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Let's Read Sword World 2.5!
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<blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 8765324" data-attributes="member: 6680772"><p>Sightseeing? No...<strong> Combat.</strong></p><p></p><p>Core Rulebook I covers the Basic Combat rules. Rulebook II covers the Advanced Combat rules, and Rulebook III covers the Master Combat Rules. In 2.0, the Advanced Combat Rules were the Standard combat rules, and the Basic Combat rules were the Simple Combat Rules, both included in the first Core Rulebook. But it appears that GroupSNE found that the Simple Combat rules to be popular and widely-used, and so gave them sole pride of place in Rulebook I for 2.5.</p><p></p><p>Personally, I love these rules. They are much, much too simple for anyone who likes playing on a grid with minis. But they translate quite well to theater of the mind, and I think I'm going to crib heavily from them the next time I'm playing B/X in person.</p><p></p><p>So a battle takes place on a three-zone battlefield. In the middle is the Front Line Zone. On other side of that is the respective sides' Rear Zones. Any zone that has members of both sides in it is a Melee Zone. So in most battles, your melee specialists will move forward to the Front Line Zone, which becomes a Melee Zone, while the ranged attackers stay back in the Rear Zones.</p><p></p><p>SW 2.5 has a very B/X style combat sequence. First are pre-battle actions. The participants on each side are confirmed. Then comes battle preparations: if a character is going to declare use of special combat ability or minor action, they do so here. Any enhancement magic for Monster Knowledge Checks or Initiative is done here. Then comes the Monster Knowledge Check. After the Monster Knowledge Check, the party decides who they will be arranged on the battlefield -- who will be in what zone. Then initiative is rolled. It's side initiative, but all combatants roll and the highest roll wins initiative for that side.</p><p></p><p>The side that wins initiative goes first, of course. The order of turns within the side is completely up to the players (or the GM in the case of the enemy). However, no player can encroach on another player's turn. On a character's turn, first they can move, then they take their Main Action. After all the characters in the initiative-winning party go, then all the characters on the other side go. The battle continues after that, then it is the initiative-winning party's turn again, and so on. If the battle is over (one side is all dead, one side surrenders, or one side runs away and is not pursued), and the players win, then they can get spoils from each monster. But taking spoils from one body takes 10 minutes.</p><p></p><p>There are three kinds of possible movement in combat: All-Out Move, Standard Move, and Limited Move. With an All-Out Move, a character can go from one Rear Zone to the other. The Front Line Zone must be clear of any enemies in order to pass through it. After this move, they can only take Minor Actions, and have a -4 Evasion penalty until the start of their next turn. With a Standard Move, a player can move to an adjacent zone, and can take any action except for ranged attacks and casting magic. Limited Movement means they are only moving within their current zone, but they can take any action. However, none of these Move options are available if there are enemies in the same zone (i.e., the character is in a Melee Zone). In order to move out of a Melee Zone, a character must spend a turn preparing to leave the Melee Zone. They cannot go into the enemy's Rear Zone, they can only retreat to their own Rear Zone.</p><p></p><p>There are two kinds of Actions: Main Actions and Minor Actions. Main Actions include casting magic, wielding a weapon, preparing to leave a melee zone, picking up/handing over/stowing a weapon, equipping equipment or putting it away, and basically any Action Check that has a duration of 10 seconds or longer. Generally, a character only gets one Main Action per turn.</p><p></p><p>Minor Actions do not take any time, and include casting certain magic, stopping maintenance of any magical effects, dropping, sheathing, or receiving a weapon or other equipment, and standing up. They can be done at any time during a turn (except during a Check), and there's no limit to how many the character can do.</p><p></p><p>For ranged attacks (including magic), they usually have a range of 1 zone or 2. The can be done within the same zone the attacking character is in, and of course the adjacent zone as well. However! If a character attacks into a Melee Zone from outside, the target is determined randomly--including allies! The only away to avoid this is to have Targeting special combat ability. Then the character can choose a target and roll for their ranged attack normally. A character cannot fire <em>through</em> a Melee Zone to the far Rear Zone unless they have Eagle Eye special combat ability.</p><p></p><p>Perhaps the biggest hurdle for someone used to D&D to get over to buy into this game is the fight mechanics. You might think, hey, this is a Japanese RPG influenced by anime and video games! Surely the fighting classes get a sorts of badass things to do! Unfortunately, this is not the case, at least as of Core Rulebook I. While the special combat abilities provide for some interesting options, in general the only thing the Warrior Skill Packages can do to enemies is deal damage. And they have to jump through some hoops to do so.