Topic: Combat Companion overview?

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Winternight -- My suggestion would be to add 1 to the critical roll for every 10 points above the max for the weapon. (if no crit is normall done -- possible for some Type I weapons -- then it does an A crit and you get the bonus to the roll...)

[shnar]

Hrm? One critical ROLL? Or one critical boost? i.e. A -> B. E -> E+A, etc. And for only 10 points over? Is that how they are generated? I mean, every ten points is roughly a new crit level? Seems easier than I expected...

-shnar

[vroomfogle]

That's the rule that I use, +1 to the critical roll every 10 above 150.  So a roll of 207 would mean +5 to the actual critical roll (not severity).   I find it works better then the chart wrap-around I used to use.

For Degrees/Tiers Claw-law style that have maximum results I would still apply the +1 to the critical for every 10 above the maximum (not 150).  So a 147 Degree 1 M.A. attack is +4 to the critical roll.   The maximum result is still limited by the maximum severity critical and the number of hits done so I think it still makes higher degrees more effective.

[shnar]

Oohhhh, +1 to the critical Roll. For some reason, I read it as saying an additional +1 ROLL for every 10 over, not just a bonus to the one crit rolled. Thanks

-shnar

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

Yes, just as Vroomfogle described.  Not extra rolls, but a bonus to the crit roll, to ensure a more devastating critical. 

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

Not by the standard Arm's Law rules. You can NOT have a chain "suit" (AT 16) and then put a BreastPlate on top of it. It's not supported. There is no Armor Type that describes that outfit.

Just a note, but... The "Arms Companion" (chapters 5.1 and 5.2) gives out rules to "mix and match parts of different armors" while keeping the standard AL system.

[PiXeL01]

Also I think it is in Companion VI that actually provides extra DB for wearing more armor

[arcadayn]

I would definitely buy an expanded Combat Companion with all of the Arms Law weapons! 

[David Johansen]

I think charts going beyond 150 would be very popular and quite reasonable to do if they use ranges of values not individual points.

Another option would be to drop the maximum result to 100 and have a second hit at -100.  A table like this would probably make anything over 0 a hit.

[shnar]

We were playing for a while that the over 150 (or if using the condensed system, over weapon maximum) you just subtracted the max and reapplied on the same table. The justification is that you did so well, in that 10 seconds of combat, you got of 2 (or more) really good hits instead of one.

-shnar

[David Johansen]

Pretty much, but the math for a zero centred chart where zero hits and one hundred is max is much simpler and there isn't that annoying miss zone to go through again.

[thrud]

I think the previous proposition was billiant. Add +1 to the crit for every ten pts over 150.
It's very simple and elegant.

[shnar]

I actually don't mind the zero's in a roll-over-the-top. It tells me that to do any extra damage, you have to do REAL good, just just barely break maximum.

And the problem with a zero-based hit chart is how do you miss? IMHO, one of Arm's Law's greatest weakness, combining the To Hit roll with the Damage roll in one.

-shnar

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

And the problem with a zero-based hit chart is how do you miss? IMHO, one of Arm's Law's greatest weakness, combining the To Hit roll with the Damage roll in one.

That sparked an interesting thought.....

1) Make Attack Roll -- determine hit or miss
2) Check to see how well you hit (i.e. each weapon has a threshold (TH) - for example, say Broad Sword has a TH of 20).
3) Using TH, determine severity of damage.
4) Roll Damage -- totaling from all appropriate columns

For example, Broadsword has TH of 20 (Dagger might have TH of  40, while 2H sword would have TH of 10).

You roll, add OB, subtract DB. If total is 100+, then you hit.
if TH is 20, then a total of 120+ means you did Light Damage, 140+ means Moderate Damage, 160+ means Severe Damage, 180+ means Very Severe Damage, and 200+ means Mortal Damage.

Damage Table has 6 columns. 1 - hits, 2 - Light, 3 Moderate, 4 - Severe, 5 - Very Severe, 5 - Mortal.

say total roll was 153, means you did Moderate Damage...

Roll damage - read and total all damage from the Hits, Light, & Moderate columns (this is cumulative!).

Comments?

[pastaav]

That sparked an interesting thought.....

1) Make Attack Roll -- determine hit or miss
2) Check to see how well you hit (i.e. each weapon has a threshold (TH) - for example, say Broad Sword has a TH of 20).
3) Using TH, determine severity of damage.
4) Roll Damage -- totaling from all appropriate columns

For example, Broadsword has TH of 20 (Dagger might have TH of  40, while 2H sword would have TH of 10).

