Thread 96720541

Have you played The Riddle of Steel? Of course you haven't, you only play d&d, space d&d and d&d clones.
The Riddle of Steel is STILL the absolute greatest TTRPG system ever created and you're wasting your time in this hobby every moment you don't play it. There has been several attempts to replicate the majesty of design in this book since its release and all have failed.

Do yourself and your group a favor and download The Riddle of Steel pdf.

>>96720541 (OP)
But I have and that's why I played some of it's successors

what so good about it?

>>96720619
Not OP, but the main draw of Riddle and it's successors is the combat system and the narrative ties each character has to the world. In Riddle that takes the form of "Spiritual attributes" which have mechanical effects of adding dice to tests with a relevant drive and also are your means of advancing your character instead of a raw XP value.

The combat is some of the best in the medium, but the games have been grappling with the same handful of problems since Riddle's inception ~30 years ago.

>>96720619
Also not OP, but its combat system is superbly good for one-on-one duels using late medieval long swords. That's because it was design by guys who sparred IRL using late medieval longswords. It is pretty good with other melee weapons, shit for ranged weapons, and lol-tier for everything else. House-ruling is key.

t. someone who owns three of the books and has played it for years.

>>96720541 (OP)
give a thorough and nuanced argument why this game is better than harnmaster 1e

>>96720541 (OP)
I ran it years ago but ran into the wall of trying to teach my crunch allergic players its rules admittedly I probably didn't do a very good job and haven't bothered to run it since. I should really find another group for it but I haven't been bothered to put in the effort

>>96720619
Character creation and progression are tied to clear motivations and the game world by spiritual attributes.

Combat is descriptive, tactical and dangerous. Players generally want to avoid fighting or risk death.

Fantasy races actually feel different. Dwarves are tough as hell and the fey are magical.

Skills get better with practice. The more you do something the better you get at it.

>>96720541 (OP)
Oh yeah? What's the core gameplay loop?

>it's a dice pool
Fuck off.

other conan based systems?

How do the spiritual successors compare? Anyone played them? Song of Swords, Blades of the Iron Throne, etc.

>>96729282
I've played Song of Swords the most personally, out of all it's successors it's the one that's closest that isn't made by the same guy. But it's got it's share of flaws that require some homebrewing to smooth out the quirks and kinks.

Blade of the Iron Throne is made by one of the original Riddle authors to my understanding, so it's gonna play the closest. At least from what I've read.

Sword and Scoundrel and Band of Bastards are a more rules lite approach with less focus on the HEMA combat. I have the books but haven't really read through them since it doesn't interest me as much. It's got some neat ideas, like building your own weapons.

>>96720687
That sounds incredibly fucking boring and poorly designed.

>>96732106
You sound like a fag and your shit's all retarded. It's actually great. Combat against multiple opponents is generally suicide and so is charging against ranged weapons. Granted, the system doesn't handle mass combat very well, but most systems don't.

>>96720541 (OP)
How well does this system handle fighting monsters and other non human creatures? Asking cause I want to run a game in this system where players are exploring a strange land with monsters and the like.

>>96734833
Reasonably well, Riddle itself even has an expansion that covers fighting monsters like gargoyles and dragons or even mundane things like dogs and horses. The system (and it's successors) are actually pretty good at handling non-humans, they just struggle with mass combats like 4 players vs 15 brigands.

>>96732636
Again, that sounds incredibly boring and poorly designed.
>Range is shit
>except if it's the NPCs
>You have to do 1v1s while the rest of the party sits there with their thumbs up their asses doing fucking nothing
That's the worst possible way you could handle TTRPG combat. They are COOPERATIVE games. Only a selfish, narcissistic sociopath could enjoy a game where they're the only one who gets any spotlight.

>>96720541 (OP)
>Baby plays his first non-D&Dogshit

>>96720687
What's funny is that it's standard of "shit" is just the norm for most games.

I've been playing this for more than ten years with my group as our main fantasy system (and also adapted it to do Cthulhu which works surprisingly well, and scifi which is a mess but fun). We never used the official setting but a homebrewed fantasy world and by now we have a shitton of houserules that honestly make it more of a derivative system than the original but I still really love the core of this system (character creation/progression and the combat that is) and there is really nothing better for lowish fantasy where more or less any fight is high stakes.

>>96720619
It has an EDGE, man

>>96738214
Let me correct you actually, ranged is shit for both the player and NPCs.

>>96738214
>You have to do 1v1s while the rest of the party sits there with their thumbs up their asses doing fucking nothing
You don't, actually. Riddle and its successors are built to best handle 1vX, where X is any number of opponents. This usually means everyone gets involved in their own little fights that resolve on their own turns, just like any other game. And there are moves to interact with other ongoing fights, so you can intercept a thrust that's about to gut your party remember and he could cut down the guy you just tied up with a wild swing.

I'm more acquainted with its successors, where fighting multiple opponents is highly risky and you generally need to threaten them with extremely dangerous moves (Like trying to cleave through multiple opponents at once), or you have to make a test every turn to keep them from being able to fully gang up on you and easily overwhelm you.

>>96729282
>Blade of the Iron Throne
It's a good successor. I only played it so I can't go into greater detail, but it is a much better Conan-esque game that TROS was, and its magic gave me fewer headaches.

>Song of Swords
It's in an awkward place. It is probably the objectively best and most interesting successor since it's been superseded by a fan-made Revised edition, as the original studio basically split apart when the owner/lead developer let his addiction to coke and alcohol spiral out of control, until he had literally driven everyone out of the company. I wish that was a joke.
Unfortunately the lead developer also did maybe 1% of the work on the game, and mostly wrote dogshit lore that nobody cared about and posted on /tg/, so it's never been properly finished, it never got a magic system, and the last supplement that came out for it, meant for fighting monsters, animals, and giant "behemoths", was broken to the point of not even being playable.
The revised edition fixed all of this at least, even introducing magic and fixing the broken supplement, and partly solved the issue of larger combats. It's still sad how it the core game was mismanaged though.

>etc.
The only other successor I know well enough to talk about is Sword & Scoundrel, and found it unimpressive. It tries to be lighter and in doing so, goes from d10s to d6s, but it loses all of the granularity that made Riddle of Steel interesting in the process and doesn't really offer anything to replace it. You can basically get the same results that S&S achieves with Riddle of Steel by just ignoring all of the advanced rules.

>>96740249
Yes, now that you mention it. The combat system just sets the bar so high.

>>96720687
>House-ruling is key.
what house rules would you recommend?

>>96720687
>it's superbly designed
>House-ruling is key.
Well, which is it?

>>96741544
Not him, but it depends really heavily on what kind of game you're looking for. If you're looking for a more historical game, I would suggest one of it's successors in Song of Swords or Sword and Scoundrel first. If you want Conan, then stick with Riddle or Blade of the Iron Throne

>>96720681
>>96720687
>>96721796
So decent 1v1 fighting rules with boring story fag progression
>House-ruling is key
So it's shit got it.

>>96742453
NTA but I agree with the assessment.
The system was designed for and is superb when it comes to swords and/or smaller fights, with other weapons or combat setups your mileage may vay but some good house rules can easily fix it and make it great even in these instances.

>>96720687
>House-ruling is key
So then, what makes it "the greatest TTRPG ever designed", like OP said? You can house-rule any TTRPG you want, and the amount of house-ruling needed is going to depend on the group.

>>96743237
Hyperbolic bullshit. There's obviously a difference between making rules from scratch and adjusting the rules present in the book.

>>96745953
>There's obviously a difference between making rules from scratch and adjusting the rules present in the book.
And whether or not a group needs to do either, both, or neither depends on the group.
So what makes The Riddle of Steel "the greatest TTRPG ever designed"?

>>96747174
Why keep repeating the question when you've received an answer? Go be mad somewhere else.

>>96747260
I didn't receive an answer.

>>96720541 (OP)
How well does it do magic?
What about characters that mix magic and swordplay?
Are the mechanics for players and creatures symmetric?
How "handwave-y" is the system in general?

>>96747917
>How well does it do magic?
Riddle is based off Conan style sword and sorcery, so it specifically has some brutal magic which can age you a few years if you fuck up a roll. Most spells are rituals rather than vancian style "cast fireball in combat"

>What about characters that mix magic and swordplay?
See above, magic using characters are limited in what spells they can use when engaged in melee. But you can still be plenty skilled with wielding a sword despite being a wizard.

>Are the mechanics for players and creatures symmetric?
Yes. Humans and non-humans are 90% symmetrical, non-humans just have special quirks to cover situations where they have multiple legs or a turtle shell or something like that.

>How "handwave-y" is the system in general?
It's pretty damn crunchy, there's a ton of skills and combat is tracked blow by blow. There's not really a lot of handwaving going on.

>>96747917
>How well does it do magic?
Very poorly or very well imo.
It's poor, in that compared to the martial combat, magic is vague and handwavy. You build spells (Possibly spontaneously) as if it were Ars or Mage, but your guidelines are pretty fucking weak and the spells can be easily minmaxed if you take them at face value. Also, the more complicated a spell is, the more harshly you're punished for failure (And the harder it is to succeed in the first place), so you're very heavily incentivized to do so. Run at face value, every wizard would just be packing a spell that instantly polymorphs whoever it's cast at.

However, since magic is very handwavy and lite, this isn't really an issue if your group understands the vibe you want, and it can work pretty decently with that, and if you have some gentleman's agreements about how spells can be made.

>What about characters that mix magic and swordplay?
Basically the same as with magic as a whole.

>Are the mechanics for players and creatures symmetric?
Mostly yeah.

>How "handwave-y" is the system in general?
Combat is rules-heavy and excellent. For everything else, it's not as rules-heavy, but still has great amounts of detail, but doesn't get in the way.

As I've gained experience, I've come to prefer its successors more though, because I like crunchy combat/conflict resolution, and for everything else to be rules-lite/handwavy, which they deliver on.

>>96740672
Jimmy did what now?

>>96747260
I never got an answer.

>>96734916
>>96740672
NTA, but which one of the successors handles fighting giant monsters the best? If Blades of the Iron Throne is designed to emulate Conan stories, I guess that would be the best one for this?
I’m actually looking for a game to run a Hyborian-age inspired campaign

>>96749830
I never encountered monsters in Iron Throne so I can't say for certain, BUT I do know it has sufficient rules to let you fight a rhino, so it can probably do it.

Sword & Scoundrel had zero support for it the last I'd looked.

Song of Swords has it, but the rules are hot garbage. The revised version had a working version, but you'd have to go hunt it down/one of the people who worked on it because I don't have the rules on me. Maybe they're still hanging in the Opaque Discord.

>>96749099
I'd detail the full extent of it, but it's really just what you'd expect if you've ever had to deal with a substance abuser: Emotional outbursts, total lack of responsibility or work ethic, and a general downward spiral. The last time I saw him he was throwing a fit and banning+blocking everyone who had spoken to him on discord recently because of something with kickstarter.

>>96729291
what homebrew do you staple onto this system?

>>96720541 (OP)
>This game is good, because.... it's good!
Great pitch, OP, have a (You)!

In reality, this game i s like every other late 90s till early 00s project: still having all the 90s pointless bloat, still struggling with its own tone, still being deep down a dungeon crawler (despite pretending otherwise) with needlessly convoluted combat. Speaking of combat - it has one of the more obtuse systems that, naturally, does it to claim "muh realism", while in practice, it just makes the combat loop take too fucking long for no real gain.
I'd rather play Barbarian of Lemuria. Does technically same thing, ten times more fun to play and run, no convoluted bullshit and not attracting autismos that learned about HEMA a month ago and now try to shine their "knowledge" about it on other players.

>>96747260
>Still didn't provide the answer

>>96747917
Everything in this game that isn't pvp combat (lol) is shit.
It was made by bunch of HEMA fags, to be a game for HEMA fags.
So either you are using a longsword, or at least a broadsword and a shield, or the game requires house-ruling. Lots of it
For your questions:
>How well does it do magic?
Very poorly. You might as well either make it complete fiat, with a single roll, or copy any given magic system from any fucking game and it would still work better and be more fitting than the stuff provided. And I mean any game - you could put there Ars Magica magic, you could grab CoC magic, you could use any of the GURPS versions, you could use FATE aspects or fucking ADD 2e big ass spellbooks.... and you would be better off than TRoS magic system
>What about characters that mix magic and swordplay?
The what, again? The game has no space for such concept. Houseruling
>Are the mechanics for players and creatures symmetric?
Kinda. However, fighting monsters means you need to constantly account for their physiognomy during encounters, meaning large section of the combat system either don't work or are working differently, making it a slog (and it's already a slow combat system)
>How "handwave-y" is the system in general?
Not at all. Think DnD 3e tier "do you have a feat for that?" design. You don't? Then fuck you. Combat meanwhile is pure crunch and bean-counting, since it was designed with "realistic" duelling in mind. Didn't prevent idiots from insisting this is a pulp game.

