Re: Weapons for pulling you down / off balance.

[raito@raito.com]

Hi Rick,



On Thu, May 2, 2019 10:44 am, Rick wrote:
> I think Neil was asking “does TFT need this”.  Some thoughts on why we
> might want this sort of thing…
>
> — No way in TFT to dismount a rider.    <— The big one.
>
> — I like the idea that you can discombobulate enemy in ways other than
> doing massive damage.

Well, I recall playing that whatever would knock down a standing figure
would dismount a rider. But I also see your point about needing ways other
than doing lots of damage.

> One thing Neil pointed out, is that the above list is not solely the
> province of hooked weapons.  ’Normal’ weapons could and did some of these
> above effects.
>
> Further Neil points out that some weapons could do some of these effects,
>  but not all.  However, in order to avoid too great complexity, I’m
> willing to group effects.

I'd certainly group effects. But then I wouldn't try to use weapons that
only do some of the effects as justification for the maneuver.

> The suggested rules I sent out a couple days ago, didn’t try to capture
> all of the above ideas.  (My rules used effects, 1, 3 and 4 only.)

> Peter suggested that many weapons have some sort of "hook rating".  So
> ’normal’ weapons would have a poor hook rating but do good damage,
> where as some weird weapons would have a very high hook rating but do
> significantly less damage.

Since I don't get everything posted to the list, I missed that.

> One thing I touched on was these could set up combinations for several
> figures.  I remember in a battle scene from a Viking’s TV episode, one
> viking hooked an Englishman’s shield (with their ax), and pulled it down.
> A moment
> later, another viking took advantage of the opening created, slaughtering
> the man.

A thing I've also seen done, though in my case it's usually the second row
that does the killing.

> (I think TFT underestimates the importance of shields, but that is
> another topic.)

In TFT, shields have a very simple mechanic. In reality, they tend to stop
blows completely. A more complex mechanic is to have shields just absorb
damage in some way. One way I experimented with was to say that a shield
would take the damage that the figure normally would if the die roll was
in the upper half of the range, discounting the multiple damage and
auto-hits. So if you had your maxed-out DX15 strike, anything above a 10
would go into the shield. Then use the shield degradation rules to know
how many hits it can take before it becomes useless. And a figure could
deliberately target a shield. It ended up not all that useful and I
dropped it. It really wasn't worth the extra time, and chopping though a
shield was time usually better spent trying to hit the other guy. I still
use shield degradation, though.

One thing I did keep was a Shield Talent. IQ 9, 1IQ. If a figure had this
talent and a shield, and had a friendly figure in its front hexes with the
talent and a shield, then the figure could lower the damage done in a blow
by the amount of both shields added together. So you could have up to 3
shields protecting you at a time. Most useful for armies, and a decent way
to emulate a shield wall. 3 Tower Shields stop a lot of hits.

Neil Gilmore
raito@raito.com