Spear vs Knights... am I missing something?

[OddGamer]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Apart from the comments already made, where is the knight's block skill? He has a shield. That DB also adds to other defences. If he shield rushes and knocks the spear guy down, it could turn the tables, even against the unrealistic spear skill.

So as for skills, he was listed as Broadsword-12. Was right in there. Adding other skills would add more points, giving Spear Dude even more ability to Do Nasty Things to the knight (either upping his ludicrous skill even more, I'd stop around skill 30, or else starting to work on ST and HT).
As for the DB, it's correctly accounted. A full set of scale armor (DR 4 everywhere) weighs 85 lbs, which with a 12 ST puts him at the 'Heavy Encumbrance', giving a -3 to dodge, +3 with the shield, comes out to 8 (exactly as before). Parry 12 is already accounted with the broadsword skill of 12.
I'm not sure a shield rush is a good tactic. They both have DX 10, the HP difference isn't huge, the knight's only moving at 2 (5 - 3 encumbrance), so they're both doing 1d-3 even if he hits (odds are 37%, 50% for the original DX attack, 74.1% chance for spear guy to fail a dodge). Plus, once on the ground, spear guy is now at a mere -4 (laying down) which... well, we'll get there.

Originally Posted by Farmer

Also, on average 4.5 damage isn't going to hurt the knight (due to DR4) whereas the sword is doing an average of 6.5 points of damage * 1.5 = 9.75 points of damage, which means if it hits first, he basically wins because it's likely a knock down or a cripple etc. The knight also goes first due to higher basic speed.

... I think you're really missing the point here. With a 27 skill, Spear Dude can target the knights eyes through the armor slits (-10 to skill) and still have a 17 skill to hit with, and with the knight's Parry of 12 that gives a 25.4% chance to hit (compared in reverse with a 1.4% chance for the knight to hit). No DR, x4 multiplier, the average damage he's doing is 14. Plus, two or three hits in and our knight is blind (-10 to skill), and that isn't even counting that the knight is likely to be knocked down or suffer Major Wounds because of this. Even with a -4 if spear guy got knocked prone, that'd be 13, giving a 21.7% chance of still stabbing the guy through the eye slits with that spear if he didn't feel like getting up. He has a -3 to defenses, sure, but with a Parry at 16, spear guy is still well protected from that sword (the chances for the knight going up to 12%, a huge increase but still pretty bad).

Originally Posted by Farmer

I think if you actually played this out rather than a straight number comparison, you'd find the knight, even against such an optimised opponent, does a lot better. With Comfortable Wealth the knight could possibly also have a balanced broadsword offering +1 to skill.

+1 skill is... not about to offset things all that much. As for playing it out, perhaps. As I said, I wrote a simulator. It doesn't take into account everything, every possible tactic, but it does take a lot into account. I didn't just compare numbers, I simulated about 10,000 battles. Spear Guy won 80% of them (roughly, I ran this a few times, it was usually around 80% or so). That +1 skill from the balanced weapon changes this to Spear Guy winning only about 75% of the time.

There are many great responses to why Spear Guy is problematic (mainly lack of realism and problems with other sorts of attackers, particularly ranged ones or sneaky ones), but this response stuck out to me for... well... how much it got wrong.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by OddGamer

There are many great responses to why Spear Guy is problematic (mainly lack of realism and problems with other sorts of attackers, particularly ranged ones or sneaky ones), but this response stuck out to me for... well... how much it got wrong.

Thanks. Effective discussion technique.

It's good to have a discussion and have people correct things. That's how we learn. I think you've set up such an unrealistic scenario that I'll agree I was throwing in a number of things to try to get a more balanced take on it. Things that aren't simulated with your straight numbers.

I'll add that without a shield skill, you've removed the possibility of closing the close combat to cause issues for the spear. You've removed block. You haven't considered attacking the spear to break (knight goes first, too). A spear is already a *very* effective weapon, so when you create a completely unrealistic scenario to further advantage it, you've pretty much guaranteed it's going to "win".

Anyway, I did learn some valuable things from the conversation, mostly unrelated to game mechanics, but still.

[OddGamer]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Thanks. Effective discussion technique.

It's good to have a discussion and have people correct things. That's how we learn. I think you've set up such an unrealistic scenario that I'll agree I was throwing in a number of things to try to get a more balanced take on it. Things that aren't simulated with your straight numbers.