You roll, add OB, subtract DB. If total is 100+, then you hit.
if TH is 20, then a total of 120+ means you did Light Damage, 140+ means Moderate Damage, 160+ means Severe Damage, 180+ means Very Severe Damage, and 200+ means Mortal Damage.

Damage Table has 6 columns. 1 - hits, 2 - Light, 3 Moderate, 4 - Severe, 5 - Very Severe, 5 - Mortal.

say total roll was 153, means you did Moderate Damage...

Roll damage - read and total all damage from the Hits, Light, & Moderate columns (this is cumulative!).

Comments?

What problem does this system really solve? A special progression for OB to make it the right scale to give good hit statistics is a very heavy price to pay so the benefits from the system need to be very good.

Basically the current Armslaw have a to hit threshold that depend on weapon and armor. It also have damage thresholds that determine when criticals begin to happen.

The only thing that is possibly troublesome is for heavy armors to differ between hit-no-damage and miss. Possibly there is also problem with the flavor texts not matching if you do roll-over but that same applies when you hit a headless zombie in the head so I can't understand the real problem. Hit locations is just flavor texts after all IMHO....

[thrud]

s0rry, me no like.
Why fix something that ain't broke?
Arms Law is fine the way it is but if you ned to go mucking about go with the new arms law idea based on AR instead of Armour Class.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

What problem does this system really solve? A special progression for OB to make it the right scale to give good hit statistics is a very heavy price to pay so the benefits from the system need to be very good.

Didn't say it solved any problems (and I don't think that there is a problem to solve). All I said was that his comment sparked an interesting idea and I threw that idea out.   

[shnar]

I personally like the idea. I've never liked that the ToHit and the Damage were in the same roll. It just seems more natural that you have X-chance of hitting a target then Y-chance of damage. Some modifiers should affect how hard it is to hit, and other modifiers affect the damage the target takes. With Rolemaster, it's all wrapped up in the one die roll, so it's difficult to segregate the differences here and there.

A lot of new players constantly wonder if they hit the target at all, even with the general "0=complete miss" ruling. That's another reason why they don't understand the 150 "threshold" damage of a weapon. In other systems, you have X-dice for damage, and so you can calculate in your head what the potential damage will be. With RM, it's sort of arbitrary on a chart, so why not let the chart go above 150? Especially with a system that incorporates an Open-Ended roll on the damate. Etc.

For me, it's not the weapon charts that make Arm's Law so fun to use, it's the crit charts. So if there was an alternative to Arm's Law that used a To-Hit system, then a damage+crit roll, I think it'd make a great alternative.

 - I like the idea of 100+ = Success (i.e. follows normal Rolemaster rules)
 - Make sure you incorporate Crits somehow (i.e. Moderate Dmg = A Crit or something)
 - What happens at the max "threshold"? I.e. in your example, what happens when a Broadsword is more than 200? Like say 300? Is there more hits, more crits, etc.
 - Is there a variance in the damage? Is the damage the same if I get 120, or if I get 139?

IMHO, such a system (after much playtesting) would be a viable option for Rolemaster. Put it in an EA, or as part of some other Companion.

-shnar

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

heh! Like I want to write more critical tables... I got plenty of that with HARP (hence the reason why I took David up on his offer of writing the crit tables for CC).

Anybody who has ever written a critical table is usually not likely to want to write more (and the more that they have written, the less likely they are to want to write more... hehe).

Shnar --
the severities of damage was essentially the same as critical severities (6 columns, from just hits to mortal damage).

also the Thresholds determines which columns are used to determine damage. Once you max out, you max out (of course you could always include damage multipliers).

the damage IS a roll, likely 19 rows on a damage table, just like a crit table (1-100 roll) thus, you have a lot of variance in the possible damage -- both the 120 and the 139 would have the potential for damage, but it would also have a range within that potential.

Not sure if you noticed it, but in my suggestion, it does sort of address an issue with criticals (i.e. with an E doing less damage than an A) by making damage cumulative across the row (thus doing the equivalent of a "B" crit would mean adding the damage from 3 entries to get the total damage done (the hits column, the Light column and the Moderate column).



Note: Please be aware that I have no intention of fleshing out such a system myself. If somebody wants to take this idea and write it fully and submit it for the EA or something like that, be my guest.

[Winterknight]

For my players, they detest the "other system" method of rolling once to hit, then separately for damage.  Particularly when the attack roll is very well rolled.  We like the idea that the better the attack roll (and for that matter, the higher your skill), the more damage you will likely do. 

The crits are the delicious icing on an already moist and tasty cake.