01-21-2022, 03:41 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
Not just to get your weapon pointed away from them, surely?
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01-21-2022, 09:56 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: New York City
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
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Weapons are only a viable means of intimidation in a "comply or else" scenario. However, the "or else" really only works if you follow through because there will be people who call your bluff. As to the OP's question, the only way to change the result of a crit fail is by using luck. If another's crit fail would be a major problem for a PC, I as GM would let a PC use their own luck. |
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01-21-2022, 10:21 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
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01-22-2022, 12:50 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
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They're not safe tools of intimidation, obviously. Telling people to that they're not tools of intimidation at all might make sense in environments where you have a sufficiently low tolerance for wounding or killing the intended subjects of intimidation, or where armed intimidation is inappropriate behavior. At least if you think you can get them to internalize such a transparent untruth. Threatening people with weapons doesn't even actually require being willing to follow through, though obviously you need to (a) not be obvious about your unwillingness to your target, (b) be willing to risk the potentially-deadly accidents that brandishing weapons invite and (c) deal with the risk of the bluff being called.
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01-22-2022, 01:05 AM | #15 | |||||
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
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Nothing here indicates you're actually pointing the spear at the person who is attacking you, just that you have it readied. Like weirdly the spear is legally occupying your front hexes and someone could attack you from behind, crit-fail, and still impale themself on the spear even though it's tip is 3 yards away and it should be impossible. Something like "this only applies if you're occupying the same hex as the spear's tip" sounds like a pretty good idea for a house rule on applying this crit fail result though. Quote:
Even though he's already ran a couple yards past the tip of your lance, it sounds like he somehow backtracks two yards and impales himself as a result of the crit-fail shove. Quote:
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This seems like a similar situation to resolving "Knockback" situations. B378 mentions this: A person is arguably "solid" meaning you could 'collide' with a person who was standing behind them. It doesn't mention anything about either party being able to "dodge" to prevent this collision. If you don't let the person standing behind the shoved person attempt a dodge though, it gives a loophole where you create unavoidable attacks via people letting themselves being shoved into targets. IE if you treat a "shove A into B" as "automatically successfil hit against B" then B still gets a dodge so long as you don't treat this as a critical success. Though since you need to roll to hit with slams, I think some kind of skill roll to have A hit B (as opposed to enter their hex but miss them, like what can happen with a slam) also seems fair. I guess if you did make that roll you could have unavoidable critical hit successes. Since the Unarmed Critical Miss result is not an intentional action, unlike with shoving a skill roll to hit seems inappropriate, meaning there would be no chance to roll a critical success to make it an undodgeable slam. Quote:
The proposal isn't "the spear user can automatically avoid stabbing the unarmed peasant" just "give him chance to prevent it if he makes an active defense roll" Some low-DX incompetent soldier with a horrible spear skill would have a very low parry and very low chances of saving that peasant from accidental impalement, ZERO chance if he had just made an AOA and lacked defenses. |
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01-24-2022, 12:58 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
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I don't think you should be required to define where your weapon is located at all times; treating it as being in all your Front hexes within Reach simultaneously is honestly more realistic, because a spearman (for example) isn't going to stand stock-still, he/she is going to be shifting where the spear is pointed to dissuade anyone from getting too close. If someone just ups and tries to run into the spear, of course, the spearman should probably get a chance to get the spear out of line, if he/she would rather not prepare a dish of Peasant Kebab. Parry fits quite nicely, here. As noted, I wouldn't require a roll if this was the result of the spearman having a Critical Success on his/her Parry - a Critical Success should never be a bad thing for the one who rolled it! (Note this also means, if someone were mistakenly attacking an ally, I'd actually have them discover it was an ally and miss on a Critical Success - or at least give the player the option for this; on the flip side, I might make a Critical Failure into a hit if I were feeling evil, but probably wouldn't)
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01-25-2022, 12:29 AM | #17 | ||||||
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
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But still, even by limiting the circumstances is the problem of "they're stabbed, end story". It creates a weird situation where a critical failure creates unavoidable contact with an attacker, making it resemble a critical success in some ways. Quote:
If you inflicted injury with anything but a thrusting, impaling weapon – or if you rolled damage but didn’t penetrate DR – your foe must win a Quick Contest of ST with you to get closerThe wording could be seen as only applying to an "obstruct" or "parry" or only "stop thrust" attacks, and stop thrusts can only be done via Wait maneuvers AFAIK Wound = spear's inside so no ST contest, instead you can freely run yourself through long as you have the gumption (will roll) That's another one of these weird situations where the spear-wielder is forced to play by the game of their target. Normally if you don't want to injure others you have options like using Defensive Attack to get a dmg penalty, or intentionally using lower striking ST with your attack to reduce the thrust dice. So if you said something like "I'm doing a defensive attack using ST of 1 to poke this peasant" you might avoid doing serious injury: just 1 basic damage x2 wounding multiplier = 2 HP lost, maybe he'll live. But apparently he can just optionally leap onto the spear, and there's no way to stop it? I would think if you perceived someone doing this, maybe you could optionally wrench your spear backward at the last minute to stop them? To react fast enough though I would think a parry roll appropriate. It's arguably even already in the rules if you have a Sacrificial Parry perk: in this case you are treating the enemy you just intentionally stabbed as an "ally" and "parrying" your own spear attack, except you're doing the kind where you're "yanking" the weapon out of the way. Quote:
Regarding the "shifting to dissuade" it takes me back to our conversation a month ago regarding how Priestess uses these wide arcing staff swings to keep goblins at bay from what looks like all 3 hexes. With spears it's a big different though, like we're not talking about launching actual thrust attacks (Priestess is clearly throwing them swings) but just using lateral movements to aim and set up possible thrusts (or "walk into his weapon" stuff too) Quote:
When people impale themselves ala MA106 they use their own ST's thrust damage, so maybe someone could somehow reduce that? The weird issue with "find maximum damage for your weapon using his thrust score" is you can have an absurd situation like some ST 5 goblin holding a tiny spear and then some ST5000 giant impales himself for hundreds of damage on it. At some point, with that level of force, wouldn't it actually just knock the goblin's hand backward so there would be nothing solid to push against? I'm thinking instead of "Success increases his wound to the maximum possible injury from your original blow" that maybe you add the self-impaler's thrust to the rolled basic damage but cap the basic damage at the maximum possible basic damage you might have rolled. I guess you could make that triple max damage since you could have theoretically rolled a crit success. This is all very instantaneous though, it seems to cover "he ran himself through on my sword in an instant" situations" but not "he gradually ran himself forward on my spear over time". I remember seeing that happen for dramatic effect in some martial arts flick but can't remember which one... I'm thinking just "you can step to inflict thrust on a force field so you can step to inflict thrust on yourself via a spear" as an analogy. Quote:
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01-25-2022, 10:05 AM | #18 | ||||||
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of. There, as you note, the struck foe gets to decide if he/she would rather back off or keep going. In a case where the foe has stumbled into the spear by accident (due to either CritFail on their end, or a CritSuccess on the defender's end), however, I'd say if they want to avoid fully running themselves through, they need to roll against either Dodge or their best Unarmed Parry (which doesn't count as an Active Defense, it's just a good measure of the character's reaction speed and efficiency).
