hi all, first post, very pleased to be here, not enough praise for the game, long walks along the beach etc, etc... So. last night bumped in to problems with snapshots bow or knife throw (or any other missile weapon for arguments sake). if MP only refreshes once you are ready to unleash the fury (...attack) how do you snapshot after your initial dice pool has been used up?? for more clarification - say you have expired your MP in an exchange then do nothing for a length of time...? does your MP not refresh at all because you are not knocked and drawn, or does it refresh (as we played it out) at your WIT per turn and you can use any or all of it as you see fit in that turn..???!!?! ....mindblowing. eagerly awaiting the pearls of wisdom to rain on my parade, big kev. cheers! =)

I was just posting this exact question though possibly a little clearer :P

another of the problems we came across in the session (i'm running this game) was how much does your mp start at in the 1st round of combat... is it full? or your Wit?
Also to expand on Kevs question is if MP refreshes at Wit per turn and you want to do some form of snapshot say with a dagger can you spend the extra MP to draw quicker and throw in one turn even though technically you haven't refreshed enough yet and then take the penalty off your MP when you get it?

Missile pool starts at 0 once the arrow is knocked and drawn.
Refreshes to full MP at a rate of WIT per exchange, or round(forgot)..
I can check in a minute.. regardless once the arrow is fired, WHAM! MP goes back to zero, until you knock and draw another arrow. and so on and so on. There is no residual MP leftover like as the case with the sorcery pool...which refreshes in an entirely different manner.

-Ingenious

Oh ok
so there is no way to perform a quick draw and throw of a dagger in one round then?

I always read it that once an arrow/knife was drawn and cocked you had your Wit in MP dice.

It seems odd to me that you would have to wait an entire second after you are drawn before you can fire.

This is one that I have trouble understanding correctly as well. From reading the rules it seems that after the weapon is in place the MP starts at 0. then each round after that the MP refreshes by WIT each turn, I have no problem as seeing this as aiming and seems quite intuitive i.e the longer you aim the better it will be (theoretically) up to your maximim skill.

This does however mean that you can't 'snapshot' i.e. let of a shot quickly especially with knives (which to me seems to be wrong for things like knives which are more of a flicking action).

How we have played it in the past is to allow the missile pool to start at 1WIT to represent how much the character has 'taken in' about his surroundings initially.

This is slightly different but I still don't know how you would deal with it, where a character had a throwing knife hidden in a sheath up his sleave, and wanted to draw and throw in one movement? where does the time to knock and draw fit into this?

Would you treat it as positioning the arms takes say 1 sec, then pool starts to refresh and maybe charge 1 or 2 MP and treat it has a maneouver , or make the player make an agility test using some of his misslie pool to make sure the knife dosen't get snabbed on the way out. hmmm.. just given me an idea for my juggling question. (I'll go and post over there)
What do/would people do in this situation?

Cheers,
Dan.

Edited for the obvious typos I saw

Another little thing I've been thinking about concerning the missile pool:

The better you are at shooting/throwing, the longer it takes to shoot/throw?

I fail to see the logic in this...

But you get more dice thus more chance of making the hit.

A professional marksman or darts player will take time over a shot to get it right wher as I would take ages and still miss. Although I do see your point that if a marksman had to make a quick shot and Ihad to make a quick shot his would be better that mine ;)

What affects the speed of the shot is how quickly his mind works WIT not how good he is MP.

Dan.

The only thing that I can say about speeding up stuff for missile pools is the current payment of 2 MP dice to roll reflex vs a target number to see if you can speed it up by one round.

I'll have to check into the exact ruling on the starting of the missile pool at 0, or at the WIT score..

In either case look for some speed modifying rules for fine weapons, arrows, bolts, etc in the riddle of gold. Hopefully I'll finish that soon, and that it will be up to Jake's standards.

-Ingenious

So what you're saying is, that even if you're a novice archer, you'd hit a target the same size as a world class archer would in the same amount of time?

Say that the world class archer and the novice each had 1 round of prep time, they would be equally good?

This is all a subjective matter...(the above post).

Page 82 notes that the MP begins at 0 and refreshes at a rate of the WIT score per round until the full MP is reached.

