(TFT) Re: TFT House Rules

["Dave Seagraves" <zilch@austin.rr.com>]

   Wow . . .  been a while since I posted.


Rick writes:

>>No. 1 - The Defense Roll. When you get hit in combat, you can
>>make a defense roll to avoid the blow. You roll 4 dice against
>>your adjDX score; if you succeed, you dodge/block/parry or
>>whatever.
>
>I generally don't like defense
>rolls.  (This is not to say that I've
>not played around with such rules in
>the past as the Inept Adept will
>attest...)
>However Dave Seagraves has posted
>the ones that he uses to the site and
>they are about the best I've seen.  You
>can might want to read his house rules at:

   Thanks for the kudo, Rick.  :^)
   Here is the exact link for my optional TFT rules, some of which
have been previously posted:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thail/files/OptionalRules.doc

   The specific rule change is under "Combat Resolution".
   rcb and I were thinking along the same lines -- a defense roll to
solve several (IMO apparent) problems with TFT combat, including
Deadliness, Lack of Scalability, and Lack of Realism.  His mechanic
and mine are almost the same.  I almost went with Attacker+1, but went
with Attacker+2 instead.  So far this has worked really well.
   In hindsight I'd glad I went with Attacker+2.  An average skilled
fighter (Sword talent w/adjDX 10) has a 3.2% chance of parrying a
"successful" 3-die attack with A+2, but 16% with A+1.  But these
defense roll chances go up to A+2 > 60% or A+1 > 90% respectively for
the PC with the currently highest adjDX in the Thail campaign.  (Rick
guess whose character that is. :^)  With this extreme example a 60%
parry looked better than 90% -- didn't want things to slow down too
much or have PC's become bulletproof -- so the A+2 method won out.
   I've seen an increase in workload when running combats, but only a
marginal one -- not doubled like one player suggested, at least not
for me.  This increase in die rolling was acceptable, even with me as
GM rolling all the dice!
   But one way to cut down on GM/player workload would be to make
most-all attack rolls /after/ defense rolls.  After the attacker
declares his attack and the number of dice he's rolling, if the
defender succeeds at parrying then there's no need to make the attack
roll.  I'll probably give this a try for the next fight.  The odds
should remain the same.
   rcb, I suggest you give your A+1 method a try.  If things get too
slow (or experienced PC's too invulnerable) you can always bump up to
A+2.  Whichever method you use, please let us know how it goes.


>>No. 4 - Separating Fatigue and Hit Points. Fatigue = ST as
>>normal, spell costs come from this pool. Hit Points = ST, but
>>only combat damage comes from this pool. If Fatigue hit 0 or
>>less but Hit Points are still a positive number, unconscious-
>>ness.
>
>We do this in the TFT campaigns
>around here, works fine.

   Same here for Thail.  Bookkeeping is simpler too.
   I almost changed back to the old system because there was a
perceived bias on this list (and from a player or two) favoring
wizards anyway.  But I chose not to change back because Too Many
Wizards is not a problem in my campaign -- only four wizards played
(two still active) out of two dozen or so characters.  Only if
everyone suddenly clamors to play wizards would I reconsider.


Ed writes:

>I have to side with Stan here.  One wrinkle, though:
>
>If you meant that a 10 'ST' Wizard can cast 6 FT in
>spells, then take 6 HP in damage, and be unconscious,
>but not dead, then it's not so bad.  He still can't
>cast more spells, he just doesn't die so easily.
>Warriors would find this handy, too, if ever Fatigue
>were tracked for things like fighting in armor or
>carrying heavy loads, etc.  And you might track such
>FT, if it actually increased survivability (leads to
>KO's), rather than with the canon rules, where it
>reduces survivability (fight until you die).

   Interesting wrinkle.


>   Huge question.  Hmmm.  I'm a paper and sissors nut.  I don't
>allow any miniatures that haven't been melted down.  I find the
>fixed postures limit the players ability to imagine the current
>fight.  So I cut out counters, write character names on them,
>and put a little triangle or arrow at the top to designate
>facing.

   Here here for counters!  I prefer them over mini-figs and Cardboard
Zeroes [sic].  Clarity of battlefield is just as good as 'figs and
better than Zeroes.


>   But that's me.  For instance the battle map I use is actually
>a huge collage of twelve copeis of the Megahexes in the middle
>of Advanced Wizard.  Taped together on the back and laid out on
>the table.  I can mark, right on it and make another next week
>or I can cut out some card stock copies (very very dark) of the
>section in Advanced Melee and use them for walls.  With the
>latter method I can lay out huge rooms, and run a party through
>extensive labrynths easily.

   I took a big 1-inch-per-hex "battlemat" and -- tediously -- drew in
the megahexes with a big green permanent marker.  It served us well in
the two years or so that we played TFT face to face.  (Off the top of
my head, we used it for TSG, Tollenkar's Lair, and TFT: Bughouse from
/Interplay/ #1, amongst others.)  We used water-based markers for
drawing in everything.  After each session we'd wipe it clean and the
megahexes remained for next time.  Recommended.
   Now I'm running the campaign online on the site Rick posted.
CyberBoard and Joe's TFT gamebox (heavily modified) is used to map out
the combats.  Here's a sample layout from the middle of the party's
last big three-way battle with soldiers (red men) and elves (green
archers):

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thail/files/RoadScene8.bmp

   As you can see the map is new.  For most counters I got rid of the
frakture lettering and recreated them to something more legible,
especially on players' 15" monitors.  All party members got custom
counters with their names on them, which was tedious but fun to make
and play with, and they look great.  (When was the last time you
actually had a counter on the board with /your/ name on it?)  No TFT
product has green counters, so I made the elven archers by taking a
blue archer counter and -- manually and tediously -- shifted each
pixel from blue to an equivalent green color, cloned them, and gave
them all unique ID's for record keeping.
   One idea which didn't work was filching the scanned artwork from
Cardboard Zeroes to make custom PC counters.  Reducing them to 256
colors wasn't too bad, but each counter is only 50x50 pixels, which
reduced each figure's appearance to an unacceptably-low resolution for
display on a monitor.  (Never thought about it before, but printer
resolution is /much/ better than anything that can be displayed on a
monitor.)  Even a bust view of each figure didn't look too good, so I
went back to working with the counters from TFT which were a part of
the original gamebox.  But at monitor scale these semi-silhouette
counters work just fine.

Dave Seagraves   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thail
Adieu, Chasseur mon ami
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