I don't know about greatswords and rapier's, but Katana's are a pretty big blade(more than I would want to be stabbed with) and you can stop one of those on a dime after about an hour's practice,
If you do nothing but practice one stroke, sure. They're about the same weight as a rapier (around 4 lbs, heavier than a longsword, 2/3 the weight of a claymore, and about 1/3 the weight of a sledgehammer) and if you're using them in a hacking motion, will probably bounce off or chip. A katana is made to be drawn across the target, letting the length of the blade glide against what it's cutting. The weight distribution is too even to allow for effective hewing (no 'sweet spot')
If you do nothing but practice one stroke, sure. They're about the same weight as a rapier (around 4 lbs, heavier than a longsword, 2/3 the weight of a claymore, and about 1/3 the weight of a sledgehammer) and if you're using them in a hacking motion, will probably bounce off or chip. A katana is made to be drawn across the target, letting the length of the blade glide against what it's cutting. The weight distribution is too even to allow for effective hewing (no 'sweet spot')
I don't know about greatswords and rapier's, but Katana's are a pretty big blade(more than I would want to be stabbed with) and you can stop one of those on a dime after about an hour's practice,
Who taught you how to eviscerate? Of course you don't hack, that's what axes are for :) Actually Katana's are very easy to control, and there's not really a lot of different cuts to practice. Down, diagonals both up and down, side to side, upward, and thrust and you've got the basics. The power is in the pulling back to your center. It's not smacking down with the sword but down and back towards yourself (toward the dan tien)if that makes sense.
Slicing vs chopping. Imagine cutting a rope with a knife, it's the slicing that makes the cut.
I know it's not germaine to a thread that seems to be evolvoing toward "what numbers should I plug into a weapon speed system", but there is a simpler way to look at it.
Big weapons tend to be slow; small weapons tend to be quick. Quick weapons should go first.
Big weapons hit your enemy before he can reach you; small weapons allow your enemy to attack you before you can reach him. Big weapons should go first.
That's a 1-1 tie. Both big and small weapons should go first.
Ergo, they all go at the same time. Or, more accurately, they all allow you to attack with roughly equal facility.
Which leaves only the personal factors: your speed (Initiative modifier) and your readiness for battle (Initiative roll) to decide who really goes first.
Yeah, yeah, that's very simplistic and abstract. But then, so is the entire rest of the combat system. It seems a fair compromise for speed and ease of play, and it's clearly the compromise the game designers found acceptable.
Of course,
And all the posts I've seen in this thread seem clear on the fact they're discussing a house rule,
not stalking Paizo or WotC game-designers until they bring back Weapon Speed to the core game.
If you're 100% content with the lack of Weapon Speed in the (several) available "Standard" Rule-sets,
then discussing such a house-rule obviously isn't going to improve game-play for you.
For me, it's only tangentially about "realism" per se, as seems to be the half the discussion here, but simply a matter of having one more degree of 'nuance' than what 3.x offers, where the functional differences between weapons are basically damage dice and crit range/mod, with Finesse (for DEX>STR melee characters) and Pierce/Slash/Bludgeon Damage Type having a small (but binary) importance.
Of course, to REALLY emphasize this Speed Factor you'd probably want to also change how Iterative Attacks work, e.g. delay each Iterative attack by (Weapon Speed) Init ticks.
Big weapons tend to be slow; small weapons tend to be quick. Quick weapons should go first.
Big weapons hit your enemy before he can reach you; small weapons allow your enemy to attack you before you can reach him. Big weapons should go first.
That's a 1-1 tie. Both big and small weapons should go first.
Ergo, they all go at the same time. Or, more accurately, they all allow you to attack with roughly equal facility.
Which leaves only the personal factors: your speed (Initiative modifier) and your readiness for battle (Initiative roll) to decide who really goes first.
Yeah, yeah, that's very simplistic and abstract. But then, so is the entire rest of the combat system. It seems a fair compromise for speed and ease of play, and it's clearly the compromise the game designers found acceptable.
Blake wins the thread.
It all evens out. Maybe not quite, and there are thousands of nuances, but I'd like to resolve an attack in D&D in under three hours, without the use of a brand-new, top-of-the-line computer (I do have one of those, it's not that I couldn't afford it. I just don't want to have to use it for D&D. That's my unplugged time).