So, whomever has the bigger WIT score would have an advantage over someone with a lower one.. this is obvious. What isn't obvious is the novice archer's stats compared to the world-class gold medalist's.
If their Wit and Per are high, 6's 7's or 8's for example.. their MP is going to be higher.. and their MP will refresh faster. Also.. I assume a world-class archer has more levels of proficiency than a novice.

I.e. I don't think we'd be seeing any novice archers with either alot of training or alot of inborn talent(high AIM score, high Wit.. etc), where-as a world class archer DOES have those things... and it capable of firing off a shot at the same time as the novice with more dice. They don't have the same chance in my mind's eye.

So there is your explanation.
I also would like to see additional things to modify TN's for missile combat, the freakin WIND comes to mind as a variable in the flight of an arrow..

-Ingenious

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.

I see your point. Yes, this is a hole in the system it seems to me now...

Perhaps using this will work better..
Have the MP refresh at a rate of (Wit+proficiency level)/2.
This takes into account one's training AND natural born mental ability.. aside from just raw talent alone to refresh the MP.

Yes.. that seems a freakin lot better.
-Ingenious
Note to self: Hole is spelt without a W in the context used above...

I was also wondering about this after reading the quickstart rules. As much as I hate to use such a far fetched example, what about Legolas in the LoTR films? He's definately not taking a full round to fill his MP.

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?

Have the MP refresh at a rate of (Wit+proficiency level)/2

Tash wrote: 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?

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..

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.

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

...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.

Starshadow wrote: 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.

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

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!

Yeah i agree with you there :)

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.

...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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

Depends what you define "start" as really :-) Each second of aiming gives you your Wit, but you get those dice at the start of that second, not at the end of it. I think this is where some folk are getting confused.

Say I'm firing a longbow. My prep time is 2-4 seconds but 2 seconds of that is getting the arrow out of the quiver. Luckily, I'm smart ebough to have lined several arrows up in fromt of me, and I'm holding 2 extra in my bow hand, so that 2 seconds is cancelled.

So now my prep time is 2 seconds (one round). On the third second, I refresh my wit (lets say it's 7). So on second 3 I can fire with an MP of 7 dice. Or on the 4th second I can fire with an MP of 14 dice, assuming my pool can go that high.

If I wanted to, I could reduce the initial 2 second prep time by a second as described in the book. That means it's down to one second (assuming I succeed). That means that on second 2 (second exchange of the 1st round) I can fire with Wit-2 or 5 dice. Or on the third second I can fire with 12 dice.

This is almost too good, as firing a good shot every three seconds is a bit beyond the pale, IMO, but having said that, a Wit of 7 is really really good. If you have a more average person, with a Wit of 4-5, suddenly things are not as high. If I was writing the archery section, I would probably up the time it takes to fire a bow by 1 second, to represent the average person using one, and then really good people could reduce that time by a second to get back to the 2-4 prep time as it now stands.

But I didn't write it :-)

Brian.

Tash wrote: I was also wondering about this after reading the quickstart rules. As much as I hate to use such a far fetched example, what about Legolas in the LoTR films? He's definately not taking a full round to fill his MP.

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?

Read the example of ranged combat in the book. It should clear up how prep-time and refresh is supposed to work.

What Legolas does is most definitely cinematic and has little to do with actual archery. In fact, I suspect it's computer-accelerated animation anyway.

I think it depends on the world you're using.

I think quickdrawing and firing "ala Legolas" is a great idea, and I'll be running a LotR campaign with the TROS rules very soon.

But I only give this ability to elves, who have had perhaps hundreds of years of archery experience. Maybe even thousands.

People seem to forget that, yes, the rules are meant to be realistic, BUT the world they are playing in is usually a fantasy world where the extraordinary happens sometines on a day to day basis.

If your playing an historical campaign, then I'd say don't use the quickfire rules. They don't fit. But, then again its up to you. :) But if you play a fantasy campaign I'd say go for it!

The problem is that many forumites fit into two categories:

1. "No, you can't do that. It's not right."

2. "It's your game. If you want it, go for it."

I belong to the second. :))