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Things are hairier if you're using a barbed spear, as pulling it out does half the damage it did going in (and requires a Ready by RAW, although I'd be inclined to have you trade an attack instead). In that case, I'd say the barbs make it too difficult to pull out with a quick reaction, so you're basically helpless to prevent the target from running themselves through. Quote:
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"Player: Alright, I don't want to kill this guy, so I'll flip my spear around and thrust the blunt butt-end into his chest. *Rolls* Sweet, a 3! Critical Hit. *Rolls again* Crap, a 3! If I do triple damage, I might just kill the poor guy... GM: Well, you had a Critical Success, which shouldn't be a bad thing. You can waive the triple damage result and just do normal damage instead; it's still a Critical Hit, so he doesn't get to defend. Player: Hey, yeah, that sounds great. Thanks!" And there you go. I'd need to look at PU5 again, but I'd never charge a player to turn their own problematic Critical Success into a Failure. Of course, I'd be disinclined to use character points as currency for impulse buys - better to allow characters to invest in Destiny or similar to get a regenerating source of impulse points than permanently burn points for effects. But that's just me.
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01-26-2022, 06:58 PM | #19 | ||||||||
Join Date: Aug 2018
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
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MA106 gives a pair of "two movement points" situations, one being "points to sidestep" if you lose the contest of ST when held at bay, or if you got impaled, it's "points to back off" which seems to imply free removal from the spear. Not sure if the latter should still apply as of Technical Grappling basically giving a free grapple to the spear-user and it's their option if they want to leave it in or take it out... like is the movement points thing still an alternate option to using a "Break Free" attack to reduce the Control Points of a spear-in-body grapple? *sends telepathic vibes to Cole* Going on your idea of using a parry... TG36 mentions "Escaping Parry" can be based on "an appropriate melee weapon skill". It doesn't mention what's appropriate but I imagine that might mean soemthing like "your skill in the weapon which is grappling you" (Escaping Parry based on Spear if a spear is stuck inside you and you're trying to get it out with your bare hands) or perhaps "your skill in a weapon which is grappled" (Escaping Parry based on Spear if someone is grappling your Spear) If we used this, we could reduce the free Control Points that a Spear automatically establishes (as of TG) when impaled inside a foe. Quote:
I've always thought this would be good emulation for "it's easier to pull your spear back for the next attack if it missed than if you stuck it in someone" (ie not just a problem for the swing-impale crowd, they should just have a more awkward time getting it loose. Quote:
That actually brings up an interesting point: since reducing a spear's grapple is now a gradual process (ie if someone puts a spear in you, maybe it takes 2-3 turns of "Break Free" to get it out) how exactly does the "half damage it went going in" get partitioned? The best I can figure is this... TG15 says "considered to have inflicted CP equal to basic damage" Quote:
It's more like perceiving "wait, they're leaning into my hit at the last second" and jerking back at last second. I do like your idea of somehow tying the damage you're able to subtract from his damage (not your own, you already committed to it) to a kind of parry roll to represent your reaction speed. Strange thing I just noticed: you can attempt dodges yet still do the whole "impale myself further on a spear" thing which seems weird to me. It's like "I was trying to avoid the spear but then realized it hit me so I figured -heck yeah- and leaned into the hit I was trying to avoid a split second earlier'. Quote:
Though there weirdly isn't any kind of "I drop my sword if a 500d crushing knockback-only attack hits my sword" in basic rules, the Gun-Fu thing of making a ST roll (subtracting basic damage) which got extrapolated to Sorcery:PAWS could be a baseline. Quote:
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Maybe in these situations, rather than negating crit successes on the fly, a GM could allow a PC to specify before rolling "if I roll a critical success, it's a normal success" ? Quote:
Should prob be some temporal guidelines though. Like yeah if you die, it's 50 points instead of 25 points to buy "extra life" in advance, but you shouldn't be able to get that -50% discount if you're trapped in a bomb with a room and make the purchase a second before it goes boom. I think part of the 'belated double cost' could be akin to "I don't need to arrange the plot normally required to buy exotic advantages" |
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01-27-2022, 04:01 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: Pisa, Tuscany, Italy
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Re: what if you don't want your foe to fall on your spear?
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impaling weapon, unarmed critical miss, you hit a solid object |
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