Author Topic: Suggestions for Simplified Round  (Read 2517 times)

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Offline jdale

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Re: Suggestions for Simplified Round
« Reply #20 on: April 07, 2022, 10:46:38 AM »
I assume from this being the RMC/RM2 forum that you are looking at this in RMC/RM2. Do the combat style options in the RMC Combat Companion address the concern? It doesn't matter if the crossbow normally takes a long time if the PC can do it faster. In fact feeling like you are getting away with something usually makes it better from the player perspective. Combat styles incur a DP cost that helps balance that out.

I don't see a balance concern with the light crossbow firing every round. It being slower than other weapons is a nod to realism. That's exaggerated in RM2/RMC and RMSS/RMFRP with their 10 second rounds because frankly 10 seconds is a really long time and everything has been slowed down accordingly -- more so for missile weapons than melee because the abstracted melee round is hard to nail down for realism purposes. But from a balance perspective, the performance isn't superior to the faster-firing long bow, except at point blank range.

Heavy crossbows have a balance reason to be slower, although giving out a magic crossbow that reloads faster may not be a problem if the campaign is at the stage of giving out other magic weapons of similar power.
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Offline Cory Magel

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Re: Suggestions for Simplified Round
« Reply #21 on: April 07, 2022, 10:40:44 PM »
And I also think that the balance between fun, realism and balance in RM is not overly skewed towards fun. the number of arguments for balance and realism on this forum alone would tend to bear it out. But of course, of the three, fun is the one that is most in the eye of a beholder.
We always treated RM the way the original RM was established: A bunch of various mechanics that you could chose to use or not in various ways.  So even when we decided to start using RMSS there were things some people might consider 'official' that we tossed right out the window from the get-go.  Exhaustion points?  Never even considered using them.  Does that have an impact on 'balance'?  Yes.  But whose balance?

Different groups play in different ways that will result in the same mechanic balancing differently.  If you let your spell casters fully rest up after every combat they know they can use all their power points in that one fight.  That dramatically changes the balance of spell vs arms users.

I'd just say you're going to have to experiment with the things you're unsure of and modify them how you see fit.

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Game design priority: Fun > Balance > Realism (greater than > less than).
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Offline Mansquatch62

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Re: Suggestions for Simplified Round
« Reply #22 on: April 08, 2022, 08:49:30 AM »
Historically-as far as I know-the charm of crossbows was the ease of training vs. a bow of any type. It could take a couple years to train a decent bowman, but a couple weeks to train a decent crossbow-person. When they were introduced, crossbows were considered a "world ending" weapon because a peasant woman could be easily trained to kill a knight with one, where most peasant women could never draw a longbow even IF they had the several years training to be effective.

In the RM game system, it is hard to simulate this aspect of the weapon. Given that-within the system parameters-it isn't feasible to make crossbow training significantly cheaper or faster (save giving crossbows a 3/* cost or something like that) it would seem crossbows are always going to suffer in comparison to the more rapid-fire bow.

Offline MisterK

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Re: Suggestions for Simplified Round
« Reply #23 on: April 08, 2022, 10:33:28 AM »
I was thinking the same thing.

In RM2, I agree that I don't know of any mechanism that could simulate that.

In RMSS/FRP, you could make the crossbow skill Everyman (x2 ranks). Not ideal, but it is something.

Offline jdale

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Re: Suggestions for Simplified Round
« Reply #24 on: April 08, 2022, 10:56:25 AM »
In general, an easier weapon will start achieving hits and criticals at lower values. That's the same effect as giving the weapon a bonus. For ranged weapons, you could also put that adjustment in the range modifiers. A fixed bonus is safer than an everyman skill which will have outsized effects at high levels.

That wasn't done in the tables for RM2/RMC/RMSS/RMFRP. However in RMU, if you compare the crossbow table (i.e. light crossbow) to long bow, the long bow does more maximum damage but the crossbow starts hitting earlier. (Heavy crossbow does more damage than long bow, but both light and heavy crossbow start hitting at the same thresholds.)
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