</p><p></p><p>Weapon Attacks are resolved through the To-hit Check (2d + To-hit bonus). This roll is contested by the Evasion check of the defending character. If the attack succeeds, the attacker can roll damage. But damage rolls in Sword World use Power Tables. Basically, you roll 2d and cross-check the result on your weapon's Power Table. If you roll a 1-<em>zoro</em>, that means <em>no</em> damage is done at all. Your successful attack is nullified. But if we assume you don’t auto-fail, and do some damage, then you add bonus damage (STR bonus + level). Then you <em>subtract</em> a set amount of damage, representing the defender’s armor. So not only do martials get two chances to auto-fail, they could ostensibly <em>succeed</em>, but roll low and do <strong>no</strong> damage.</p><p></p><p>I should note that that is a worst case scenario, and the flip side is critical hits. For each weapon (or spell) that uses a Power Table for damage, there is a crit range: for most weapons 10 or higher. If you roll a crit, you get to roll on the power table again. That means that crits are <em>exploding</em>. And, I should further note, monsters do not use power tables to determine damage, so they don't crit.</p><p></p><p>But, that said, I love the zones. I love the movement rules, the ranged attack rules. I was a bit leery of the power table for damage until I found out about the possibility of exploding crits on every successful hit. I'm even on-board with to-hit rolls being opposed roll contests. But I can't wrap my head around why they would build so many failure points in the martial attack system. Magic, of course, does not have quite so many. An offensive spell either does damage (it has a power table), or it has an effect. Casting these is an opposed roll, caster's Wield Magic check vs. the defender's Spiritual Resistance. A successful save means a damage spell does half-damage, and an effect spell has no effect. This means that a martial character could do everything right and still do no damage, while a caster can actually <em>fail</em> their Wield Magic check and still do damage. And damage, mind you, that is not affected by armor.</p><p></p><p>This is not how I would design an attack system. (Point of order: it's actually very close to a system I <em>did</em> design...in the 7th grade.) And yet. Sword World is an extremely successful game. If this system, which I daresay is one of the most major, load-bearing systems in the game, has not been received poorly enough by its many, many players, why might that be? My goal with such Let's Reads as this is not to critique or run-down a game, but to look at it on its own terms and understand what it's trying to do. And some things that may not look good at first blush, may indeed work out much better in actual play, when other factors come into play.</p><p></p><p>To look at the game from this perspective, I have to do a little jumping around the book. The next part will be a look at these rules in that light, to see what other design features and mitigating factors might actually make them fun.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iosue, post: 8765324, member: 6680772"] Sightseeing? No...[B] Combat.[/B] Core Rulebook I covers the Basic Combat rules. Rulebook II covers the Advanced Combat rules, and Rulebook III covers the Master Combat Rules. In 2.0, the Advanced Combat Rules were the Standard combat rules, and the Basic Combat rules were the Simple Combat Rules, both included in the first Core Rulebook. But it appears that GroupSNE found that the Simple Combat rules to be popular and widely-used, and so gave them sole pride of place in Rulebook I for 2.5. Personally, I love these rules. They are much, much too simple for anyone who likes playing on a grid with minis. But they translate quite well to theater of the mind, and I think I'm going to crib heavily from them the next time I'm playing B/X in person. So a battle takes place on a three-zone battlefield. In the middle is the Front Line Zone. On other side of that is the respective sides' Rear Zones. Any zone that has members of both sides in it is a Melee Zone. So in most battles, your melee specialists will move forward to the Front Line Zone, which becomes a Melee Zone, while the ranged attackers stay back in the Rear Zones. SW 2.5 has a very B/X style combat sequence. First are pre-battle actions. The participants on each side are confirmed. Then comes battle preparations: if a character is going to declare use of special combat ability or minor action, they do so here. Any enhancement magic for Monster Knowledge Checks or Initiative is done here. Then comes the Monster Knowledge Check. After the Monster Knowledge Check, the party decides who they will be arranged on the battlefield -- who will be in what zone. Then initiative is rolled. It's side initiative, but all combatants roll and the highest roll wins initiative for that side. The side that wins initiative goes first, of course. The order of turns within the side is completely up to the players (or the GM in the case of the enemy). However, no player can encroach on another player's turn. On a character's turn, first they can move, then they take their Main Action. After all the characters in the initiative-winning party go, then all the characters on the other side go. The battle continues after that, then it is the initiative-winning party's turn again, and so on. If the battle is over (one side is all dead, one side surrenders, or one side runs away and is not pursued), and the players win, then they can get spoils from each monster. But taking spoils from one body takes 10 minutes. There are three kinds of possible movement in combat: All-Out Move, Standard Move, and Limited Move. With an