Katana's are a pretty big blade(more than I would want to be stabbed with)
Funny you should mention that. That's the way I feel about katanas, too. And daggers. And bread knives. And can openers. And pretty much everything with a blade.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with your weird, sick, perverted stabbing fetish, I'm not here to judge you. Weirdo. ;-P
Now we have individual initiatives. And if you think about it, the characters using the 'faster' weapons of the WS system usually have higher Dex meaning faster initiatives. The real difference is that before, if you were faster that was just it.
Funny you should mention that. The clumsy weakling seven-year-old with his dagger was faster than Conan the Epic-Level Warrior with str and dex right off the scale.
I like weapon speeds and I wish my 1ed group would use them. Sadly, I seem to be the only one with that opinion. In 3.5 I don't think they really work as well. Not without the whole slew of tweaks needed to make it work realisically as meantioned up thread.
Let's see:
I know I am in the minority on this and many gamers here probably don't have much exposure towards weapons speeds or rules vs. various armors.
I have had exposure to the crappy 2e rules. Nothing to do with my age, everything to do with the fact that the rules weren't any better than PF rules (in fact, they were worse), but they were more complex.
Given the points made in this thread and rereading the Exlated combat rules, if I were to push in my group to apply speed factor I would honestly only push for it to be applied to break up iterative attacks (either from BAB or feats). Not effecting initiative itself. (...)
Yeah, I agree that's the most 'realistic' approach all things considered.
For me, it would be breaking up the flow of play WAY to much (even if it IS more cinematic), so there's no way I could play like that (on a semi-regular basis). Combined with AoO's that would be ALOT of 'cinematic breaks', so I could see ditching most AoO's if you played that way. If the entire game system is designed around it from scratch, it might work easier.
Glancing at a weapon-specific Init Mod and otherwise using standard 3.x turn/action dynamics is practically no extra work vs. glancing at the standard 3.x "universal" Init mod. But like I said, that isn't really about 'realism' as much as just a non-damage-focused nuance to combat that ties into the same rationale as Improved Initiative.
|
In the Scarred Lands Player's Guide to Fighters and Barbarians, they introduced an Optional weapon speeds system that seemed to be inspired by something said in Sean Reynolds rant linked upthread.
Weapons were divided into three categories;
Quick - dagger, rapier, scimitar, darts, shuriken, exotic monk weapons (kama, nunchaku, sai), etc.
Standard - mace (light or heavy), spear (half), quarterstaff, longsword, short sword, longbow, warhammer, battle axe, etc.
Slow - comp longbow, greatsword, greataxe, most polearms, bola, scythe, greatclub, lance, etc.
Standard weapons work normally. Users of Quick weapons gain iterative attacks every 4 points of BAB. Users of Slow weapons gain iterative attacks every 6 points of BAB.
So a 9th level Fighter with a longsword would get two attacks at BAB +9/+4. If he was using a scimitar, he would get three attacks at BAB +9/+5/+1. If he was using a glaive, he'd still get two attacks, but they would be at BAB +9/+3.
I'd probably quibble with some of their choices (I'd want the short sword to be a Quick weapon, for instance), but otherwise it was a pretty neat little system.
|
Just throwing a new angle on speed factors for you to consider...
What if speed factors, instead of making you act slower made you react slower? The speedfactor of a weapon is greater the slower the weapon, dagger +0 to great axe +10 for example.
You roll initiative as normal for 3e/PF but once you have acted you cannot perform an Attack of Opportunity with your primary weapon until you have passed your initiative result minus your weapons speed factor.
for example; a fighter with his great axe goes on initiative 15 while a wizard rolls initiative 8. The fighter attacks the wizard on 15 but cannot make an attack of opportunity until initiative 5. the wizard on initiative 8 can then cast his spell without fear of an attack from the fighter. next round the fighter switches to his dagger and can now threaten AoO on any initiative so the wizard now must cast defensively or more out of threat.
Its a little more abstract than most but i think it maintains the fundamental structure of the initiative system while incorporating a distinction between slow and fast weapons.
|
I think that out of the initiative systems used in D&D-ype games that 2nd edition had the most "exciting" and simple.
d10 + weapon speed or spell casting time.
dagger = 2
long sword = 5
2H sword = 10
magic missle = 1
fire ball = 3
etc
lowest goes first.
We had fighters swapping to daggers/dart (ok issues with darts) to fight spell casters. Spell casters vs spell casters became VERY interesting. Remember of course you lost you spell if you took ANY damage before the spell went off.
