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Mamatried Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017 Posts: 1861 Location: Norway
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Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2022 9:40 am Post subject: |
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Grimace wrote: | I'm in the same mind as garhkal and KageRyu. Blending Melee and Unarmed Combat into one is like mixing two things that really aren't similar other than the fact that it's close combat. A person skilled in unarmed combat is not automatically skilled in the use of melee weapons. The method of fighting is very different.
That would be like having Starfighter Piloting being grouped in with Capital Ship Piloting, all because they happen in space. Very different in how each is done.
There's a point where you can trim D6 down to so simple that you lose much of the detail that made character development interesting. All characters will start to look the same by reducing the skills and combining the skills.
So, yes, you are welcome to do whatever you want in YOUR game. But I offer this note of caution at reducing things down too much.
I would suggest, as KageRyu mentioned, that you blend Melee and Melee Parry together into one skill and Brawling and Brawling Parry together into another skill. Learning offense and defense in each method makes a lot more sense than it does crossing methods of attack and defense entirely. |
I both agree and disagree here. if we look at the game mechanics there is no difference between unarmed and armed combat outside the stats for the weapon used being addeded.
with the game mechanics in mind I can not see the big difference in any of these skills being comined into one or two.
As to starship piloting and capital ship piloting we can ask what is the thought behind things and what is it based on, and I can tell you that flying a B-17 Bomber or a P-51 Fighter then the difference is more or less none, one being what we could call a "capital plane" the pther a smaller fighter with tranport planes filling the gap in between.
I saw na interview with a B-1 pilot who helpe land an airliner, and as he said a cocpit is a cocpit, the controls are the controls, it is pretty much the same.
I am one to actually have captial ships as a spaciality, all shileding and weapons/gunnery going under staship......as there is little to differenc in the actual controls and systems.
and again if we go over the skill list I am sure we can find several skill we can combine or make into specializations.
to me capital ship piloting is a spaciality not a seperate skill, and yes if you can drive a notmal car you can start up and drive a truck, the gas is the gas, the gears are the gears etc etc,
Howver driving a tracekd Vehicle is not the same at all in any way, so maybe have that as a skills "tracked vehicle" as there are several tracked vehicles in star wars....so the list can go on and I can see pros and cons with all, but to go back to melee/brawling.
the only difference we have in the game is the damage dealt when using a weapon, and in that context the differences in techniquess is covered by the skill |
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garhkal Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005 Posts: 14213 Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2022 9:57 am Post subject: |
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Darklighter79 wrote: | I've seen this type of simplification in the newest Alien RPG - only 12 skills (like close combat, ranged combat, pilot).
But Alien is a very different setting: survival horror with often claustrophobic environment. Basically there's the same set of characters (pilot, marine, corp exec, medic, etc.) and the goal is just, well, survival, not a hero's journey.
Still, if it works - good. |
Heck in some other 'skill LITE' games where they may only have 5-6 skills under each attribute, they often still separate out melee from brawl. Shadowrun for example. _________________ Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk! |
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pakman Commander
Joined: 20 Jul 2021 Posts: 441
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Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2022 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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I have no idea how to make this short....but will try...
My personal experience side;
As someone with experience in both hand to hand, and melee weapon (martial ars, some boxing, actual strip fencing, historical combat, and stuntwork/stage combat) I feel while there are similarities - (foot work, reading an opponent, balance, etc.) but they are very different (forms, movement, reach, parrying methods, blocking, blade control etc.).
Others have articulated this better thane me.
From a GM experience side;
if it were a system with 20 or so skills, I could see them being the same - melee combat, or close combat - and the specifics could be specilizations.
Such a system with few skills, each skill means a lot more (savage words, dnd 5e, mythic d6, etc.).
If it were a system with over 60 skills - I feel they should be different.
As such a system has skills that show greater distinction from one another.
Now, having said this - I have merged the parry into the attack skill in my game (melee parry is done with the melee skill, brawling parry is with the brawling skill, etc.). However, I keep melee and unarmed separate.
Also...a possible un-intended consequence
Fewer skills mean each point of skill increase is more valuable - if we consolidate too much - there may be a need to reduce the number of CP between adventures.
Honestly, I think they should be separate - but that is just me.
