(TFT) 18's & broken weapons / weird stuff / variety of encounter.

[Rick Smith <rsmith@lightspeed.ca>]

> Then do you ignore "18 = weapon breaks" when the target of an attack isn't 
> attacking back?

	No.  I also don't have skinny little
rapiers break more often, nor adjust the chance
of breaking weapons for thrusting short swords 
as apposed to swinging long swords.  Nor do I 
calculate the chances of the tip breaking off 
when it hits the rock roof when you are under
ground nor give ANY chance of breaking when I
use a sword to block / deflect a heavy weapon
such as an ax.  I don't even keep track of how 
much the player's shields have been chopped up.

	The point is to have a game that is 
fun.


	I notice that TFT does not have cheap
weapons.  This is hardly surprising when a 
sword costs only a weeks salary for a guard or
5 times normal living expenses for someone in
the poor area of town.  I think that TFT swords 
are _plenty_ cheap.

	Now I happen to think that a sword 
breaking 1/216 times (1/1296 for a good fine
blade) is FAR closer to realism than the 
1/1,000,000 number you mentioned a while ago.

	Can I prove this?  No, not unless some
one happens across a study of how often blades
of various qualities / alloys / cultures 
actually broke.  (If anyone does see something
like this please let me know.)

	However, I notice that you have not got
any studies backing you up on this point either.


	Chris Crawford has an essay where he 
built a Celtic sword (with a mixture of ancient
and modern techniques).  In this, he mentioned
that swords became longer as the metallurgy 
improved since they were more resistant to 
breaking.  I think that if swords broke only
once in one million strikes, this would not 
have been a concern.


	As for saying that a Roman Soldier 
swung that (presumably fine) sword for 3 hours,
I doubt anyone is in that much combat over a
year.  (And if the sword does break how many
people survive to walk home and collect?)

	Consider a TFT, one on one combat.  It is 
over in what, 15 seconds, 20 seconds?  Let us
say that there is lots of defending, swords
clashing and dancing around; it takes 45 seconds
to finish the guy.

	Let us further say that this Roman, is
TOUGH.  He has good armor, fights in formation,
picks incompetent foes, has years of experience,
etc.  In fact, he is so good that he has a 97.5% 
chance of winning every fight he is in.

	There is a 0.2% chance that our guy is 
still alive after 3 hours of combats.


	For that matter, if all swords broke 
once in one million swings, why would ANYONE
offer a guarantee that this particular one would 
not break?!?  Why bother? 


	Rather than (further) belaboring the 
point, I think I should just say that your 
argument that swords break closer to one in a
million swings has failed to sway me.


	However, this whole argument is a 
chimera as far as I am concerned.  if I was
looking for realism I would play GURPS.  My
question is 'what is fun'?

	Greg Costigan wrote an essay about
game design called, "I have no words but I 
must design", in which he creates definitions
for a number of game design ideas.  Once thing
he mentioned was 'variety of encounter'.  
Magic the Gathering has a lot of variety of 
encounter, it is the game's primary appeal.

	In TFT combat, I like the fact that
once in a while, something weird happens.  The
main reason I would like interesting spell
criticals is that after many years of TFT,
losing full fST for spell failure is dull.


	Now I fully understand that you may
enjoy the more realistic, reliable, ordained 
mechanistic, (dare I say predictable?) ways 
that melees have historically been described.

	;-)	

	And I have no problem with that.  


	More seriously, random crap can 
spoil a carefully planned assault.  Some stupid
goblin can roll a triple damage and kill a
good PC undeservedly.  It pisses me off when
a 18 breaks a enchanted sword and thousands
of $ of enchantments go poof.

	But for me, the fact that sometimes
some weird luck thing rocks everyone back and
people are scrambling to react is one of the
points that makes rolling dice fun.


	I mean, if I hated random crap, I
would be playing the (very clever) Amber Role
Playing Game.  (Diceless everything for those
not familiar with it.)

	
	Getting back once more to my point, 
realistically, when an 18 was rolled, one of
a HUNDRED things could go wrong.  GURPS got
that part right, the sword does not always
break, sometimes the Reptilite slips on a 
fish.  (I also understand PvK's players who
felt disappointed when a nothing happened 
when they got a critical failure.  They 
thought something cool was going to happen.)

	But the advantage of TFT is that the
rule, 18 = weapon breaks, is SIMPLE.  It can
be remembered.  It is a nicely balanced 
disaster.  Bad, but you can still draw another
weapon and keep on fighting.  (Unlike slipping
on a fish which can get you killed.)


	I suspect that this is one of those
taste things.  Those who like some chaos in
combat are less troubled by 18's mean broken
weapons / weird spell failures.  Those who 
don't like them, don't like them.

	My major question that started this
whole thread off, was not are critical spell
failures a good thing.  (Of course they are!)
It was more of what were people's thoughts on
using tables to generate them.

	Because, I am not enamored with the
table you have to look things up with.  It 
just feels clunky.  However nothing else that
gives the variety of encounter that I crave
suggests itself to me.

	Does anyone have any thought on this
point?

	Rick
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