Rate of Fire (and Perrin Conventions)

[alcyone]

This looks pretty open to interpretation, given the broad combat sequence suggestions, but it seems reasonable to allow differing numbers of shots per round depending on the weapon used, as in Chainmail, in Delving Deeper. I notice however, that in two cases a rate of fire is specified, that is, in aerial combat and seafaring combat, which is that missiles (and artillery and spells) may be used only once per round, which makes me think perhaps Delving Deeper's authors at least considered the idea.

I am thinking of introducing multiple shots per round to my game. It seems self-limiting in any case, if shooting into melee or while melee'd is discouraged, and if there is a penalty to switch weapons. I think if I adopt the Perrin Conventions www.archive-host.com/compteur.php?url=http://sd-1.archive-host.com/membres/up/186124882939900327/perrin-conventions.doc this would balance things as well as give me some reasonable initiative guidelines.

Has anyone seen any drawbacks to an increased/decreased rate of fire with or without the conventions?

[waysoftheearth]

I don't know whether this qualifies as a "drawback" or not, but an important distinction is that the Perrin document discusses 10 second melee rounds, while DD assumes one minute combat rounds.

Hence DD combat is intended to be more abstract.

A single attack roll is (almost always) enough to sum up multiple feints, cuts, thrusts, side steps, parries and ripostes in melee a combat. And IMHO there's no compelling need to treat missile fire any differently.

It's your game, and you should make it your own. But it is worthwhile considering that missile attacks are already very powerful in DD considering that a) they can be made at a distance, and b) they are at +2 to hit at short range (the bulk of underground shooting), or +3 to hit with high dexterity, or +4 to hit for a halfling with high dexterity!

In my opinion these favorable attack adjustments are due, at least in part, to the assumption that they represent a barrage of fire rather than a single shot.

With that in mind, I would stick to the single attack roll and insist that 3-6 arrows or 1-4 bolts be spent during a round of bow or crossbow fire, respectively. If a player wants to conserve ammunition and fire exactly one shot per round, then he incurs a -2 to hit penalty to represent his reduced odds of causing harm.

Just a few thoughts... as you say, it's wide open to interpretation

[mgtremaine]

Jan 25, 2013 5:20:14 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

I would stick to the single attack roll and insist that 3-6 arrows or 1-4 bolts be spent during a round of bow or crossbow fire, respectively.

Hmm... Interesting Simon. How would you handle ammo recovery? Normal versus magical?

-Mike

[alcyone]

Fair point about the abstraction. Indeed, my interest began with wanting a consistent and less interactive combat sequence for my DD PbP. The rate of fire part just came with the Conventions, and I am a champion of the archery type characters.

Now I wonder though if it would be better to eyeball combat as I have been until I see if Perilous Mazes has any good advice I can readily adopt.

[Zenopus]

Aergraith, Holmes is pretty clear that you get one missile attack per 10 sec round, except for crossbows, so I've stuck with that for Perilous Mazes. The Holmes bonuses for short/medium/long range are slightly different, being +1/0/-1.

Light crossbows get one attack every other round, heavy crossbows every fourth round. The first attack being on the first round if they are previously loaded. That's a big disadvantage but my interpretation that justifies this that crossbows are mainly used by the unskilled (i.e., NPC guards) while bows will be used by the skilled (i.e., Fighters).

[alcyone]

Jan 25, 2013 14:15:05 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Aergraith, Holmes is pretty clear that you get one missile attack per 10 sec round, except for crossbows, so I've stuck with that for Perilous Mazes.

Ok, interesting, so is PM also using 10 second rounds? It seemed to me it didn't really matter much if it's 10 seconds or 10 minutes if you are actually enumerating everything they can do in that time period.

Thanks for the PM info, communication like that helps us plan around these things!

I guess that makes sense in light of "lets you play Delving Deeper in a very Holmes-like way", and not "lets you play Holmes Basic in a very Delving Deeper-like way".

[waysoftheearth]

Jan 25, 2013 8:14:22 GMT -6 mgtremaine said:

How would you handle ammo recovery? Normal versus magical?

Hi Mike; it's not something I recall coming up in my own games. I generally assume that bolts and arrows are "one shot" articles. The non-magical items are really cheap (5gp for 30 and 20 missiles, respectively) and a "serious missile man" would be remiss not to carry two quivers or bolt cases.

Magical missiles are not quite so cheap, but they are the most commonly occurring type of magic weapon and when they do occur, there are 5-30 or 4-24 items. I'd treat these more or less as "charges" of a magic wand. Unless a player uses something like a "Locate Object" spell to find a spent missile, they are expendable items.


FWIW -- I see the expenditure of missiles as part of the "operating cost" of having ranged attacks. Getting through missiles more quickly than 1 per round is appealing to me because it makes this cost non-trivial. It also differentiates bows and crossbows somewhat in that crossbows are cheaper to operate due to bolts costing less than arrows and their lower rate of fire.

Enjoy

[talysman]

Jan 25, 2013 16:24:17 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Jan 25, 2013 8:14:22 GMT -6 mgtremaine said:

How would you handle ammo recovery? Normal versus magical?

