Quoting Mark Tapley <mtapley@swri.edu>:
1 arrow/5 seconds is reasonable for me. I'm not a "trained archer"really, but I've spent a fair amount of time practicing at it.2 arrows/5 seconds seems out of reach to me, but maybe someone*really* good could do that.
1 in 5 is easily picked up in about a month of practice. 2 in 5 is pretty hard, but I know a couple people who can do it, and I've seen video of others. And I watch archery every week.
In fencing, I'd say 1 attack/5 seconds is reasonable. It takes me 5 seconds or more to map out the feint, thrust, decieve, whatever else I'm going to do next to try to beat my opponent's defenses. Once the action starts, of course, there can be several "attacks" (counting parries, stop-thrusts, etc) within much less than 5 seconds, but at the end of the action, usually nothing happens for a while while each fencer thinks through what just happened, where a weakness might befor the next attack, etc.
In fencing, 1 in 5 is pretty slow. Those dead times are either spent out of engagement, where the timing is pretty irrelevant, or in engagement but defending (in TFT terms). I also watch fencing every week. Really, 1 in 5 for any sword is pretty slow. More like 2 or 3 in 5. But one area where TFT breaks down at the micro level is that the important body/footwork movements in the use of a sword are much smaller than a hex. I win most of my bouts with movements 3" or less. I use a sword simulator every week. Another area where TFT is very weak is HTH, if you want to go that far. Look at the medieval manuals. Their 'wrestling' involved breaking limbs, and the guy who wins NEVER, EVER goes to the ground. And if there's any chance the fight will end up there, you disengage. In Fiore's stuff, any time you're close enough to touch the other guy with your hand, it's no longer a swordfight, it's a wrestling match. As well, there is a wide range of specific techniques for wrestling while armed. So the whole idea that HTH is about dropping weapons and falling down is pretty ludicrous from a historical perspective. They just did not fight that way as a matter of course. And if you're unarmoured, you probably never go for HTH anyway, unless the other guy is unarmoured and unarmed, or only armed with a dagger. I think Jackson devised the TFT HTH system from watching SCA armoured combat, where the grapple is forbidden. One of these days, I experiment with a more historically-based HTH system, though working in the fantasy elements will be difficult. A lot of the historical HTH techniques are for use against other humans. In any case, a regular division of time in which a figure may take a single action works well, and 5 seconds works well as the interval. From my experiences, it makes combats take about as long as they should, modulo the armour system. Historically, plate is pretty much invulnerable to single-hand cutting weapons, and pretty close to invulnerable to mass weapons. Some of the hostorical manuals from the 1400's decry rich young guys and their inability to parry. They never bothered to learn because their Cadillac armour kept them safe. As well, again from the manuals, armoured combat is more wrestling and probing than cutting and hacking. Pollaxe play was seen as vigorous exercise, and not life-threatening at all by the age of plate. And even mail does a pretty darned good job. But I'm not complaining about the armour system either. Reducing damage is far preferable to reducing chance to hit, mostly (realistically, it would be a combination -- if you hit hard enough, some gets through. But if you can bypass the armour, you can get a good hit). And contrary to popular belief, armour doesn't restrict movement all that much. Some, yes, and it takes practice to get that agility, but not as much as some would have you believe. Rolemaster got that part right. I'm frequently fresher after a day in armour than younger guys, jsut ebcause I've been doing it so long. But maybe I have a unique perspective. I've been doing RPGs since D&D first came out. And I've wrestled, fenced, done swordplay and martial arts comptetitively since about then. OK, so I haven't wrestled in a real match since 1980.
Neil Gilmore raito@raito.com ===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"