Yea, adding in defense rolls really slows down combat.
Take Heroscape for example. It's a dice pool system. If you're not familiar with it the attacker rolls a number of dice equal to his attack ability, trying to get skulls (there are three on a die). The defender rolls a number of dice equal to his defend ability, trying to get shields (there are two on a die). The shields cancel out the skulls, excess skulls are recorded as damage. While this game is a lot of fun it's a lot of dice rolling and turns into a slug fest. An average battle between 3-4 heroes can take up to 45 minutes to complete.
The typical TFT encounter/battle in an given scenario takes what, 15 minutes?
So there's the real issue for me.
For a combat oriented board game, like Heroscape, defensive rules work fine.
But for a role playing board game I like the fact that TFT's defense is passive and does not slow the game down. The battle is fast, the winners and losers are determined quickly, there's lots of tactical decisions to be made, and I can get on with the story line.
That and a lowly little goblin can roll well and take out even the biggest, baddest character. The possibility of an early death always keeps players on their toes!
David
__________________________________________
David O. Miller
Miller Design/Illustration
2 Dean Court
East Northport, NY 11731
(631) 266-6875
Hi all, Thomas.
I hated those rules even tho my character (Flinch) was hugely helped by
them. I took a very high DX since I was a thief / spy character. Dave told
me that the campaign was not heavily oriented towards combat so I took
ZERO weapon / defense talents. My weapon was a crowbar, since clubs
didn't require a talent.
It turns out that Dave's campaign was huge for fights. I was hosed right?
No. I had DX.
In combat, my character could not be hit. I became a combat monster,
who was far more capable than characters with more attributes than me
who took many combat talents, and had armor.
One thing I like about TFT was that the three attributes were about equal
in importance. Dave's rules totally broke that.
Additionally he had talents which made the situation worse. I would have
been less put out about the rules, if NO talents modified the parrying rules.
(Now it could be argued that better design of the talents might have made
the situation better rather than worse - which is a fair point. But I would
hardly hold up Dave's Thail campaign as an exemplar of parrying in TFT
done well.)
Warm regards,
Rick.
On 2016-09-30, at 12:05 PM, Thomas Fulmer wrote:
Dave Seagraves has a fairly well developed set of Parry Rules. The attacker chooses the number of dice to roll to hit (min 3). The defender rolls two dice more than the attacker to parry. Some of the advanced weapons talents give bonus dex to parry ratings to make it easier for higher talented fighters to parry.
So if you are attacking a high dex figure, you have to make "complex attacks" of 4 vs Dx or 5 vs Dx in order to get them up to a high enough number of dice to make them have a chance of missing their parry (6 vs Dex and 7 vs Dex in these examples).
I think people who have played under the rules have mixed reviews overall, but I found them relatively easy to understand and use. It definitely biases the combat system towards dex heavy characters though. It's not enough to be strong and have a big weapon if the thief can parry you 99% of the time with his short sword.
--Thomas
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