Weapon speed for a d20 remix

[RangerWickett]

My friends and I got talking last night about how to capture the concept that a man with a knife fighting a man with a greatsword might get chopped in half on his way in, but once he closes he'll be able to stab much faster than the big guy can swing.

My proposal was that under normal circumstances, if you have a weapon with longer reach than an opponent (and each weapon would have a reach stat), you get a bonus to your attack roll. Something substantial, like +4. (If your opponent has no melee weapon, you automatically 'win'.)

But if you start your turn adjacent to an enemy, you can use a move action to get into 'close combat,' in which case whoever has the smaller weapon gets a bonus. (I'm still not sure how unarmed strikes or natural weapons should work. And I think getting into close combat with creatures substantially larger than you should be hard.)

The weird effect of this is that I think now all weapons need to do the same damage. Like make everything a d10. And suddenly I'm developing a whole new weapon system.

Thoughts?

 

[RangerWickett]

Of course, there's always the traditional "your weapon's speed modifies your initiative," but that would mean the guy with the knife is able to run in and stab before the guy with the big sword warding him off is able to strike, since seems counter to my experience.

I could, I suppose, come up with a 'moment by moment' initiative system, where each action advances you X steps along the initiative, but that requires way more tracking than I think is worthwhile.

 

[GMMichael]

Concerns:
Your knife wielder has very real concerns about getting his head chopped off by a greatsword, so he can't just stand next to the swordsman and stab at lightning speed.

Furthermore, even though characters on a battle grid might look stationary, they're not. So the swordsman isn't about to hold still while the knife wielder makes multiple stabs.

Finally, hit points represent more than wounds. So it's tricky to justify attack bonuses based on weapon size. This is, by the way, a good argument for all weapons doing the same "damage."

My solution:
Give your players a weapon-size/speed modifier to starting initiative. Figure out if this should be applied to ALL other actions, including spells. More than that and yes, you're creating a whole new weapon system that is less than worthwhile.

Also, under 3.5 rules, your knife wielder doesn't have to worry about that longsword if he "grapples" the swordsman. If he wants to be good at this, he definitely needs the Improved Grapple feat.

 

[RangerWickett]

Grappling is a bit more involved than what I'm thinking, though. I'm thinking more of "he swings his big sword, and it takes him a half-second to recover before he can attack again, so I dash in and start shivving him."

I'll say, though, that if I saw a guy with a baseball bat, I'd be less scared of him than a guy with a sword.

I dunno, maybe I should focus on the drama of fighting monsters, not the minutiae of a melee.

 

[Celebrim]

Impulse or segment based systems can be very cinematic, at the cost of a huge amount of bookkeeping.

If you break the round down into 10 or 30 steps, and have each action take a number of steps beginning on your initiative count, then yeah, you can capture or simulate some of the real time effects you seem to think you are missing.

But don't be surprised if combat takes 2-3 times as long as normal.

Coming from 1e and rules systems like SFB, I've thought about these sort of things as well. HackMaster I think actually goes ahead and implements it, and Exalted has a similar segment based system. But ultimately I think that it just makes the game too freakin' complicated. You'd need an elaborate 'smart' computer interface just to manage combat in a speedy manner, and that gets in the way of the strengths of PnP as a game. Dice and imagination is ultimately a better approach than attempts at high realism.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) I dunno, maybe I should focus on the drama of fighting monsters, not the minutiae of a melee.

I think this is the answer.

The problem with any sort of syncretism between a "realistic" system and, um, D&D with hit points is the best you can hope for is some sort of half-arsed Gygaxian AD&D-like mess.

Go with the drama.

 

[RangerWickett]

Well, one thing I do want as part of that 'monster fighting drama' is to make spears better against big foes. You wouldn't try to stab a bear with a knife if you could use a spear instead, right?

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Well, one thing I do want as part of that 'monster fighting drama' is to make spears better against big foes. You wouldn't try to stab a bear with a knife if you could use a spear instead, right?

And then you end up with Gygaxian high dickery of weapon damage changing according to the size of the opponent... and perhaps end up with the longsword and the two-handed sword being the only two melee weapons chosen by fighter types.

Why not build it into the classes or feats instead?

 

[questkick]

If you're going for a simulation type game then it makes sense, but it also sounds like a major change that would most likely unbalance the system. I'd just say test it out by running battles with some high, mid, and low level characters and make sure it works with all of them.

 

[Stormonu]

If you're going to do this, don't forget to factor in ranged weapons and spells. If someone with a spear should attack before someone with a sword and before someone with a knife, clearly someone with a bow should get to strike first before someone with any sort of melee weapon (Old D&D did handle this in that it went spell, ranged, then melee in that order).