>>96749900
For Song of Swords?

The big one is fixing damage. The less involved way is to calculate Strength Damage Bonus 1:1 up until 4 strength, then 2:1 after that. So 4 strength gives you 4 damage, 6 gives you 5 damage, 8 gives you 6 and so on. It's the simple way of handling it, but you still have some of the quirks like lightsaber weapons that'll insta-kill people with a glancing blow.

The other way that I personally use is to axe toughness altogether and use the vanilla damage bonus (damage = half strength), then implement a wound limit equal to the number of successes on a blow. You have to make some other tweaks, like adjusting the protection values of armor, shields weapon guards and so on. But it neatly fixes a lot of the primary issues riddle games have had basically since their inception.

Other stuff is just making small tweaks to talents, ranged defense and adding homebrew races to taste.

>>96749961
Not that anon, and I mean this as a 100% sincere question, but:
Why the fuck bother and what's even the appeal?

See, this is one of those things that I just can't wrap my head around when it comes to TTRPG: this chase after "realistic combat", that ultimately just means extreme level of rule bloat for no noticeable gain, and usually being also very poorly edited and requiring extensive homebrewing to make it work.
So - what's even the point?
>inb4 whatever insults you lob instead of answering a simple question

>>96750004
Because I make a couple changes to the game (just like most other TTRPGs on the market) and make a game I already like more enjoyable. Do you play every system you play completely RAW with zero changes at all?

SoS has some of the best combat in the medium in my opinion. Riddle set a solid foundation in the beginning and it's just a matter of iterating on it until it reaches some level of polish.

>>96750004
Maybe i can explain the apeal of SoS better.
The combat isnt just bloat. Its an act, react resolve loop that requires the players to outgame the DM or each other in the case of hobo knife fights.

Your not just stabbing the bandit in the guts, your finding chinks in armor to maximise your damage to get that sweet injury table that tells you that your opponant will never sire children.
To do this you need to actively get past his shield in a gambit i.e you have to effectively bet against the DM which each blow.

When this is in a campaign your players genuinely fear combat in a way few other systems really capture. Combat is deadly for both parties but not due to rocket tag but instead circunstance. Players sitting at a table WILL be stressed that the man across them has a knife because hes within their range for e.g

If a character has a goblin on his back, it doesnt matter that he is a fully armored bezerker, hes going to be freaking out because that shit covered shank might be his end.

Meanwhile they know this applies to everything so suddenly the invincible dragon doesnt look so tough when they realize its missing a scale under its arm.

>>96750069
This anon more or less covered exactly what the draw is to these systems, and why I made the changes that I did. That goblin is in fact, a lot less threatening when the armored berserker can in fact just shrug off getting stabbed in the face without even taking a scratch.

>>96750069
>>96750096
>there are 500 steps to rolling to attack therefore its good game
lol
lmao

>>96750103
But that's not even true.
You and your opponent pick a maneuver, you wager dice and you roll off. There's at most, 4 steps; including choosing to attack, wagering, comparing successes then resolving damage.

>>96750116
Which takes fucking ages because both the player and the DM have to sit there choosing a maneuver from a massive list with a million tiny exceptions and extra rules. One full round across the table can take 2+ hours EASILY

>>96750130
Why would you do that, come on the internet and tell lies like that?

Either you never played the game and you're lying through your teeth, or your group is made up exclusively of chronically ADHD zoomers with the memory of a goldfish.

>>96750163
Can't help but notice that you didn't refute anything and immediately stooped to ad hominem. Thanks for showing everyone who was right in this argument.

>>96750130
just swing

>>96750004
>See, this is one of those things that I just can't wrap my head around when it comes to TTRPG: this chase after "realistic combat",
Stop seething and think for a moment. What could be the purpose of realistic combat rules? What kind of atmosphere does that create and does that translate to the general vibe of the game? It obviously serves a purpose.

>>96750004
>See, this is one of those things that I just can't wrap my head around when it comes to TTRPG: this chase after "realistic combat"
Well, I can't speak for others, but I don't enjoy the games for "realism" (none are perfectly realistic anyways).
I enjoy them because the combat enables a dynamic back-and-forth between two sides that creates a tense, strategic struggle for victory. But instead of sort of getting that when I have 6 players fighting 12 NPCs, I can get that from just two people fighting.

So, since the "rulebloat" (it's a pretty small book compared to what's standard, being only 272 pages and covering the equivalent of the PHB, DMG, and MM) has had gains I had no issue identifying and great fun with, I think you may just be incapable of getting the point.

>>96750171
What's there to refute? The game gives you a lot of options, your group doesn't like options. I understand that anon, but that's a personal issue on your part. If you're really struggling picking from a list every time (To which, I would hope you'd memorize at least the most commonly used maneuvers), print out or write out some flashcards that cover the maneuver.

>>96749870
>it has sufficient rules to let you fight a rhino, so it can probably do it.
Thank you for your answer anon
I have a follow up question, if I may:
How about fighting a bunch of low level opponents? It was mentioned earlier that Song of Swords managed to come up with a way to streamline that, even though otherwise it seems like a system that needs a good bit of improvement, but what about Blade of the Iron Throne?
I understand that in a system that’s aiming for verisimilitude, being outnumbered should be appropriately dangerous, but at the same time being able to take on a bunch of mooks is also a staple of the genre in Sword and Sorcery (and Conan especially)

>>96750015
>Do you play every system you play completely RAW with zero changes at all?
First time? Yes, of course.
If I find the system enjoyable or doing its job well, I stick to it and run/play it for a while. If it needs fixes, I change it later.
But if the system right off the box requires homebrewing and house-ruling, it's a shit system, period. There is just no way around it.
>SoS has some of the best combat in the medium in my opinion
That's literally my question here: WHY you think that way.
It's the "why" that's never provided

>>96750069
First of all, whoever you were arguing with, wasn't me and sorry for the asshat.
But, to check if I get this right (and I'm 100% sincere here, not trying to troll or whatever):
The appeal is in meticulous, extra-detailed one-upmanship about who made the more broken combo, in a similar way how people enjoy max-optim build autism?

>>96750193
That's the problem: they don't serve any real purpose in my eyes. They are chase after the impossible, the idea that you can have "real" combat by piling up rules, modifiers and special techniques and then operating the game on principle of piling this up.
This works in, dunno, deck building game. There it makes sense.
Tabletop RPG? Why?!

>tbc

Here’s something I’ve been wondering for a while:
Is it me, or is Osprey’s En Garde some sort of streamlined wargame adaptation of Riddle of Steel?
Or is this just a case of gaming convergent evolution?

>>96750218
But you don't need the massive amount of minutae details those games dwell into, that's the thing.
Let me give you some basic examples:
Dzikie Pola 1e is a back-and-forth system, where each turn you have a "mana pool" (for lack of better way to describe it) to spend on your moves. But the combat itself is just set of fixed attacks (4 types), fixed parries (3 types), feint (just feint, singular) and that's it, with d100 roll and building your lineup of moves each turn, until you run out of mana (meaning anything between 1 to 4 different attacks/parries/moving around/feints). Yet the combat is a highly dynamic back and forth, because you have this simple resource to manage that's makes it endless loop of thinking on your feet how to not be turned into shishkebab. Entire combat ruleset is 15 pages, in a 380 pages long rulebook (and this is combat-centric game)
Broken Compass is a gonzo pulp system that's ENTIRELY build on back and forth dynamics (the game, in fact, is fully static without player input) and it's the most basic (to not call it simplistic) mechanics imaginable. But it's endless back and forth by design, despite being theatre of a mind thing where you don't even face a single target, but already clusters of enemies. It's covered across 6 pages. Even in shorthand edition, the game is 60 pages long

So what's the point of taking reactive system and adding to it massive rulebloat, other than (failed, due to the size of bloat and its arbitrary final outcome) chase after simulation that's by design bound to fail? You literally don't need those rules to get things moving in the direction you want them.

>>96750103
>>96750130
>>96750171
Why would you try to derail an actual, sincere question I had and make a retarded set of strawman posts?
Like what's your major malfunction, Private?

>>96750484
And just to make it clear:
It's not that your pointers are wrong.
It's that I want to understand why people find it appealing to sieve through rulebloat in the first place.

>>96750465
>>SoS has some of the best combat in the medium in my opinion
>That's literally my question here: WHY you think that way.
>It's the "why" that's never provided
NTA but this
>>96750069
>The combat isnt just bloat. Its an act, react resolve loop that requires the players to outgame the DM
>Your not just stabbing the bandit in the guts, your finding chinks in armor to maximise your damage
>To do this you need to actively get past his shield in a gambit i.e you have to effectively bet against the DM which each blow.
Perfectly answers that question as far as I’m concerned.
There isn’t so many games around which can make combat between all martials parties feel
1- Tactical and engaging
2- Varied

>>96720541 (OP)
I honestly enjoy all hardcore shit like this this. Pendragon, too. Systems need to have some teeth to them in order to excite me. Give me a wizard the can animate an enemy's skeleton, rip it out of his body, and then make it stab another enemy to death.

>>96750465
>The appeal is in meticulous, extra-detailed one-upmanship about who made the more broken combo, in a similar way how people enjoy max-optim build autism?

How would you come to that conclusion? Seriously, how does "The game's rules are built on gambling, combat is genuine life and death" translate to "You guys want to dick measure who has the most broken builds."

Riddle and it's successors don't lend itself to that kind of dick measuring contest, because constantly doing so means your character is going to fucking die. People are drawn to it because the combat is both tactile where individual choice in armor, weapon and style matter and it's appropriately consequential when swords are drawn. You don't run into 4-6 combat encounters per day with your carefully optimized build; you weigh the options any time you have to go into battle, or even avoid a fight altogether.

There's a reason people say the games have "The best combat system you'll never use"

>>96750498
Which sends it back to my reply to that post >>96750465
And repeat of my question: is it the same kind of appeal that max-optim build autism?
There are other games that do the thing described by 96750069, and they are doing it without having so many rules and lists of moves or different techniques for (meaningless in the grand picture, but still present) various weapons.
As far as I see it, SoS appeals to the same people BB appeals to: extensive, almost autistic min-maxing to come up on top of adversary, without taking into account just about any other aspect of the game than the one-up mindset.
Which, again, is great for duels, but when you have 3-5 people doing this around the table... I just don't see the game working at all. You might as well play a video game at this point. And I don't mean it as a diss, but just to note the amount of stuff you need to do in analog just for the sake of calculation that tells you that yep, you planned your attack well.
It's so incredibly detached from TTRPG experience to me that I just don't get how people find it worth doing more than once to see how it works and then move on. Sure, different people, different tastes, but this is just so far away from doing anything else than murder simulator, I'm just baffled.

>>96750563
>Seriously, how does "The game's rules are built on gambling, combat is genuine life and death"
Maybe because this is such broad non-statement, that I focus instead on the actual content of the rules?
You realise this statement describes ANY game with combat in it that isn't outright geared for players to win (like H + I vs pawns)? It's a non-descriptive "I like it, because I like it", detached from the content of the game itself.
>People are drawn to it because the combat is both tactile
HOW.
It's like I need to repeat those two questions: why and how, because unless I stress them, they just get ignored.
What you proceed to list is build optimisation: did you pick the best equipment, the best skills and used them for maximum efficiency. I fail myself to grasp how you DO NOT see this.
>There's a reason people say the games have "The best combat system you'll never use"
Except when you ask those people why they think so, they simply repeat that "because it's the best" or, which is even more confusing, act like this is the only system with action and reaction in existence, rather than it being a staple of the game design since at least the late 80s.

The bottom line is: I'm asking you why you like this, and you tell me "because" and consider this an exhaustive answer.

How detailed is the damage system? I'm looking for a crunchy system, maybe not crunchy enough to track individual organ damage, but close.

>>96750617
It's about that level of crunchy
>maybe not crunchy enough to track individual organ damage, but close.
This brings the obvious question:
For what purpose?

>>96750604
>I'm asking you why you like this
Why are you asking?

>>96750623
Autism? I don't know. After playing Mythras I can't go back to simple HP pool type systems. I need more detail. I want to know exactly where the blow lands and what kind of effect it has.

>>96750633
It's called curiosity, anon. So I'm being curious why would you find such game appealing. Like what's the draw, because even if it's not appealing to me, it clearly is appealing to others. And I'm simply curious as to why and so see it from potentially different perspective.
Problem being, if I ask, it's suddenly a problem to articulate why you like it and why you consider it worth your time beyond surface-level "because I like it". Gee, wow, what a great answer.
If it helps, I also ask /d/eviants why they find their specific fetishes appealing. The main difference between /tg/ and /d/ is that they are far more chatty and capable of answering such questions, too.

