Official ICE Forums
Systems & Settings => Rolemaster => RMC/RM2 => Topic started by: Jengada on August 31, 2017, 02:28:19 PM
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Last night I ran a mounted combat encounter. It was 6 riders on an open grassland plain, started with one pursued by three, and then two others came to the first rider's aid from out ahead. The combat mechanics were fine, with control checks and riding attacks, but the movement was a nightmare. Riders moving 300' to 500' per round, passing one another, wheeling to return to the battle - it slowed things down incredibly! I have some ideas how I might streamline it in the future, but I'm curious what others have done, that worked.
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This was one of the reasons i am glad RMU is reducing the length of the round from 10 seconds to 5. Character movement is just too fast in a 10 second round.
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If you are using a battle map or minis then I would suggest trying to adapt the car war movement rules. Once the players declare their intentions manoeuvring their horse make a control roll based upon the sum of the difficulties. Having the horses moving second by second can add to the excitement.
I ended up having people make multiple riding rolls per round as this was easier to track.
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If you are using a battle map or minis then I would suggest trying to adapt the car war movement rules.
Are you referring to the original, plastic-box set Car Wars, with the cardboard chits? If you are, you're showing our ages! I completely remember that!
I was using a battle map for basics, but when it came to a rider wheeling around after an all-out charge, the turn radius went totally off the grid. And with 6 riders, that was a mess.
Side topic to this was, one of the horses got stunned while riding at 5x. I had to wing the rider's damage, but later did do a quick velocity-to-falling-distance conversion. Moving at 250'/round equates to a 10' fall, moving 500'/round equates to 40'. (10-second rounds.) FWIW, and ignoring the fact they're not hitting a wall head-on, the rider was going to skid on the ground.
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Yes I was referring to the original game and those rules are available as a free PDF now. http://www.sjgames.com/car-wars/games/classic/
Once the player describes where they want to ride then you can easily sum up the moves in Car Wars terms and then get them to do a suitable riding roll.
In CW terms a horse walks at 5 or 10 mph, trots at 10 or 15 mph, canters at about 20mph and full out gallop at up to 40mph. That scales to the CW movement quite nicely.