[Rq-rules] Aiming and attack speed

[Tom Cantine]

I've been thinking about it since I first posted it, and now have 
refined the proposal a bit.

During statement of intent, a player may roll the hit locations on his 
or her target before deciding what attacks to make. This represents 
seeing openings and either exploiting them or passing them by. Only one 
opening is available at a time; the player must decide whether to 
exploit it or not before being able to roll the next one. One can roll 
an opening for every full 50 percentiles one has in a given available 
attack, plus one general opening for all available attacks under 50%. 
(An available attack is one a character could make without having to 
ready a weapon or move into range.)

So, for example, Blorg has 2H Spear attack 75%, Fist attack 60%, and 
everything else is below 50%. He faces Thrak, who has a massive kite 
shield on his left arm and wears a stolen breastplate, but no other 
armour to speak of. At statement of intent, he contemplates stabbing 
with his spear, but the only opening he sees is to Thrak's left arm, 
protected by 16 points of kite shield.  Blorg sees the futility of that 
attack, and decides to chance an opening for his Fist attack, which 
turns out to be even worse: Thrak's chest. A fist against 8 points of 
plate armour is just not worth it. He checks for his last, general 
opening, and gets Thrak's head. Hmm. Blorg decides to make a Grapple 
attack. (If it succeeds, perhaps we can interpret it as Blorg ducking 
aside, slippling behind Thrak and hooking the haft of his spear under 
Thrak's chin to choke him...) So Blorg chooses to Spear Parry and 
Grapple Attack at Thrak's head.


Incidentally, this system makes me think that for weapons like swords, 
Slash and Thrust could be developed as separate skills, so one could 
generate different openings for each.

On 29-May-06, at 8:35 AM, David Smart wrote:

> If your players like a bit more tactics in their combat, you could add 
> an Attack skill vs Attack skill roll on the Resistance table to see if 
> their opponent is good enough to not advertise his next move to the 
> player. Combine this with the pre-Intent location role.
>   
> But then this will definitely slow down combat. It _is_ fun though if 
> the GM is running a single higher-level player adventure. It could 
> also be used as a very low-level reward for a successful minor 
> Heroquest or for someone with a weapon skill above 100.
>   
> YMMV.
>  
> David
>
>  
> On 5/29/06, Bjorn Stolen <stolenbjorn at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I like this idea
>
> >So I wonder if it might help things if we change the sequence of the 
> dice
> >rolls a bit.
> >Here's my suggestion, then: If I want to target a location, roll the 
> hit
> >location BEFORE finishing the statement of intent. That way, if I'm up
> >against someone with an unarmoured head, and I see from his stance 
> that his
> >armoured left arm is exposed, I can state Parry and Dodge. Actually, 
> since
> >I can in principle declare a variety of different attacks (slash, 
> stab,
> >punch, kick, headbutt, grapple, shield bash...), we could be perverse 
> and
> >roll a different location for each potential attack, and then decide 
> what
> >intent to declare. (Incidentally, it also could influence defensive
> >tactics; if I realize my shielded left arm is exposed to the guy with 
> the
> >bastardsword on my left, while my unarmoured abdomen is vulnerable to 
> the
> >one on my right, I might choose to parry differently.)
>
>
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