Was a system where the players had to state what they were doing before initiative of course and I think that was one of the things that 3e moved away from. I guess players no longer trusted DM's to play fair once they had heard all of the PC's plans?
S.
Remember of course you lost you spell if you took ANY damage before the spell went off.
How I hated that. No matter how powerful and tough a wizard you were, and no matter how trivial the damage, you just lost the spell. So some commoner stabs Elminster while spellcasting, Elminster just loses the spell. He could withstand a bath in lava for a year or so, but a little needle prick totally ruins his concentration.
Was a system where the players had to state what they were doing before initiative of course and I think that was one of the things that 3e moved away from. I guess players no longer trusted DM's to play fair once they had heard all of the PC's plans?
It was restrictive, and didn't allow you to react to what happened before your turn.
It was restrictive, and didn't allow you to react to what happened before your turn.
And that was deliberate, and appropriate. Losing that aspect is one of my big annoyances with 3.x. Turning initiative into a circular rotation changed the concept: now it's just turns in a board game. With per-round initiative rolls and modifiers from weapons and spells, the model was that you start doing something at the beginning of the round, and can't simply abort on split-second notice; you're already mid-swing, you've made half the magic gestures, etc. It was much more accurate to the simultaneous events it's supposed to be modeling.
My very favorite initiative system was in Earthdawn (of which I only ever played 1st Edition, and I'll note that this system probably existed elsewhere; never played Shadowrun, heh). Initiative was once per round, like AD&D; but you rolled first, and then announced your actions in ascending order of initiative, i.e. the person who was going last, announced first. This added the element of reaction to other events in the round for those with a high initiative count, which is where it really belongs. 3.x gives that award to the low count (at least in round 1) which is borderline nonsensical.
Well, since we're all discussing our favorite inititative systems, I'll share my 2nd edition home-made version.
Using weapon speeds and casting times, as well as DEX modifiers, multiple attacks, etc., I eliminated the "combat round" entirely.
I referred to everything in seconds, as in, 60 seconds makes a minute.
Everyone started at second 0. There is no upper limit.
First, everyome makes an initiative roll which is always d10 - DEX modifier, but the result cannot be less than 1.
Then everyone begins their action on that result. Every action has a time involved. Often, that time is a weapon speed (dagger might be 2 seconds, greatsword might be 8 seconds, etc.) or a spell casting time (Magic Missile might be 2 seconds, Meteor Swarm might be 10 seconds), or other times (standing from prone was 5 seconds, turning around 180 degrees was 2 seconds, drinking a potion already in hand was 8 seconds, etc.
If you have multiple attacks, you add each attack's speed to the previous initiative value, so if you last attacked on the 13th second with your first attack, and your weapon speed is 5, your next attack will be on the 18th second.
When you run out of actions (based on how many actions the 2nd Edition rules said you could take in one "round"), you would roll initiative again (d10 - DEX >0) and add that to your last initiative value.
It just keeps going up and up and up until the fight ends.
In other words, this system tracked combat just like real time. You start at the beginning at second 0 (zero seconds of the battle have elapsed) and you end, for example, at second 57 (meaning the fight took 57 seconds from beginning to end).
Someone with good dex, multiple attacks, and a fast weapon might attack several times before a big slow old ogre could swing his big slow tree trunk even once.
Hasted people, or high-level people with multiple attacks due to levels, didn't make very many actual initiative rolls compared to their enemies who might have had to roll between every attack.
It worked unbelievably well. It was really quite easy to use (we all tracked our initiative using markers on our battlemats). It wasn't any harder than the existing 2nd edition initiative rules. But the best part was that fast combatants with fast weapons got to attack often enough to do as much damage as slow characters with big deadly weapons and tons of STR.
Using it over the years, I had it quite nicely balanced where my players were equally satisfied with 2WF, 2HW, S&B, and ranged styles, and nobody had any angst that spellcasters were overpowered because, if you're casting a 5-second spell, anyone who can attack you during those 5 seconds could disrupt the spell - no need for delays or readied actions.
Great fun.
I've never seen a system that modeled it so easily and so fairly balanced, though I admit, I'm only familiar with a handful of game systems. The best part of this one was that it worked perfectly with D&D, and since there were more D&D players at the time than all other game systems combined (or at least it seemed that way in my neck of the woods), it was great to have a sweet initiative system that integrated smoothly with the biggest and best game on the market, especially since it took only 5 minutes to teach it to a new player.
