The final stretch is here, today we're tackling Man-to-Man combat, and it'll be a short one at only 3 pages and a couple tables.
As always the fantastic Pink Phantom has called in and shared his thoughts - you'll have to listen to the back half of the audio podcast to catch it - which I do recommend. I also recommend checking out his podcast for some great content and ADnD solo play.
Okay, so this system is intended to be used when each figure represents a single man instead of the usual 1:20 scale - perfect for small battles or a castle siege. To be honest, it's not really a system, we get a list of exceptions from the regular rules and that is what makes it up. Lets see what its all about though.
Well it becomes instantly clear that we're missing something, Missile Fire is talking about how to determine short, medium and long range - but why? What does that mean? Well we have to look at the tables at the back of the book - not yet mentioned in the text.
There are two tables (and a third we'll look at later) that are relevant before we read on. The “Man-To-Man Melee Table” and the “Individual Fires With Missiles” Table.
Lets look at the melee first, this is the (perhaps infamous) weapon vs armour table. You roll 2d6, then cross reference your weapon with the opponents armour. There's a few things to note, this is obviously more granular than the previous system of “Light Foot” vs “Heavy Foot” (or half-armoured, fully armoured for missile) with 12 different weapons and 8 armour classes (And 2 more for horse). The advantage to being more granular in the options is that different weapons can be better or worse depending on the defending armour - the two-handed sword is really the powerhouse only ever being beaten by a mounted lance at lighter armour classes. But we can see something like a flail is more effective against heavier armour then a sword might be, the flail also ignores any bonuses from shields.
Additionally, we're still looking at rolling to kill, not damage. And there is a rule that certain weapons will have an easier time killing a prone defender in plate armour (A dagger goes from needing a 12 to kill to a 7).
Then we get the missiles. It works exactly the same, comparing different ranged weapons against the same armour classes - except for a few changes. There are 3 scores presented for each combination (this is for the short, medium and long range that was confusing earlier) and there are cases where a unit is unkillable. For example a short bow at long range cannot kill a unit in plate. Lastly, we get a rule for how cover interacts with this system - it subtracts from dice scores. Now we'll have to read on, I went back and checked the cover rules and 'soft cover' simply reduces the number of shots in half so that doesn't seem to carry across cleanly.
Okay back to these exceptions, I'll quickly list what I'm reading and only elaborate if theres something particularly interesting.
To work out missile fire ranges, split their max range into thirds. Thrown weapons are treated as short bows on table.
Okay we get some rulings for the order of striking on the first and subsequent rounds (lucky we solved the round debate last post).
By default the attacker is going first in the 1st round, unless the defender has a weapon which is 2 classes higher (the weapons are numbered on the chart) or the defender has a height advantage (fighting from a wall). I have to assume the weapon class matters as its a substitute for length. On the second round and all following rounds, the same figure goes first except where the opponents weapon is 2 classes lower or they have the height advantage.
Additionally rear attacks negate first round attacks, and automatically go first on the second round. Specifically attacking from the left flank will let you automatically go first in the first round.
There are bonuses for mounted men fighting non-mounted. Horses can attack after the first round. Bonuses for rear attacks, and there is no counter strike.
Then we get to parrying, which is fairly complicated at least in reading but probably simple enough in practice. Basically if you weapon class is roughly equivalent you can replace your strike with a parry subtracting 2 from the attackers roll, as your weapon class gets lower relative to your opponents you can parry and counter on a success - scoring the original requirement breaks the weapon (I'm not sure if this is after subtracting the roll, I assume not because then you would break the weapon AND kill, its odd that you could score one above the original and then nothing would happen though). The last part is where I get confused. If your weapon is eight or more classes lower, the defender gets first blow and can parry the second (which I assume would be the attackers strike?) OR he can strike the second (which puts the attacker on third?), this parry is only a -1 though. It also notes that certain weapons still get to go first on a charge (pikes, spears and lances).
And then all my confusion is resolved - this section is awfully formatted/ordered - If a weapon is four classes lower they strike twice in a round whilst if it were eight classes lower they strike three times. So the above parrying section would be referring to the defenders second of three strikes.
To further the odd formatting here, we get some more rules about mounted men fighting unmounted men but its just a repeat of the rule above. Never fear though there is more here, you may unhorse a man if it is specifically stated as your goal - you then must score a successful hit (ignoring the usual penalties), this also possibly stuns the rider.
Lastly, leaders get a +1 on all dice, and are considered to be the best armour class that would be available to them. And there a special rules for viking berserkers (roughly what you'd expect).
This is pretty fun, I'll have to get this to the table one day - though I believe the game basically has a solution (a set of moves that you can basically guarantee a win) so maybe theres a better version out there?
Basically this allows you to play out a jousting tournament - each player selects an aiming point, and a position in the saddle. You then compare these and find out the result - this is Appendix C. You continue this process until one rider has been unhorsed or you've done it three times. There is a scoring system if you wanted to have a tournament with few ties.
For the purposes of this read through, nothing terribly exciting - we get a list of point costs. I would assume these are for man-to-man being in that section but we get rules for Bombards and Heavy Catapults. So maybe these are just general points, and seeing as we didn't get them previously thats what I'd have to assume.
And okay I lied, there is one potentially interesting point. There are a list of weapons that cost additional points, so to arm your light foot with pikes would cost an additional point. But this is the section where Catapults and Bombards are listed, so theres probably an answer to the number of figures manning these weapons (it is 1:20).
One new question here, how does cover work for missile fire? Nothing really answered, but something like how are catapults manned is given some extra clarity. I suppose points values generally are something that I did have a question of but I didn't bring up previously.
There are some nice things in here that I think will become relevant as we get to OD&D proper.
Well we're up to the last section the Fantasy Supplement starting on page 28, for the next week I will be reading up to (and not including) Spell Complexity on Page 33. I think that leaves us 3 more episodes (including the next).
Thanks again for reading.