Quick-Draw (weapon) Talent

[Devious]

The Quick-Draw (weapon) Talent says to "roll 3d vs. DX-2." Is that supossed to be the regular DX or the adjDX? It seems that logic would dictate that it should be the adjDX, but that makes for abyssimal odds! For example, a DX 12 fighter wearing leather armor would have an adjDX of 10 and thus, he would have to roll an 8- on 3d6???!!! Those odds completely SUCK!

In GURPS, the fast-draw skill is DX/easy, and it's very easy to have skill of at least 12 by investing only 1 point into the skill. Rolling a 12- on 3d6 has odds that are SO much better than trying to roll an 8- !!!

[Shostak]

Yes, the roll is against adjDX. As it is written, quick Draw is not worth the investment.

You can find a good discussion of Quick Draw over in this Talent/Spell of the Week thread from a while back.

[hcobb]

Just drop the weapon on the ground and use the ITL104 procedure to ready it with a straight 3/DX roll for no MA expended or talent needed.

[Devious]

Considering that Fast-Draw (weapon) is a DX/easy skill in GURPS, and borrowing from GURPS, here's the Quick-Draw (weapon) write-up that I will use in my games:

Quick-Draw (weapon) (IQ 8, 1 point, p. 36):

This Talent lets you quickly draw a weapon from its holster, sheath, or hiding place. Roll 3/DX (regular DX, not adjDX). A successful roll means you ready the weapon instantly. On a successful roll, you can now make an attack. You can use the weapon to attack on the same turn. On a failure, you ready your weapon normally but may do nothing else on your turn. A critical failure of 17 or 18 means you drop the weapon! You must specialize by weapon class. Quick-Draw (sword) includes knives as well. This Talent does not apply for HTH combat.

There are two Fast-Draw skills that allow you to reload crossbow and gun weapons quickly:
Fast-Draw (crossbow quarrel): Lets you ready a single quarrel instantly. This reduces the time required to reload a crossbow by one turn. Thus, by using this Talent successfully, a light crossbow will fire every turn and a heavy crossbow will fire every other turn. If you also have a high enough adjDX of 16+ for the heavy crossbow, and if you successfully use this Talent, you can fire the heavy crossbow every turn.

Fast-Draw/TL (Ammo): Reduces the time required to reload any kind of gun. The exact benefits depend on your weapon, but a successful roll always shaves one turn off the reload time.

For the Quarrel and Ammo specialties, failure means you drop the quarrel or accidentally drop one round of ammunition. On a critical failure of 17 or 18, you drop the entire quiver or ammo box, scattering loose ammunition everywhere!

[pzmcgwire]

Does Missile Weapons talent bonuses assist the Quick Draw roll?

So a player with 3 levels of Missile Weapons (+3) would Quick Draw at +1 DX?

[Devious]

Originally Posted by pzmcgwire

Does Missile Weapons talent bonuses assist the Quick Draw roll?

So a player with 3 levels of Missile Weapons (+3) would Quick Draw at +1 DX?

I would say that Missile Weapons x3 would not give a +1 to the Quick-Draw Talent. I’m already making it much easier to have success with the Quick-Draw roll by saying you need to roll 3/DX (regular DX, rather than adjDX -2.)

For example, a character with DX 12 wearing leather armor has an adjDX of 10. With the RAW, you’d have to roll an 8- on 3d. With my rules, you need to roll a 12-, which has odds of 74.1%. Typical GURPS characters have a fast-draw skill of 12 or more, which they have to roll less than or equal to skill level on 3d6 with an investment of only 1 point.

If you’re a GM running your own game, of course you can say you’re going to give a +1 to Quick-Draw if a PC has Missile Weapons x3.

I don’t give any Quick-Draw for regular bows because they normally shoot 1 arrow every 5-second turn and 2 arrows per turn if the PC has a very high adjDX.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by Devious

Fast-Draw (crossbow quarrel): Lets you ready a single quarrel instantly. This reduces the time required to reload a crossbow by one turn. Thus, by using this Talent successfully, a light crossbow will fire every turn and a heavy crossbow will fire every other turn. If you also have a high enough adjDX of 16+ for the heavy crossbow, and if you successfully use this Talent, you can fire the heavy crossbow every turn.

Loading the crossbow quarrel isn’t something that TFT recognizes as taking an appreciable amount of time, as can be seen from the analogous nocking of an arrow by someone with a bow. The extra time to make a crossbow ready to loose again is pulling back the bow and setting the cable on the trigger. As can be seen in this video, loading the quarrel takes very little time.

It might make sense for Quick Draw (Arrow) to be the talent one needs to be able to loose more than one arrow per combat round, instead of letting that be automatically conferred by a given adjDX.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by pzmcgwire

Does Missile Weapons talent bonuses assist the Quick Draw roll?

So a player with 3 levels of Missile Weapons (+3) would Quick Draw at +1 DX?

Missile Weapons does add to DX for the purpose of lessening the time between shots. However, it doesn’t make much sense to allow it to make unslinging a crossbow.

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Just drop the weapon on the ground and use the ITL104 procedure to ready it with a straight 3/DX roll for no MA expended or talent needed.

Let's suppose that we do this with a sword, so that we can shoot our bow. We'd want to start the combat with sword in hand, so it can be dropped and the bow readied, so we've given up one turn of shooting so that we could ready the sword "for free" later.

What did we gain? Later, when engaged, we can pick up the sword and attack in the same turn, so that's one more sword attack swapped for one fewer bow attack. You're a little better off by abusing the rules in this way, but not a lot.