07-08-2012, 04:09 PM | #41 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Yucca Valley, CA
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Re: Zhentish Rapier Fencing
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http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...3&postcount=10 BTW, the thread also has some styles nominated for Forgotten Realms by Icelander. GEF |
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07-08-2012, 04:48 PM | #42 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Shangri-La
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Re: Zhentish Rapier Fencing
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That's the flavor text, anyway ... practically speaking, a PC buying the style will likely just spend 8+ points (designated for melee skills in most DF templates) on Rapier, 1 each on Holdout, Main-Gauche, and Style Familiarity to buy the style (maybe more on Holdout), so that he can buy Two as One as a Style Perk. Thinking about it, though, I'd allow Off-Hand Weapon Training (Main-Gauche) without counting it as a Style Perk. In fact, I guess I'd have to do that in order for Two as One to be available as a character's first Style Perk. It's not really that I don't like the idea of Signature Perks (and I'll confess to being a little less on the fence about it now, seeing that the Mighty Kromm Hath Spoken... :\ ), it's that using Weapon Adaptation to completely replace a Style Skill just felt ... I don't know ... dirty somehow. (Yes, I'm weird.) Quote:
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07-08-2012, 09:40 PM | #43 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Yucca Valley, CA
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Re: Zhentish Rapier Fencing
>I'd allow Off-Hand Weapon Training (Main-Gauche) without counting it as a Style Perk. In fact, I guess I'd have to do that in order for Two as One to be available as a character's first Style Perk.
Why? You don't need Off-Hand Training to PARRY with a main gauche in the off-hand, only to attack. >using Weapon Adaptation to completely replace a Style Skill just felt ... I don't know ... dirty somehow. Well, it should, if that's what you were doing. However, as I proposed it, you add ONE weapon to the repertoire of Main-Gauche skill, the rapier. You can't use a jiann or sword-rapier without adding a separate perk (for which you'd need another 10 or 20 points in style skills), and you don't get a default to broadsword, and therefore you can't get Weapon Adaptation (Broadsword with Main-Gauche skill). Go the other way, with Rapier as the main skill, and allow Weapon Adaptation to use a main-gauche with it. Well then, your skill won't apply with a stiletto or other knives, and you get no default to Jitte/Sai skill (read as swordbreaker), and you don't get the advantage of an unpenalized parry with a main-gauche in the off-hand. GEF |
07-08-2012, 09:41 PM | #44 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Yucca Valley, CA
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Re: Zhentish Rapier Fencing
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07-09-2012, 10:54 AM | #45 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Shangri-La
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Re: Zhentish Rapier Fencing
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It just doesn't feel right ... straight-up Weapon Adaptation in this situation brings up too many weird questions for my liking. |
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07-09-2012, 07:45 PM | #46 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Yucca Valley, CA
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Re: Zhentish Rapier Fencing
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What's it like to be a student fencer? Start with a rapier in one hand, and after some time, add a knife in the other? Start with a knife in one hand, and after some time, add a rapier in the other? Start with both, a bit steeper learning curve but with the benefit of flexibility? Even if you can't make a dual attack, having a short weapon in the off-hand prepares you for close combat. Assuming the latter case, Off-Hand Training would be a good signature perk. You'd need a point each in Rapier and MG, then you'd add 6 more in MG...and then you need one more for the next level. Pull it out of rapier, put it in MG, and your rapier skill doesn't change, because now your default from Main-Gauche is just as good. However, now you've spent 8 on MG alone; if you have a couple in Fast-Draw, you qualify for a style perk, and Weapon Adaptation would be a good one. If the off-hand weapon is less about distance flexibility and more a cool way to defend without a cumbersome shield, then Weapon Adaptation as a signature perk, and Off-Hand Training as your first style perk (and Unusual Training for Dual Attack as your second, if not a Weapon Master) may be a better way to go. Then you have only one skill for both primary weapons of the style, which I find cleaner, although your aesthetic sense may differ. Of course a style needn't have a sig perk, but this style seems a good candidate, because it requires a trio before you can fight in its most iconic fashion. I say it "requires" three because I'm counting Weapon Adaptation. Without it, you take your default at -3 for one from the other. It's just not cost effective to buy up the default instead of improving the main skill thereby pulling the default along with it. Against a warrior with comparable training in a different style who uses paired weapons with the same skill, dual scimitars say, your fencer is always at a disadvantage unless you allow a Weapon Adaptation perk. Against a sword-and-shield fighter, who must also master a pair of skills, I suspect the latter enjoys more benefit from the diversity between his weapons than a sword-and-knife fighter (defense bonus, slam bonus, block missiles, low cost.) GEF |
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07-11-2012, 02:44 PM | #47 | ||||
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Shangri-La
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Re: DF: Forgotten Realms Martial-Arts Styles
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So it's not that I disagree on the point-optimized use of the rules; particularly with the clarification for Main-Gauche in MA, by-the-numbers it works better to dump Rapier from the style altogether -- especially if we allow Weapon Adaptation to be bought up front rather than as a Style Perk. But it stills seems to be using a loophole (and bending a rule to boot) to get around paying for what would otherwise be a required style skill -- prerequisite to learning the style's traits, and included in style cost. Weapon Adaptation doesn't just move a single weapon to a new skill -- it moves all weapons covered by that skill to the new one. I can see no exception for defaults; unless I'm reading RAW wrong, Main-Gauche + Weapon Adaptation (Rapier to Main-Gauche) not only includes any weapon used with full Rapier skill, but also any weapon that can be used with the Rapier skill at a default. As I'm looking at it, even if a rapier+main-gauche fencer does buy Weapon Adaptation to use a single skill for both, he needs that 1 point in each of Rapier + Main-Gauche if they're both style skills in the style that makes Weapon Adaptation available to him. |
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Tags |
dungeon fantasy, fantasy, forgotten realms, martial arts |
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