Hehe... right, I was talking about my favorite system that I've played, of course. Moving into the realm of theory, my ideal system, which is still a work in progress but has seen hard-copy, is extremely similar to the one you just described, Blake, right down to using markers to track the time (glass beads, each represents one second: you get a pile when you perform an action, remove one per tick and go again when the pile's gone).
I had a "holy crap" moment when people here described the Exalted system earlier, and the same "tick" terminology was raised. :)
It was restrictive, and didn't allow you to react to what happened before your turn.And that was deliberate, and appropriate.
Never seemed appropriate to me. Ruined the fun. Felt like I was attacking with magical soap bubbles.
Losing that aspect is one of my big annoyances with 3.x. Turning initiative into a circular rotation changed the concept: now it's just turns in a board game.
No, that cannot be, because 3e is not a board game.
And you still have changes in the initiative order, if someone delays or prepares an action.
With per-round initiative rolls and modifiers from weapons and spells, the model was that you start doing something at the beginning of the round, and can't simply abort on split-second notice; you're already mid-swing, you've made half the magic gestures, etc. It was much more accurate to the simultaneous events it's supposed to be modeling.
It wasn't more accurate as a whole. Because if that one guy is that much faster than me, and his action can be finished a lot sooner, why will he wait all this time before doing it again?
So my meteor swarm has a speed factor of 9, while my enemy's magic missile has a speed factor of 1. Let's add insult to injury and let me roll really crappy (10 on the d10) and him really good. (1 on the d10). My init factor is 19, his is 2.
Why doesn't he do it again? And again? And again? If he keeps going, he should be able to cast 9 magic missiles before I get my meteor swarm out.
And the old system also completely ignored character capabilities. So I am some really high-level character with near godlike strength and dexterity. I could use armoured carriages as weapons because I can lift them off the ground easier than a normal man lifts a stone. The greatsword I wield is no hindrance to me.
I face off against an old, fat man, no strength or dexterity to speak of (both around 4). He has a dagger.
The guy has a better chance of going first than I do, even though I can swing that sword much easier than he his dagger.
Does that seem right to you?
Initiative was once per round, like AD&D; but you rolled first, and then announced your actions in ascending order of initiative, i.e. the person who was going last, announced first. This added the element of reaction to other events in the round for those with a high initiative count, which is where it really belongs. 3.x gives that award to the low count (at least in round 1) which is borderline nonsensical.
Yeah, because it makes so much sense that you can react to something that hasn't even happened yet. :P
And 3e always rewards the initiative winner, because he can choose to act first. He doesn't have to - he can always delay.
If you have multiple attacks, you add each attack's speed to the previous initiative value, so if you last attacked on the 13th second with your first attack, and your weapon speed is 5, your next attack will be on the 18th second.When you run out of actions (based on how many actions the 2nd Edition rules said you could take in one "round"), you would roll initiative again (d10 - DEX >0) and add that to your last initiative value.
That means the benefit of iterative attacks was greatly diminished.
No, that cannot be, because 3e is not a board game.
I'm not sure you've played 3e. ;)
It wasn't more accurate as a whole. Because if that one guy is that much faster than me, and his action can be finished a lot sooner, why will he wait all this time before doing it again?
Because he's not "faster." The action takes the same amount of time, he just got set up to perform it more efficiently than you did. Less lead-in, more follow-through.
Yeah, because it makes so much sense that you can react to something that hasn't even happened yet. :P
Odd comment from the person claiming it's not a board game! These events are not occurring in discrete, segregated and sequential moments. He's not reacting to something that hasn't happened; rather, he's reading your motions and predicting your action and beats you to the punch (literally).
The Gygaxian initiative system is intended to be a simple model of simultaneous action, not sequential. A delay-based system like the one Blake brought up is much better if your model is "turns occur in order." 3.x has a lowest-common-denominator hybrid of the two which plays OK but is horrid compared to either from a simulation perspective. It is literally equivalent to taking turns in Monopoly: a big step backwards from either of the other methods.
|
|
The biggest problem with declare-up-resolve-down initiative systems is that they take too long - everyone has to say what they are doing twice, and it's extremely frustrating not to be able to start just doing what you just said you were doing. A significant secondary issue is that it is possible to have utterly wasted actions - i.e., Joe the Wizard goes on 12 and declares that he is casting magic missile at the hobgoblin warleader, but when resolution comes around, Shiela the Fighter acts on 17 and crits on the warleader with her scythe. So Joe's spell goes fzzt! and he doesn't so anything else either - not a whole lot of fun.