Hi Mike; it's not something I recall coming up in my own games. I generally assume that bolts and arrows are "one shot" articles. The non-magical items are really cheap (5gp for 30 and 20 missiles, respectively) and a "serious missile man" would be remiss not to carry two quivers or bolt cases.

In contrast, I figure some mundane arrows should be re-usable. Start with the idea "what are the chances that a single arrow breaks or otherwise becomes unusable?" Go with the simple, universal answer "1 or 2 in 6" (or "5+ on 1d6".) That's 1 in 3. So, if a third of all your arrows will break, skip the die roll and just let archers recover 2/3rds of their spent ammunition, as long as they can reach it and take the time to do so. Maybe adjust the time needed to recover them all up or down based on how the ranged attacks played out, and ask players how much time they want to waste retrieving arrows.

Magic arrows might be different. For example, I'm wondering if the arrow itself ought to be recoverable, but the *enchantment* should only last for one attack. But that depends on how you want enchantment to work in your campaign and can't really be answered simply.

[waysoftheearth]

If you do want missiles to be recoverable, then another consideration is the time required to actually find them.

Here's a real life anecdote...

A friend of mine acquired a compound bow and arrows, and we "messed about" with it on his farm, shooting at trees and hay bales. The arrows had fluorescent-orange and fluorescent-yellow shafts and bright, colourful flights. When we missed our targets (which we frequently did) the arrows would shy off into the surrounding grass, which was dry and brown, and mostly about ankle high. The grass was taller along fence lines and around trees and piles of firewood, but those things were mostly well out of the way.

In this near "best case scenario" -- in broad daylight, at very short range (approximately 20 yards), immediately after firing, with three or four of us observing where each luminescent arrow went -- it could take ages to find a stray arrow. Some of them we never found at all.



So now imagine searching for dull arrows, in dim conditions, after a battle, where nobody was particularly watching where misses flew (because all eyes would be on the most immediate deadly threats).

I'd call it a tall order. If the players were determined to find stray arrows I might allow 1-6 serviceable missiles to be recovered after a full turn of searching (i.e., allowing for an additional wandering monster check).

[talysman]

I dunno if I'd call finding anything in the grass a "best case scenario". Dim light or not, I think shooting down a corridor or tunnel is actually the best case, since the players could just duck-walk past the fallen bodies dragging their hands and locate the arrows by touch. That would be the "1 turn" option for me. For larger underground areas, I'd probably use the width (in ten-foot squares) as the number of turns. If there's a grassy area or some other place for things to get covered up, I'd still calculate the number of turns, but with a random roll for number recovered. If there's a deep pool or pit in the target area where stuff could actually get *lost*, I'd reduce the max # recoverable by 1/6th or 1/3rd before figuring out what random roll to use.

[alcyone]

I'd say that any arrow that misses its soft target and smashes into a hard stone wall would probably not be an arrow you'd depend on in the future; my understanding is bodkin points were usually soft iron, and not terribly field-replaceable, unlike todays arrow heads which typically screw on, though I'd agree they'd probably have an excellent chance of being recovered indoors.

For that matter, some percentage of arrows that hit soft targets would be recoverable (but icky... watching Walking Dead and that guy pulling his infinite crossbow bolts out of zombie brains... I am no germaphobe but geez...)

[talysman]

Right. So the arrows that are unreliable after hitting a hard stone wall will probably break on second use. Rather than track individual arrows and their current quality, just assume that you lose at least a third of all arrows fired, due to breakage or whatever.

[alcyone]

Right, that's about the best you can do I think.

[waysoftheearth]

Feb 7, 2013 14:17:59 GMT -6 talysman said:

Right. So the arrows that are unreliable after hitting a hard stone wall will probably break on second use. Rather than track individual arrows and their current quality, just assume that you lose at least a third of all arrows fired, due to breakage or whatever.

An arrow that "will probably break on second use" can easily be the difference between penetrating armour or not, and therefore the difference between a hit and a miss.

Hence, those "unreliable" arrows are... unreliable. There is a very real chance that they won't punch through plate or mail armour even if fired accurately.

[talysman]

Feb 7, 2013 15:42:43 GMT -6 waysoftheearth said:

Feb 7, 2013 14:17:59 GMT -6 talysman said:

Right. So the arrows that are unreliable after hitting a hard stone wall will probably break on second use. Rather than track individual arrows and their current quality, just assume that you lose at least a third of all arrows fired, due to breakage or whatever.

An arrow that "will probably break on second use" can easily be the difference between penetrating armour or not, and therefore the difference between a hit and a miss.

Hence, those "unreliable" arrows are... unreliable. There is a very real chance that they won't punch through plate or mail armour even if fired accurately.

Right. So the attack rolls that miss? Those were the unreliable ones. The outcome is the same. I'm just saying "don't worry about tracking individual arrows."

[waysoftheearth]

Feb 7, 2013 17:30:32 GMT -6 talysman said:

Right. So the attack rolls that miss? Those were the unreliable ones. The outcome is the same. I'm just saying "don't worry about tracking individual arrows."

I agree; that's a perfectly reasonable abstraction.

I guess what I was trying to say is that a quiver containing a motley of unreliable arrows would have reduced odds of a successful hit compared to a quiver of fresh, reliable arrows. This difference is not represented in the above model.