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Quasi-Playtest: OSR Fighter
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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8345045" data-attributes="member: 29398"><p>This is fine if the fighter reliably gets to act first, but potentially rather lethal if action order is random, or mixed, or (worst) if the opponents can reliably act first.</p><p></p><p>If nothing else, having to proactively use an action to get your armour going makes surprise a much bigger factor. Question: does using a shield require a second action to gain its effect? If yes, then sword-and-board becomes very sub-optimal.</p><p></p><p>In any case, my initial thought is that if armour is to be so much less reliable overall then unless you're specifically after a high-lethality (or very low-combat) game you'll want to jump up the hit point values for all classes. A lot.</p><p></p><p>A metric for fighters might be the number of hits it'll take for a given weapon to bring them down, and how this number changes as the levels go up, relative to the level. For example, if the average fighter starts at 12 h.p. and a longsword does an average of (I'll round this off for simplicity) 5 points per hit then it's going to take 2.4 hits to knock out a level 1 fighter: a 2.4:1 hit-to-level ratio.</p><p></p><p>Let's run that fighter up to 10th level. She's only gaining 4 points per level but the average weapon damage is 5 points. She's at 52 h.p. now as a 10th, meaning now it's going to take 10.2 hits to get her to 0, giving a hit/level ration of 10.2:10 - which when reduced means that 2.4:1 hit-to-level ratio has shrunk to close to 1:1. Put another way, the fighter is by this metric getting progressively easier to kill as she gains levels - are you sure that's what you want, when coupled with less-reliable armour? (note this decreasing ratio is a problem with any system where hit points are front-loaded at 1st level)</p><p></p><p>Compare this with standard D&D and its d10 per level for fighters. Here, the average point gain per level is slightly higher than the average weapon damage, meaning that while the fighter's hit-to-level ratio is much lower at 1st level (6:5, or 1.2:1) it stays there throughout and thus by 10th level outstrips your model above.</p><p></p><p>Bad luck, bad tactics, ambush, or intentionally (e.g. if fighting what appear to be mooks); and over the course of a fighter's career a situation like this is inevitably going to happen numerous times.</p><p></p><p>I'm confused - elsewhere you talked about a no-magic system yet here you talk about casters. Which is it?</p><p></p><p>I ask because if there's casters and if those casters potentially have traditional area-effect damage spells then you might want to jump the casters up just a bit - even making it 1.5 / level instead of 1 / level could make a big difference.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 8345045, member: 29398"] This is fine if the fighter reliably gets to act first, but potentially rather lethal if action order is random, or mixed, or (worst) if the opponents can reliably act first. If nothing else, having to proactively use an action to get your armour going makes surprise a much bigger factor. Question: does using a shield require a second action to gain its effect? If yes, then sword-and-board becomes very sub-optimal. In any case, my initial thought is that if armour is to be so much less reliable overall then unless you're specifically after a high-lethality (or very low-combat) game you'll want to jump up the hit point values for all classes. A lot. A metric for fighters might be the number of hits it'll take for a given weapon to bring them down, and how this number changes as the levels go up, relative to the level. For example, if the average fighter starts at 12 h.p. and a longsword does an average of (I'll round this off for simplicity) 5 points per hit then it's going to take 2.4 hits to knock out a level 1 fighter: a 2.4:1 hit-to-level ratio. Let's run that fighter up to 10th level. She's only gaining 4 points per level but the average weapon damage is 5 points. She's at 52 h.p. now as a 10th, meaning now it's going to take 10.2 hits to get her to 0, giving a hit/level ration of 10.2:10 - which when reduced means that 2.4:1 hit-to-level ratio has shrunk to close to 1:1. Put another way, the fighter is by this metric getting progressively easier to kill as she gains levels - are you sure that's what you want, when coupled with less-reliable armour? (note this decreasing ratio is a problem with any system where hit points are front-loaded at 1st level) Compare this with standard D&D and its d10 per level for fighters. Here, the average point gain per level is slightly higher than the average weapon damage, meaning that while the fighter's hit-to-level ratio is much lower at 1st level (6:5, or 1.2:1) it stays there throughout and thus by 10th level outstrips your model above. Bad luck, bad tactics, ambush, or intentionally (e.g. if fighting what appear to be mooks); and over the course of a fighter's career a situation like this is inevitably going to happen numerous times. I'm confused - elsewhere you talked about a no-magic system yet here you talk about casters. Which is it? I ask because if there's casters and if those casters potentially have traditional area-effect damage spells then you might want to jump the casters up just a bit - even making it 1.5 / level instead of 1 / level could make a big difference. [/QUOTE]
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