I dealt with that kind of system a lot during the days of the old Storyteller system from White Wolf, and it caused some serious headaches. In WW's World of Darkness: Combat sourcebook, however, they proposed an interesting alternative: resolution begins with the slowest combatant and goes up the initiative count, but you can interrupt the actions of any character with an initiative slower than yours, thus allowing you to have the advantage of knowing what they are doing but not requiring a double-count of the initiative sequence.
What really ties this system to the OP, however, is that different actions had different initiative modifiers - so you could, if you tried to adapt something like this for d20, bring weapon speeds in as a means to change the initiative order and react faster or slower to the actions of others...
|
|
The biggest problem with declare-up-resolve-down initiative systems is that they take too long - everyone has to say what they are doing twice, and it's extremely frustrating not to be able to start just doing what you just said you were doing. A significant secondary issue is that it is possible to have utterly wasted actions - i.e., Joe the Wizard goes on 12 and declares that he is casting magic missile at the hobgoblin warleader, but when resolution comes around, Shiela the Fighter acts on 17 and crits on the warleader with her scythe. So Joe's spell goes fzzt! and he doesn't so anything else either - not a whole lot of fun.
Kind of like real mass melee. If you have ever been in a brawl or riot (errr....) you will find out that combat, melee combat specifically is insanely chaotic. There are several instances where I have seen multiple people dogpile one guy since they were all eyeballing him as their target, and at the risk of incriminating myself I will stop on that there.
I love the declare-then-go initiative, it is what I used in 1st 2nd and even converted over to 3rd/PFRPG ed. I think there is some confusion on exactly how it works, the fast spell caster (magic missile) has a much higher modifier to his initiative than the guy casting Meteor Shower for that round . There are still mods calculated for improved initiative (caster), Dex, and the largest factor; the d20 die roll.
So the faster spell caster is not guaranteed the win, just a higher chance of getting one for the round. If the Meteor Swarm caster isn't disrupted from the MM damage his slower spell will still go off for the round, and there is a slight chance (all in the mods and die roll) that he may beat the normally faster spell. So the checks are made per round, and usually I give my guys one small declared contingency declared backup action. If they want to do a drastically different action mid-round I recalculate their initiative with a penalty, if it's still positive then that is their new step in which their action goes off, otherwise they can't make the change or the action is triggered at the beginning of the next round.
Makes for a more dynamic and varied combat, gives melee types huge options while they run around in a fight, and maybe they can change their actions round per round to affect their speed and thus effectiveness.
No, that cannot be, because 3e is not a board game.I'm not sure you've played 3e. ;)
No problem, I'm sure enough for the both of us.
|
|
That's the Exalted system, Quijenoth.
I've seen the Exalted Books in store and have been enticed to them by the anime style art but my groups never embrased any system except D&D and Shadowrun. I may have to grab myself a copy because what you guys have mentioned here it sounds like a fun and balanced system.
For the past 8 years I have been working on my own gamesystem on and off and one of the more common roadblocks that I come across is the combat. It is a fine line between realism and abstraction vs playability and I find one of the biggest restraints for that is the battlemap. D&D as you know uses 5 ft squares to represent a characters space, yet as I witnessed at a UK Gencon some live roleplayers actually set up a life sized grid and played out D&D for real.
I would recommend anyone grabbing some wooden poles (cricket stumps work well) some string or ribbon and plotting out a typical 5 ft corridor leading into a 10x15 ft room down at the local park. Then act out a couple of rounds of combat and see just how abstract the D&D system really is.
I'll have to take a look at Exalted. I got the core rules on PDF when White Wolf just gave them away to show that unlike some companies, they are all about the future, which is PDF.
|
I felt that weapon speeds were pretty off base and cumbersome. Why wouldn't a loaded crossbow give you a great initiative? Since crossbows could only be fired 1/round or 1 every other round wouldn't the reload time be taken into effect since bows could be fired multiple times in the same round under the old rules?
Also. why would any spear weapon not have an amazingly good weapon speed? All you are doing is thrusting. Only really combersome weapons like axes, mauls, maces and hammers should have been regulated with poor weapon speeds.