Fighting about combat mechanics - different weapon ranges

[Christoffer Lernö]

I'm wildly disagreeing with a friend on how to incorporate different weapon ranges in my game.

Ygg uses D12 against static defense, but has special types of attacks like grab, throw, stuff like that.

Ideally they should work like any other attack but give some kind of advantage if they succeed (the attacker can't attack freely, ends up on the ground whatever).

With that kind of detail I felt one should definately take into account different weapon ranges, for example in a fight between sword and spear.

I first made a rather bulky rule about not being able to attack a person with a longer weapon until you "jumped in". If you jumped in, the other guy would have a free attack. If that attack succeed you both got hurt and didn't manage to get in close.

If you DID get in close though, then the longer weapon person would have difficulties instead. To avoid that, the longer weapon person could decide to "jump out" to long range... which would give you a free attack and if that succeeded you stayed on close range.

Ok so far?

It still seemed a weird business, that with jumping in and jumping out, so I thought of a new way which I felt was simpler.

If you have shorter weapon, you get a minus to attack and minus to defend (unless you decide not to attack that round because then you keep your defense).

IF however, you manage to attack, you'll give damage and you're now also at "close range". That means the person with the longer weapon now suffers the same penalties as you did when you were at long range.

If the person with the longer weapon succeeds hitting anyway, you're now again at long range (and so on).

That seemed more symmetrical and easy to me.

So I mailed it off and got a reply how it was WAAAAY too complicated. I was like "huh?". I wondered if he had seen the first version at all. It's quite possible that he hadn't as he started talking about how he thought everything would be abstracted into the attack roll anyway.

Since I already had decided to put even more detailed things into the game (grab, throws whatever) I don't feel that's an option (besides the grab was gonna use a variant on the weapon range rule anyway)

What do you think? Any other ways to resolve the problem?

What I have to access is initiative (determined by character's movement stat) and the weapon skill of the involved.

[Bankuei]

Pretty standard there, I've seen at least 2 or 3 other rpgs that handle it exactly like that without any problems.  If you use initiative, you might as well also add that bonus to the person with the reach advantage as well. :)

Chris