Multiple Opponents, again

[Mayhem1979]

It's not really a matter of time or speed.  It's a matter of actio-reaction.  No matter how fast you are in OBAM, you're still human and you're not gonna be able to move beyon certain limits.  

You're reflex is how you decide how fast you are in the opening of the fight.  If you're the fastest guy, it means for you the whole fight actually starts a split second earlier than it does for the other guy.  You're Die pool represents you're skill with the weapon and how much effort you put into each strike.  It does not mean that if you have a combat pool of sixteen that you can magically make sixteen seperate swings/thrusts in the same time that someone with a combat pool of ten can make the traditional two.

So guy one makes a strike, the other guy reacts to it (successfully or not) and then depending on how well he does it, he can either make a swing at you or you get to follow up with your attack.  Now if neither of you spent more than one or two dice on either part of the exchange it doesn't mean that your going really really fast and just being sloppy... it just means that you weren't trying very hard.  

Or put in the simplest terms I can think of it's ... Dice = Effort, not Dice = speed/time.

And by association a round isn't a fixed period of time, it's a set of actions and reactions.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

and really as a correlary to that, with one weapon you can only strike at one spot at a time. You cannot simultaneously hit your opponent in the leg, hand and head with one sword, you can attack one spot at a time, and after the second set of action reaction the pool refreshes and so ends the standard "round". A round is two sets of action/reaction pairs not a period of defined time.

[Lance D. Allen]

But with one weapon, I can strike two opponents at the same time? Come now...

I can, however, strike one guy 2-3 times (solidly, even) within 1 second. The strikes won't be as focused or quite so powerful as a single shot, but it's possible.

Basically, the only difference in striking once, and striking twice is that you're rolling two smaller groups at the same time, rather than 1 larger group, whether you're striking one opponent, or two. If I've decided to commit 8 dice to the attack, I can either do it 8 dice in one single attack, or two smaller ones of 4 each (or 4 and 3, if you use the -1 die rule for additional attacks).

You are right; the system works fine as is. But it would also, I'm sure, work fine as described by the proponents of multiple attacks.

[Mayhem1979]

Your not striking them at the same time, and once again a round is not a measure of time.

In a Red red red situation if you win the contest of reflexes your just moving faster than BOTH your opponents and landing blows on them in rapid succesion.  That's a lot of EFFORT to do successfully, but not impossible... partly becasue they have to eal with not hitting each other as well.

In a Red-red-white you hit the other guy going red first, but the other guy is WAITING for you to go after him, so you can hit both of them before the second exchange happens because once again... a round=two exchanges, not a period of time.

In a Red-white-white situation they're both letiting you go first so you can obviously hit them both in you're first exchange... but doing so without leaving yourself vunerable to any counters is going to take more dice than you can afford, unless you expend enough EFFORT to disable the both of them with those first blows.

Making sense yet?

[Ashren Va'Hale]

I think you missed the point. The round is not time based, it is action reaction based. Thats why we measure it interms of exchanges not in seconds or fractions there of. Now in one ROUND for you, you can strike multiple opponents once or one guy once, why? because your round doesn't happen simultaneously with your opponents.

Example.... you and mook A engage at T+.3 seconds, thats when that round starts for mook A, Mook B is slower getting in range but is still going to be in strking range before mook A can counter attack or drop dead, say T+.6 seconds so you smack him and Mook C was a lumbering ox and gets there last but before either Mook A or B can react so you wipe him out with a blow at T+.9 seconds. Now against each badguy you had ONE exchange although you attacked multiple times. Your round began in three phases, the bad guys did not count to three before attacking but attacked in a slightly staggered less than uniform fashion, like in real life. If you attack one guy alone you can only have ONE exchange followed by another since he will react and two sets of action/reaction constitute a round.
So, in effect you are proposing eliminating the exchange and rounds system and replacing it with "pools do not refresh until both parties run out of dice" whenever the hell that happens. It is unwieldly and problem ridden. You arent modifying the system you are changing it. It snot an option when you change the entire game around. You might as well say "lets roll a d20 against the aggregate defensive number and then roll the damage dice of the weapon" because thats how much your "option" changes the original system. Now please, dont get the idea that I am trying to insult you but this is exactly what I mean when I spoke about fixing the system until it was broken, granted it would have read better as "modding" the system until it was broken but I only bought one bumper sticker.

[Anthony I]

But with one weapon, I can strike two opponents at the same time? Come now...

Actually, that is not an absurd proposition.  One of the main strengths of the true two hand sword (doppelhander in TROS) was its ability to offend more than one opponent with it's large, powerful cuts.

I can, however, strike one guy 2-3 times (solidly, even) within 1 second. The strikes won't be as focused or quite so powerful as a single shot, but it's possible.

No offence intended and not directed at you in particular, but I don't believe anyone can strike the same person with a weapon larger than a dagger more than once in a second.  Let me clarify first that I am talking about a blow with a weapon that is a) meant to wound or kill and b) of realistic weight.  I'm not talking about just trying to touch someone with the weapon, but actually trying to strike to harm.

[Sneaky Git]

Actually, Mike I think that would be fine...and much better as a general rule.  If i can swing once at you and once at him, then I should be able to swing twice at you...

There might be a slight edge to the attacker due to the granularity of the dice...might require the defender to use an extra die to get the same level of defense, but that should be mitigated by the decrease in average damage...two level 3 wounds being inferior to a level 6 wound.

