[Rq-rules] Aiming and attack speed

[Tom Cantine]

True enough. In fact, that's one of the very few instances I can think 
of where I had enough success to warrant using the tactic: sword parry 
against natural weapons. It's especially useful when fighting ghouls, 
with their Demoralizing howls. Demoralize affects attack percentages, 
but not defensive ones, so I often found that sword parry against an 
unsuccessful claw (or better yet, bite!) attack was a more reliable way 
to damage these opponents than attacking them directly.

Some further refinements on the idea I spat out this morning, now. It 
now amounts to a separate phase, just before statement of intent, which 
I will call "Opportunity Generation". Each character in a melee gets to 
generate one opportunity per opponent in melee range, plus one 
opportunity for each available attack skill over 50%. (By available 
attack skill, I mean one that could be used on its normal strike rank: 
a weapon drawn and in hand, or a natural weapon). These opportunities 
are hit locations rolled normally on the melee hit location table, and 
are specific to the attack they were rolled for. (The basic opportunity 
everyone gets can be used with any attack skill under 50%). If a weapon 
like a broadsword can be used to thrust or slash, declare which to use 
before identifying the opportunity. If an attack skill is over 100%, 
two opportunities may be rolled for it, one for thrust and one for 
slash (if appropriate).

The opportunities then inform the characters' choices in the Statement 
of Intent phase. As well, it provides a mechanism to encourage use and 
improvement through experience of non-primary attack skills. A guy 
who's survived scores of serious fights  should be better at things 
like kick and headbutt as well as sword attack.

I will have to playtest this soon.

On 22-May-06, at 12:48 PM, David Smart wrote:

> And then there's those who essentially wait and attack whatever an 
> attacker chooses to attack with.
>  
> I've been thinking of allowing a To Hit bonus = (the waiting 
> character's melee SR minus the attacker's melee SR) * 10%. The bonus 
> improves either the waiting character's Parry or Attack percentage or 
> can be split between both but this kind of attack uses up both a Parry 
> and Attack action and uses a single die roll that must be equal to or 
> under the Parry/Attack skills to be successful. If successful, the 
> limb the attacker is using in his attack is struck.
>   
> Armor still protects though so this may not be as useful as it sounds 
> (assuming it sounds useful) and I haven't tested this so it may be 
> more trouble than it's worth. I just like giving PCs and NPCs tactical 
> options in combat.
>   
> David
>  
> On 5/22/06, Tom Cantine <tcantine at incentre.net> wrote:
> The more I think about this, along with my own experience in fencing,
> the more I am inclined to drop aiming rules for melee combat. It seems
> to me that if I'm trying to hit my opponent in a spot I perceive as
> especially vulnerable or tactically useful, one of the things I will be
> doing to enhance my likelihood of hitting there is trying to get him to
> defend somewhere else, and that means actively going after those other
> spots.
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