I'll add that without a shield skill, you've removed the possibility of closing the close combat to cause issues for the spear. You've removed block. You haven't considered attacking the spear to break (knight goes first, too). A spear is already a *very* effective weapon, so when you create a completely unrealistic scenario to further advantage it, you've pretty much guaranteed it's going to "win".

Anyway, I did learn some valuable things from the conversation, mostly unrelated to game mechanics, but still.

Yeah... adding a shield skill might help. If I get that to 12 on the knight, and sink the same number of point into Spear Guy's spear skill (again, keeping them even), I think that gets Spear Guy to 28 only. He now has a 17 parry, but also closing to close combat is not as helpful as you might think. Notice that Spear Guy has the 'Close Combat' technique from Martial Arts, meaning he can use his spear in Close Combat at a -4. Perhaps if he were knocked down, too, that'd be a -8? ... Okay, so now I'm imagining this heavily armored knight jumping on top of the Spear Guy in a very inappropriate fashion... it might be late. :P

In any case, I wasn't trying to 'create a scenario' to make it more advantageous. Honestly I stumbled onto this entirely by accident. I was trying to make a combat simulator so I'd have a vague idea of 'if I put my players up against this baddy/group, how likely are they to survive the fight'. I made a lot of simplifying assumptions (basically the two sides just sit there and hit each other until they go down, no feinting, etc.) for the purposes of running the simulation, but I wasn't trying to favor spears at the start. Heck, the whole reason I picked the spear initially was the serious possibility that the player wouldn't be able to afford anything I initially thought was better!

I've decided to cap skill at 16 after seeing all this stuff, because... beyond that it gets ridiculous as this shows.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by OddGamer

Yeah... adding a shield skill might help. If I get that to 12 on the knight, and sink the same number of point into Spear Guy's spear skill (again, keeping them even), I think that gets Spear Guy to 28 only. He now has a 17 parry, but also closing to close combat is not as helpful as you might think. Notice that Spear Guy has the 'Close Combat' technique from Martial Arts, meaning he can use his spear in Close Combat at a -4. Perhaps if he were knocked down, too, that'd be a -8? ... Okay, so now I'm imagining this heavily armored knight jumping on top of the Spear Guy in a very inappropriate fashion... it might be late. :P

In any case, I wasn't trying to 'create a scenario' to make it more advantageous. Honestly I stumbled onto this entirely by accident. I was trying to make a combat simulator so I'd have a vague idea of 'if I put my players up against this baddy/group, how likely are they to survive the fight'. I made a lot of simplifying assumptions (basically the two sides just sit there and hit each other until they go down, no feinting, etc.) for the purposes of running the simulation, but I wasn't trying to favor spears at the start. Heck, the whole reason I picked the spear initially was the serious possibility that the player wouldn't be able to afford anything I initially thought was better!

I've decided to cap skill at 16 after seeing all this stuff, because... beyond that it gets ridiculous as this shows.

While I'd say 27 is clearly a exceptionally high skill for most settings which in turn can be leveraged to get exceptional results (as you pointed out) especially if no on else comes close, a cap at 16 might be going a bit far in the other direction depending on what you want in your game.


For instance a cap at 16 meaning a lot of fighters will be lower will make shields very powerful in relative terms. This is not necessarily a bad thing of course!

What kind of feel are you going for here?

I used to run a lot of v.low fantasy/historical, combat skills v.rarely over 20. fights generally favored defense and players had to generally speaking look for advantages and tricks to get past defensive opponents rather than raw skill.

[Black Leviathan]

A guy with 21+ in their weapon skill is someone who defines the art. The kind of fighter who has a fighting style named after them.

That said your rich guy could put 50 points into wealth and just travel around with an army of heavily armored mercenaries. Of for half of those points you could make a guy who throws sticks really well, attacks your spearman at range and makes his amazing spear skill nearly useless.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

A guy with 21+ in their weapon skill is someone who defines the art. The kind of fighter who has a fighting style named after them.

I'd think someone with a fighting style named after him probably has at least some of the following, or similar skills I'm just not thinking of:

• Teaching
• Writing
• Research
• Physiology (Optional Spec: Sports Medicine)
• Propaganda
• Acting and Fast Talk

[OddGamer]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

What happens when someone shoots a bow at spear guy? Or sneaks up on him and stabs him in the back? Or fights him under the influence of a Shield spell? Incredibly mediocre knight is better prepared for each of those eventualities. That is the peril of choosing to be a one-trick pony quite apart from the uproarious laughter from your DM when you present such an unbelievable character.