What works for your game, is not my game (unless you got better snacks, then maybe I should be in your game....but I am off on a tangent here...). _________________ SW Fan, Gamer, Comic, Corporate nerd.
Working on massive House Rules document - pretty much a new book. Will post soon.... |
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Mamatried Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017 Posts: 1861 Location: Norway
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Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2022 7:11 pm Post subject: |
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I see this from a game mechanics perspective and in that there is actually no difference between armed and unarmed close combat, the only different is the weapon damage added to damage.
Any and all the "techniques" we see be them for unarmed combat or armed combat we have much if this covered under the varuous marital arts that spesifically have these thechniques.
But as one who learned HEMA I can tell you I can "wave" a sword, and even look good doing it without being at all combat effective, aka I know many techniniques or seeminly but I do not know how to implement them in actual combat.
So with brawling unarmed being on Hit STR Damage, and STR+X with some glove types.
We then have in Armed melee STR + WEAPON Damage, so I can not see the need to have this being 3-4 skills.
Now to cove the intricacy of marial Arts techiques we have these covered in the Martial Arts supliment, and I have seen much if the debate go on the marial Arts aspec, the knife fighting if you will rather than fighting with a knife, becuse those two are in fact different.
And if we look at any form of attack other than the very basick punch, strike, thrust, and swing, then I am sure we have convered the most basic ones and we add in the damage for the weapon, and once we want to do some riddick moves or some bruce lee jumping we do thins with the maritla arts as in 2REPU which covered most if not all of advanced hand to hand, both armed and unarmed.
that being said Brawling should not be a STR skill but a DEX skill as it really is irrelevant how strong you are as to you Chance to Hit, but it doe have a significan effect on damage |
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KageRyu Commodore
Joined: 06 Jul 2005 Posts: 1391 Location: Lost in the cracks
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Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2022 8:15 pm Post subject: |
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Mamatried wrote: | I see this from a game mechanics perspective and in that there is actually no difference between armed and unarmed close combat, the only different is the weapon damage added to damage.
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The fact that the same game mechanics to determine damage are used is irrelevant. Game mechanics are not reflective of the knowledge skills represent. By this logic ALL combat skills should be combined into one massive COMBAT skill since all damage is determined by weapon damage vs Strength. By this logic, since most skills use the same game mechanics to determine success and failure let's just combine them all into SKILL - then we only have to worry about 2 skills to improve. It is a slippery slope. If this is really how you wish to run your games, so be it, but I feel it shows a lack of understanding of skills based on this justification being used.
Skills are representative of what a player is learned in and knows, and should reflect that. Game mechanics exist as a way to resolve actions, tests, combat, and many of these mechanics are shared across areas and are not a good litmus test for whether or not a skill should exist. What the skill represents in terms of knowledge in a realistic sense, training involved, use, study, implementation is a better method. As it is, there are already a significant number of specializations for Brawling and Melee separately. Combining these into a single skill would create an unbalance in close combat, and make for allocated dice and skill increases to be far more effective across the entirety of close combat fighting. Further it would remove any distinctiveness at all to characters who specialized in brawling as opposed to weapon fighters as they all now use the same skill.
As it stands, D6 Skills already give a lot of leeway in what falls under a given skill, and with skills defaulting to attributes, allowing the characters to possess vastly diverse knowledge when compared to many skill robust games.
While yes, there are Martial Arts forms that specifically train in the use of weapons, This would be an aspect of game mechanics not in D6 or Star Wars. Those Martial Arts that are solely for weapons combat I would point out would still be the Melee skill by another name. I would also point out that the RAW core rules have no Martial Arts skill at all - this was generally handled by Brawling or by house rules (or by the rules in supplement book). _________________ "There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra |
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Grimace Captain
Joined: 11 Oct 2004 Posts: 729 Location: Montana; Big Sky Country
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Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2022 12:24 am Post subject: |
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I've done some work on concentration of skills, boiling them down to the basics. I came up with a basic set of skills that can be used, then focused in on more specific skill classifications.
