Topic: HB11 condensed combat system and Martial Law tables

[Chris Seal]

Hi all,

I'm thinking of trying combat using a modification of the HB11 condensed combat system and would like a wee bit of feedback on the idea. Essentially each Martial Law hit location has its own armour rating which is used to determine which column of the attack tables is used in an attack. The critical is then rolled on the Martial Law table for that location with no modification for armour (since it has already been taken into account).

Armour doesn't grant additional DB, rather, it provides improved armour rating to the various hit locations. For example, Fred the Rogue likes to run around in light leather armour but appreciates the value of his good looks so wears a full helm to protect his face.

Normally this would give Fred an AR of Soft Leather (on the torso) with +14 DB. Instead Fred has +0 DB from armour and uses teh soft leather column everywhere except the head where he uses the plate column.

Has anyone tried this combat system and if so is it too deadly ?

Cheers
Chris

[janpmueller]

Sounds promising - isn't this quite Rolemaster-esque? I, at the very least, would be very interested to hear how it goes.

If it's too deadly, you could just raise the base DB (by using 2*Qu + SD + In, e.g., or by giving a flat value based on size: gnomes: 40, humans 30 and so on).

[jasonbrisbane]

Actually, I was thinking that it was Exactly Rolemaster!


Thirsty, you might like to look a using Arms Law in your HARP games...

[GMLovlie]

Now my experience with Rolemaster is really limited to RMSS/FRP, but to my knowledge this wouldn?t be exactly like rolemaster, but perhaps closer. I don?t know about the newer editions and revisions of rm, but as far as I know about the older ones, they don?t have hit location, per base rules at least. I see a link though, by removing all armour DB from the equation, this makes it more RM-like, the idea is not without merit.
If I understand you correctly, this could actually be quite cool, although I would consider perhaps lowering the hits taken from the HB11 attack tables, to even out the damage taken, since its based on locations, perhaps have a looksie over of the tables to see if the damage difference between the different armour types on the tables correlate well with the ML armour adjustment rules.
I for one could use this idea, but I would personally keep the DB mods from armour.

You should test it out and give us a heads up of how it went.

[Chris Seal]

Thanks all for your feedback.

My idea was to use the concept that Rolemaster espouses, where armour is "passive" defense and DB is "active" defense but wanted to also integrate the Armour by the piece rules from HARP. I have looked at Arms Law and at the Combat Companion but figured this would be a better aproach.

Janpmueller, I really like the idea of using In in the base DB. Might have to yoink that in any case (maybe Qu+In as base DB). Have an idea point.

Having said that, I currently don't have a group to trial it with. I'm going to run a few of the NPCs from the back of Martial Law to try it out, but that is an artificial setup and wont show all the bugs. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Cheers
Chris

[janpmueller]

My idea was to use the concept that Rolemaster espouses, where armour is "passive" defense and DB is "active" defense but wanted to also integrate the Armour by the piece rules from HARP

You would find a lot of friends on this forum if you succeed in that... A friend and I tried to have hit locations (which "armour by the piece" would entail) + armor as passive + critical tables and we didn't manage to get it all together (without ending up with something so complicated it wouldn't deserve to be called "Game" anymore).

The problem for us was that hit location should be reflected in the critical tables, but passive armor should as well... We found you need a cube to display this (or else multiple tables for either (a) each armor class or else (b) each hit location with the other dimension as columns - and you would still have tables for every weapon. That could mean a lot of tables).
In the end, we thought dropping hit locations from the tables (and simply rolling it with 2D6 or sth.) and improvising should the critical hit not match the location was way easier.

Good luck, though, and I'm very interested!

[Karizma]

An idea I've heard somewhere is that DB is your "not getting hit" statand armor is your "damage soaking" stat.  There's some potential there.  So you do the whole crit thing, but depending on the armor you use it would soak up X or Y of the concussion hits.  Just a thought.

[Chris Seal]

Hi all,

I ran a quick comparison of the combat systems this evening. I took three basic fighters each armed with longswords and various armour combos. The armours used all had a DB of 40 as determined by the armour by the piece (ABTP) rules in the core rulebook but were as follows:
a.) Full set of chain
b.) Plate helm, plate gorget, soft leather curiass, plate gauntlets, chain bracers, rigid leather greaves and boots.
c.) Plate helm and gorget, plate curiass, rigid leather boots and greaves, soft leather bracers and gauntlets.
The level 5 fighter from ML was used so the base DB for each is 66.
The OB of 99 was split into an OB/DB of 74/25 bringing the total DB to 91
Where appropriate ML hit locations were used

For the HB11 combat, the DB for the curiass was zero as per the thread previously in the forum and the standard half db was applied to the chain set (In hind sight using half DB for each may have been more appropriate)
The DB for the HB11 tests were thus
a.) chain column DB 71
b.) Soft leather column DB 85
c.) Plate column DB 73

For the modified HB11 combat the armour contributes no DB (DB = 51) and the hit location determines the armour column used.

Dice Roll (Crit roll if needed)	Core	H&S	ML a.)	ML b.)	ML c.)	HB11 a.)	HB11 b.)	HB11 c.)	HB mod a.)	HB mod b.)	HB mod c.)
39	9H	6H	-	-	-	-	-	-	2H	3H	4H
24	5H	2H	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	2H
68	16H	19H 2S -15	1S	-	-	4H	-	3H	8H	6H	6H
85(81)	18H	26H 2S 2B -25	8H 2S -10	18H 3S 2B	3H	7H	5H	5H	11A (24H 2S 1B -15)	15C (31H 3S 1B -20)	8H
53	12H	13H -5	2H	7H	7H	1H	-	1H	5H	5H	5H
71(46)	16H	19H 2S -15	3H -5	3H	13H -15	4H	-	3H	8H	7H	12B (18H -5)

On the whole the damage looks comparable to the core rules, though the variability associated with the critical roll can make a large difference.

Once I can finally get a group together (not easy at the bottom of the world), I'll do a more thorough playtest.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers
Chris

[Ancient of Days]

i just read through the HB11 stuff and the martial arts information is non existant ... and it does look very much like a basic derivation of RM combat tables .. might as well use the RM stuff and call its Rolemaster instead of HARP... looks like the best stuff on earth just keeps getting better.... ha ha.

[dob85y]

My idea was to use the concept that Rolemaster espouses, where armour is "passive" defense and DB is "active" defense but wanted to also integrate the Armour by the piece rules from HARP

You would find a lot of friends on this forum if you succeed in that... A friend and I tried to have hit locations (which "armour by the piece" would entail) + armor as passive + critical tables and we didn't manage to get it all together (without ending up with something so complicated it wouldn't deserve to be called "Game" anymore).

The problem for us was that hit location should be reflected in the critical tables, but passive armor should as well... We found you need a cube to display this (or else multiple tables for either (a) each armor class or else (b) each hit location with the other dimension as columns - and you would still have tables for every weapon. That could mean a lot of tables).
In the end, we thought dropping hit locations from the tables (and simply rolling it with 2D6 or sth.) and improvising should the critical hit not match the location was way easier.

Good luck, though, and I'm very interested!

Have a look at this then

http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=8007.msg119799#msg119799