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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 11, 2012 6:03:07 GMT -6
This post would specifially be aimed at others who have played Warriors of Mars, but I assume that anyone who has experience with wargames or miniatures rules or RPGs could weigh in based on that experience.
Warriors of Mars has a neat combat system, but I'm not quite sure I like the lethality of it when I run WoM-style RPG camapigns. The combat charts list four key things: (1) Number to wound (2) Number to kill (3) Number for panic (4) Special, where appropriate
Seems to me like one could have a more OD&D-style or Chainmail-style combat if you only use #1 above. Each creature can take a certain number of wounds (essentially Hit Dice) and, while it would remove the automatic kill, seems like it would keep combat more balanced.
The problem I see with the automatic kill roll is that characters could die in a hurry the same way that monsters would die. While more "realistic" it certainly seems to diminish some of the fun of the role-playing experience.
What do you think? Keep the autokill number or simplify?
Also, the panic number seems needlessly complex. Each monster has its own number to panic against each other monster. I have thought about averaging the numbers so that each monster gets a single moralle number just to have fewer numbers to keep track of.
Thoughts?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2012 8:21:11 GMT -6
I haven't played WOM before, but your analysis seems spot on.
Having a kill number seems great for a miniatures game but ugly for a role playing game. Keeping hit dice and a number to wound seems to fit better.
I kind of like the idea of panic, but hardly ever use morale in my game sessions. My monsters tend to be dumb and keep attacking until they die, so no need for panic. Maybe that's a shortcoming of my play style.
What is "special, where appropriate?"
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Post by jmccann on Mar 11, 2012 12:40:26 GMT -6
The combat charts list four key things: (1) Number to wound (2) Number to kill (3) Number for panic (4) Special, where appropriate .... Also, the panic number seems needlessly complex. Each monster has its own number to panic against each other monster. I have thought about averaging the numbers so that each monster gets a single moralle number just to have fewer numbers to keep track of. Thoughts? Chainmail and WOM (which I have not played or read carefully) both have a creature-type X creature-type matrix then. I think that is a big simplification that D&D's combat system makes, using the 2 "to-hit" tables. I agree that having a panic number be creature X creature is too complex, it makes it very hard to extend the system to new creatures. Does panic affect player characters as well or just NPCs and monsters?
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 11, 2012 13:47:48 GMT -6
Characters do not have a panic score. :-)
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Post by Morandir on Mar 11, 2012 21:54:34 GMT -6
I've actually taken inspiration from this for my latest campaign, in the interest of speeding things up just a bit. PCs and monsters have wounds based on their HD; F-M get 2+HD, Clerics and MUs get 1+HD, and monsters just get HD. This way all PCs are guaranteed to survive their first hit.
If the bonus is at least +3 (like that of a Troll), I give another wound. A Con bonus grants an extra wound at first level and every three levels thereafter, the reason for both being that the average roll on 1d6 is 3.5, so an extra 3 HP in the standard system should grant an extra wound. The one at first level is basically a freebie tossed at the players for a bit of extra survivability.
Certain more powerful monsters get more wounds; a Very Old dragon, for example (say 12 maxed HD, so 72 hit points) would require an average of 20.57 hits to kill in the standard system, so I'd give it 21 wounds.
All hits deal one wound per die, so most attacks deal one wound and those few who deal 2 dice would deal 2 wounds. For anything else, I'd just divide the normal average damage by 3.5 and use that.
When someone hits 0 Wounds, I roll on the Arduin critical hit chart to see what happens. So you might survive, but probably won't. One PC died as a result during the game.
I've only used this for one session, but it worked out fairly well. Combats are definitely a lot quicker since there's no possibility for a string of low-damage hits on a high-HP creature/PC. Still, I'm unsure about continuing; I like uncertainty in my games and this removes one element of that. I may use it a few more sessions and see how things go.
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Post by kesher on Mar 12, 2012 7:18:12 GMT -6
Personally, Fin, I'd just use the M-t-M chart for all combat, since it has wound and kill results already worked in. Just give all creatures a level, similar to the one already listed for men, keeping in mind that no monster should be higher than good ol' JC (13), and you're good to go. Number of wounds = level/ranking.
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