Close Combat, House Ruling the Insanity Options

[Jpwoo]

45 dice? Time to retire.

See the thread on dual wielding as to why I think this is broken.

We have always played that the modifiers for multiple opponents didn't take effect until they had taken an action on you. As for the people who say that this is too harsh and are debating kung-fu masters on the head of a pin need to consider what SR hand to hand is trying to simulate. It isn't five people displaying skill on a dojo mat, it covers the harsh realities of one guy in a back alley getting the beat down from corporate security with nightsticks, or a street gang assaulting someone with chunks of concrete from the ground, it is fast and brutal and unforgiving.

One of the strengths of the system is that even faced with a min-maxed blender with twin dikoted scimitars six determined people stand a chance. Even the best of the best know when to run, nobody should be without fear in SR.. ever.

[BitBasher]

Okay, substitute what I said with "My house rules are"... they give a penalty to fighting multiple opponents but do not drop the target number for the attackers. I have always done it this way.

And I feel the rules for whirling and Close Combat suck 31 flavers of ass, Baskin Robbins Style.

[Swansonegger]

[Mystery Mantis]

if you don't like how it applies a mod to each side, modify the rule.

this is what i did, since i agree that this is a double penalty to a player, at that is no only not fair, but is unprecidented. i mean, if you are going to make a rule that gives someone a penalty and another a bonus at the same time, then why not jsut double the bonus or the penalty. by doing things this way you knid of are doing just that.
but anyhoo, i made it so the penalty only applies one way or the other, choosen by the side that has the bonus.
ie- if one runner is against 3 gangers, then the gangers can take a -3 to hit, or give the runner a +3 to hit.
i know it is pretty basic, and goes against the greatness that is the SR rulebook, but it works.
on a further note, i made a lot of changes to HTH, my players and i are playtesting them, but they seem to be working for us. maybe instead of calling for a change ion the rules (not sure if that is what you were asking for, but it was the impression i got), jsut do what you feel you need to do to make it work.
and have some fun, and btw, how does he get 45 dice? jsut wanting a more detailed expalination there so i can umm, jsut read up on it....not try to keep the info from my players, or notihng... 8)

[hobgoblin]

green beret = career soldier yes? and im not talking some avarage grunt, im thinking some elite combat unit with heavy screening happening. this and the fact that they train to kill or seriusly injure and i would say your black belt is in a shitload of trouble, atleast if he have never used his skills in any other enviroment then the gym. personaly i find the belt system artificial, sure it tells a person that you can go tru the moves but it does not tell you anything about how the person will react when faced by someone willing to kill the person. there isa lot more then skill that makes up a fighter. as for the SR combat system, i find it a nice balance of playability and reality, as allways...

[Kagetenshi]

Hobgoblin, you're going into flamewar territory. Suffice it to say that there are some schools in which a black belt will come out relatively weak in combat due to lack of practical training, and others in which they will be more than capable of killing your career soldier.

~J

[BitBasher]

Which brings me to a point, when picking an art to follow pick one that uses liberal sparring and actual contact fighting, it makes all the difference in the world.

[Kagetenshi]

No. Contact fighting yes, sparring no.

~J

[hobgoblin]

thanks for the warning, i dont knowwhat got me so fired up over this thread :(

[Tziluthi]

Learning how to break people's arms and restrain them using their own body is useful too.

[Siege]

It may be too late for the flamewar warning -- there's already been a post about Sphynx and his fighting ability.

And Kage is right on the money. In my humble opinion.

-Siege

[mfb]

i do think it's kind of silly that facing multiple opponents makes it harder for you to hit them. reducing their penalty to hit you makes perfect sense; it's harder to guard against attacks, but there's no reason i can think of that it'd be harder for you to hit any one of them.

[danbot37]

I have no doubt that sphynx or anyone else with the right training could take on 3 or 4 guys. A couple of good sidekicks to knock a couple of them back and stumble a bit will knock that friend modifier right off, IMO. I used to play with a guy pretty knowledgeable in small squad tactics, and when playing a game (SR or 'that other game'), him knowing where to stand, what formation to be in for what surroundings, where to move/stay in combat, made all the difference in battles, and not because it modified any dice rolls, but because we used his knowledge to limit the opponents (less knowledgeable GM) effectiveness as a group.

[Kagetenshi]

Three or four guys with no training, yes. Three or four guys with no idea how to attack together would be easier than one of them individually, actually. But three people, attacking in unison, knowing what to do? No. Not unless the skill difference is truly massive.