>>96750648
Again: for what purpose?
At this point, I sincerely suggest trying BB. It's ugly as fuck, but covers for all the details without the drawback of having to consult/memorise extensive tables and rules, since the game is going to calculate it for you

>>96750669
Why do you care?

>>96750688
I don't.
But that doesn't exclude being curious.
I might as well ask you why you can't even explain why you like something that you like. Clearly, there must be a reason for it, yet you are either unable or incapable of stating it. We just spent past... 3 hours with you beating around the bush a simple question:
What's the draw of this game.
Actually answering it, rather than the most generic, catch-them-all statements that could be said about literally any game and would be fitting.

>>96750704
*unwilling, unable or incapable

>>96750704
It's been explained to you at length. Why do you still not get it?

>>96750725
Because your answer boils down to "I like it, because I like it and I act like this is the only game in existence that has reactive combat".
And this is a non-answer.
But when you are nugged about it, you start asking me why I keep pegging you for it./
Should I just run to conclusion you are unable to actually tell me why you enjoy this game, and now are doing your best to not admit it? Because I DO NOT want that outcome. I want a fucking answer to a simple question:
What's the appeal?

I'm in this hobby since the late 90s. I played and run a wide range of titles and for past decade, my main goal is to check out as many systems and their design principles as feasible. Not because this or that game is appealing to me, but because I want to see what they are doing on their own, why people play them and how they pan out outside the bubble of their fandom (for which I ran every Wednesday an open table at the local library, every 3 weeks new title to see how it "ticks").
And each and every time I try a combat-centric game, it's one of the three options:
>it's doing something completely new that no other game is doing
Those are usually either narrative solutions or gameplay integration ones, where action=specific reactions cooked into the game
>it's a build autism, plan and simple
Nothing really to explain here
>it's a rulebloat that assumes more rules and more details means better experience
And mind the word - experience. Not simulation, since those games rarely simulate, but experience

So, here we are, with a game that's a clear case of third variant, and when I ask you why you like it, you are telling to me "because I do".
Literally anything would be a better answer. Dunno, "I like it, because it validates my skill as a player to arrange the elements of the game mechanics in my favour" actually tackles the source of enjoyment, rather than blanket statement of "It's the best".

tl;dr
I'm asking you why you like the game and you can't answer it

>>96750801
>And this is a non-answer.
Why?

>>96750604
Are you being obtuse on purpose? How are character decisions build optimization? There's no objective "best equipment" or "best skills", hell skills don't even apply to combat at all. 60% of the game's combat is mind games, 35% of it is gambling and 5% of it is raw mechanical skill. That's what makes it tactile. You don't just go "I roll to attack", you deliberately try to outwit your opponent by getting them to over or underbid against your attacks, with the occasional hail mary last ditch efforts to clutch things out.

>>96750686
BB?

>>96750805
>Why do you like it?
>Because I do
That's why

>>96750816
I said LIKE max-optim builds, not that it IS.
>Tool up character for specific approach to combat
>Get the right attack from the list
>Consult the whole bunch of tables and subrules to get validation on your choice
>Roll for it in the end, even if the roll is barely needed, the outcome was already decided by the pile-up
That's basically how the combat works. And that's build on the same logic that games build on max-optim builds: "I get validation for extensive knowledge of detailed game rules, and this appeals to me".
The whole "gamble" in combat boils down to the fact you might get countered if your GM feels like it, but it's a) semi-reactive (duh) with b) pure fiat (because it's the GM decision, rather than automatic outcome) and c) the gamble is on GM's side (since he is initiating the reaction, and if it fails, then it only hastens NPC's death)
>>96750130 was trollposting, but his point stands. It's about flexing who knows the rules better, and the rules are extensive for the sake of it, rather than improving anything in the experience, since you would be better off having an excel sheet for the combat.
Actual gameplay boils down to just listing modifiers and re-checking them after every action, while the high lethality means it's all moot in the first place, as you are checking just how dead the target is, not if.

>>96750847
Battle Brothers

>>96750875
So you can't explain why it doesn't count as an answer? Then I guess it does.

>>96750884
Grab some

>>96750896
So you've just been baiting all along? Why admit to it?

>>96750875
>Roll for it in the end, even if the roll is barely needed, the outcome was already decided by the pile-up
But that's wrong. Everything you said is objectively false. There is never a single scenario where a "roll is barely needed" unless you're doing the equivalent of a level 15 DnD fighter against a level 2 goblin. In which case you might have a slight argument, but against two fighters that are within the same ballpark there's no optimization game to win.

>>96750906
I feel like at this point you are trying to slide the issue, for the sake pure semantics. "Oh, you mentioned build optim, now let's cling to that for next two hours". If that's your line, we are done here.
If you plan to actually face the fact that if you have two equally tied characters, then it's about pulling from the list the most effective maneuver, precisely to decrease gambling and precisely to flex the system knowledge, or else you are at the mercy of (loopsided against "simple" solutions) RNG, then we can continue.
So which one is it going to be?

I'm just mirroring your retarded routine of a 5 year old kid repeating the word why over and over. You think that's bait? That's very telling.

>itt: autismo who dislikes crunch-heavy games arguing with autismos who are into crunch-heavy games, and neither side can't grasp the concept of different people liking different things
It almost feels like /tg/ back in the good old days.

>>96750943
You might instead answer the simple question, you know. By doing so about 3 hours ago, you wouldn't have to spent all that time being annoyed by the question you just keep dodging for no reason other than clearly enjoying arguing for the sake of it.

>>96750952
>itt: people meticulously explaining why a game is good while one mentally stunted individual keeps chanting the word why like a magic spell
fixed that for you

>>96750961
You haven't answered my question either.
>>96750805
Have fun with it.

>>96750934
>then it's about pulling from the list the most effective maneuver
Doesn't exist. At no point does there exist a maneuver that automatically wins fights. Unless you're really gonna tell me making a better decision in the moment is "System mastery"

>or else you are at the mercy of (loopsided against "simple" solutions) RNG
I suppose that's the case, given you're dead set on assigning it either of those arbitrary categories.

I've had situations in my own games where statistically superior and better equipped fighters had the upper hand and were still put on the back foot because of a bit of luck and clever tactics from the other party. Like was explained to you hours ago, people enjoy the combat because it's never a sure thing so it has appropriate narrative weight.

>>96750455
>How about fighting a bunch of low level opponents?
All of them are pretty bad at it, with the exception of Song of Sword's revised fanbrew shit. However, this is either a problem or not a problem depending on how dangerous you want combat to be.
In real life, fighting two people at once is almost certain death unless you're better than them and have certain situational advantages over them. In most of the games, it works out that way, though it's a bit TOO easy for 5 naked peasants to overpower a fully armored warrior.

Basically, YMMV and it depends on what you want. If you want the verisimilitude of fighting two or more combatants you don't massively outclass to be a death sentence, they're all fine as-is.

>>96750465
>But if the system right off the box requires homebrewing and house-ruling, it's a shit system, period.
Why? If you're fine with altering something after using it, why wouldn't you just pre-emptively alter it so it's better from the get-go?

>It's the "why" that's never provided
It's been provided many times.

>>96754127
>though it's a bit TOO easy for 5 naked peasants to overpower a fully armored warrior
Well, the thing with SoS and most other systems is they're dead on with how easy it is to overpower someone if you throw out the fear of death. Like, 5 guys bumrushing the warrior at the same time is basically guaranteed for the naked men to pin him down, but it'll probably cost them a man or two. In reality, it's likely they'll hesitate long enough for the armored guy to get most of them. It's just a inherent issue in the medium of the division between the player/GM and the game.

>>96754127
>though it's a bit TOO easy for 5 naked peasants to overpower a fully armored warrior.
This is if the seneschal is playing the peasants as a pack of mindless automatons who are all not afraid of the sharp blade at their faces.

>>96750476
>But you don't need the massive amount of minutae details those games dwell into
If 272 pages is "massive", you might be retarded.

>Dzikie Pola 1e
Has more amounts of minutiae. You fail. Besides that, it sucks ass which is why nobody has bothered translating it.

>Broken compass
Never heard of it, looking it up it's just kickstarter garbage that nobody plays and would be totally incapable of covering the same stuff as TRoS and its successors.
Since you're retarded enough to rep the shitty polish game, I take it you have never played TRoS and its successors, and don't actually know how this would relate to the topic.

>>96750604
>Maybe because this is such broad non-statement, that I focus instead on the actual content of the rules?
You should read them first, since you still haven't done so. You have argued around them instead.

>You realise this statement describes ANY game with combat in it that isn't outright geared for players to win
See what I mean? Most games are designed to let the players win, and are as much gambling as playing slots. TROS is more like high stakes poker, or playing an actual game.

>HOW.

>>96754197
>You listed games I never heard about, so it means your arguments are invalid
Nta, but some top argumentation up there. No wonder he couldn't make you list reasons why TRoS is good.

>>96754218
>Nta
Sure, buddy.

>>96754215
>TROS is more like high stakes poker, or playing an actual game.
Then prove it.
Don't say "it's high stakes"
Prove those high stakes.
This is a game with dice involved, that means probabilities.
You could EASILY show how low probability of success is, IF IT IS TRUE.
Instead, you post Howie, because a SINGLE PERCENTAGE representing chance of successful attack would destroy your entire argument.

>>96754230
I'm >>96750130
Have fun with your ultra-detailed game that is build under assumption that obtuse means complex and lots of rules means lethal combat.

>>96750617
It varies between the versions, but you usually have different damage types. Every hit location then has its own associated wound levels, where the higher it goes, the worse the injury, which in turn causes you to be stunned, take permanent penalties until it heals/is treated, and possibly to start bleeding out.

Generally the wounds work the way you think they would. Take a cutting wound to the neck? You're gonna die very quickly. Stabbed in the guts with a spear? You can keep on trucking if you're tough, but you'll be at a higher risk of infection. Smashed in the chest with a mace? You'll be momentarily winded but fine. Struck on the head? You might get knocked out. Hits to the arms and legs can knock you down, and so on.

>>96750623
>>96750669
>>96750686
>>96750604
The bottom line is: The game isn't meant for you if you're confused as to why it's fun. That's fine. You can simply move on instead of seething impotently that other people enjoy things.

>>96754233
This isn't a math dissertation. Nobody has to prove jack shit to you. If you can not infer meaning from casual conversation it might be better if you stuck with video games instead of shitting up a social hobby with your autism.

There are multiple posts in this thread listing multiple reasons why TRoS is amazing, but you'd rather spam your inane ramblings of "why" presumably because you can't read.

>>96754172
>>96754190
>Well, the thing with SoS and most other systems is they're dead on with how easy it is to overpower someone if you throw out the fear of death. Like, 5 guys bumrushing the warrior at the same time is basically guaranteed for the naked men to pin him down
IMO, it's not really that simple.
Even if you don't have the fear of death, a skilled warrior irl would probably be able to kill or badly injure 2-3 people before they can even get close enough to grab him, and he can probably shank the last two, even if they are all relatively competent.
It wouldn't be guaranteed to end up that way, but it basically is always a loss for him in TROS, and the peasants can do it with relative safety as well. Equipment is just a much bigger deal IRL than it is in TROS and the likes.
I don't have a problem with this though, because rpgs aren't and shouldn't be exactly like real life, because real life is actually pretty boring.

>>96754218
>You listed games I never heard about
Good thing I never said that. I said you gave one game I've never heard about, and after learning about it, I see that it sucks and you're a retard.
I'm actually pretty sure you've never played either game since you failed to post pdfs.

>>96754243
>I'm the troll that kept replying to himself
Good job on outing yourself I guess?

>>96754233
>Then prove it.
Already did.
>N-no I'll just say you didn't
Don't care, seethe nogames.

>>96754233
>This is a game with dice involved, that means probabilities.
Isn't poker a game with probabilities involved as well? Wouldn't that mean there's zero stakes in poker, going by your own argument?

>>96754243
no you aren't lol

>>96754243
>Have fun with your ultra-detailed game that is build under assumption that obtuse means complex and lots of rules means lethal combat.
I don't think you've ever actually played an obtuse, rules heavy game. You've certainly never read or played Riddle games.

>>96740909
This has been a continued problem in my attempts to expand upon it: Nothing really compares.

Making a new magic system for the game either means it needs to be some spellsword stuff that just changes how fights play out a little bit, or it needs to be as good as the normal martial combat. Which isn't impossible, but instead, farworse: Very difficult and time consuming.

Still, it's fun to tinker with games I enjoy, so I don't mind it that much.

>>96720687
Why not put long point for chudan? It’s literally the same thing.

