Zornhau Forums

Korbel wrote:Oh, OK. But isn't a +1 increase in TN too small difference between fighting with a sword and a chair? That's only one success less (on average), when attacking with 10 dice. I know it might change the tides of battle, but I'd expect a bigger change of chances, when one uses such an unwieldy weapon.

Why use a sword over axe? Well, it's easier to carry!

There's a whole lot of other reasons you'd want a sword over a chair. The damage isn't going to be all that great, and in a suitably cinematic fashion the chair will probably break over the person you're trying to hit.

I don't know if you played TROS, but once they introduced The Flower of Battle, something interesting happened to the weapon stats. They started including 7s and 8s as baseline and what we rapidly learned is that no one wanted to use weapons with ATN7 because they just weren't good enough to compete with parries and shields from other weapons. If you had a ton more dice than the other person, you could just about even the odds, but even then in practice you were often hurting. I don't know anyone that could use the ATN8 stuff. No one ever did. It was just too significant a penalty to be viable.

It might be realistic to start a chair off at ATN8, but what that would ultimately mean is that no one would ever do it in game. You'd never seen someone pick up a bar stool and smash it over another dude's back, because the game makes it too hard to pull off. Worse, when someone decided to do it anyway, the GM has to go look up the stats on a chair.

Keeping it streamlined has a lot more benefits than drawbacks. The GM doesn't need to look up stats on it. It's easy to make a judgement call on damage ("uh, strength+1 blunt.") and then it falls under the general rule that improvised weapons are Disadvantaged. Because the rules are simple and relatively forgiving, the player can get away with deciding that they want to hit someone with a chair and have a reasonable chance of doing it. In my book, that's pretty cool.

Whenever we're faced with a design decision, we try to go with the choice that lets the player do more cool stuff.

EinBein wrote:Sounds very promising

I was a bit unhappy with the way axes were dealt with in TROS. Yes - historically - they may have been a second string, but I'd like to have them at least a viable choice.

Axes haven't felt fleshed out as there were many different techniques for the handling of different shapes, sizes and amounts of blades but only one technique (mass weapon and shield) for the use of all kinds of "mass" weapons (which are at least as diverse as the blades are).

Don't get me wrong, I don't take up the cudgels for more techniques. I would prefer them to be more general in general (either universalizing (try to avoid "general" again) a bit more on the blades end or making them more open to include mass weapons). At least make it feel fair

Axes were something we played around with quite a bit. Mass weapons and polearms are both swiss-army-knife kinds of weapons. They are tools that are specialized to a particular job, and the Weapon Codex lets you build and customize your axe to purpose, whether that is a light versatile tomahawk style weapon, or a great big nasty chopper. The same thing applies to basically all weapons, but it really shines with mass weapons and polearms with the sheer amount of diversity that existed in real life.

We kept Mass Weapons as a single proficiency. As much as we looked, the information we came across only ever barely touched the use of axes and hammers, and where they did there was a significant amount of overlap on how they were used by virtue of the way the weapons are - a long haft and a striking surface at the end. If we were going to break them up at all, we'd have wound up doing so by functionality: two-handed mass weapons, Mass weapon and shield, single mass-weapon... But since in terms of techniques, they all do roughly the same things, we went with the above decision: err on the side of players getting to do more with less.

Ultimately, it wound up being broken into Mass Weapons and Polearms. Mass Weapons is a fairly direct art form, chiefly about feeling out your opponent and waiting for that opening to deal a massive, overwhelming blow. That's not to say Mass Weapons have no tricks, but the emphasis rewards a certain play style. Polearms have more tricks up their sleeve and really reward you for keeping an opponent at range. It's more versatile in many ways, but if the enemy gets inside your range then you lose your primary advantage.

Most mass weapons will be Mass by default, but two-handed weapons can be used in either Technique. A Dane Axe thus can wind up being used as a polearm, or a mass weapon. The differences in techniques with it are made evident by the proficiencies and their individual technique choices and emphases.

hector wrote:

Korbel wrote:Why use a sword over axe? Well, it's easier to carry!

That's a fairly good point that many role players forget about: swords were the most common side arm in civilian life, pretty much regardless of the wealth of the person carrying it, for primarily that reason. If you're walking about town, not looking for a fight but wanting to be prepared, a sword at your waist can be out of its scabbard and ready to use in far less time than a battle axe can be pulled out of a belt loop and have whatever it is that protects you from the sharp edges removed so that you can properly hit someone with it. If, of course, you neglect the bits that protect you from the sharp edges, that axe is going to be far less comfortable to wear.

It's pretty much the same reason as why people in a civilian environment would carry a buckler over a kite shield; one of those things is far easier to carry around all day than the other...

