The standard old-school interpretation -- my interpretation, too -- is that the attack roll does not represent a single attack. It abstracts several swings, thrusts, feints, parries, and dodges into one roll, which determines if all that activity resulted in a potentially fatal blow.
The usual objection to this, from blow-by-blow advocates, is that missile weapons don't work that way: you lose one arrow per attack roll. But that is easily fixed.
Or is it? Crossbows seem to be an irreconcilable exception, especially the heavy crossbow, which can be fired only every other round. Of course, maybe that's only in the blow-by-blow versions of the rules, like Holmes Basic. I haven't done a survey of the way crossbows are handled over several versions.
My initial thought is to just let that be the downside to only wasting one arrow per shot, max. But I thought I'd open up a discussion about it anyways.
I don't see much reason to agonize over it. A melee combat involves a lot of thrust, feint, and parry, because it's easier to dodge and block relatively slow-moving swings of handheld weapons than it is to dodge a projectile with a much higher velocity. There was even a Mythbusters episode in which they proved conclusively that it's impossible to catch an arrow fired from a bow even with the fastest human reaction time ever recorded.
ReplyDeleteThey did show it's possible to knock an arrow aside with a sword, though... Food for thought.
DeleteI think it's inaccurate to characterize the 6- or 10-second rounds as "blow-by-blow". A swordfight is fast-paced enough that 6 seconds could contain 3 blows, or none, as well as jockeying for position.
ReplyDeleteOne minute is probably enough to encompass the entirety of most serious swordfights. Which I suppose is fine if you consider the attack roll to indicate the entirety of how the fight goes, but that breaks down fast as you level up.
Two level 5 fighters could easily be engaged in a 10-minute melee, which seems a little silly to me, unless they're spending most of their time dancing about not fighting.
Fights - including swordfights - typically last less than a minute.
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ReplyDeleteIn a game where an "inch" could mean ten feet indoors, ten yards outdoors, or one-twelfth of a foot, I never felt compelled to take the one-"minute" length of a round seriously. My group generally judged a round to be approximately one to ten seconds in length. Nowadays, I adopt the recommendation of Fudge of making a round last 3.14 seconds. ;-)
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ReplyDeleteSorry, had a rather embarrassing typo.
DeleteThe fact is that if one is trying to hit a moving target, it can take quite a few seconds to get a bead on it, so it certainly doesn't break my immersion too much.
In my opinion this is an advantage to the ten-second round of B/X, that's long enough to get a decent amount of swordplay, hardly blow-by-blow at all, but short enough that the question of what the archers are spending their time actually doing doesn't come up.
I use the rule about missile ammunition Brendan posted over his blog. In my games, crossbows can't utilise the volleying manoeuvre.
ReplyDeleteComing from an albeit amateur archery standpoint, I assume in my games that crossbows fire one bolt every round and bows fire three, both abstracted with better damage than the books have traditionally indicated.
ReplyDeleteComing from an albeit amateur archery standpoint, I assume in my games that crossbows fire one bolt every round and bows fire three, both abstracted with better damage than the books have traditionally indicated.
ReplyDelete