So, what makes The Riddle of Steel the greatest TTRPG ever designed? I never did get a response.
Provide objective evidence of positive aspects the product has, that other TTRPGs don't have, to back up your claims, and make sure to be detailed and specific.

What makes it the annoying troll it is?
Let's see ...
-fixiates autistically and pointlessly on the hyperbole in the OP
-ignores any answer as an arbitrarily defined non-answer
-thinks a personal opinion needs to be a scientific paper
-doesn't notice or care how many straw man arguments it uses
-probably just waiting and not interested anyway

I love the character creation because you get mostly human parties with the priority distribution system. In order to play an elf or a wizard you have to have place your race as first priority which automatically limits you in other ways. You don't get the rainbow parties of other games with fantasy races and so being and elf or a dwarf feels special.

>>96757043
Wrong. This would work better if you just randomly rolled for it.

>>96757048
Assigning priorities in character creation and having to make sacrifices in one area to prioritize another would work better if it was randomly assigned? Are you quite literally retarded?

>>96757174
>Assigning priorities in character creation
Buildfaggotry for munchkins.
If you want fantasy races to show up less in parties, just have race be randomly rolled for. The only reason you wouldn't see everyone playing an elf or a wizard is because the magic sucks and it's not the optimal build.

>>96757183
So I have this idea for a dwarf, right? A character that I really want to play and that fits the campaign the DM has set up. Guess what? I rolled an elf, sucks to be me, I guess...
Random character generation can be fun, but I hate with a passion any system that tries to force it on you.
Having to prioritize certain character aspects can lead to minmaxxing, yes, but it can also translate into meaningful and fun choices for people. And let's face unless character generation is always 100% random (which needs a system and setting catering to that to be a good thing) someone who desperately wants to minmax is always going to find a way unless the DM just outright stops them (which they should if it bothers them).

>>96757197
>So I have this idea for a dwarf, right?
...You did this without reading the rulebook and seeing that you roll to determine things about your character?
Yeah, really must be suck to be you, illiterate and retarded.

>>96757210
Oh you were just baiting, sorry for taking you seriously. Here's a second (you) so you can feel good. Cherish it.

>>96757043
I would argue you get less rainbow parties because not being human is suboptimal.

>>96757048
No thanks. I like to have agency in the games I play.

>>96757275
>I like to have agency in the games I play.
Woah, what are you? Some kind of theater kid faggot? Only queers would ever want agency in their tabletop game. Now buckle in while I make you sit through my hour long cutscene with my GMPC as the star.

>>96757236
Saying that mathematically making something guaranteed to happen is the best way to make it happen is "baiting" ok.

>>96757326
My, you're a greedy one. Here's another (you).

>>96720541 (OP)
I prefer Dzikie Pola for my autistic weapon fighting game.

>>96757275
Don't know why you had to reply to me again after making yourself look stupid, but you're proving my point that this is a game for minmaxing munchkins. It's a dice rolling game. Yet you hate rolling dice.

>>96757382
I know people overuse this a lot but I'm seriously interested: are you autistic?

>>96757250
Is it suboptimal? Is being a landed noble optimal? What about taking gifts or flaws? It's pretty obvious you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about so fuck off back to the the 5e general.

>>96757446
>Are you autistic?
>He asked with zero self awareness as he stans a shitty crunchfest game
And let me guess, the first thing you thought to reply with is "W-well you didn't answer me directly so ur autistic".

>>96757464
>Is it suboptimal?
Yes.
>Is being a landed noble optimal?
No, you can get good gear without that.
>[Gets mad because other people saw what was broken about the game immediately]
Hahaha

>>96757482
>No, you can get good gear without that.
Yeah you just have to do Baal run for a weekend and you're pretty much geared for endgame.

>>96757464
>Is it suboptimal?
Yeah kind of. CP > Stats > Gifts/Boons > Social Class > Stuff > Racial bonuses from a purely mechanical standpoint.

>>96757476
I'm not the guy you are arguing with just an observer and I was genuinely interested.

>>96757795
I'm sure.

>>96757801
I'm totally serious about this: if you are not just trolling and this is your real personality, and not just an internet personage, I wholeheartedly recommend you go see a therapist at some point. They can help you or help you find someone who can.

>>96757844
>The samefag does his usual concern troll song and dance
*Yawn.*

>>96757859
>usual
I know your first reaction to something like this is negative (this is pretty normal honestly) but if this is something that people "usually" throw at you, I sincerely hope you are least keep it in mind. Not going to detail this thread further now, so don't bother.

>>96757875
>but if this is something that people "usually" throw at you
Your reading comprehension remains poor, I see.

>retards
>autists
>trolls
>autistic trolls
>autistic retards unable to cope with other people enjoying different things
>and a few people that actually wanna talk about the game
This almost feels like two decades ago yes more like 17 years, before one of the autismos spergs out when I first learned about RoS on /tg/.
Great game, has its flaws, still play it and enjoy it.

>>96742484
>Song of Swords
They never finished the game.
>Sword and Scoundrel
Still in a beta state last I checked.

>>96740672
anyone have a link to SoS revised? want to check it out

>>96758762
>They never finished the game.
I thought it was released complete?

>>96759277
Not worth it, it's just the same game made by power gamers for power gamers.

>>96759294
It is more or less. It's only missing the magic system, which for a historical game is completely irrelevant.

>>96759570
That can be fun in its own way. I'd at least be interested to see the direction they took what was otherwise a blatantly incomplete project.

>>96761245
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ZNDiv00hNqn3kw4IcgKyLk68DT7jducP7yNs-MuiKY/edit?usp=sharing

Unless anon had a different version in mind, this is the only revised edition I'm aware of.

>>96761267
Much appreciated. I'm mostly interested in how they changed the math or expanded (or added) systems.

>>96761286
>they changed the math or expanded (or added) systems.
That's kinda the thing, they didn't do much of that. Not significantly at least. The biggest thing they added was the "deterministic" combat system that just rewards being a munchkin.

>>96761286
They didn't change anything, absolutely do NOT read it.

>>96761286
You're wasting your time. They didn't change or add a single thing to it except more ways to optimize.

What makes it the annoying troll it is?
Let's see ...
• makes autistic and pointless hyperbole in the OP as a qualitative statement
• responds to criticism of the qualitative statement with personal preference
• thinks personal preferences are valid arguments in a discussion about observable qualities
• doesn't notice or care how much it gaslights and deflects, as long as the opposition is attacked instead of the point being made

>>96763498
>butthurt dndfag

I suppose it's a longshot asking in this thread, but I'm currently chewing on a way to make the shield coverage system in Song of Swords a bit more engaging. Instead of there just being an objective correct position to hold a shield, I want there to be more mindgames involved with bypassing the coverage; especially on smaller shields.

>>96764998
What's your ideas on how to change it?
I just changed the areas shields covered, so you'd always have weaknesses places that you can't protect by leaving the shield in one position. It doesn't fundamentally change anything really, though, it just makes them less random.

>>96765038
One thing I got was allowing shields to change position at any time, instead of just at the beginning of a beat/move, then being able to switch again by paying for a quick defense. Which should theoretically encourage more feints. Beyond that, I'm thinking of some kind of option to allow quick defense to extend to any location that's not already covered at the cost of sacrificing regular coverage. The exact amount of coverage depends on shield size, so if you wanted to protect the lower leg with a buckler, you can but you could only select the thigh, knee or foot. Medium shields get two and large shields would get three (though it would be a bit irrelevant since they already cover so much)

>>96765062
>One thing I got was allowing shields to change position at any time, instead of just at the beginning of a beat/move, then being able to switch again by paying for a quick defense. Which should theoretically encourage more feints.
Why not just let it change when you declare your normal maneuver? I thought that was how it worked anyways.

Not sure I like the Quick Defense thing. It basically means that if you don't have enough dice to feint more times than the opponent can quick defense, you're not going to hurt them.

>>96765142
>Why not just let it change when you declare your normal maneuver? I thought that was how it worked anyways.
That's more or less what I'm thinking of doing, vanilla RAW you can only do so at the beginning of the move/beat (so long as your shield is even capable of being used IE, not in a bind, grapple or having got hooked). The issue right now is it's a huge commitment to move your shield, since you can only do it at the beginning of a move and the benefits are usually zero. Since the enemy knows exactly where your shield is, and you often get significantly worse coverage if your shield is out of the "correct" position.

>Not sure I like the Quick Defense thing. It basically means that if you don't have enough dice to feint more times than the opponent can quick defense, you're not going to hurt them.
Probably, what I'm looking for is a way to make it so small shields offer their AV more often and make it so that there's more ways to bypass the coverage of larger shields.

>>96765363
I'd consider looking at the revised rules in >>96761267
The way shields are changed there is that Shield Bind gets slightly expanded upon, you can move shield position once at any time IF you have a talent for it, and their positions offer slightly better coverage (Like large shields in the low position covering the legs entirely instead of partially).

This works pretty well in my experience, since it also changes target locations to head/chest/abdomen/arms/legs and more fairly weights certain parts of the body or gives bonuses to the defender for attacking them.

As far as the small shields go, letting Quick Defense increase the places you cover could work. I honestly don't think it's needed though. Shields in general are good because they give you passive defense and a solid TN. Small shields, like the buckler, are great because they give you an amazing block TN and are usually good for shield bashing too. The only shields that kinda suck are medium shields, but that's only in comparison to how good large and small shields are.

>>96769031
>Shields in general are good because they give you passive defense and a solid TN. Small shields, like the buckler, are great because they give you an amazing block TN and are usually good for shield bashing too. The only shields that kinda suck are medium shields, but that's only in comparison to how good large and small shields are.
While I think shields are good in a pure mechanical sense, I think it's not great design that shields are so static with a singular "correct" way to use them. I very strongly disagree with medium shields sucking as well. In the low position they cover you chest to thigh, while your head, your weapon arm and shoulder are uncovered, along with the lower part of your legs; those are some of the easiest and cheapest locations to get a lot of armor on, especially when you can halve the price for only putting it on a single arm.

Small shields on the other hand are solely block devices, which I'm not a fan of since they might as well not offer AV with how little they leave covered up, with no way to expand the cover. The buckler is the only small shield that's worth it because it covers both arms in their entirety.

The only shield type I'd arguably want to increase coverage on are small shields. If anything I'd want to reduce coverage for medium+large so there's more incentive to move the things around, and more room for an opponent to feint into uncovered areas.

>>96769084
>I very strongly disagree with medium shields sucking as well. In the low position they cover you chest to thigh, while your head, your weapon arm and shoulder are uncovered, along with the lower part of your legs
In Vanilla, these are also conveniently easy to bypass. For example, attacking the Lower Leg means you will bypass medium shield coverage 100% of the time. And if it's high, attacking the groin will do the same.

>Armor
You can't use partial armor in vanilla, but also armor is a secondary concern, as someone who attacks you will already want a means of getting through it, and not even plate will stop a guy swinging a dane axe into your shins. Large shields have an easier time with this problem because of their greater coverage, as a shield + plate WILL stop that guy. And Small shields can avoid it altogether because of their block TN.

>Small shields on the other hand are solely block devices, which I'm not a fan of since they might as well not offer AV with how little they leave covered up, with no way to expand the cover
On this end I also disagree. First, Bucklers do not cover the entire arms, just the hands and forearms. Second, all Small shields can fully cover the head in vanilla, which is a very bad place to get hit (You can survive a battle where you get your leg cut off, but not your head), and their TN is enough to make it worth it.

Further, I don't think you really get how shield coverage works on a meta level. Competent opponents will try to avoid it entirely. In Vanilla, this just makes small shields king unless someone is shooting at you (But the ranged combat sucks in vanilla so that's a whole other can of worms) because your opponent will simply target whatever you don't have coverage for.
In Revised, they will do the same, but with sufficient coverage you can sometimes make the opponent choose a target zone that's to your advantage (Like making someone swing for the legs so you can pull off a better Mobile Void).

>>96769229
Increasing the coverage of a small shield wouldn't really change this, it would just make them slightly better in edge cases when they're already one of the best options (Anyone can buy a small shield and carry it around for minimal expenses and weight).
Decreasing the coverage of other shield types would in contrast make medium shields not really change from being kind of sucky, but would probably make large shields borderline pointless.

And, at the end of the day, passive AV is probably the most boring thing about shields. You either find a way around it, or you don't get to hurt the opponent. So I think they're fine as-is, and if there are any changes, they should have more ways to directly interact with the opponent or be interacted with by the opponent instead.

>>96769229
>In Vanilla, these are also conveniently easy to bypass. For example, attacking the Lower Leg means you will bypass medium shield coverage 100% of the time. And if it's high, attacking the groin will do the same.
I'm aware, I've been cracking at ideas on solving that.

>First, Bucklers do not cover the entire arms, just the hands and forearms.
Okay, I misread a bit the buckler covers the shield arm shoulder and the hands and forearm of the weapon hand. Since SoS treats the shoulder as part of the arm in the hit locations.

