Re: (TFT) Magic Carpets and Brooms

[Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>]

Uhhhhhh... Oooooookaaay Jaaay.

It's far too late to go back to normalville but try to keep things here in
crazy town... insanity city is a spooky place.


 So when drawing up Figures I use classical proportions from art for
Joe/Jane Average where the human Figure is 8 heads in height proportionally
making a 6 foot tall Figures head height 9 inches and proportionally 6
inches wide (6 by 9 by 9).

To tie this to the mapping stuff I use a square-hex enlarged by a factor of
4 on quarter inch graph that I call a scale-hex.

Each of the quarter inch squares at this scale represent three and a
quarter inches across with a area roughly equal to the palm of a hand (6
foot tall proportionally) for these quarter inch scale-squares.

To snap the 6 by 9 dimensions of Joe Average's head onto the square-hex
grid takes 2 by 3 scale-squares.

I call 2 by 3 scale-squares a head-unit.

I use this for a couple of reasons.

The art approach uses heads to construct a Figure so I use the same
approach to box out Joe Average.

Remember Joe Average has a silhouette that at its largest equals around
half a hex or 8 square feet, 1152 sq in.

It takes 23 head-units (hu's) to describe Joe.

9.75 by 6.5 is 63.375 square inches per head-unit which works to 1457.625
sq in to box Joe in scale-squares.

This is my basic unit for determining targeting probs and mods.

TFT AM pg. 20 has the stuff on aimed shots.

It gives the head, body, arms, and legs as the humanoid targets.

''BODY: All 'normal' attacks are considered to be aimed at the body anyway.

Without head-units that doesn't tell me much, with hu's I know that this is
about 9 of Joes 23 hu's or over a third of his total Figure for a normal,
no mod attack in TFT.

That's the starting point.

Then things start getting a bit... off I find.

Arms and legs are at a -4 DX to the attacker and the head is at a -6 as is
a shield arm.

I'm sure this is an old saw but how in the world does a shield make an arm
harder to hit?

I though the point of a shield was to get in the way of blows but it
appears that the added weigh allows the shield arm to gain speed from the
additional momentum or some such.

Because its harder to get through the shield?

Then don't count the armor if the shield arm still gets hit with the -6 DX
hung on the attacker?

Or does everybody and their grandma wear at least a buckler which hangs the
same -6 DX on the attacker that a tower does?

Looked at like this I'd strap one on both forearms.

Now I realize that one of the main factors of hanging a mod on the
attackers DX here has to do with the dynamic nature of the limbs and of
course someone is going to try and jerk the limb out of the way of the
coming blow but I'd think that would be assumed to be the norm here.

I note 2 things.

Compared to the bodies 9 hu's for the base attack an arm only has 2 hu's of
area (4 hu's long though compared to the bodies 3).

A leg has roughly twice the area of an arm along roughly the same length
and Figures tend to stand on them making legs generally move slower than
arms with the exceptions like sprinting being issues unto themselves.

A head is a ninth of the basic body shot.

For Joe this drops his 50/50 shot at the body down to about a 5% shot
(50/9) or a 5 on 3d6 which is the first auto-success that takes a -5 to adj.

Divide that 9 body hu's by 2 for the arm hu's and then pair down the 50/50
and it comes out to -4 to adj.

Well will you look at that... no changes to the mods from Jay logic, yet.

But the leg has about twice the area of the arm and the above procedure
works out to a -2 mod.

Wow, I'm really screwing everything up.

I can note that the leg can be divided at the knee and the areas equal the
arm at -4 with fighting types like gladiators being much more concerned
with the lower-leg it seems.

But that's still messing everything up by adding more aimed shot targets, 2.

So there's that.

Also, for Joe Average attacker a -6 mod is effectively a -4 as dropping an
attack on 3d6 below 6 adjDX (just under 10% chance) is pointless due to
crits.

Of course Joe probably would be well advised to stick to the basics with
his 10 DX but he shouldn't be forbidden from an attempt.

I let players add 1 dice to their roll per -4 adj removed which is
significantly in the players favor from a probability pov but also quite a
bit more 'fuzzy'.

The average result on that extra die is 3.5.

Roll a 4 and your back where you started but a 5 or 6 is worse than you
started.


 So I told y'all all that to tell you this.

The 'Principles of Flight' reference I keep mentioning has significant
information on materials and construction including the rigging and setup
for basic controls like the stick, pedal, and brakes (heal or toe).

If I use hu's on Figures and the main weapons were designed for ground use
against Figures then it makes sense to paste 'em onto plane silhouette when
looking at how planes would be damaged as compared to the organs and bones
under a particular hu.

Also of note is the 3 by 2 scale-square breaks down into 6 individual
scale-squares which is handy in a d6 system like the 6 surrounding hexes of
a center-hex.

More on scale-squares on the morrow.
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