With that said, I came up with the distilled version as follows:
Under STR:
Weaponless Fighting - fighting with your hands, arms, feet and legs. Encompasses everything from wrestling to boxing, to fist fighting and controlled styles of fighting like karate
Under DEX:
Melee Weapons - related to any hand to hand weapon use, such as blades, blunt weapons, piercing weapons, axes, flails and other such things
Under my distilled skill list, I have 3 skills in Strength, 10 skills in Dexterity, 2 skills in Constitution (yes, I broke that separate from STR to avoid the bullet-proof Wookiee syndrome), 5 skills under Charisma, 21 skills under Intelligence, 10 skills under Perception. That's all the things.
For a Star Wars setting, only 37 skills (out of 51) would be used.
So, yeah, you can distill down the skills to much more bare elements, but if you do you run the risk of having every character look the same after a short period of time. I avoided this by adding another layer to the skills, called them "focused" skills, and then going even one level further into expertise and masteries. This gives players to ability to have more specialized skill focus, or become experts or even masters in their field.
That gives each player character the ability to be quite different from others, even with the limited skill list.
If you don't allow for that granularity in your system, you're going to end up with advanced characters all having a lot of the same skills around the same levels, and not a whole lot to make them distinct from other PCs of the same experience. |
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garhkal Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005 Posts: 14213 Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2022 1:39 am Post subject: |
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pakman wrote: |
Also...a possible un-intended consequence
Fewer skills mean each point of skill increase is more valuable - if we consolidate too much - there may be a need to reduce the number of CP between adventures.
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That's one big reason i dislike combining so many skills.. Such as how some seem to do all the pilotings to one or just 2.. and so on.
Plus Brawl is Str based, melee is Dex based.. There's somewhat of a disconnect there when combining them imo. _________________ Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk! |
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Mamatried Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017 Posts: 1861 Location: Norway
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Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:14 am Post subject: |
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An alternative could of course be to combine melee combat and melee parry into one skill, Melee
and brawling parry and brawling into one skill Brawling.
and while brwaling is a stregth skill to me it make very little sense as strenght imo impacts how much dama ge you deal, not you ability to hit to me this is mobility and thus dexterity.
I can not see a withlifter having a higher chance of hitting than a taxi driver, but I can see a major difference in the outcome.
I would move have both brawling and brawling parry under same attribute, being str or dex. and then have the 2 skills
Str- Braling ( combined brawling and brawling parry)
dex-melee (combained melee combat and melee parry) |
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Ninja-Bear Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 26 Sep 2016 Posts: 209
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Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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I can certainly see Melee and Melee Parry being folded into one skill and the same with Brawling and Brawling Parry since that is the way Lightsaber skill works. I previously moved Brawling to DEX and created Brawling Damage to STR. |
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Ninja-Bear Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 26 Sep 2016 Posts: 209
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Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2022 2:40 pm Post subject: |
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Grimace wrote: | I've done some work on concentration of skills, boiling them down to the basics. I came up with a basic set of skills that can be used, then focused in on more specific skill classifications.
With that said, I came up with the distilled version as follows:
Under STR:
Weaponless Fighting - fighting with your hands, arms, feet and legs. Encompasses everything from wrestling to boxing, to fist fighting and controlled styles of fighting like karate
Under DEX:
Melee Weapons - related to any hand to hand weapon use, such as blades, blunt weapons, piercing weapons, axes, flails and other such things
Under my distilled skill list, I have 3 skills in Strength, 10 skills in Dexterity, 2 skills in Constitution (yes, I broke that separate from STR to avoid the bullet-proof Wookiee syndrome), 5 skills under Charisma, 21 skills under Intelligence, 10 skills under Perception. That's all the things.
For a Star Wars setting, only 37 skills (out of 51) would be used.
So, yeah, you can distill down the skills to much more bare elements, but if you do you run the risk of having every character look the same after a short period of time. …..
If you don't allow for that granularity in your system, you're going to end up with advanced characters all having a lot of the same skills around the same levels, and not a whole lot to make them distinct from other PCs of the same experience. |
To me though the burning question is, has that ever happened? Yes, I see the risk is there certainly but has a group played long enough to gain that many points to eventually be identical? |
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Mamatried Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017 Posts: 1861 Location: Norway
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Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2022 3:07 pm Post subject: |
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Ninja-Bear wrote: | Grimace wrote: | I've done some work on concentration of skills, boiling them down to the basics. I came up with a basic set of skills that can be used, then focused in on more specific skill classifications.
