Fantasy Supplement with Man to Man rules

[thegreyelf]

Anyone actually tried this? The way it reads, pretty much, is that a normal man, be he mounted, armored, light, heavy, etc, cannot harm a creature on the fantasy table. There's no way to apply the Man Combat 2d6 system to the fantasy table's 2d6 system. It's odd, because you'd think it should be pretty simple, but that "what pre-heroic figures need to hit" element is just not present; it's pretty clear the fantasy supplement is designed for mass battles, with fantasy "showdowns" breaking away.

Any thoughts on how it would/should/does work with man combat?

[jjarvis]

briefly many years back I did this with a modifier based on difference in ranks.

I think I had normal-man, veteran, hero, superhero as the ranks, monsters were hero rank or as spelled out on the fantasy table. If you were fighting someone a higher rank then you the attack was at -2 and if attacking someone of lower rank the attack was at +2.

so a normal man or veteran still attacks as a hero but at -2 to the rolls on the fantasy table.

Didn't bother with it for more then a small number of games.

[Finarvyn]

As you said, basic flunky types can't inflict damage on supernaturals (as perhaps it should be, and is what makes Nazgul so scary) and you need to be a Hero or Super Hero or Wizard in order to use the Supernatural Nasties table.

I've used the man-to-man mass tables quite often, and it's great if you like to roll lots of d6's. I let the players see which weapons and which armor gave characters which ratings and went from there.

I like this system because it allows me to make use of "Fighting Capability" from Men & Magic; otherwise why have FC at all?

What I found the most annoying was trying to jump back and forth between two types of opponents: "um ... you're 4/1 against this guy but only 3/1 against those guys." I would get confused and My solution was to program an Excel spreadsheet to give me all the results and round to the nearest number of dice, so this way I can look at my chart and match up attacker versus defender abillity and then tell the player how many dice to roll.

In spite of the fact that the "alternate" combat system was apparently the one most used, the chainmail system really works quite well.

[snorri]

One of the things I kept from Chainmail in Epées & Sorcellerie is that monsters which can be attacked by magical weapons, can be attacked also by 4th level (or for some 8th level) characters (heroes & superheroes, in Chainmail). This is to allow heroic actions in sword & sorcery worlds with allmost no magic weapons.

[Finarvyn]

Exactly, so advancing to the point where you achieve "Hero" status in Fighting Capability suddenly has great significance because before that you were "food."

[thegreyelf]

I suppose on some level that makes good sense, and the so-called "lesser" fantasy creatures like orcs and goblins are clarified as "attacking as" and "defending as," thus implying that certain ones are killable by normal mortals.