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Re: Weapons for pulling you down / off balance.



My rules for hook were a regular attack, then an opposed ST roll. If the hooker won then the hooker optionally moved one hex back, the hookee moved one hex closer and maybe the hookee suffered some kind of DX penalty until the hooker's next attack. If the target was on a horse he fell off. In practice that's what hooks were for historically: pulling cavalry down among the dead men.

The downside is that really I don't think it would be used very much, except against cavalry. How often is it tactically valuable to drag someone from two hexes range to one? Other than when facing them on opposite sides of a pit.

Part of my solution to that was to have talents that meant some attacks were forced to be secondary. Your side's initiative die roll, modified by new talents, determined your right to attack. 1-6 was regular TFT rules so in the absence of special talents nothing changed. But if you had a talent that pushed it down below 1 you got a bonus secondary attack. So a guy with a sword and a shield might be able to attack with both, or a guy with a halberd might be permitted one hack and one hook, or a swordsman might get a stab and a pommel strike, or somebody might be allowed to stab and also trip, if they had an appropriate talent and/or the initiative die was their friend. Under other circumstances, when the dice were not their friend and their enemy had a good defensive talent, the modified initiative might go above 6 and the attacker might only get to make a secondary attack, not a primary. But this is all a dramatic change, slightly fiddly, and primarily done for reasons that had nothing to do with hooks.

Otherwise it's hard to make hooks relevant enough to be worth a whole action.

--
David





On 3 May 2018 at 06:17, <raito@raito.com> wrote:
Rick,

The naginata really can't hook anything. And in TFT terms, it already has
an advantage in damage vs. required ST.

The more likely Japanese weapon would be the sode-garami (literally
sleeve-entangler).

As for rules, my variant of #4:

Attacker declares a hooking attack, and it takes place at -4 DX (or
whatever the aimed attack rules uses for arm/hand attack if that's
different, rules aren't here on this desk). Success hooks the target. A
hooked figure must either select the unhook action (which doesn't really
exist, but whatever) or (insert whatever dropping to the ground is) as
their action. When they act and they selected the unhook action, if they
make a 3/DX roll, they are unhooked. If the selected the drop to ground
action, they drop to the ground and are unhooked. Note that hook attacks
do no damage.

Neil Gilmore
raito@raito.com

> Hi all,
>   A number of weapons were intended to hook shields, pull enemy off of
> horses, pull enemy off balance or pull shields out of position.
>
>   Examples of such weapons are:  The Egyptian Khopesh, Halberd, Pike Ax,
> Shuang gou (hook sword), Kusari, jabajabba, battle axes, Jutte (or
> Jitte), Hakapik, Guisarme, and no doubt many of have missed.
>
> Some people have said that the TFT naginata could be used this way, but
> looking at it on wikipedia, it is simply a spear with a slightly curved
> blade. I’m willing to say that the TFT Naginata has this ability, simply
> to make the weapon more interesting.  (You have to have a special talent
> for it after all.)
>
>
> I will refer to this class of weapons as ‘hooking weapons’.
>
> Hooking weapons that are pole weapons will simply allow them to have a
> greater reach, but will other wise behave the same way.
>
> There are several ways to handle these weapons:
> 1. — Ignore them.  They don’t exist in TFT.
>
> 2. — Give them some sort of built in advantage that does not require
> special actions.  e.g. If a hooking weapon rolls a 7 exactly, the opponent
> is hooked and something happens.
>
> 3. — Give them an even more abstract advantage.  e.g. Enemies fighting
> such weapons must make a 3vsDX or fall if they move away from a hooked
> weapon wielder.
>
> 4. — Special rules to hook opponents.  You say that you are making a
> hooking attack, if you hit the target gets a saving throw, etc.
>
> I’m thinking of something along the lines of #2 above.  Just give them
> some sort of ‘back ground’ advantage which is always there and may be
> triggered rarely.
>
>
> Anyone have ideas, or wish to discuss this?
>
> Warm regards, Rick.
>
>
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