ah ha- more ignorant queries!!

[nsruf]

Is there any mechanisim for handling very fast shots in these rules?  Its certainly not realistic to expect an archer to fire a well aimed shot in under a second, but if what is the best way to handle that for a player who wants to have a Legolas/Robin Hood style character?

Since time-critical situations usually involve melee, you could align MP refresh with the melee round like this:

Each round, an archer who has his weapon ready can either

1) fire during the first exchange using only the MP built up during previous rounds
2) fire during the second exchange using MP increased by 1/2 Wit
3) don't fire and increase MP by full Wit

Option 2) would be a snapshot.

To go really cinematic, you should combine it with a proficiency-based refresh rate as suggested above.

[Ingenious]

A preview of an optional rule for fine arrows that I wrote..

Quick-draw arrows.
These arrows are of fine quality, and allow the user to knock and draw an arrow in one fluid motion reducing preparation time by one second.
They cost the same as fine-arrows.

Hope that helps. You'd still be looking at 1-3 rounds of prep-time.. and 0-2 rounds if you spend 2 dice to roll reflex to speed it up more.. though a person such as Legolas has an UNGODLY reaction-time/agility... so that roll is made 99.999999999% of the time. Also.. if your arrows are in the quiver, that's 2 seconds until your MP starts to refresh.. and you're getting a shot of every 2.5 seconds/rounds.

-Ingenious
Damn, it's 4:15am already.. what a double-edged sword that is..

[Dan Sellars]

Starshadow,

I think that the flip blade down is assuming that the knife is being thrown by holding the blade and thrown over arm in a flipping action thus:

it would be draw holding handle
flip blade (so it's pointing down, being held by point)
throw

That's how I read it anyway, but I could be wrong.

I my example above from a sheath it  would be thrown using the handle, which probably means it's not thrown as hard.  dunno here really.

Another thing I was thinking about.  Should a knife's damage drop off with range?

Dan.

[Ingenious]

Or thrown sub-marine(under-handed), side-arm, etc.

To tie this in to the topic about juggling the knife and wanting to throw it.. you wouldnt have to pull it out of the sheath.. so that's one round of prep time erased.. and you can take one round off of the prep time for cocking the back your arm all the way.. though doing so in order to hasten yourself will lessen the damage via not all of your strength being put into the weapon's momentum/velocity..

And all of that fun stuff.
It's been interesting tonight guys talking about this.. but I gotta go to sleep sometime lol.
-Ingenious

[Dain]

...before you read this, please take into consideration that I am new to the system and that I have no idea what ramifications this would have to the game system (other than making missle combat evilly lethal).

MP is really 2 part...part from a derived stat and part from proficiency. Perhaps a house rule could be you always get your proficiency, but the derived part is the part that starts at zero and refreshes by Wit. I am pretty sure this is NOT what the author intended, but it would solve your snap fire "novice versus world class archer" problem.

[Trevis Martin]

Lets say that both the novice and the champion has a WIT of 7, the novice has proficiency of 2 and the champion 15.

After one round both of them will still be equally good...

I'd still say it's highly illogical.

I say that a champion archer WILL have a higher chance of hitting the target, even after just one round of prep time.

Um, not to poke holes or anything but if you are using  the WIT score as the refresh rate then after the first round the novice would have 2 MP...period...that's all he would get, and the champion would have 7 building to 14 on the following round.

So they would not have an equal chance...the pro would be substantially better.  We're talking about very short increments of time here.  

Hell, for a snapshot let them use 1/2 their WIT!  (all kinda jokes off of that one.)

[Edge]

Actually the novice would have a MP of 4 and the Champion 7 at the end of round 1.  At the end of round 2 if no shots had been fired it would be novice still 4 and champ 14.

the way we have been doing snapshots until we were told something better :) was
1) to take the shot in the 1st round (it goes off in the 2nd exchange)
2) in the case of daggers impose a -4mp penalty and take two Ref checks (-2 for drawing the dagger and -2 for drawing back and throwing)
3) Shot is performed with whatever mp would be left from your wit if it was refreshed.  So in this way only a person with 5 or more in wit could perform a snapshot with a dagger

[Trevis Martin]

Oops!  I stand corrected.  I didn't see the aim score for anyone mentioned but you are right.

However the point still stand that the MP wouldn't be the same.

good catch!

[Edge]

Yeah i agree with you there :)

[Dain]

In defense of Star Shadow....resurect a highly skilled American Indian warrior from a couple of centuries ago, hand him a bow, put my Charlie Brown looking butt next to his and hand me a bow, and send us both off running past a series of moving targets we have to snap fire at because they are shooting rifles back at us (and if we pause to aim they will blow huge holes in our chest), and I guarantee that not only will he EMBARRASSINGLY out shoot me (unless I count my own foot as bullseye) he WILL HIT WITH DEADLY ACCURACY most everything he aims at....and he will not take more than one or two seconds TOPS to fire each shot (whereas I'll probably spend 10 seconds fumbling each arrow into the bow before I drop it, trip, and drive the bouncing shaft through my own heart as I fall on it).