Swords are very much side-arms. You used them as backup weapons in many cases, freeing you up to carry a more specialized primary weapon. At least in the medieval period and later, axes are specialist weapons. You grab the axe, keep the sword in your belt. Of course, in setting where swords were too expensive, spears become the primary weapon, with axes and short-swords becoming sidearms.

I played TROS, but not much. And more duels (for fun) than actual adventures. But as I can remember, my favourite was my two-handed flail fighter - he rocked! Despite quite high ATN (7? 8? something like that) many opponents were just too scared to close, for they knew one lucky hit from my Glorius Weapon and they might be out, even if they wore armour and had shields. So the high ATN was compensated - at least, in my opinion. Maybe if we played longer, we would discover it was sub-optimal?

Well - fighting with a chair is not what you WANT to do. You do this only if you really have to... But if you believe that lower damage and probability of losing this "weapon" after one or two solid hits is enough (with a +1 penalty in TN), than OK. I'm sure you will balance everything just fine, I just wanted to ask.

Whether a sword is a backup or a main weapon depends, I think, on the situation. If you're travelling, or if you're actually expecting trouble and don't care who notices, then it's a backup to whatever your main weapon is (which will likely already be in your hand, since you're expecting trouble); if you're walking down the street in a reasonably sized town, not expecting trouble but wanting to be prepared for it, then your sword is going to be your main weapon (either used two handed or one handed in combination with a buckler or dagger, most likely).

It's kind of like how the police in America carry pistols when not expecting trouble, and shotguns when they are...

Well, if you're on the street and have only a sword (for it's convienent to carry one), than your sword is not your main, but just simply your.. only weapon. If you have one weapon, than there's no need (even: no possibility) to differentiate between "main" and "secondary" weapons.
Sword (not a big, at least) is a great weapon - you can carry it easily, quickly draw and effectively kill people, particularly unarmoured people (and usually they don't wear it, for it's inconvienent). So a sword is great most of the times. Only when you are in battle, you seek for other qualities - range (polearm, twohanders, ranged weapons) or extra punch to dispatch armoured opponents (mass weapons) et cetera, for it's more important than convienence of a sword.

hector wrote:Whether a sword is a backup or a main weapon depends, I think, on the situation. If you're travelling, or if you're actually expecting trouble and don't care who notices, then it's a backup to whatever your main weapon is (which will likely already be in your hand, since you're expecting trouble); if you're walking down the street in a reasonably sized town, not expecting trouble but wanting to be prepared for it, then your sword is going to be your main weapon (either used two handed or one handed in combination with a buckler or dagger, most likely).

It's kind of like how the police in America carry pistols when not expecting trouble, and shotguns when they are...

That all fits neatly under the designation of side-arm. I.e. It is not a primary battlefield weapon, which was the point I was going for. If you're wandering around not expecting trouble, then all you are carrying is your side-arm. That's not a negative. If anything, it's the primary advantage of a single-handed or hand-and-a-half sword. It can be kept as a sidearm with some other weapon occupying your hands if you are expecting trouble.

I like what I read very much. There are some slight details where the intended simplicity stings my detail-loving heart (are axes as good in parrying as swords or are they "disadvantaged"?). But my feeling tells me that I will become used to it.

As soon as beta releases of course...

EinBein wrote:There are some slight details where the intended simplicity stings my detail-loving heart (are axes as good in parrying as swords or are they "disadvantaged"?)

The heads of the historical battleaxes were really thin and light, so, while the difference in balance most definitely exists, the difference in practical agility isn't really worth modelling. Now, if we're talking about an axe that was designed to be a tool, that's a different story entirely and it would most definitely count as disadvantaged on both attack and defense.

If anything makes an axe harder to use in a fight, it's the fact that it has a very short/limited striking surface by which you can effectively connect. A sword is much more forgiving on that aspect. And by harder, I mean it's different... Which is one of the reasons they fall under a different proficiency. Keeping proper edge alignment is important for both.

"Keeping proper edge alignment is important for both"
It is, but only if you want to cut. Will there be an option for bashing with an axe (and other weapons, for example hitting someone with your sword, but not with the edge to keep him alive)?

If you want to keep someone alive, don't use a sword (or an axe, for that matter). A mace aimed at the limbs would probably pull it off, but pretty much any blow to the head that knocks a person unconscious for more than about a minute is liable to cause brain damage if not death anyway...

Korbel wrote:Will there be an option for bashing with an axe (and other weapons, for example hitting someone with your sword, but not with the edge to keep him alive)?

Well, our mass weapon codex starts off with a haft that you can then attach a head to... so, if hitting with the odd surface is your desire, just use the provided stats for the plain haft. Or you can consider the haft having a Hefty trait, if the head has some weight to it.

But if you really-really want to capture someone alive, then we do have a mechanic for that -- it's called grappling.