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Re: (TFT) The year is 20XX...



I knew that a lot of ideas for "fixing" the pole weapons were thrown around after Steve Jackson left Metagaming, but I didn't think anything official had been settled on. Where was this written up? Interplay?

My own house rules do include something like your two suggestions, but that's because I have deliberately set out to change the "flavor" of combat in my own campaign.

I am on the side that sees the pole weapon charge rules as broken, but I also think that most of the proposed changes are over-corrections, if one wants to stick close to the letter and spirit of the original rules. And that includes the "three hexes in a straight line" requirement, official or not.

Erol K. Bayburt
ErolB1@aol.com

On 4/15/2014 10:50 AM, David O. Miller wrote:
Erol,

Howard Thompson and team added that in after Steve Jackson had left
the company. It's only in the very last addition of TFT and, as far
as I can tell, was added because of a lot of vocal dissatisfaction
concerning the pole weapon charge attack rules. Of course those of us
who don't think the rule is broken usually don't complain about it.
Therefore I think it was a simple case of the squeaky wheel gets the
oil. The other possible factor is that Thompson was trying to move
away from Jackson's version of the rules and mold them more to his
own tastes. Me, I'll stick with the original designer's rules.

Two quick things.1. I think a lot of people got hung up on the word
"charge". Call it a one hex "lunge" attack and the rule suddenly just
sounds better.

2. If you really want to nerf the two top tiered pole weapons just
add in an extra die damage rather than double what's rolled. Keeps
the lower pole weapons doing basically double damage while lowering
the bite of the two big ones.

My two cents, David __________________________________________ David
O. Miller www.meleewizards.com Miller Design/Illustration
www.davidomiller.com






On Apr 15, 2014, at 11:34 AM, "Erol K. Bayburt" <ErolB1@aol.com>
wrote:

The rules for pole weapons and charge attacks are as big a magnet
for house-rule changes as the rules for HTH combat.

The TFT wiki has under "Charge Attack" the note "Special case for
pole weapons (x2 damage, if last 3 hexes in a line)." Is this an
official rule from Metagaming, added late in TFT's history? Or is
it a house rule that somehow crept into what should be a list of
official, "by the book" rules?

As a suggestion made with an eye to keeping the rule changes as
simple and minimal as possible, I'll push forward:

"A figure using a pole weapon in a charge attack situation does not
get either double damage or the possible +2 DX bonus if he and his
opponent were in adjacent hexes at any time during the previous
turn."

Erol K. Bayburt ErolB1@aol.com

On 4/15/2014 3:13 AM, Edmund Nelson wrote:
... And everybody uses spears to absolute perfection. I really
don't see how there is any counter at all to spears without armor
other than getting very lucky, the general rule in melee is be 1
Dexterity higher than them or 8 Dexterity lower and be
invulernable to their attacks. unfortunately spears have an
amazing properties in being pole weapons, The user can disengage
from the slower enemy and instead of dealing many weaker shots
they can deal one double damage attack every 2 turns rather than
having 1 double damage attack followed by a string of weaker
ones. this makes most heavy armor characters weak to spears.  one
needs to have an odd amount of armor to beat spears reasonably,
so they avoid getting knocked down by the spearman on rolls 2 or
greater.  this provides us with the following configurations as
potential candidates to beat spearmen Cutless Small shield No
armor- 14 Dexterity lets him  hit spearmen turn 1 and survives on
a roll .less than 3, however still is very weak to just taking
damage and unfortunately just can't cut it Broadsword small
shield Leather armor 10 Dexterity vs 13, unfortunately you Still
suffer from the problem of losing to the initial charge quit
often, sure spearmen hit the initial charge a little less than
50% of the time, but when they do you die 2/3rds of the time, so
the amount you are favored in the mid game does not make up for
the disfavor early

The only candidate I find that might be a spear counter is
Cutlass with Chain and a large shield the strategy is to defend
on the turn of charge and then to counterattack on the retreat,
though just how good that is is hard to know because it is hard
to simulate, The best I can come up with is Charge attack turn
(turn 1) Spearman has a 40% chance (rounded) of hitting the
cutlass user If they hit they do 1 1/6 times 3 1/6 5 1/6 7 1/6
Instant kill 2/6 Note that the spearman needs to deal 9 damage to
get a kill and not 10, also note that there are a neat set of
permutations that lead to kills, they have about a 13% chance to
instantly kill the cutlass user every combat, and 2/6ths of the
time deal significant damage and 2/6ths of the time deal marginal
damage (though 3+7=10 and thus = dead cutlass)


The cutlass user is more complicated  they hit 50% of the time
but they go second, they also deal less damage overall, I'd give
this matchup to the spearman for now until more data is gathered
about spear vs armor.

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