>You can't use partial armor in vanilla, but also armor is a secondary concern
Yes you can. The SoS book explicitly says this. The daxe guy thing is a problem in vanilla, but I've already nixed that in my own homebrewing by stealing my friend's ideas. TOU gone, AP reduces AV instead of giving damage, half SDB, increase armor AV to compensate for no toughness, cap wound level to BS. It's a bit more involved than vanilla, but it solves the Daxe light saber problem. Even in vanilla, a guy with regular toughness and no mail on his feet still needs about 3 BS to level 1 him with a Daxe, 1 BS with a power attack, but that reduces your odds of hitting.

>Further, I don't think you really get how shield coverage works on a meta level. Competent opponents will try to avoid it entirely. In Vanilla, this just makes small shields king unless someone is shooting at you (But the ranged combat sucks in vanilla so that's a whole other can of worms) because your opponent will simply target whatever you don't have coverage for.
I'm aware of that, which is why I want to make shields more mobile and positioning less committal. Because vanilla RAW, you always know exactly what position it's in and what position it will stay in.

I've been mostly unimpressed by revised. It's a lot of bandaid fixes when they really should have torn the system down altogether to rebuild it.

>>96769322
>Yes you can.
You can wear one piece, yes, but it's not any cheaper like you'd claimed.

>I'm aware, I've been cracking at ideas on solving that.
What's there to solve, though?

>The daxe guy thing is a problem in vanilla, but I've already nixed that in my own homebrewing by stealing my friend's ideas. TOU gone, AP reduces AV instead of giving damage, half SDB, increase armor AV to compensate for no toughness, cap wound level to BS
AP reducing AV is... The same as giving damage? None of this solves the "problem" here really, unless you make armor so high it's no longer possible to get through. At which point, you have an entirely different issue.
>Even in vanilla, a guy with regular toughness and no mail on his feet still needs about 3 BS to level 1 him with a Daxe
Shouldn't, no. The Daxe does damage equal to regular toughness. Add in +2 from having average strength, and +1 from hitting with 1 BS, and it's already a Level 3 wound.

But then, Vanilla's real problem were things like masterstrike and not being able to do enough damage with normal weapons, not Dane Axes or other big two-handed weapons hurting too much.

>I'm aware of that, which is why I want to make shields more mobile and positioning less committal
But you aren't proposing anything to do that, you're just offering things that would make them more static, or would have both sides go
>I feint to get around the shield
>I quick defense so you can't
>I feint to get around the shield
>I quick defense so you can't
>Repeat until somebody runs out

>>96769370
>What's there to solve, though?
That you can easily and readily target locations that were historically really hard to hit. Like you said, it's trivial to just zip a guy in the foot even if he's got a large shield or a medium shield. It's kind of why armor that leaves even a single gap on the face or neck uncovered is suicidal. To say nothing of joint thrusts.

>AP reducing AV is... The same as giving damage?
Yeah, thinking on it keeping the vanilla layering system does make it kind of the same.


>But then, Vanilla's real problem were things like masterstrike and not being able to do enough damage with normal weapons, not Dane Axes or other big two-handed weapons hurting too much.
The final publication did that because Daxes and other big two-handed weapons instantly killed everyone they touched. Especially when we're talking beta versions where SDB was directly equal to STR. Imagine getting 13 damage on a 1 BS swing. In any case, having actually played it. Removing TOU, then adjusting every thing to compensate along with the BS cap to damage put things in a happy medium between the two. So you don't get the "Two naked peasants can't hurt each other with a knife" problem of the final publication or the "Dane axe light saber" of the beta/revised version.

>Shouldn't, no. The Daxe does damage equal to regular toughness. Add in +2 from having average strength, and +1 from hitting with 1 BS, and it's already a Level 3 wound.
I should have specified I was talking about hitting plate armor. That was an assumption on my part. So I'll concede there.

>>96769622

>But you aren't proposing anything to do that, you're just offering things that would make them more static, or would have both sides go
I'm willing to adjust the quick defense idea. To be more clear with my original draft:
You can move your shield ONCE from either low or high at any point during the beat before maneuvers resolve.
Quick defense would then allow you to move the shield again position from low or high again, or extend the protection to a single small portion of the body that would not normally be covered. The exact amount of coverage depending on shield size. Say we're defending the upper part of our weapon arm against an attack, a targe could cover the shoulder, upper arm or elbow. Both would impose the +1 TN penalty to a defense like it does if you cancel one maneuver into a quick defend. That way if your opponent feints from a swing into a hew, beat or hook you also just can't defend against it without penalty.

I could probably put a cap on the amount of times you can do the quick defend thing. But I'm definitely thinking there has to be some way of extending coverage or being able to spontaneously make body parts covered up and force both players to make the judgement call of whether or not to feint/quick defend.

>>96769622
>>96769705
>That you can easily and readily target locations that were historically really hard to hit.
Just use 2d10 and fewer but larger hit zones, spread out possible results as desired.

>The final publication did that because Daxes and other big two-handed weapons instantly killed everyone they touched. Especially when we're talking beta versions where SDB was directly equal to STR.
Eh, sorta. It was mostly a playtesting issue. Daxes were really good at hurting people, but you could resist them relatively well in turn because TOU was a compound attribute. Then there was some aborted attempt to scale it back with half STR as SDB, but also making TOU just 4, which missed the problem that weaker weapons still had no way to play catch up aside from getting a buttload of successes.
I don't see how your own method really changes it though. Even in Vanilla, a max damage Daxe is just dealing a Level 1 through plate on 1 BS. And having max wound level tied to successes just makes the Iron Club better than it already was (And it's the true best weapon).
And if armor is buffed to compensate, then two naked peasants can just wear gambesons and not hurt eachother.

>New shield idea
In Vanilla, you can't change your maneuver except from a Swing to a Thrust.
And as far as the cap goes, eh. I don't think there's much of a judgement call there with shield AV. You are either hitting the shield and doing no damage, or not. It's a pretty clear-cut call to make since it's not a direct interaction with the opposing maneuver.

>>96769924
>Just use 2d10 and fewer but larger hit zones, spread out possible results as desired.
Not an option, I've been prototyping a replacement for joint thrust that keys off a similar mechanic to power attack. Spend CP to get "accuracy" that allows you to adjust the hit location by whatever amount you spent, then spend whatever remains to skip past either a gap in the armor (like the open face of a barbute/nasal bar) or with a thin blade weapon you can skip past a joint in plate. 2d10 would require way too much CP investment since it's adding 8-9 additional results on the table.

>I don't see how your own method really changes it though. Even in Vanilla, a max damage Daxe is just dealing a Level 1 through plate on 1 BS. And having max wound level tied to successes just makes the Iron Club better than it already was (And it's the true best weapon).
How I did it was adjust plate AV by +2 points, and all other armor by +1 point. With TOU removed and SDB halved, naked peasants are still plenty capable of hurting each other with most knives even with gambesons on. Since the total piercing AV is only 4, but that's fine since they're actually wearing armor. When actually naked or only wearing clothes, small knives are actually something to be concerned about instead of having to staple poise on for it to be an eventual threat. As for the Daxe thing, plate protection comes out to 10 AVC total, assuming no layering beneath so you would need to be 8 STR+ with a Daxe to 1 BS someone, or throw in power attack at 6+, but that's fine in my book because the former is a character who's near the human limits of physical strength.
>Iron Club
Sure, on pure offense it's pretty okay. But you're in pretty nasty shape if someone ever steals initiative from you or you don't have initiative.

>>96770090
>Feint can only change to a swing or thrust
Huh, I've always ruled it that you could feint into fancy maneuvers like that. It's weird that you can't since hooks especially can easily be feinted from swings since all you need to do to hook with most of the weapons is deliberately miss.

>And as far as the cap goes, eh. I don't think there's much of a judgement call there with shield AV
In theory, if the location could spontaneously change. Then both parties have to read the other to guess whether or not it's going to stay where it is. While the shield fighter could quick defend and move it again, he's taking a TN penalty and having less dice available on his next action.

>>96770090
>>96770131
>Not an option, I've been prototyping a replacement for joint thrust that keys off a similar mechanic to power attack. Spend CP to get "accuracy" that allows you to adjust the hit location by whatever amount you spent, then spend whatever remains to skip past either a gap in the armor (like the open face of a barbute/nasal bar) or with a thin blade weapon you can skip past a joint in plate. 2d10 would require way too much CP investment since it's adding 8-9 additional results on the table.
Just go by zones rather than results, then: Every 1 CP spent lets you remove two zones on the hit location.
Let's say you have a hit location for the arm with Hand, Elbow, Forearm, Upepr Arm, and Shoulder. If you spend 1 CP, you can remove the Upper Arm and Shoulder locations. Spend 2, you can remove the Elbow and Forearm locations.

>How I did it was adjust plate AV by +2 points, and all other armor by +1 point
Sounds like you either wear plate and bring something that can pierce plate, or you lose.

>Sure, on pure offense it's pretty okay. But you're in pretty nasty shape if someone ever steals initiative from you or you don't have initiative.
Not really, just bring a club or a small shield. They're all 0 weight so you can carry as many as the GM will allow, and you can yoink it out with Quickdraw, or start with one in your offhand and drop it when you have Initiative.

>Huh, I've always ruled it that you could feint into fancy maneuvers like that.
I've tried it both ways, but it does make sense since it just makes a noob trap. In Vanilla, the non-damage maneuvers are all pretty shit and it's easy to punish someone for using them. If you can feint out of them though, going for the punish will, itself, always get punished.
(Cont)

>>96770090
>>96770131
>>96770177
(Cont'd)
>In theory, if the location could spontaneously change. Then both parties have to read the other to guess whether or not it's going to stay where it is. While the shield fighter could quick defend and move it again, he's taking a TN penalty and having less dice available on his next action.
Problems I see with this:
1. RAW You don't actually have to guess, you can just quick defense/feint after the other side does so.
2. Guessing wouldn't be interesting anyways. You could as easily just give shields a "coverage chance" of applying their AV to every given hit, and it wouldn't really change how it plays out.
3. Spending 2 dice to full stop the opponent is easily worth it.
If we compare a max strength Dane Axe (Including AP, 11 damage) vs Plate (10 AVC), it threatens a wound immediately. BUT, throw in the 10 AV of a Buckler and the Dane Axe needs 10 bonus successes to cause a wound. And he'd need to throw around 25 dice to have 50-50 odds of getting 10 or more successes, which is pretty insanely high.
Now consider that almost every character won't be using a dane axe with 10 STR, and it's almost always going to be the best choice to just declare a quick defense and stop them from hurting you, unless they can eventually gas you out and feint around it, in which case it is always the best choice to NOT declare any quick defense.

>>96770177
>Just go by zones rather than results
I feel this makes it too precise, especially if the targeted location is in the center of a hitlocation table (see: face). We're just reinventing joint thrust again.

>Sounds like you either wear plate and bring something that can pierce plate, or you lose.
At worse, wearing armor is only 1 point less protective than revised/khopfix. Taking a longsword for example, the average person is swinging around 5 on a 1 BS hit, and plain leather is AVC 4. Lighter armor still does something against bigger weapons without completely eating them while being plenty protective for lighter weapons. As for plate, it's exactly as protective as it is in revised/khopfix, the functional damage v soak ratio ends up being the same when you do the whole 0 base TOU, halve SDB + 2 AV rigamarole.

>Not really, just bring a club or a small shield.
Okay then I steal initiative when you've traded out your best defense. Or target that weapon/shield with a beat/hook. I retain imitative and deal shock.

>In Vanilla, the non-damage maneuvers are all pretty shit and it's easy to punish someone for using them.
Most non-damage maneuvers deal BS stun in addition whatever effects you're looking for. If the shield is your best defense TN you can't exactly power through with an attack when the unmitigated BS from a hook stops your attack cold, unless you're gonna all in; in which case you have to hope you can reliably deal enough damage through the other guy's armor with only a couple BS. Something like a tripping hook, disarm or a beat stops your attack cold in addition to draining CP from shock. Most non-damage maneuvers are fine. There's a reason for the adage "beat the blade, hook the leg".

>>96770240
IMO, shields themselves work good for what they are: They are an offhand tool that you take to improve your defensive qualities.
I take a buckler if I want to carry my shield around everywhere, actively block people well, and bash them.
I take a large shield if I want to rely on passive AV to encourage bad decisions from the opponent, protect myself from ranged attacks, and potentially bash them.

If you wanted to make shields more interesting, I think they need things that make more of them individually interesting.
Like yeah, small shields as a whole have a niche: They block good but offer poor coverage. But why would I ever choose the Targe over a Buckler in vanilla? The Targe is mildly cheaper but has worse stats in every way.

