Why not treat the action economy... like an economy?

[Dragoslav]

4(This one shows what daggers are for - low "damage" my rear end!)

"Praise be to Mary and her child and all of those with them in Paradise. Spendeth a healing surge and regain 1d6 additional hit points."

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is very interesting and worth exploring a little further. However just to clarify, I was not talking about the speed of the weapon but the effort it takes to wield it (where a rounds worth of effort is broken up into Major, Minor and Swift chunks). To use your example, a well balanced sword in the hands of a proficient user is going to be a pretty lively and reactive affair. In comparison, how much effort is taken up wielding that massive greataxe?

That depends - and I think you're thinking of D&D aesthetic choices and then trying to apply real world standards to them. Even on such oversized axes as the daneaxe (below) there wasn't too much mass to the head, so although the momentum they can produce is massive the weight and effort is probably less than to carry a large round or kite shield for combat. (Speaking from decade-old reenactment experience).

A dagger in comparison would seem [again in the hands of a (highly?) proficient user] to offer greater capacity for reaction taking less effort; providing one has closed sufficiently with their opponent.

And there's the hitch. Closing with your opponent is something they shouldn't allow. The Daneaxe isn't the best weapon for preventing this, admittedly. I'd much rather a halberd.

The other factor is proximity and where a weapons reach trumps a characters speed. That dagger wielder is going to have to close with the greataxe wielder and that is a dangerous process. However if the dagger-wielder's ally can suck that major action out of the greataxe dude, the dagger-wielder gets a good chance to close otherwise the greataxe wielder gets first strike before the dagger-guy gets to do diddly. Or so I would imagine.

In practice it's all you imagine and worse. When I used to do reenactment fighting, one of our common line drills was five people with sword and board vs three people with spears and no shield. The odds were heavily in favour of the three as long as there was any sort of virtual anchor on the flanks (i.e. we had to stay in line) even if any one swordsman was more than a match on average for a spearman.

(The vikings fought with spear and shield - the spear held overhand to stab at the eyes. But that's going to be far too dangerous for reenactors).

Respecting what you and @Balesir have already said and not referring to intitiative speeds and the like (I've read that thread some weeks ago), I'm going to just explore some of your reasoning for my own curiosity:

- If one opponent swings a greataxe and has therefore considered making his attack, but his opponent with the dirk makes his, and considering you assume that now he is able to reach his target with a dirk, you realistically foresee that he is already within grapple range and could he not therefore attempt a further quick stab at his opponent?

At that point you need to ask "Why the hell was he allowed to get in grapple range?" No one can move their body as fast as someone with a daneaxe can move the head of an axe. Or more normally someone with a sword or pointy polearm (halberd, glaive, etc.) can move the head of their weapon, and in these cases they just need to move the point of their weapon between themselves and you.

And the answer to a quick stab is "no." A quick slash, yes. But to make a quick stab you need to change direction twice from the shoulder - first you need to draw back your hand and then you need to bring it forward. If anything it's easier to make an extra quick strike with a Pollax/Bec De Corbin/Lucerne Hammer/the family being played with in Balesir's video. You bring the head of the axe round, pivot it round the block point, and then stab their feet or trip them with the other end.

The second issue is that even a 6" stab is pretty fatal anywhere on the torso (although may take some time for a gut-wound) and you need to commit from the shoulder, giving you no speed advantage. Light slashes are fast - but the wounds are comparatively superficial. They are, I believe, used a lot in contemporary knife fighting because they do damage and don't leave you exposed in the same way.

- Isn't more realistic that most full length weapons or two handed melee weapons require a decent swing and not just the movement of the wrist? Not everyone is carrying epèes or rapiers.

You're probably thinking of the side-sword or some smallsword variants not the rapier (a common mistake). The rapier is a stabbing-only weapon (as for that matter is the épée) and in both cases part of the idea is keeping the point between you and the enemy's body. Yes, for heavier blades, you need to move from the shoulder. But most swords were very well balanced precisely to make them fast and easy to wield.

Let me add: That if we were to give a benefit to dirks/short blades in this manner that by all means reach weapons such as 2H-axes and long-blades, polearms and the like should have the opportunity of going first and perhaps some other benefits.

I'd favour a free attack for anything remotely long and pointy - if the free attack succeeds the dagger wielder doesn't get close enough to be able to reach.

 

[jrowland]

I like this idea but I'd probably restrict it to two Basic Melee or Ranged attacks... We're having no problems with grind (due to house rules) getting the players dishing up a pair of Encounter Powers would tilt the game heavily to the PCs.

Cheers PDR

2 basic attacks would cost 6 points in these scheme, so it is already restricted. Doing an "encounter" or "daily" power equivalent would cost more than 3 points, so you would only get 1 per round in that case.

