indicated is reducing a halberd to a two-handed ST 13 weapon that only does 2d and needs to win initiative to be likely to get an advantage for its length.

If one wanted to model the halberd based on the explanation, it could be ST 13 2d+2 or 3d-2, which can be used like a 1d+1 spear in charges, or can "jab" (actually swing) at two-hexes for the higher damage amount.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

You definitely need to step over to GURPS if you want to scratch your itch for more realistic functional stats for weapons and armor. The LE revision offered an opening for porting over some of that to TFT, and it probably could have been done without fundamentally changing the game. But that ship has sailed.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

To get into the mechanisms of how different weapons work, axe vs sword vs spear would require the shorter turn length of GURPS also so we'd have weapons that took X seconds to ready instead of 5 second turns.

So keep the charge attack rules as written, so long as swordsmen are afforded the charge defend.

Re: 3 hex charge pole weapon rule
 

Honestly, it is a miracle that the granular details of combat in TFT feel as realistic and interesting as they do, given the abstract nature of the game.