There was a special on the history channel recently on this phenomenon, and in all fairness it wasn't pure "difference between amateur versus pro." They took novices and had them stand and "careful aim and shoot" at stationary targets (with really embarassing results), then had them snap fire instead as the American Indians had to do in actual historical combats and the accuracy went up significantly. They then had them run past stationary targets and try as best they could to hit them...those that successfully snap fired usually at least HIT the target (not well), but those that fumbled around and had to pause and aim usually missed the target altogether. They then re-ran those that paused and made them snap fire on the run, and accuracy went way up.

The whole purpose of the show was to demonstrate the way the bow had to be used in actual combat. The American Indians had to like put one arrow in their teeth or hold maybe one or two at most spares in one of their hands (I think the one that holds the bow) and literally nock the arrow while running (without pausing AT ALL lest they get shot by another bow or by a gun when doing so) and snap fire while running (again without pausing at all, for the same reason).

Ok, I've been windy enough, what's my point other than wasting your time? Maybe "snap fire bow" should be a special proficiency as it obviously is not the same skill as a line of English archers would be using. Maybe the existing methodology makes great deals of sense for that type of archery, but this new "snap fire bow" proficiency has higher TN's (maybe even significantly higher than the normal bow proficiency) but the entire MP is available each round...or maybe a new separate pool is used SFMP (snap fire missile pool) whose calculation is yet to be determined by those who are not brand new to the system (me).

...or maybe I'm an idiot just full of WAY too much hot air. You guys decide,...<grin> I'm ok with either decision.

[big kev]

...hot winded idiot.  =) long stories cut short, house rules are always going to occur and unles some official cater-for-any-imaginable-sitution-rules (...tfob..??? tehe) produce themselves then we may have to rely (god forbid) on our own ingenuity.


reading back on that it is possible that my waffling may be construed as attacking the very essence of this forum, or i could just be a hot winded idiot.

[Ingenious]

Trevis, you fail to see the point.

Regardless of MP.. if the situation were so that the 'novice' archer has an MP equal to his WIT, and also equal to the expert's wit.. they would be on the same playing field in terms of 'skill' i.e. they have the same chance regardless of the total CP.

This is why the optional refresh rate was created. It takes into account the level of training with a certain weapon. I can tell you all right now, with my archery background.. that regardless of the type of bow that I am using, long-bow..recurve.. or composite.. that I can draw an arrow and knock it at the same rate with each of them.

This means that the 'snap shot bow' proficiency is not entirely logical. Given enough practice(i.e. enough proficiency in bows) one would realise that his reloading time between shots has decreased dramatically from when he was a 'novice'. This is also, IMO, why there is a global bow proficiency.. i.e. not seperated into different types of bows..

-Ingenious

[Starshadow]

Um, not to poke holes or anything but if you are using the WIT score as the refresh rate then after the first round the novice would have 2 MP...period...that's all he would get, and the champion would have 7 building to 14 on the following round

It would get to two only if the novice has 0 AIM. Highly unlikely, if you ask me.
remember, the MP is AIM((AG+PER)/2)+proficiency...

Regardless of MP.. if the situation were so that the 'novice' archer has an MP equal to his WIT, and also equal to the expert's wit.. they would be on the same playing field in terms of 'skill' i.e. they have the same chance regardless of the total CP.

That's what I find starnge about the system...

[Brian Leybourne]

I've never learned how to throw a knife, so I can't speak for the speed of suck, but the speed you can fire a bow, reasonably accurately, in TROS is about right guys. Even "snapshotting" a bow, takes a few seconds, and is not really all that accurate. A supremely good Welsh or English longbowman could get off 7-8 shafts in 30 seconds with reasonable accuracy, thats about 4 seconds per shot, which is what it'll take you in TROS if you're a good archer (high wit) and you have your arrows ready or being handed to you (and with a good Wit remember that you can reduce the prep time by a second also).

American indians, well, I can't speak for them, but I highly suspect that if you go back and watch that TV thing again and actually count the seconds it's taking the guy to fire each arrow (including grabbing it, nocking it, etc) it's still 3-4.

By the way, "rounds" in missile combat should be generally treated as 1 second, not 1-2, which is most important whern you're marrying missile and melee combat. This is talked about in TFOB too.

Brian.

[Dain]

Does that mean there are 2 missile rounds in one combat round (ie. one missile round per melee combat exchange)?

As for the program they were taking about 4 seconds from the time they grabbed the arrow to the time they shot, but only about half a second of that was on the run aiming...the rest was fumbling about looking for the string, getting the feathers right, etc,.... so you're about on the money.

Added edit:
Of course a master probably wouldn't have wasted that 3 or so extra seconds finding the string lessening the time...or would he? Not a real archer here, so I don't know. So, does missile pool refresh begin from the time you grab the arrow or from the time it gets onto the string? And you do start at zero, not at wit?