I actually have a question about that Shield spell. Well, the Armor spell, really.

But first, a Shield spell isn't about to help anything. If you've sunk points into Magery (25 to be able to get that Shield spell) you're missing out on ST and HT at this point, need to get your spell skill up there (otherwise you end up not having it, so let's assume 12). Said mage can have the Comfortable wealth level to afford the armor, but at that point there's not much left for any form of actual attack skill. I think this would have to be something along the lines of Spear Guy is up against multiple opponents. But that's not a fair comparison.

So the only way that works, really, is for 2 Spear Guys against mage and knight. But this doesn't work since Spear Guy can just Feint to obliterate any bonus that mage could give (and I didn't even simulate Feinting in my run, just 'Deceptive Attacks').

This brings me to the Armor spell... does it cover the eyes? The Magic book says it offers DR 'just like armor', but the whole point of attacking the eyes is to avoid the armor! If it does cover the eyes, yes this will severely mess with Spear Guy's day.

Ranged weapons and sneak attacks are, of course, far more of an issue, and there's not a lot this character can do about that, true.

However, all that said, I'm not sure the knight is faring much better in these scenarios than Spear Guy. What if the knight (or two of them) were up against someone with a shield spell? Armor spell? Those would ruin his day by almost as much since basic damage is 1d+1 vs 1d+3. And if it were against another knight, the attacking knight is toast! It's the DR of the spell and the underlying armor now! If we considered 5 DR from the spell and 4 from the armor, that makes the knight effectively unable to do any damage at all without trying for the impossible eye shot (needs a 3 or 4 roll), meanwhile Spear Dude still does damage on a roll of 5 or 6 and is hitting with a 17.

Then there's ranged combat. Not sure the knight's faring a whole lot better there, either. Sure, with his DR of 4 most shots aren't going to hurt him at all (depends on the weapon, but a regular bow with ST 10, so not even knightly, would do damage on a 6) while the Spear Guy gets pelted with arrows and turned into a pin cushion, but that person with the bow, unless they are heavily armored, too, can likely just outrun the knight, keeping him at a distance and pelting him with arrows until he goes down anyway.

Now the knight can correct this by getting a block skill, but the Spear Guy can largely do the same since even at Poor he's still got plenty of money left over to buy a shield, though he'd lose 1 point of damage. Not sure how this would play out. Unlike the knight, the Spear guy can't really be kept at a distance because he's likely moving the same speed as the archer (whereas the archer is likely moving much faster than the knight).

[naloth]

Originally Posted by OddGamer

Wealthy Dude: 58
ST 12, DX 10, IQ 10, HT 12, Wealth: Comfortable, Broadsword-12
--Equipment: Scale armor (DR 4 everywhere), Broadsword (1d+3 cutting), Large Shield
==Dodge: 8, Parry: 12

Poor Peasant: 57
ST 10, DX 10, IQ 10, HT 10, Wealth: Poor, Close Combat (Spear)-4, Spear-27
--Equipment: Spear (1d+1 Impaling, using 2 hands)
==Dodge: 8, Parry: 16

First off, wealthy dude is built really badly, and you're exploiting all his weaknesses. You've given him armor he won't be allowed use and very limited combat abilities while sending him against the best spear master to ever grace the planet. He should lose horribly given this situation.

Wealthy guy would do much better with a shield skill and no broadsword. Shield bashes would likely break the spear before an eye hit (33% chance of breakage parrying the shield vs 25% chance of failing a block).

Wealthy guy would also benefit from a warhorse more broadsword as well while replacing broadsword with riding. The strategy here is to have the warhorse trample the peasant. Trying to "parry" the horse is possible, but even more likely to result in the loss of a spear (5/6 chance of breakage?). Once the spear is out of play, wealthy guy can punch him the peasant to death with armored gauntlets while the peasant effectively can't hurt DR4 wealthy guy.

Mostly, though, wealthy guy should pay some archers or knife throwers to make an example of this unruly peasant.

[Kalzazz]

In actual gameplay I've never found any issue with insane weapon skill, sure, you are awesome when weapon skill helps and less awesome when it doesn't. Insane weapon skill character hasn't shown brighter than characters who spent CP differently

[jackcelso]

Originally Posted by naloth

Wealthy guy would do much better with a shield skill and no broadsword. Shield bashes would likely break the spear before an eye hit (33% chance of breakage parrying the shield vs 25% chance of failing a block).

.

NALOTH said everything 1 shield bash and a bit of luck and the spear is broken and our spearman is defenseless