I did propose a 2 point "off-hand" attack, that would allow 3 of those in a round, but that would be low damage each...and likely a cost of a feat to get it (or class feature for rogues/fighter)

 

[Balesir]

Regarding, specifically, sword and board fighting, I just found this, which is three episodes I saw a while back with the sound fixed up and it's brilliant as an insight into what we know/think about dark ages foot swordsmanship. It's long - just over half an hour - but well worth watching:

Hammaborg Sword and Shield

 

[Balesir]

"Praise be to Mary and her child and all of those with them in Paradise. Spendeth a healing surge and regain 1d6 additional hit points."

Yeah, well, as I have said in other threads around here, I think D&D is and has always been an "action adventure" system designed to give characters interesting decisions to make such as might be faced and made by an action hero. "Realism" doesn't really come into it at any point, and I'm absolutely fine with that and think that, frankly, it ought to stay that way.

It's a bit like having a bulldozer and complaining that it's not very fast and doesn't handle well on corners. Instead of arguing that it should have a souped up engine, re-ratioed gearbox and redesigned suspension with rubber tracks, I think you'd be much better off just going out and getting a sports car for when you want to drive fast and corner like you're on rails...

Good luck with the sports car when you want do some earth moving or demolish a building, though!

 

[TwoSix]

In general, fantasy weapon combat is intended to more closely model Soul Calibur than the SCA. And I think that's perfectly OK.

 

[Harlock]

In general, fantasy weapon combat is intended to more closely model Soul Calibur than the SCA. And I think that's perfectly OK.

I don't know that I agree with that completely. To you, perhaps it should model Soul Caliber, but some people are of the opinion, and they are not wrong (for themselves!) that combat should be realistic. That's the beauty of a trim and lean set of core rules with the allowance for modularity built in. If you and your group want Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and my group wants The Black Company, it can work for both of us.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Sometimes I want something more realistic, and other times I want something more fantastic or mythic. What I don't want is faux realism based on nothing but much but vague and confused ideas, incoherently put together.

Picture if you are old enough, Rich Little doing a Richard Nixon voice, with this statement: "I reaaaaallllly want a grity, tough magic system, one evocative of the grime and toil of casters slaving away at cauldrons over dangerous and prickly herbs, where every spell is a danger. To get this feel, we'll have little Teddy Bear familiars dance in circles around the caster, singing wholesome nursery rhymes. Then the caster will clap his hands, smile, and friendly unicorns will be summoned. Then they'll all go play in a sunny field all day. Won't that be eviiilll!"

Some of the expressed desires for particular styles of fantasy weapon use make me think of something like that.

 

[Balesir]

I don't know that I agree with that completely. To you, perhaps it should model Soul Caliber, but some people are of the opinion, and they are not wrong (for themselves!) that combat should be realistic. That's the beauty of a trim and lean set of core rules with the allowance for modularity built in. If you and your group want Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and my group wants The Black Company, it can work for both of us.

There should definitely be sets of roleplaying rules made to suit a 'gritty realism' style; that I agree with 100% - but it shouldn't be D&D.

The "Simple Core" has nothing to do with it. The first 5e playtest packet takes D&D about as simple as it can go, but still has the core elements (which have been "core" to D&D since the earliest days) that make it, in my view, fundamentally unsuitable as a vehicle for "realistic" roleplaying. Specifically:

- It uses hit points. Hit points are fundamentally tuned to either a resource management or a dramatic model of "reality", not a real one. They work fantastically well for games of resource management or allocation or to model action heroes who die only when facing insurmountable odds. They are about as realistic as an early Star Trek set!*

- It uses character classes. These are a great aid for encouraging teamwork, for giving inspiring "archetype" characters and for making sure nobody is overshadowed all the time in play, but nobody I know in real life has what I would really call a "character class".

- It uses levels. Sure, IRL you can get better at stuff; the quest for mastery is a basic human motivation. But you don't get better at a specific package of stuff all together because of what your "class" is.

So, if I want "realism", I don't use D&D. And that's fine! To have a whole field of great RPG systems available to us and then expect one system to cover everything seems to me to be just perverse - and hopelessly unrealistic...

*: Actually, they are quite similar; I love those early ST sets and progs, but "realistic" they ain't!

 

[Harlock]

We'll have to agree to disagree. Hit Points was a means to an end. Something had to take into account, for lack of a better term, life force. Classes can easily be called professions, which we do have in real life: Soldier, Nurse, Detective, and cubicle-dwelling customer support dude are all classes. And again with levelling, means to an end.

Aside from that, I was addressing "fantasy weapon combat" specifically. What you and your group picture in your minds when you play can be vastly different in style than my group. Again, a lean, stripped down set of rules that has basic combat at its heart (attack, resolve hit or miss, resolve damage) lends itself to both styles when you can drop in a module that adds fantasy elements (use super wuxia leap to position your super martial monk of doom, swing or cast or use living spike chain attack of uber-doomnation, resolve hit or miss or super force energy attack of Crane Clan, resolve damage and status effect from suffering the wrath of the crane monk's chi).

A system can plainly be both and yes, D&D should be that system as it has been in the past and has and can lend itself easily to all styles and plenty of genres.