Or take large shields: The hand pavise offers me the best AV and Durability by far, but is terrible at bashing, active blocking, and weighs more and costs the most.
The Scutum gives me great shield bashes, decent active blocking, and decent AV. But why would I ever take the other two large shields, the Kite Shield and Large Round Shield? They're objectively inferior except for costing marginally less.

>>96770315
>But why would I ever choose the Targe over a Buckler in vanilla? The Targe is mildly cheaper but has worse stats in every way.
That's kind of my inciting incident yeah. Things like the wicker targe are so irrelevant in both coverage and AV they basically only exist as a blocking device for super impoverished individuals. Then the others on the shield list might as well be paired down to a single option in each size category because there's always one that's so much better than the other. At least with weapons you can argue that it doesn't exist within the region or time period you're in. But shields are so generic that luxury isn't really an option.

>>96770308
>I feel this makes it too precise, especially if the targeted location is in the center of a hitlocation table (see: face). We're just reinventing joint thrust again.
I mean, you did say it's a replacement for Joint Thrust. +2 AC to hit an exact location also seems pretty fair to me, there aren't many things with a greater cost than +2 AC. Though you could just increase that by making it 1 Zone for 1 CP.

>At worse, wearing armor is only 1 point less protective than revised/khopfix.
Sorta, not really my point though. My point is that there's an even larger gap and greater need for armor now. Plate gives you 10 AVC, but something like Lamellar gives you 6 AVC, whereas before it was 5 and 8. And if you have mail with the plate, the difference widens even further.
And with TOU, the practical AVC of Lamellar was actually 9 vs 6. So now to get to the same levels of protectiveness that Lamellar offered in Vanilla, you basically have to wear plate.

>Okay then I steal initiative
Ok, I pull out my buckler and block it, since you can't steal initiative if you had initiative at the start of the bout where I would have used it up. Or just arm parry it. Or just void it. Or just win the steal.
>Or target that weapon/shield with a beat/hook
This can be tried, but if it's a hook, you're probably still dying, and if it's a Beat, you've only succeeded in regaining initiative. And in return, there was a 50-50 chance you failed to steal initiative and would have just died.

>Most non-damage maneuvers deal BS stun in addition whatever effects you're looking for.
Yes, and this is why they suck.
(Cont)

>>96770413
Stun is temporary, and there's too little of it dealt, and the effects give your opponent another chance to prevent you from succeeding.
For example, let's say you try to attack me for 5 dice, and I'm blocking you for 5 dice.
You have around 50% odds of beating that, and most likely by just 1-2 BS.
If that was a Swing, and you were able to wound me on 1-2 BS for an equivalent level, you have successfully dealt 0-6 stun, like 3-9 pain, and possible enough to make me start bleeding out. It's probably enough pain to decrease how many dice I have. And that's before we consider if your weapon has Shock or Crushing or other things.
This progresses the fight in your favor, and brings you an irrevocable step closer to winning.

If that was, let's say a Hook, not only do you have to spend an extra die just to use it, but you only deal 1-2 stun, which barely gives you any advantage, and possibly no advantage in dice.
I then have to make a stability test at 1-2 RS. Now, I probably have 8 Agility, but even if I were merely average at 4 Agility, I would have an 87% or 52% chance of negating your hook with my rolls. So you went from a 50% success rate, down to a 6% success and 24% success rate.
And what's worse, I can just spend 3 dice and get up again - So you'd better hope I ran out of dice when I fell down, you still have enough dice, and that this is only the 1st move so you can finish me off, or that success rate is going to fall even further.

>>96770355
>That's kind of my inciting incident yeah
You should probably target them instead of making shields as a whole better, then. The ideas you've landed upon would make shields better (Though I think they'd make the game worse as a whole, or do nothing).

I don't really mind having objectively inferior options myself though. It's just that buffing those specifically the easiest way to improve shields and make them more interesting.

>>96770413
>I mean, you did say it's a replacement for Joint Thrust. +2 AC to hit an exact location also seems pretty fair to me, there aren't many things with a greater cost than +2 AC. Though you could just increase that by making it 1 Zone for 1 CP.
The point was to replace joint thrust without making it the cancer that joint thrust is. I'm trying to avoid the autohit here.

>So now to get to the same levels of protectiveness that Lamellar offered in Vanilla, you basically have to wear plate.
Functional protection in vanilla is ahead of both revised and my change. Because SDB is halved while also having toughness. So yes, while you have lamellar with total soak 9 in vanilla, incoming damage from that same longsword is still only 5. Compare that to the 7 in revised/khop while keeping the same total soak, and the 5 vs 6 in my change. It's only 1 BS worse than revised, and vanilla has crazy high soak anyways. Besides, revised/khopfix functionally removes TOU as a factor anyways. Which is how I came to my conclusion that TOU is just bad for all Riddle likes and is the reason why they all constantly fiddle with damage formulas.

>pull out the buckler and block it
I can't claim steal initiative without having lost it in the first place. So this is after you block/parry to take initiative and dropped your buckler/weapon. You could quickdraw yeah, but that's still an activation cost plus an AGI check.

>Arm parry
Still deals damage to the arm. Granted in vanilla it is a trivial amount

>Void it
TN 8, you grabbed the buckler/weapon to avoid that in the first place.

>>96770513


>This is why they suck
IF you're capable of nuking people with a cheesed out build and always wounding on 1 BS then yes, I can see how unga bunga wins. But also, you're not standing up in the next move after a tripping hook, assuming you fail the check. Dropping prone deals half of your total CP in stun. So unless I'm at like 10 dice vs your 20 and I got a super lucky trip on you I'm still coming out on top here. Since you've lost 11 dice in that scenario minimum, +3 more for a rapid rise. Which even with a murder hobo is pretty difficult because RAW, you halve your MOB when knocked prone and the RS is 3. Even if we swing around to refresh, your pool is halved so I'm at an advantage still.

Then obviously disarm leaves you without a weapon and beat prevents you from attacking.

>>96770513
>The point was to replace joint thrust without making it the cancer that joint thrust is. I'm trying to avoid the autohit here.
Then just make it 1 zone for 1 CP.
Besides that, Joint Thrust itself is fine, the problems it has in vanilla are that it lets you ignore armor and do so with polearms at polearm distances.

>and vanilla has crazy high soak anyways
It's not really the soak that's high (Like, armor in it honestly is pretty shit and everyone just goes for plate because it's borderline mandatory).
The problem you're not seeing is that your method makes it move even further into the rocket tag realm, and makes high armor even more mandatory than before because now armor that was kind of okay is totally worthless.

>I can't claim steal initiative without having lost it in the first place.
You also can't steal it in the same bout you lose it in.
So you have to survive an entire move where you can't steal initiative.
>but that's still an activation cost plus an AGI check.
The buckler has no listing under Quickdraw and is H-Reach, so it's got no roll. And paying 1 dice isn't much.
>Still deals damage to the arm
Won't matter, 10 AVC.
>TN 8
And +4 to +8 dice over you, which is the big problem steal initiative always faces. So your odds just become a question of: Do you have enough dice to make TN 8 hurt, or not? And regardless it lowers your success rate even further.

>IF you're capable of nuking people with a cheesed out build and always wounding on 1 BS then yes, I can see how unga bunga wins
I mean, that's just how most of it ends up. Since it's even easier to damage people in your setup, that's almost always how it's gonna be if someone is trying to win their fights.
>But also, you're not standing up in the next move after a tripping hook, assuming you fail the check
Sure you can, so long as it's the next bout. But also like I said, this is only if you can secure the kill in that same bout.

>>96770538
>Then obviously disarm leaves you without a weapon and beat prevents you from attacking.
Beat and Disarm prevent you from attacking *with that weapon*. You can still get kicked, tripped, unarmed-disarmed, or grappled, or he can just pull a dagger out and shank you. And of course, much like with Hook, there's fair odds the disarm won't even succeed. It's really just a shit maneuver because it's so easy to ignore the effects of.
This is also why Beat is often just a better disarm when its available, because even though disarm is semi-permanent (There are no clear rules for picking up a weapon you were disarmed of while the fight is ongoing), any competent fighter will have alternatives, and Beat allows no additional roll.

>>96770574
>The problem you're not seeing is that your method makes it move even further into the rocket tag realm
Wound level is capped at BS, remember? Let's say we have a character with chainmail facing off against something ridiculous like a maul and no padding. On a power attack 2, 1 BS hit, despite suffering 9 damage vs 3 soak, you only suffer a level 1 wound to wherever it hits. People only take plate in earlier versions because it weighs basically nothing and wound level isn't capped by anything. Like characters with average strength can wear significant amounts of plate without suffering encumbrance.

>fechting
You're assuming I'm performing all these actions simultaneously, they're all different options to circumvent the strategy of "just have one weapon to block in your offhand while wielding a two handed weapon with a bad TN".
I don't think any sane GM would rule that things like bucklers are free to draw without a check anyways.
>Besides that, Joint Thrust itself is fine, the problems it has in vanilla are that it lets you ignore armor and do so with polearms at polearm distances.
Joint thrust is cancerous, there's nothing fine with it at all. Reducing reach doesn't mean anything because it's inherent purpose is skipping armor layers and hitting bare flesh. That's half the reason TOU is still shoehorned in because you can always autohit the face; and zipping past reach isn't really a problem especially with TN 6+ thin blade weapons. I know revised copes with capping it at TN 7 outside of a grapple, but TN 7 isn't really some dealbreaker except maybe vs other hyper optimized characters. Especially when all you need is 1 BS to instantly kill the other person.

>>96770592
Sure, but now we're gonna be arguing about the relative cost in reach activation costs. Which, between the quick draw for a dagger or attempting to punch is going to mean you end up with less dice than the guy who disarmed or beat the weapon away.

>>96763867
D&D is trash too, retard.

>>96770660
>Wound level is capped at BS, remember?
I did remember, and if you noticed, accounted for it.

Although, this isn't very important. It just means you're less likely to kill someone outright. A level 1-3 wound is still enough to tip the balance in your favor to the point where victory is basically a foregone conclusion.
And in many cases, it was basically capped at BS in Vanilla, too. Hell, even with Khopfix, you might have missed that a Daxe only does 12 damage with max STR, which Plate AV+TOU match.
In your setup, that much doesn't change, but armor that isn't plate does suck a whole lot more, which makes plate that much better in comparison. And the wound cap itself, if it did have an impact, would mostly encourage people to throw more dice on their attacks to increase the volatility of the roll.

>You're assuming I'm performing all these actions simultaneously, they're all different options
But all the options you offered sucked and didn't work well.

>I don't think any sane GM would rule that things like bucklers are free to draw without a check
Objectively, they are H-reach though, and H-reach is automatic. It's more likely they would rule in favor rather than against given that.

>Joint thrust is cancerous, there's nothing fine with it at all.
Sorry anon, but... Skill issue.
Joint Thrust is very easy to make fine: Cap its reach at Short, put its minimum TN to 7, penalize using a long weapon.
Now to use it, someone has to get in close, will objectively have a worse TN for doing so, and unless you're using a dagger or halfswording, it's pretty non-viable. So it functions as a possible win condition against those in ridiculously heavy armor, if you can get to the right place. From experience, I can say it becomes a good, but viable option.
Though with your system, it does kind of make it useless unless you want to run someone who is STR 2 and constantly fights people in plate.

>>96770660
>Sure, but now we're gonna be arguing about the relative cost in reach activation costs.
We probably aren't, since we were already working in the Reach 4-6 range anyways. Paying 1 or 2 dice to get a ball-shattering kick through, if you blow a whole bunch of dice on a Disarm that I can just ignore and let go through, is a non-issue.

>Which, between the quick draw for a dagger or attempting to punch is going to mean you end up with less dice
It's 1 die to quickdraw a dagger, anon. Not exactly a massive cost.
Importantly, unless you don't get high agility for some reason, your odds of quickdrawing even a longer rondel dagger are >90%, capping out at 98%, and you can make it RS 0 if you just put draw on your dagger for 1 copper coin, in which case it always succeeds.

And since you were intending on doing this with a steal initiative, you also have to remember that you're already down 4 to 8 dice, plus more from the disarm itself.

>>96770810
>AV
It works just fine in my playtesting. Lighter armor provides some protection and tough characters with robust actually feel tough. And encouraging people throwing more dice is a GOOD thing, it means less 1 BS instant kills from wearing bad armor and facing off against supers, or incentivizing set up moves like hook, trip and so on.