With that said, I came up with the distilled version as follows:
Under STR:
Weaponless Fighting - fighting with your hands, arms, feet and legs. Encompasses everything from wrestling to boxing, to fist fighting and controlled styles of fighting like karate
Under DEX:
Melee Weapons - related to any hand to hand weapon use, such as blades, blunt weapons, piercing weapons, axes, flails and other such things
Under my distilled skill list, I have 3 skills in Strength, 10 skills in Dexterity, 2 skills in Constitution (yes, I broke that separate from STR to avoid the bullet-proof Wookiee syndrome), 5 skills under Charisma, 21 skills under Intelligence, 10 skills under Perception. That's all the things.
For a Star Wars setting, only 37 skills (out of 51) would be used.
So, yeah, you can distill down the skills to much more bare elements, but if you do you run the risk of having every character look the same after a short period of time. …..
If you don't allow for that granularity in your system, you're going to end up with advanced characters all having a lot of the same skills around the same levels, and not a whole lot to make them distinct from other PCs of the same experience. |
To me though the burning question is, has that ever happened? Yes, I see the risk is there certainly but has a group played long enough to gain that many points to eventually be identical? |
I doubt that has happend more than maybe once ever for anyone if that even.
However, gaining enough CPs even and having "too many" skills that can be defaulted to a "level" that is listed as a "professional" and it is easy to have a character with 4D in 2 Attributes, being at a default "professional" level in all skills under that attribute, with enough levels everyone becomes alike sooner than we think when the "template" or "concept" of out character is not changed to something else through a deliberate chage in "role" like the club dancer joining the army and becomming a commando, but rather a dancer who runs around traning on their own and eventually, but too soon imo becomes so much more than the dancer that they are now a commado pilot and maybe force sentiive, having allocated most CP into make sense skills and maybe raised an attribute by +1 pip, or not, still having either too many too profecient default skills, or actually not enough "template/Role/Class" related skills compared to very basic written up NPCs, like a "stock padawan" is often much more powerful in both skill dice and attribute dice than most force using PCs.
So by combing some skills reducing the number of skills, and allowing a more narrative skill use by combing many skills into one, like some piloting skills, driving skills and of course both melee and brawling skills and more.
I have found that some skills can really be covered by another, but have been added to the game though scoursebooks etc, to be more a "discriptive" than an actual skill differnce.
if we look to Blaster Artillery, Vehicel Blasters, and Missile Weapons, they do overlap in many instances, a Moblie artilley, like a HIMARS or a Missile launcher, would reasonably be both an artillery that can be blaster tech based, it is a vehicle weapon and if in blaster tech category covered now by 2 skills, then you have missile weapons, since this is a moble launcher system, so a case where 3 skills overlap, a person now IMO with a DEX 4D should not even know of some of the systems, let alone be a professional at them, I have seen tanak, I am exposed to today's modern tech, I am a faily ok shot, I have about average Dexterity, but I do not have average ability to use neither a tank, nor a howitzer or many rocket launchers.
and I think that if we look at this we can easily combaine all the brawling and melee skills, even lightsaber into one skills like "close combat" and determine damage from the weapon/Tool/technique used, and before any shuts down the Martial Arts, bign part of 2ed RAW, we can look to the Special Forces Scourcebook, here we do have the martial arts rules and a list of techniques, some actually that can be combined with weapons.
While there are few instances where you have an actual weapon used in "breawling" we do have the use of environment, use of imporvised weapons, often at a skill level very similar, and in most times untrained and thus not following the rules and laws of conventional martial arts.
An untrained opponent armed with a knife, is imo very different than a trained opponent with a knife, the untrained opponent will fight more in a manner close to brawling than the traned knife fighter that will naturally rely of effective techniques and otherwise use the benefits of his traning.
Here we see where melee and Brawling actually overlaps, both could be rolled for melee, however if the untrained person simply has higher mobility, he is not more skilled than someone tranied, this goes for shooting as well.
so we now have a knife fighter basically using "armed" brawling, and a kinfe fighter using melee Combat, maybe even specialization in Knife...but
but will do STR+Knife in damage, bit are mechanically the same, but narratively different.
To me these overlappings and others makes me thing to reduce the overall amount of skills and with the combined ones, use specializations and "narratives" to seperate them.
