View Single Post
Old 07-21-2009, 06:12 AM   #27
Icelander
 
Icelander's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: Tourneys and jousting

Quote:
Originally Posted by aesir23 View Post
One option: you could say that since the lance strike is designed to unhorse an opponent rather than injure him, that it's treated as a shove. This wouldn't allow you to break your lance, however....
I think my problem is that in GURPS rules, it is (quite realistically) very hard to drive someone back with momentum from your attack. In general, it takes far less damage to disable a person than throw her back even one yard.

But then we have blows which really are powerful enough to throw someone back a whole yard, but when that someone is sitting on a horse, he suddenly gets a rather easy roll to resist it? A standing person has 0% chance of resisting knockback, but if that person were sitting on a horse, those odds suddenly go up. Why do they go up? Someone standing, perhaps even braced to receive the blow, has less chance of staying in his position than someone sitting on a moving horse?

As far as I can see, a skill 12 person sitting on a war saddle has 62.5% chance of resiting knockback. That's far too high. A blow powerful enough to cause knocback* should be nearly impossible to sit through, not fairly easy.

Any solid hit should have a chance of unhorsing people and those causing knockback should be nearly guaranteed to do so. My intuitive sense would be to call for a Riding check any time the character is hit, but I accept that this might be fiddly and would in any case probably never unhorse anyone but an amateur. I'd want the penalty for yards to knockback to be far more than -4, though.

Hmmm... sounds like any hit of at least HP/10 (to prevent gnats from unhorsing giants riding mammoths) might call for a Riding check and knockback should cause a Riding check of -8/yds.

*Which, you'll remember, is pretty damn powerful. For a ST 14 man to knock another ST 14 man back one yard with a baseball bat, he needs to roll 11 or more on a 2d6. That's a 1/9 chance. Even with an All-Out Attack (Strong) and the bat held in both hands, he still has a less than 50% chance of doing it.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Icelander is offline   Reply With Quote