Pondering gaming....
Oct. 1st, 2020 01:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brooksmosesA bit of rules explanation: In the system we're using, on one turn in a battle you can move and you can hit someone (in either order). If you move away from someone you're next to and fighting, they can hit you out of turn, or you can roll a d20 and get 10 or higher to try to avoid that by "disengaging". And if you try to move past someone to hit someone else, the person you're trying to move past has the option to "intercept" you and cause you to stop next to them instead. The general effect of this is that if you hit someone they probably get a chance to hit you back, and there's a fair chance they can keep you from leaving or hit you when you leave too.
So, my character -- a "rogue"-class young woman with a history of assisting the anti-imperial rebellion by liberating supplies from imperial caravans -- has a talent in battle that gives a +5 bonus to disengage checks (making it "roll 5 or higher on a d20" rather than "10 or higher"), and the ability to avoid being intercepted by making a disengage check. And she has picked up a special attack skill that is "+5 to disengage checks this turn (so it's now "roll 0 or higher", which is hard not to do), and on your turn you can move, attack, and then move again."
This leads to the interesting battle tactic of "I will dance through the middle of the battle, stab the big bad guy that's currently occupied in beating on our big armored fighter, and keep going so anyone who wants to attack me has to move away from someone."
It's quite amusing (and effective), but I'm now trying to figure out how to play it without it becoming an overplayed joke.
I suppose this does somewhat resolve the conflict I was having at an earlier level, where the rogue class is really designed to mostly do hand-to-hand fighting, but my character's preference is to avoid getting hit and instead carefully place arrows in unsuspecting enemies. She's also learning that she's a bit tougher than she thinks; if it takes getting hit hard a couple of times to save her compatriots, that's actually fine. (Yay magical healing.)
Part of how she learned this was a significant error in understanding minotaur social customs. A trio of minotaurs came across our party on the road and rushed at our party waving clubs and yelling, and she took this as a threat instead of a friendly greeting and gave one of them a warning arrow in the leg. Quick thinking on the part of our more-experienced party leader managed to turn this into a one-on-one "she called you out" challenge rather than an all-hands battle. After a couple of rounds of hand-to-hand fighting, with a lucky dice roll she cut off his beard as a trophy, and then both of us had unlucky dice rolls and flailed wildly and missed each other, and the other minotaurs laughed at us and ended the battle and declared her the winner. She's pretty clear that she got rather lucky in how this turned out, but she's also now got the confidence of "I went up against a bull-person twice my size in hand-to-hand combat and held my own, and I've got the trophy to prove it."
So that's been fun!
So, my character -- a "rogue"-class young woman with a history of assisting the anti-imperial rebellion by liberating supplies from imperial caravans -- has a talent in battle that gives a +5 bonus to disengage checks (making it "roll 5 or higher on a d20" rather than "10 or higher"), and the ability to avoid being intercepted by making a disengage check. And she has picked up a special attack skill that is "+5 to disengage checks this turn (so it's now "roll 0 or higher", which is hard not to do), and on your turn you can move, attack, and then move again."
This leads to the interesting battle tactic of "I will dance through the middle of the battle, stab the big bad guy that's currently occupied in beating on our big armored fighter, and keep going so anyone who wants to attack me has to move away from someone."
It's quite amusing (and effective), but I'm now trying to figure out how to play it without it becoming an overplayed joke.
I suppose this does somewhat resolve the conflict I was having at an earlier level, where the rogue class is really designed to mostly do hand-to-hand fighting, but my character's preference is to avoid getting hit and instead carefully place arrows in unsuspecting enemies. She's also learning that she's a bit tougher than she thinks; if it takes getting hit hard a couple of times to save her compatriots, that's actually fine. (Yay magical healing.)
Part of how she learned this was a significant error in understanding minotaur social customs. A trio of minotaurs came across our party on the road and rushed at our party waving clubs and yelling, and she took this as a threat instead of a friendly greeting and gave one of them a warning arrow in the leg. Quick thinking on the part of our more-experienced party leader managed to turn this into a one-on-one "she called you out" challenge rather than an all-hands battle. After a couple of rounds of hand-to-hand fighting, with a lucky dice roll she cut off his beard as a trophy, and then both of us had unlucky dice rolls and flailed wildly and missed each other, and the other minotaurs laughed at us and ended the battle and declared her the winner. She's pretty clear that she got rather lucky in how this turned out, but she's also now got the confidence of "I went up against a bull-person twice my size in hand-to-hand combat and held my own, and I've got the trophy to prove it."
So that's been fun!