Blaster IS a combined skill, it combines three skills in fact, the repeaters, the pistols and the rifles. and like most combined skills shouls be handled we can now specialize in one of the skills. |
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pakman Commander
Joined: 20 Jul 2021 Posts: 441
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Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2022 2:12 pm Post subject: |
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A lot of good commentary here - and some differing opinions for sure.
However, I would go back to the initial statement which started it...
Quote: | ...Someone over on the Facebook Group made a suggestion recently to the effect that Melee and Brawling were sufficiently similar that they could easily be combined... |
I contend that this statement - is not true.
Or, to quote ben maybe - "from a certain point of view".
Relativism
In system where melee (of any type) is rare - and very few skills, (say 20 or so) - then I could see them being combined - say, in a spy game, or something where the focus is less on weapons (ranged or otherwise) and more on other powers (a super hero game for example).
However, in a game with a strong focus on melee (of any type) - I could see a lot of different skills (say fantasy or medieval etc.) - where the differences between a fist, a rapier and a flail or even an off hand weapon matter a lot more.
In the view of star wars - which is kind of in the middle - and has, between 60-90+ skills (depending on version etc.) I think that it is diverse enough to warrant more than one skill (remember - by raw, it was FOUR skills to begin).
I think reducing it to two is enough.
Furthermore, my "certain point of view" if we are going to differentiate between making repairs on vehicle - the fact that there is separate skills for a speeder, a walker and a star fighter - that feels like a game where melee and brawling should be different.
Now, if a particular game merged those skills - I could see it.
Other Factors
Also - it is important to have brawling as its own skill - why?
Because otherwise - it is too easy to be good at both parrying when you have a weapon, and when you don't. I feel this is important.
Furthermore - if we look at later versions of star wars (or d6, without the star wars IP) - the four skills (melee, melee parry, brawling, brawling parry) were indeed combined - into melee and brawling.
I think this makes sense.
And then...
Finally - what is the value proposition of the change?
Were characters complaining about too many skills? Did they feel there was a demonstrable need to reduce the number of close combat skills? Did their skill points not go far enough?
Every effort of making a house rule should be designed at either enhancing the game with new options, and/or correcting for a perceived shortcoming.
This feels like change for the sake of change - but that could certainly be a bit of a stretch - and my bias against merging them showing. _________________ SW Fan, Gamer, Comic, Corporate nerd.
Working on massive House Rules document - pretty much a new book. Will post soon.... |
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Darklighter79 Captain
Joined: 27 May 2018 Posts: 529
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Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2022 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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Quote: | However, in a game with a strong focus on melee (of any type) - I could see a lot of different skills (say fantasy or medieval etc.) - where the differences between a fist, a rapier and a flail or even an off hand weapon matter a lot more. |
Newest d6 game - Zorro - uses Melee for both, armed and unarmed attacks.
Call of Cthulhu on the other hand:
1) Each ranged weapon has a different skill.
2) Unarmed attacks divided into separate skills: fist, kick, head, grapple. _________________ Don’t Let the Rules Get in the Way of a Good Story. |
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Mamatried Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017 Posts: 1861 Location: Norway
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Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2022 4:29 pm Post subject: |
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I can see a good argument for Brawling and Bralwing parry being merge into one Brawling Skill.
I can not for the life of me see that you do not block (which is a parry) and move and more when you fight even if you are a trained brawler or not.
I can say the same with melee combat and melee parry, having one and not the other makes little sense.
and yes you may be better defensively than offensively, however I also think mich of that can be and should be added to the weapn used.
I will say it is the weapon not you defensive skill that is the main defensive diffence betwen the quarter staff and the dagger........here we have reach.
I can see that some weapons have a +X parry bonus in addtion to STR+XD+X damage
So maybe trather than combing the 4 skills we can look at combining brawling and brawling parry, and melee combat and melee parry into two skills Brawling and melee. |
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KageRyu Commodore
Joined: 06 Jul 2005 Posts: 1391 Location: Lost in the cracks
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Posted: Tue Jul 12, 2022 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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Darklighter79 wrote: |
Call of Cthulhu on the other hand:
1) Each ranged weapon has a different skill.
2) Unarmed attacks divided into separate skills: fist, kick, head, grapple. |
There is a Cthulhu D6 version? Could you point me to it? _________________ "There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra |
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