Topic: Shoooting to the zone, vs melee combatants, & spotting familiars

[Dalewarrior]

Hi Gamers,
I've got a couple of questions you might have an answer for.

Shooting at the zone, at a large group of incoming foes, what penalty should it have? I mean it's easy to hit the zone but whether you hit someone seriously is another story!

I've got one player who's really good at a longbow and he keeps shooting at enemies stopped by a shield wall. This tactic, I believe, wasn't used in the Middle Ages. Should it be allowed? I give it a -90 penalty but maybe it should be more. I recollected that the Tumbling Maneuver in School of Hard Knocks has a Modifier for a Medium +0 Maneuver that reads,

Medium: Diving to safety. If the character is currently behind cover and successfully tumbles to another position with cover, he cannot be targeted by missile weapons except with a -100 OB modification. If the cover is not complete, he can still be shot at while behind cover.

That's a -100 Mod, it's peanuts foor my player who has +250 in lb.

Should the Mod for shooting into melee fighters that inlude friends and foes be around -200?

The last question I have for you concerns Familiars who are sent spying, like Saruman sent the Crebain to spot the Fellowship of the Ring in Eregion. What should the % of spotting enemies be? If the birds are flying near the targets it should come to a Perception check, but what if they fly more away from the PCs, not actually in their range of sight?

Regards,
DW

[Hurin]

This thread might help, though it seems like RM might not have addressed firing into melee specifically before RMU.

https://ironcrown.co.uk/ICEforums/index.php?topic=17885.0

RMU specifically addresses firing into melee on p. 172. Basically, you can fire into melee (with cover penalties as appropriate, of course), with the downside being that if you miss, you roll a +0 attack on a different melee combatant selected at random (including any allies).

This was very similar to the rule we used in RM2, so I wonder if it was in one of the companions.

[jdale]

In a battle you generally wouldn't put the archers right behind a row of shields because you need more infantry in place to fill in the gaps as people fall. In a small engagement, having the archers right there makes a lot more sense. I've done archery and crossbow in SCA heavy combat, and sometimes you get a line that is only one person deep so that's the situation. In practice it's not really that it makes your shot less accurate, but that you have to spend more time finding an opening for your shot. In game terms, though, treating it as half cover is very reasonable. In RMU that's -40 (or +40 DB, depending on how you want to look at it). It's definitely not Nigh Impossible (-100).

[Hurin]

I was thinking of offering my RMU players the option of firing into melee without the chance of a random attack on a miss, so long as they used Concentration; this would represent the extra time necessary, as you mentioned above.

[Dalewarrior]

Thanks for your answers!