Armor spikes question

[Drakon66]

Argo,

After some reading and your posts, I know understand how the term "off hand" is being used in the rules. I agree that the use of the spikes in this case is an off hand attack by the way the rules are written. BTW thanks for the heads up on the 6 sec. combat round. I have been using it since 1st Ed. when the round was 60 sec. and a total joke!

King Ghidorah,

The backing into an opponent would be a second attack as discribed per the rules. However, accidental damage can and does happen. It would be up to the DM to figure out how to apply that damage. For instance, your charactor is walking thru the forest and a porcupine falls out of a tree, landing on your charactor. His spikes are going to do damage if they hit an unprotected area. The same thing could be applied if your PC,wearing his spiked shield on his back, is startled and steps/jumps back into another PC/NPC behind him. There is a good possibility someones getting hurt.

Darklone,

You make a great point about the TWF situation.

And to all, thanks for the help. It seems to me that the 3.x rules turns combat into mathmatical word problems. I guess that is why in every 3.x game I've played in, there seems to be a major delay in action as PC stop to figure out every different plus and minus is a sudden combat encounter. Not to say that this didn't happen in earlier editions, just not as long or complex.

Once again, thanks for the help.

Jeff

 

[king_ghidorah]

However, accidental damage can and does happen. It would be up to the DM to figure out how to apply that damage. For instance, your charactor is walking thru the forest and a porcupine falls out of a tree, landing on your charactor. His spikes are going to do damage if they hit an unprotected area. The same thing could be applied if your PC,wearing his spiked shield on his back, is startled and steps/jumps back into another PC/NPC behind him. There is a good possibility someones getting hurt.

My point is claiming that you would not get a free attack through incidental damage.

In any case, since hit point damage is abstract, and since even one point of damage has a 25% chance of killing an ordinary human (commoner 1, even a wizard 1 or sorcerer 1), what chance do you grant that a porcupine falling from a tree of killing an ordinary human? Even a one-story fall only does subdual damage. Why would a porcupine be more dangerous?

The fact is, given the abstract system of rules, sources of damage are rated as too deadly. An ordinary house cat can easily kill a commoner using the rules as written. And armor spikes can be a deadly as a dagger. This seems too much damage for a random source of incidental damage.

If we model all simple accidents with hit point damage, soon we find that cooks should be dying all the time from self-inflicted knife injuries and burns.

That said, the point of the game isn't to model realism, but to create a game that feels real enough to make sense to you and your players. If significant accidental damage makes sense to you, more power to you. Being accident prone and a former avid mountain biker and a former wrestler, it has been my experience that only fairly serious accidents have the same debilitating effect as a good solid attempt by an opponent to whup your butt, and thus would seldom dish out incidental or accidental damage without a strong reason (traps, falling off a tree, a rain of porcupines, etc.) and even then, seldom without allowing a save or requiring an attack roll (like a trap). But YMMV, and I accept that.

 

[king_ghidorah]

And to all, thanks for the help. It seems to me that the 3.x rules turns combat into mathmatical word problems. I guess that is why in every 3.x game I've played in, there seems to be a major delay in action as PC stop to figure out every different plus and minus is a sudden combat encounter. Not to say that this didn't happen in earlier editions, just not as long or complex.

Once again, thanks for the help.

There is a certain ease in familiar systems, no matter how complex. I find that AD&D (first edition) ran very quickly back in the day largely because we ignored huge chunks of the rules (weapon vs. armor type, unarmed combat, the convoluted details of initiative in the DMG, spell learning chances, training costs and times, experience for treasure earned), but that most of our games felt very different from each other, and we seldom agreed on rules at the table. These days, my groups tend to be closer in rules, even if the campaigns are in different styles. We tend to have our rules gurus, and most of us have specialties. And when we want to ignore rules, we do, but in a more selective way than when we swept rules that made no sense to us under the rug. Really, it's a matter of taste. In my experience, 3rd edition tends to make the rules-heads in the group happier, the newbies understand the rules better, and most of the veterans roll with the punches, but I understand the call of the familiar. Sometimes, that will free us up mentally to focus on the really important parts of the gaming experience and let go of the mundane rules.

 

[Drakon66]

I guess I need to keep testing the waters, as it were, to get a better feel for this rule edition. I also need to find a group that is patient with a veteran who is holding onto the past!

Jeff

 

[king_ghidorah]

I guess I need to keep testing the waters, as it were, to get a better feel for this rule edition. I also need to find a group that is patient with a veteran who is holding onto the past!

Jeff

I gotcha. I had the advantage of a long time away from D&D playing a passle o' other RPGs, so I didn't feel an attachment to or recent familiarity with the old rules. It was more like walking away from a distant relationship with a friend who I had lost contact with than abandoning an old love for a new stranger.

 

[Darklone]

One additional comment: Axespike, a feat from Races of Stone, allows you to use armor spikes similar to a natural weapon. IMHO the best thing to do.