Re: (TFT) shield deflection

[Daniel Tulloh <daniel@jaws.greatwhite.com>]

On Mon, 1 Nov 1999 srydzews@ix.netcom.com wrote:

> 3) And what if some giant hits a hobbit with a fifty-pound 
>    sledgehammer?  Can the brave hobbit deflect the attack with 
>    his wee little shield?  I don't think so.  How about 
>    cannonballs and eight-die lightning bolts?  Can you deflect 
>    them?  It seems like there should be some sort of cap on how
>    large of an attack can be deflected.  (Maybe you can't deflect
>    an attack that does more than one die per four points of your ST?)

I've done a lot of thinking about this in the past and I've 
never really been able to come up with a playable solution.
The problem is not just limited to shields, but to armor 
as well.  Chainmail, for example, protects well against cuts
and punctures (swords, axes and arrows) but does a poor job
against bludgeoning weapons (hammers, clubs and the like).
And even if the chain stops the blow, there's still some
nasty bruising.

TFT attempts to address this by only allowing armor to stop
a set amount of damage, anything else goes through.  In the
example above, the 50lb hammer hitting a hobbit would probably
do enough damage to go through the shield and kill the poor
hobbit.  (lesson to be learned here: hobbits should not go toe
to with giants).

Perhaps a system like this would work:  A small shield adds
an extra die to the attacker.  If the attacker beats his AdjDX,
he has made it past the shield and hit the defender.  If 
the attacker misses however, remove the highest die and see
if the new total would have hit the defender.  If so, the 
attack has hit the shield and now some scheme can be employed
to implement 'knockback' damage or some such.

Dan Tulloh
daniel@jaws.greatwhite.com


=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"