>Joint thrust
Again. Doesn't fix it. All you need is a single hit. Most weapons that are good for joint thrust also do shitloads of base damage. So you're looking at minimum level 2 wounds. Nevermind super strong munchkins who level 4 with a minor hit, or have harnischfechten to turn BS into damage. It's really not hard to get into S reach (especially if your weapon is already that short) and/or eat a couple extra die spent to pay the activation cost. The best thing you've done to nerf it is make it a 50/50 deal to instantly kill someone with a bit of a risk for failing the roll. Basically the same as rolling around with a flanged mace and just trying to power attack people to death. But now if you get into a grapple you can obliterate people since it's uncapped now.

My system replaces it with "Spend dice get accuracy". You still roll on the hit location, or spend your accuracy to adjust the table to a spot with a gap or weakpoint, then pay an amount dictated by the armor. As an example, I've prototyped the barbute as having a Gap with value of 3. So if you spend 3 dice before declaring a thrust to the head, and land on the face location you can skip the face armor. While things like spaulders have a "Joint" instead and require a weapon with thinblade.

>>96720541 (OP)
>GREATEST TTRPG SYSTEM EVER
But that's wrong. D&D says it's the world's greatest roleplaying game right on the cover.

>>96770905
Further thoughts on the AV thing:
Boosting armor further by 1 point just makes it khopfix levels of protection with all the same gripes that comes with that, and even further beyond gets into vanilla territory of "need huge weapons to feel anything." To which it seems the best option going forward is probably to reduce weapon damage so the average hovers around +0 instead of ~+2. Encouraging more BS here and reducing raw damage is the most ideal form. I'm starting to see.

>And since you were intending on doing this with a steal initiative, you also have to remember that you're already down 4 to 8 dice, plus more from the disarm itself.
You keep assuming I'm doing these on steal initiative. They're individual options. It's either steal initiative OR disarm OR beat OR hook as appropriate for whatever I've got. Even then, realistically it's more like 3-5 dice spent on the steal initiative (you have a helmet right?) and most munchkins probably don't have insane PER, especially if you want that 8 ADR. Compared to the bare minimum 1 stun you suffered, plus the 1 for quick draw (if you're doing that) then at minimum 1 for reach cost and throwing this without initiative.

>>96770905
>It works just fine in my playtesting.
I hope so, but experimenting with it, it just makes the issues the game has even worse, really.

>And encouraging people throwing more dice is a GOOD thing
Encouraging people to throw more dice and make the game more rocket taggy is good because... Why?

>or incentivizing set up moves like hook, trip and so on.
It doesn't do this at all though?

>Again. Doesn't fix it.
Fixed it just fine in my games.
>Most weapons that are good for joint thrust also do shitloads of base damage.
Well anon, in the base game, yes. But with those changes, no. The best weapon for joint thrust becomes the Rondel Dagger, which does okay damage.

>It's really not hard to get into S reach
You were just quibbling over how it would be too costly a moment ago? Make up your mind.

>My system replaces it with "Spend dice get accuracy".
To be honest, I think this method really sucks if you can spend dice and not get any results for doing so.
>As an example, I've prototyped the barbute as having a Gap with value of 3. So if you spend 3 dice before declaring a thrust to the head, and land on the face location you can skip the face armor.
So it's... Joint thrust but you can't rely on it anymore?

>>96770945
>Boosting armor further by 1 point just makes it khopfix levels of protection with all the same gripes that comes with that
I mean, the better method is to just stick with TOU and let SDB be higher, so people aren't afraid of dying from papercuts.

>You keep assuming I'm doing these on steal initiative.
I mean, you quite literally did say that's what you're doing. Because otherwise, you uh, don't get to do them. You just die first.
And if you mean when comparing them to just trying to deal damage, you've basically offered zero rebuttal to what was proven, that they are objectively inferior to doing damage.

>Compared to the bare minimum 1 stun you suffered
The stun I suffered isn't actually comparable here, as you had to spend dice to deal it.

>>96771112
>Encouraging people to throw more dice and make the game more rocket taggy is good because... Why?
Because munchkins running around with 8 STR, 8 ADR and bardiches is bad, and forcing them to gamble more for decisive strikes or set things up is good. It encourages set ups like hook and trip because you can't just pull level 4 wounds on a single BS.

>Well anon, in the base game, yes. But with those changes, no. The best weapon for joint thrust becomes the Rondel Dagger, which does okay damage.
If you're using the revised rules, then you're reading it wrong. Because the Estoc and even regular spears are fine. The maneuver exactly specifies that you do it at reach S (or weapon reach if it's shorter). Which overrides the longer weapon reach, and it has the same activation cost rules as vanilla (IE, +1 per step over M). As the maneuver is written in revised, using an estoc even without halfswording is only a 5 activation cost to aim for a weakpoint from it's natural reach. Since the maneuver declares S reach. The rondel is only slightly better because you can use a TN 6 thrust to get into S while only worrying about regular reach costs. This only gets worse if you're targeting a location without a weakpoint (like an uncovered face or neck) because that reduces the activation cost to literally free with M weapons or shorter. If anything it obsoletes things like butt strike because it's an S reach maneuver.

>So it's... Joint thrust but you can't rely on it anymore?
Sure. This is a good thing. Joint thrust being reliable makes armor significantly worse than it should be when you can rely on it hitting the face.

>>96771177
>I mean, the better method is to just stick with TOU and let SDB be higher, so people aren't afraid of dying from papercuts.
No, it's not. TOU and high SDB just leads to the worst form of the game of people minmaxing what kind of armor they can beat with their chosen weapon and creating enormous disparities between weapons that are haves and have nots. See: Bardiche, DAxe, Iron Club vs small knife, two handed katzbalger, bar mace. You have next to zero reason to feel threatened by a small knife if toughness exists at all. Never mind if you add a single additional point of toughness or AV to the equation. SoS needs less damage, hell you were even saying plate was the only real valid armor option even back in the final published version; because a few weapons can treat it as if it's not there.

>>96771112
>The stun I suffered isn't actually comparable here, as you had to spend dice to deal it.
You also had to spend dice to avoid it, otherwise you'd be suffering a hell of a lot more than just 1 stun. If I hit at all, we broke even and still have initiative.

>And if you mean when comparing them to just trying to deal damage, you've basically offered zero rebuttal to what was proven, that they are objectively inferior to doing damage.
IF you can deal damage. Then yes, I can concede that if you're 100% guaranteed to deal damage on any hit at all then it is superior to deal damage. But unless you're hyper optimized or in a tournament setting where you can always lug around a two-handed meta weapon with you at all times, it's not a guarantee. If your 1-2 BS damage isn't enough to wound however then you're doing literally nothing. At least a 1 BS, failed tripping hook attempt results in the opponent losing a single die.

>>96771177
>Because munchkins running around with 8 STR, 8 ADR and bardiches is bad
And making them even better is good... Because...?

>It encourages set ups like hook and trip because you can't just pull level 4 wounds on a single BS.
No, actually. It encourages you to go much more for pure damage because those options still suck.

>If you're using the revised rules, then you're reading it wrong.
I don't think I am, no.
>Because the Estoc and even regular spears are fine.
No, they are not.
With a regular spear, you suffer from an AC of +3, plus another +4 from Reach, THEN +2 from Joint Thrust, for +11 cost in total. That's quite a massive cost, and in Revised? Unusable.
With an Estoc, you need to Half-sword it, or you're at +1, +2, and +5 total, which is also far too much to stomach.

If you somehow find yourself losing when the opponent gives you a massive advantage, sorry, you have a skill issue.

>Sure. This is a good thing.
Not really, just remove the concept entirely instead of creating an option so unviable and bad it's only a noob trap.

>>96771223
>No, it's not. TOU and high SDB just leads to the worst form of the game of people minmaxing what kind of armor they can beat with their chosen weapon
This has little to do with TOU and SDB, it's just the nature of the game itself, unless you offer alternative methods for beating armor, and directly buff the non-damage options.

>hell you were even saying plate was the only real valid armor option even back in the final published version
Can you quote this? Because it is not the only real valid armor option, but it is the *best*, which is an important distinction.
The problem with your own ruleset, is that it becomes the only real valid armor option, however.

>You also had to spend dice to avoid it
No?
>otherwise you'd be suffering a hell of a lot more than just 1 stun
Which doesn't matter, because you will always be losing more. I'll elaborate on this.

>>96771734
>>96771280
See, stun from Hook, Disarm, and other things sucks because it's derived from BS. This isn't so great because you will need to spend more dice to get more stun off, which defeats the purpose.
The only exception is during low dice exchanges, like if you rolled a disarm with 1 dice and I Swing at you for 1. If you succeed, my swing is stopped instantly because the stun eats its die.
Though notice, due to the Activation Cost disarm has to pay, you're still losing out, even then. And if I really wanted to screw you, I would just declare a kick to your groin for as many dice as needed, because you can't disarm feet.

>IF you can deal damage.
And why wouldn't I?

>Then yes, I can concede that if you're 100% guaranteed to deal damage on any hit at all then it is superior to deal damage.
Actually, it's superior if you're guaranteed to deal a wound even starting at 2 BS. The only time it becomes less optimal to go for damaging attacks is if your odds of causing a wound fall into the <20% range.

>But unless you're hyper optimized or in a tournament setting where you can always lug around a two-handed meta weapon with you at all times, it's not a guarantee.
Sure it is. It's more guaranteed in your system than ever before, since you have effectively given everyone -3 AV. Now, not only am I almost always in a position to cause wounds on 1 BS, it's even easier and more sensible to make sure my fighting man can do so.

>If your 1-2 BS damage isn't enough to wound however then you're doing literally nothing.
This is also incorrect.
I'm gonna pull the cat out of the bag: You clearly aren't very familiar with the game, anon, because nobody who has played it would forget that weapon qualities exist like you just did. Crushing and Shock are very common, and trigger on a hit.

>>96771734
>And making them even better is good... Because...?
How does it make them better? Worse case scenario, they're basically exactly the same; any hit they land becomes a wound, except now they're capped at 1-2 level wounds exempting extremely lucky blows on any armor. This is overall a nerf.

>Joint Thrust
I will concede that at maximum measure, a spear has an unsuable joint thrust cost. But if you're forced into S reach, or make your way there (mobile void, butt strike, kick, etc.) you're able to make AC 5 joint thrusts on parts with a weakpoint, and AC 3 joint thrusts on parts without (say, an uncovered face or neck) the latter being better than the activation cost to make a regular thrust. With estocs, this can drop as low as zero if you half sword, and 2 if you have to get through a weakpoint. The activation cost is the same or lower, and the TN isn't even worse. These aren't that nasty when these result in your instantly winning a fight because any hit results in a level 4.

>>96771734
>This has little to do with TOU and SDB, it's just the nature of the game itself.
But it is. You NEED shitloads of raw damage to beat armor because TOU exists. It's been a blight on the systems since Riddle. You get a shitload of damage just from your weapon and SDB (and occasionally qualities) before you even roll dice and to counteract that they had to implement TOU and dial back SDB... but now only weapons with shitloads of weapon damage were viable so Khopfix/revised once again functionally removed TOU for everyone but the bad weapons.

My system is a single point less protective than Khopfix. A longsword needs 1 BS to deal a wound in my system, and 2 in khopfix revised. If a single point less effective soak is all it takes to completely break the system; then the system is inherently fragile and needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. Instead of tacking on more shit like poise.

>Crushing and Shock are very common, and trigger on a hit.
Crushing only takes effect on the next move and requires you to hit the same location again. Not reliable. Most weapons with crushing are two handed, save for the flanged mace and about half the 1h blunts. IE, these are not weapons you can lug around with you into a town.

>Shock
Similar issue with lugging around. Though it's more common and reliable. Though a lot of the 1h options only have shock 1.

>>96771964
>A longsword needs 1 BS to deal a wound in my system, and 2 in khopfix revised
Forgot to specify through a plain leather vest. IE AVC 3/AVP 2.

>>96771907
>How does it make them better?
Because now it's even easier to turn the game into rocket tag? You can be the munchkin with just 4 STR and a bardiche and still damage everyone on 1 BS when only 10 AVC is in your way. So, yeah, in your earlier scenario with the steal initiative stuff? You're paying 8 dice, straight up, because PER is the next stat that's hitting 8.

>B-but their wounds are capped
Which doesn't really change anything, because as you've already acknowledged, damaging maneuvers are always better so long as you can cause damage. You've made it easier to play rocket taggy munchkins.

>But if you're forced into S reach, or make your way there
See, here's your problem: That is the point. Joint Thrust sucks if you try to use it outright. You need to meet conditions.
And even then, +5 AC sucks so hard you should not use a spear for it, while an Estoc must be half-sworded.

>and the TN isn't even worse
For Estocs? It absolutely is since it gets locked to TN 7.

>These aren't that nasty when these result in your instantly winning a fight
But they don't?
For example: If you have a fighter with say, 17 Dice, You will average 9 Successes with the Estoc if you just thrust it with everything you got (as you would in your system where you want people to use as many dice as they can) If you Joint Thrust it? You're down to 12, at TN 7. That puts you down to 5 successes on average.
So unless your opponent is retarded, you're far better off thrusting at them in basically any scenario, and your Joint Thrust would probably fail. Far from instantly winning a fight, trying it makes you much more likely to lose.

