Activity % and the 10 second round

[Tiqon]

One of the key points, not mentioned in this film, but in others with Lars (I ofc knew of him beforehand...), is that he does not aim with one eye closed, he has both open and does not use breathing techniques and such, he just relies on his experience and intuition. That's why he can shoot that fast and do it while moving too.

But I agree with Damned and Ardem about the training. Beside the longbow archers from England (and that was just to draw the bow back) I don't think many of the archers in a medieval army was trained much. Also, when you stand 300 archers shooting at 500 others its not so much about hitting a small target but just getting some arrows over there . We tend to look at different kind of combat, army battles, sieges and personal combat and mix it. Not to mention different time periods and cultures. And hey when it all comes down to the nitty gritty, rpg is all about having fun .

[Dakadin]

Not to worry; some adventuring party will hire him on for a half share.

Ha! I would give him at least a full share and probably would be tempted to give him a share and a half. With the Rolemaster combat tables, I would just have to mop up the left overs.

[Archlyte]

If you after a system with non linear damage check out my Extinction Event ruleset (shameless plug) It is free and you can find it in the wiki.

Down side it is geared for a modern setting, but hey never know it might be your cup of tea.

I will check it out

[JohnD]

Ha! I would give him at least a full share and probably would be tempted to give him a share and a half. With the Rolemaster combat tables, I would just have to mop up the left overs.

Yeah, there's a lot of truth in that.

[Archlyte]

While I agree with what you are saying, I feel that most systems operate on constant assumptions as the biggest component of the abstraction. The assumption is that every fight will result in a 1 v 1 setup during the "Turn" (or whatever you call the characters time to act) with opponents making measured openings to test defenses, etc. The Ten second round proposed in the rules could be a time when you do nothing as you wait for your break, or you could literally be raining blows on someone who was a slow slug or distracted. The combat rounds are too big in my opinion, especially considering how many things you could do or not do in those seconds.

It is my curse that I have to feel like descriptions and mechanics are married well, so if something strikes me as a long period of time in which only one attack is made it will get under my skin. Especially since every combat system is described in its rulebook as being a series of feints, binds, parries, and other stuff, but in my experience the only thing anyone actually verbalizes is the blow that hits or misses.

<Player Rolls>"Ok you hit the Bandit in the left arm with your sword."

So you get a round that is supposed to be full of stuff but it comes across in description as a weird chunk of time where nothing but one action really occurred for each actor. Maybe they moved and attacked/cast, but not much else. If they reloaded a heavy crossbow you could go out for coffee in the time it takes them to finish.

Add to this a typical Linear Initiative System and you have a recipe for robot combat, at least in the description, because each character will stand in a queue for their one significant action which their brain will be telling them is very little action at all.

[Dakadin]

I would definitely recommend looking at some of the other initiative options in the Rolemaster Companions. There was one in RMC 4 (I think) that I used to use about 10 years ago that I really liked with very little adjustment. I haven't looked it up so this is from memory but everyone basically declared their action and they took a specific amount of time which you added to the current initiative. Once that was done you could declare another action which added which at some point would wrap back around to 0 (It might have counted down too. I don't quite remember and don't have time to look it up). Then the GM just announced the current initiative to see if anyone had an action completing. I think I counted by 10s and worked out the specifics if there were multiples. Movement was the difficult part since you had to break it up into smaller chunks but it wasn't too bad most of the time since you could usually figure out where they would be at any point in time. I think stats and/or skills helped modify the times for certain activities. The nice thing is if you thought something was to fast or slow you would just adjust the base value for it and start using that instead.

[Archlyte]

Yeah I think this is an issue of my taste more than anything. I have grown dissatisfied with standard initiative over time, but I realize that it's not a problem for a great many PnP gamers so I have to be diligent in avoiding sounding like an ***.

On the constructive side: do you know if there is a way to have a default (AT:null DB:0) that will allow for untargeted rolls using the Ruleset?

[Dakadin]

You are doing fine. I am a firm believer in using what works for you. I've tried to make it easier to handle things when they are different from what the ruleset can currently handle but it isn't possible to handle every possibility. Hopefully you can find a way to play RM the way you like to and still take advantage of some of the things that makes using FG much smoother than playing without it.

It shouldn't be hard to create an extension that does that. Hopefully it would be in one spot in the code but I wouldn't be surprised if it is in a few different places. I will take a look at the code and let you know.

[Dakadin]

Archlyte, it wasn't too bad to create so I threw it together. I haven't tested it much but the only thing I noticed that was odd was the attack stack on the combat tracker wasn't clearing the resolved attacks so you would have to manually do it.

Also it does modify a file that handles the customdata for most rolls so it might not work with other extensions.

[Archlyte]

Archlyte, it wasn't too bad to create so I threw it together. I haven't tested it much but the only thing I noticed that was odd was the attack stack on the combat tracker wasn't clearing the resolved attacks so you would have to manually do it.

Also it does modify a file that handles the customdata for most rolls so it might not work with other extensions.

Holy Crap! thank you Dakadin I'm speechless. This is awesome