All-Out Move, a character can go from one Rear Zone to the other. The Front Line Zone must be clear of any enemies in order to pass through it. After this move, they can only take Minor Actions, and have a -4 Evasion penalty until the start of their next turn. With a Standard Move, a player can move to an adjacent zone, and can take any action except for ranged attacks and casting magic. Limited Movement means they are only moving within their current zone, but they can take any action. However, none of these Move options are available if there are enemies in the same zone (i.e., the character is in a Melee Zone). In order to move out of a Melee Zone, a character must spend a turn preparing to leave the Melee Zone. They cannot go into the enemy's Rear Zone, they can only retreat to their own Rear Zone. There are two kinds of Actions: Main Actions and Minor Actions. Main Actions include casting magic, wielding a weapon, preparing to leave a melee zone, picking up/handing over/stowing a weapon, equipping equipment or putting it away, and basically any Action Check that has a duration of 10 seconds or longer. Generally, a character only gets one Main Action per turn. Minor Actions do not take any time, and include casting certain magic, stopping maintenance of any magical effects, dropping, sheathing, or receiving a weapon or other equipment, and standing up. They can be done at any time during a turn (except during a Check), and there's no limit to how many the character can do. For ranged attacks (including magic), they usually have a range of 1 zone or 2. The can be done within the same zone the attacking character is in, and of course the adjacent zone as well. However! If a character attacks into a Melee Zone from outside, the target is determined randomly--including allies! The only away to avoid this is to have Targeting special combat ability. Then the character can choose a target and roll for their ranged attack normally. A character cannot fire [I]through[/I] a Melee Zone to the far Rear Zone unless they have Eagle Eye special combat ability. Perhaps the biggest hurdle for someone used to D&D to get over to buy into this game is the fight mechanics. You might think, hey, this is a Japanese RPG influenced by anime and video games! Surely the fighting classes get a sorts of badass things to do! Unfortunately, this is not the case, at least as of Core Rulebook I. While the special combat abilities provide for some interesting options, in general the only thing the Warrior Skill Packages can do to enemies is deal damage. And they have to jump through some hoops to do so. Weapon Attacks are resolved through the To-hit Check (2d + To-hit bonus). This roll is contested by the Evasion check of the defending character. If the attack succeeds, the attacker can roll damage. But damage rolls in Sword World use Power Tables. Basically, you roll 2d and cross-check the result on your weapon's Power Table. If you roll a 1-[I]zoro[/I], that means [I]no[/I] damage is done at all. Your successful attack is nullified. But if we assume you don’t auto-fail, and do some damage, then you add bonus damage (STR bonus + level). Then you [I]subtract[/I] a set amount of damage, representing the defender’s armor. So not only do martials get two chances to auto-fail, they could ostensibly [I]succeed[/I], but roll low and do [B]no[/B] damage. I should note that that is a worst case scenario, and the flip side is critical hits. For each weapon (or spell) that uses a Power Table for damage, there is a crit range: for most weapons 10 or higher. If you roll a crit, you get to roll on the power table again. That means that crits are [I]exploding[/I]. And, I should further note, monsters do not use power tables to determine damage, so they don't crit. But, that said, I love the zones. I love the movement rules, the ranged attack rules. I was a bit leery of the power table for damage until I found out about the possibility of exploding crits on every successful hit. I'm even on-board with to-hit rolls being opposed roll contests. But I can't wrap my head around why they would build so many failure points in the martial attack system. Magic, of course, does not have quite so many. An offensive spell either does damage (it has a power table), or it has an effect. Casting these is an opposed roll, caster's Wield Magic check vs. the defender's Spiritual Resistance. A successful save means a damage spell does half-damage, and an effect spell has no effect. This means that a martial character could do everything right and still do no damage, while a caster can actually [I]fail[/I] their Wield Magic check and still do damage. And damage, mind you, that is not affected by armor. This is not how I would design an attack system. (Point of order: it's actually very close to a system I [I]did[/I] design...in the 7th grade.) And yet. Sword World is an extremely successful game. If this system, which I daresay is one of the most major, load-bearing systems in the game, has not been received poorly enough by its many, many players, why might that be? My goal with such Let's Reads as this is not to critique or run-down a game, but to look at it on its own terms and understand what it's trying to do. And some things that may not look good at first blush, may indeed work out much better in actual play, when other factors come into play. To look at the game from this perspective, I have to do a little jumping around the book. The next part will be a look at these rules in that light, to see what other design features and mitigating factors might actually make them fun. [/QUOTE]
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