>>96771964
>But it is. You NEED shitloads of raw damage to beat armor because TOU exists.
In vanilla? Yeah, because it's unrealistic to do anything else, and because all alternatives to doing damage are pretty shit.

>>96771964
>>96772325

>My system is a single point less protective than Khopfix
Which is the problem. It isn't very different, but it creates a much worse meta. Plate is now too good, and nothing else that was wrong with the system (Damaging maneuvers being vastly more effective than non-damaging ones, for example) has really been improved in any way.

>A longsword needs 1 BS to deal a wound in my system
And like you already admitted: If you deal a wound on a hit, you have no reason to do anything else but try to inflict damage. Your system only exacerbates a flaw the game already had.

>If a single point less effective soak is all it takes to completely break the system
Many systems can be broken if you slightly change the math, anon, and they work fine. But in this case, it's not that it breaks anything outright, it's just that it's objectively inferior and does not achieve what you explicitly wanted it to as well as the alternatives. You just seem to have a hatred for the alternatives for no real reason.

>Crushing only takes effect on the next move
Which is fine, it still gives you some permanent effect.
>IE, these are not weapons you can lug around with you into a town.
? Yes they are. It's not especially difficult to carry a two-handed weapon, anon, nor was it uncommon.

Regardless, you didn't even know these things were so relevant, so your grasp of how the system works is ehhh, questionable. You just don't seem to really understand why or how some things function, and think a playtest means it is ideal and you can't accept the flaws your methods have. Which doesn't really track; Revised has been tested to hell and back, Vanilla was tested to hell and back, TROS was tested to hell and back, and yet you complain about those as well.

>>96772325
>In vanilla? Yeah, because it's unrealistic to do anything else, and because all alternatives to doing damage are pretty shit.
In any system with TOU. See: naked peasants with knives. Try dealing damage with a sidesword against someone in even leather lamellar. You need 4 successes to even deal a wound.

>You've made it easier to play rocket taggy munchkins.
this is a tacit admission that SoS falls apart at STR 6 and beyond then. You can get the exact same experience by just playing a character with frail or having STR 6 with revised SDB.

>it's just that it's objectively inferior and does not achieve what you explicitly wanted it to as well as the alternatives.
But it does exactly that? Because it stops you from just instantly killing everyone without even needing to score a BS? You and I both know how trivial it is to get a level 5 wound before a die is even rolled.

>? Yes they are. It's not especially difficult to carry a two-handed weapon, anon, nor was it uncommon.
You're not gonna be walking around with a fucking halberd in the middle of a town without being harassed unless you're a guard. We both know this.

>>96772339
>Revised has been tested to hell and back
and yet, it has antithetical systems like deterministic combat and lazily implemented bandaids like poise and the open face helmets rule.

>>96772355
>In any system with TOU
Well no, that's just a vanilla issue. In revised or with khopfix, hurting someone with a knife through leather lamellar could be done with around 2 BS.

>this is a tacit admission that SoS falls apart
If you want to say so, I suppose. But in that case, why are you here? You evidently don't play the game.

>But it does exactly that?
Nah, you've already admitted it doesn't solve the problems you've been complaining about. "Everyone doesn't instantly die" isn't an issue in the normal

>You're not gonna be walking around with a fucking halberd in the middle of a town
Did I say "Halberds exclusively" in my post?
No?
I'll accept that concession then.

>>96772593
>Did I say "Halberds exclusively" in my post?
The same goes for a spear, bardiche, poleaxe or just about any large two handed weapon you faggot.

>hurting someone with a knife through leather lamellar could be done with around 2 BS.
4 tou, +4 AV. Total soak 8. SDB 4. +1 from the sidesword or most fighting daggers = 5 base damage. You need 4 BS to get a level 1 wound, and you say I don't play the game.

>>96772613
Oh and before you say anything, leather lamellar isn't hard. So no it doesn't proc crushing, ap thrust or anything of the sort and since we're specifying knives, they're liable to have less cutting than piercing, so you can't really target the lesser AVC of the lamellar. The sidesword could 3 BS on a swing, and maybe 1 BS if you full on power attacked though.

>>96772613
>The same goes for a spear, bardiche, poleaxe
Did I say "Also spears, bardiches, and poleaxes"?
No?
>or just about any large two handed weapon
Did I say "large two handed weapons"?
Also no?
Funny that.

>4 tou, +4 AV.
Well, you already got that wrong. Leather lamellar is AVC 3.
That sidesword can deal up to 7 base damage, possibly even 10 base damage, anon. And that's assuming you don't sharpen it.
>and you say I don't play the game.
Evidently, you don't, since you didn't even know what the armor you were referring to uses for stats.

>>96772624
>Oh and before you say anything, leather lamellar isn't hard
That's precisely true, which is why it becomes vulnerable to things like Draw.
Really, now it's obvious you've never played the game and are just trolling. Hell, you don't even know the most common argument around why damage was buffed with Khopfix.

>>96772638
>That sidesword can deal up to 7 base damage, possibly even 10 base damage,
Right of course, we just have to assume juiced up munchkins with razor sharp orichalcum weapons like every assumption we've made thus far and now we're getting into the "instant death" problem that doesn't exist. Weird how every example of a character has 8 AGI, 8 ADR and is wearing full plate. It's almost like in revised anything less results in you instantly dying.

>>96772645
>Right of course, we just have to assume juiced up munchkins
Anon... You can do that with 4 STR and ordinary swords. Whetstones cost 1 copper, you know.
There's really nothing else to say. You just don't know the game as well as you think you do, and clearly don't play it much, if at all.

>>96772648
>Anon... You can do that with 4 STR and ordinary swords.
Max draw you can get on swords without draw is 2. Razor sharp, and then tight grip. Which only procs at 2 BS if you push cut (which reduces base damage anyways) or at 3 BS, which makes the draw basically irrelevant and most certainly not our base damage. Especially if we're tossing in power attack as well. Any you lose it immediately after the hit, so you better hope you get that 2-3 BS right away.

>>96772659
>Anon once again demonstrates he can't play the game.
Deep Draw Cut lets you proc at 2 BS, anon, and without draw a sidesword, at STR 4, can still do 7 base damage.

Sorry man... But if you aren't doing a poor job of trolling you have a critical skill issue.

>>96772671
>Deep Draw Cut lets you proc at 2 BS
At the cost of reducing reach by one step and reducing your dice pool. Which reduces the odds of proccing deep draw.

>and without draw a sidesword, at STR 4, can still do 7 base damage.
Right, again with tight grip full 2 CP power attacks. Which again, we're getting into increasingly optimized characters

>>96770810
>Sorry anon, but... Skill issue.
This is a genuine critique of the game I have desu. You have to actually be skilled at it to play it well. You can't really play a skilled swordsman unless you actually know how to use the system well. That's a perk for some people tho. Some people also get their asses kicked because they have no skill and then blame the system. I had that happen to a player in my game who seethed with the rage of a thousand suns when, in a practice fight with another player, he got shat on by a guy with half his armor and a weak weapon because he just kept tapping him until he ran out of CP. He blamed the system, then the other player, then me, then the rest of the table, then demanded we run it in 5e to his benefit because he didn't want to learn the rules so we kicked him.

>>96772683
Anon, anon, shhhh. You're contradicting yourself again. First you think losing 5 dice is acceptable, now you're saying paying 1 die to do damage is too much. Get a grip.

>Right, again with tight grip full 2 CP power attacks
Nah, you can do it without tight grip. Just use the maneuver. If using a maneuver anyone can use is "making an optimized character" to you, well. Maybe you should go play a different game, you're clearly not here for the tactics or strategy.

And honestly... You don't know how the game works. You got the stats wrong. You forgot about weapon qualities. You think every two-handed weapon is a halberd. You just, don't know how any of it works.
I've got to just write you off as a really weird troll, or someone too stubborn to get any better. Sorry man.

>>96772705
>You forgot about weapon qualities.
Which only matter against guys in full plate. But you're right, we have to constantly assume every party is wearing full mail and only using iron clubs. Wouldn't want them actually losing because they're 2 dice behind of course.

>>96772724
>Which only matter against guys in full plate.
And in that conversation, which was about fighting guys in full plate, you forgot they existed completely. Because, y'know, you don't play the game.

>>96772440
eh Nta but they work fine for me. I like it because it makes fights quicker to resolve and lets the players pull off sneaky stuff. The determinism stuff pissed off a newbie we invited one time over online play and he couldn't articulate why but refused to use it to everyones confusion, but I heard from another GM that he was using some shit to spoof roll20 and cheat his rolls so he got the boot and I consider that a big upside.

>>96772738
>I like it because it makes fights quicker to resolve
That's kind of the inherent problem. It's antithetical to the "every fight matters" core design of riddle and SoS. It's not even that difficult to proc, even without gaming specifically for it. A single hit instantly spirals into a win because you can auto BS with a crushing+shock weapon and the fight's done. The margin is so slim before it activates, it's only like a 3 dice differential with equivalent TNs. If you're going to use it, you shouldn't have had a combat encounter there in the first place; and if you're not gonna use it then the rules is just a waste of space.

>>96772746
Kek nah, making fights take longer doesn't make them matter more. And my players are alot more cautious cause they know lucky rolls can't save them if they put themselves in a real bad spot.

>>96772732
Well I got outplayed. I'm out of bait and you cornered me. So I'll tap out here. I will still say I genuinely fundamentally disagree with the concept of toughness as a mechanic though. It's been too much of a back and forth between naked dwarves, cracked out beast toughness and 0 WL joint thrusts to the face.

>>96772757
I don't really care what a troll disagrees with.

>>96772755
>And my players are alot more cautious cause they know lucky rolls can't save them if they put themselves in a real bad spot.
Well that's the thing, you don't really need lucky rolls. You just need any single hit or do something like a charge (or outflank, etc etc). I mean, I guess if they have the entire town guard after them or something like that. But a manageable level of enemies and they'll just clear the encounter like it's 5e.

>>96772769
>Well that's the thing, you don't really need lucky rolls.
To save em when they do something stupid? They sure do kek. You sound like 5e's more your speed if you're looking for forced and manageable encounters.

>>96772777
Yet you use deterministic combat. The system that turns any encounter into a manageable one in an instant. Curious.

>>96772782
>The system that turns any encounter into a manageable one
KEK
Yeah, 5e is deffo more your speed when you've never had an "unfair" encounter before.

>>96772795
Sorry the truth hurts. But turning a single hit into an autowin is kinda easy mode.

>>96772800
Killing your players in one hit is easy mode?

>>96772802
You're further illustrating my point though. If it activates at all, the person on the receiving end loses. Players are naturally going to optimize around it when it's in play. At which point, why are you even having a fight in the first place? You might as well an ADR test and have the loser die instantly.

>>96772813
>You're further illustrating my point
That you make the game easier for your players if they can't win certain fights?
Nah you're dumb nigga.

>>96772818
>No you
You mind proving me wrong? Either you're pulling your punches and not using deterministic against your players. Or you're not even playing the game because it's a race to the lower possible TN.

>>96772818
Don't bother, he's an admitted troll who doesn't play games.

>>96772824
still haven't proven me wrong.

>>96772824
You're right kek, it's the same sperg who was mad about the OP. there just wasn't anything else to talk about.
I guess I could talk about the game I'm running. I'm planning on throwing the players into a historical one based around the fall of Constantinople. But I'm gonna have them on the side of the Ottomans instead. I think it'll be more interesting to try and survive since they still took huge casualties instead of fighting a doomed battle, plus there's alot I can throw at them, like storming the outlying fortresses, getting sent out to "forage", fighting in tunnels and trying to deal with Byzantine counter-sappers. Might make a few deviations from how the history books say it went down too so they can't know what's coming their way.

>>96772862
I want to run a "bandit/rebel group innawoods" campaign about overthrowing a local lord. Maybe work a political plot twist or two in there. Feels like this kind of system would work very well with that general concept.

>>96773019
TROS would work really great for it. I ran one where the PCs were a few de-landed nobles trying to found a mercenary company once that went well, ended with them trying to push claims on their old lands and retaking them.

I wish #thisyear /tg/ could organise another round of Waifu Wars or the arena games we used to play that grew out of that. We used to post cool looking character art, make stats and character sheets based on them, and then a volunteer GM would get some practice in the system of their choice just running an NPC battle between them.
We learned to beware the bunny girl barbarian, they will FUCK YOU UP.

>>96780508
Why not just do it? Make a thread, or stat your waifu in RoS right here and now. Best chances to get it started. I have to study RoS anyway.