~J

[danbot37]

Well, yea, exactly. After all, if they know how to block/evade/counter those kicks, or know how to react to your formation, or whatever, it won't do you any good.

[John Campbell]

I'll second Kagetenshi on this. I've been doing SCA heavy combat for years... for those that aren't familiar, this is medieval-style armored combat - full-speed, full-contact, unchoreographed, with rattan weapons, on any scale from single combat to wars with thousands of fighters on each side. I'm fairly good, though not truly great (I don't practice as much as I should). I've been in plenty of melees, and on both ends of the numerical disparity and the skill disparity.

What my experience tells me is that, given a little room to maneuver, one good fighter can take apart four less skilled and uncoordinated fighters attacking him en masse with little to no difficulty. You move around them, disrupt their formation, make them get in each other's way or draw them out of support range of their buddies, and you kill them one at a time when their friends aren't in position to help them.

However, if you take those same four guys and teach them not how to fight, but how to fight as a unit, then they can take on any single fighter without difficulty. They may take casualties - probably will, if the guy's good - but while he's killing one or two of them, the others will take him down. Three is generally sufficient. Two is iffier... a good fighter can frequently hold off two less skilled fighters long enough to get an opening on one of them, thus reducing the problem to a one-on-one that he'll easily win.

Unit discipline is more important than individual skill. This is the lesson of the Roman legion.

[Cain]

[Siege]

As John pointed, so long as the Roman Legions can operate in formation it's a wonderful thing.

When the barbarians lead the legions into heavy woods and thick brush, they couldn't stand shoulder to shoulder and the individual skills of barbarian versus legionnaire tended to carry the day.

The SCA experience would seem to bear that out.

Not a meaningful bit of information, but it helped round out the reference.

[RedmondLarry]

[Glyph]

Whirling isn't really that broken of a maneuver. Yeah, at first, it does look like you're going from getting beaten to a pulp to invincible, but it doesn't put you on completely even footing with your attackers. For one thing, you still have a +1TN to your rolls, and for another thing, you still still have to divvy up your Combat Pool among all of your attacks and counterattacks, while your opponents can concentrate all of their own Combat Pools to attacking you. If you are fighting opponents of skill roughly similar to yours, you will still get wiped out by multiple opponents. However, you don't get wiped out when it is multiple unskilled opponents.


The thing that really gives me fits is the Reach bonus and the Close Combat maneuver. If you have a Reach bonus, you get it all the time, for every round of combat - no one can negate your reach, even if they are lucky enough to attack and damage you. On the other hand, if you use the Close Combat maneuver, you don't have to make any kind of test to get past someone else's Reach; it's just gone. I don't like the all-or-nothing quality of Reach and Close Combat. I'm not sure how I would fix it, though.


By the way, the thing I like least about the CC unarmed combat rules is that you can't combine martial arts. Never mind that most pro or UFC-style fighters will study a variety of styles to create their own composite fighting styles. The way I would house rule unarmed combat is to keep maneuvers, but go back to a generic Unarmed Combat skill - for every 2 points of skill, you can buy a maneuver. I would also allow maneuvers for armed combat skills, which would not require learning the maneuver in unarmed first.

[vinsane]

Why does reach bother you. It's only in effect if someone's reach is greater than the other. If some one does have a longer reach then they should be able to employ it, if the reach is equal than it just cancels out.

Close combat is more for players anyways to negate the nasty reach of those trolls with combat axes. If the GM is throwing out baddies using close combat all the time... well that's just hokey. Of course if your mad at players for doing, just throw out 2 trolls with combat axes... this'll get them back peddlin and reachin for a gun. It also prevents them from using other maneuvers. I really wouldn't want to add another roll in to see if I got it off, but that's just me personally...

In our game, we have modified the rule to allow you to choose whether you use it with the weapon or with a style to represent your practice with the weapon and foregoing the traditional use in the style.

[Sahandrian]

I was thinking. What if instead of having TN mods for multiple opponents, you divided your dice (skill + combat pool) among the opponents as you choose. That way, you could just try to defend yourself reasonably against all of them, or ignore a few weaker fighters to try to take out one strong one right away.

Anyone think that would work?

[Harkon]

I think you end up dead faster this way, since you roll less dice in your defence.

[Glyph]

And SR melee combat is based on dice contests, so if someone was trying to split dice among numerous opponents, he would get wiped out even if he was attacking.

Besides, they already have this concept partially in place. Combat Pool doesn't refresh until the start of the next round, so the guy fighting multiple opponents does have to allocate Combat Pool dice separately for each exchange. Not even having the skill refresh would just get the guy killed even quicker.

[Halloween Jack]