Well I suppose it could be taken to an extreme...10 1-die attacks against an opponent with 8 dice guarentees 2 free 1 die hits (which with suitably damaging weapons are still potentially nasty).

Just remember that you still only get one exchange (meaning one attack) for each opponent. So if you're dividing between 3 guys you get 3 actions, but against one guy you get one. Tops.

Jake

Hmm.  After thinking about this...I've got to agree with Jake.  And for a simple reason at that.  You attack me with Valamir's 10 1-die attacks...and I defend the first (because they cannot be simultaneous) with...let's say 3 dice.  I am successful.  Your attack fails, and I now have initiative.  Right?  So I get to attack now.  Unless, of course, I've already attacked (1st exchange of blows) and was unsuccessful...and now the round is over.

That is how the rules are written...right?

Chris

[Lance D. Allen]

Chris,

The 10 1-die attacks are admittedly totally out there. Which is why I suggested a progressive activation cost. -1 CP for the second attack, -2 for the 3rd, and so on.

But the point given is that the attacks are essentially simultaneous. It's all one fluid (or perhaps not so fluid, depending on the attacker) combination of strikes. So it's rolled at the same time, and defense against the multiple attacks, if the defender chooses to defend against them all, is also rolled simultaneously.

And Anthony, yes I can. 3 is pushing it, but I can do it on a good day with my bastard, two handed. If I can do it, I've no doubt that a trained swordsman can do as well or better.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

Sneaky git is right on.

[Callan S.]

Isn't it a visualsation thing here?

I mean, if you split 9 dice over three guys, yeah, it looks like three attacks.

And when you use 9 dice on one guy, when you just look at the dice, it looks like one attack.

But is it? Why can't it be hacking at the one guy three times, or more/less? Just because all the dice are added together for one roll, doesn't mean it can't represent several strikes itself.

After that, the only problem is why can't you call several locations to hit if this is what your doing, since when you attack multiple foes you can aim for different spots.

I'd attribute that to having a bit of sword menouvouring (bad spelling!) space between foes, so you can get it where you want. On one guy, you go for just one point multiple times, otherwise your basically feinting.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

fi think the problem is that people here have Dand d - ized the combat of TROS in this discussion. In D and D the attacker attacks then the defender counter attacks and in this each guy takes his turn attacking the ideas presented would make sense but in TROS the attacker and th defender act simultaneously. You cant do what you guys have suggested as an attacker because the defender is going to defend at the exact same time so you will make your second strike different than you might have planned depending on your opponents reaction.

The current system already represents perfectly well the ability to land many well placed blows rapidly since the round is not time based but is simply constituted of a pair of exchanges.

I think that those who want to do multiple attacks against the same guy dont seem to grasp that yet.

[Callan S.]

I'd edit my message, but can't, and I realise I wasn't clear

'But is it? Why can't it be just imagined as hacking at the one guy three times, or more/less? Just because all the dice are added together for one roll, doesn't mean it can't represent several strikes itself. '

The bold bit is what I would have editted in.

[Ashren Va'Hale]

if you want to I guess you could but it wouldnt make sense.... I swing with 9 dice to zone four and bozo executes a counter.... thats swing and counter, not several attacks at once inveloped into a nine die summary for me... but hey, each his own etc etc....

[Jason Kottler]

No offence intended and not directed at you in particular, but I don't believe anyone can strike the same person with a weapon larger than a dagger more than once in a second.  Let me clarify first that I am talking about a blow with a weapon that is a) meant to wound or kill and b) of realistic weight.  I'm not talking about just trying to touch someone with the weapon, but actually trying to strike to harm.

I'm going to have to go out on a limb and disagree here. Certainly, you're right that heavier weapons just have too much inertia to whip them around multiple times per second.  

However, I personally can punch three times a second, and my sifu can deal devastating blows with double sticks (escrima) at a very high rate of attack.

Also, a foil / courtsword sort of weapon could be used to deliver multiple puncture wounds while a larger weapon was being wound up to strike, and yes, I've fenced.

So, if you're going to have multiple attacks per round, why not take the penalty die concept a bit further and make it so that heavier weapons cost more dice to attack with more than once? It seems from the QS rules that the damage bonus on a weapon is directly related to it's weight / leverage (another thing that'll cost time). So why not penalize the value of the damage bonus on a given weapon to make multiple attacks?

Anyhow, as far as TRoS goes, since a round isn't a measure of time, I'm just going to stick with 2 exchanges per round and leave it at that.

[arxhon]

The thing here is basically you can't strike three times against a single opponent simultaneously, like you sprouted extra arms also wielding weapons. You swing, he reacts, you attack again if he doesn't throw you off balance enough to get his own in, etc.

This is already simulated in the exchange system, and quite well, i may add.

I suppose that attacks against multiple opponents could be considered some kind of flowing maneuver thingie that strikes at each opponent in turn, but to be honest, i ain't no swordsman, as they say up here in Canada (well, they would, if the subject came up, and they weren't swordsmen), so i can't really attest to the validity of my suggestion.


When i brought up the "interesting wrinkle", i hadn't expected discussion like this, but i'm glad it cropped up. It certainly highlights an interesting issue with the multiple opponents rule.

I'm going to play the sysem as is, since i really don't see why making multiple attacks against a single opponent is going to change anything as it currently stands. You make the same exchange rolls, except with smaller pools. It's like chopping up a chunk of salt. You will probably get ever smaller and smaller cubes, but they're still cubes (ok, poor analogy, but i'll leave it there).