HAND TO HAND

comedyofhate · HAND TO HAND

Are people happy with melee and unarmed doing damage to vitality?

Would people prefer a switch to body, or another system. Post suggestions here. Smile

Fenric

Doing damage to vitality is fine for "Basic" moves - but I think there should be an Upgrade to "Strike" perhaps which does Body damage ?

Derek and I will happily roleplay any changes to this rule you suggest to see which one gets injured more Razz

Seriously though - when it did damage straight to body it was OVERLY lethal - as Grapple, Strike, Strike, Strike (which are all in the basic package) would put people on the same body as a 0 vitality person being hit by a staff weapon.

Unfortunately now when it's going to vitality a person can take up to 18 hits before they go to -3.

This is more a VITALITY problem than an unarmed problem, which is caused by people having ungodly vitality.

Woody

Yeah if it went riect to body there would have been a lot more deaths at the weekend just gone for certain, that is probably too leathal. THe large amounts of Vit problem is a different issue. Allowing strike to do one point of damage straght to body may be the answer but control needed on how many strikes you get.

Not had unarmed so don't relaly know what else can be done.

Freeman

A starting character has 6 Vit, 4 Bod.
That's 13 strikes to take them to -3.

That sounds like pub-level brawling to me.

If you want to increase the lethality of melee / unarmed combat, add in some feats to increase the martial-art aspect of it.

Woody

Isn't it 6 and 3? Still 12 strrikes but just making sure.

Freeman

You are correct, I apologise.
6 Vit, 3 Bod.
Making 12 strikes to -3.

(Don't have rules to hand as am at work and working from a very bad memory)

comedyofhate

Hmm.

How about unarmed and armed combat does vitality damage. Without the use of any strikes. Unarmed can do as many blows for 1 point of vitality as you want.

However unarmed and melee strikes go straight through to body...

Strikes become special and orrible.

Ergo An unarmed strike does 1-2 (depending on how people want it in the rules) points of body damage for an average human.

Limit the amount of strikes...

Melee gets strikes as well.

Oh and you can sacrifice your body armour to negate a strike..

Colour Sargent Rob Knight

Sounds good, but should be heavily restricted feat, I.e perminant trade up, or the game would turn into a hand to hand blood bath.

Either that or have strike do 2-3 points of vitality damge but only 1 point of body, representing the extra energy required to physicaly fight with an oponent.

comedyofhate

Of course the simple option is that hand and melee just do vitality like everything else.

It the plot organisers feel that a monster should be able to blast through a characters vitality thats what critical hits are for. If a players wants to punch so hard it cripples an opponent, critical hit.

The catch all fuck em up feat that keeps on giving...

Doc Benton

i think that hand to hand shold be vil but swords (melee) shold be body

just my thorts you can get messed up in a pub fight but in a knife fight and you dong have a knife well your kida nead an ambi (dissarm mohehe then kick there face it) Smile

Meyrick

I think the non-feat based, 'straight to body' attacks are overpowered when compared to other attacks. A more uniform approach to the fighting styles (ranged, melee, hand-to-hand) would probably be better.

Let all the attacks do Vitality damage, but put in themed Critical Hits for each type. For instance:

Sweep (HTH) - 3 Body Damage and Knockdown
Hamstring (Melee) - 2 Body Damage - victim must limp and cannot run until the wound is healed

The idea is that the feats should be as good as, but no better than, the 4 Body Damage that Critical Hit does. It would give us a chance to include some of the more interesting (and painful) effects of advanced martial arts.

Does that sound reasonable?

Olivia Chase

Numbers wise hand-to-hand is over powered in some ways, the but disadvantage is that you have to get up close and personal, like melee and that is very risky for the character involved, especially if your quarry can shoot you before you even get close.

So I think that may need to be taken into account.

The themed critical hits sound very interesting though. I guess you may not be able to have the best of both worlds.

Harry Font

Thats what critical hit and on the nose atre for arn tney.. for getting the damage through vitality

comedyofhate

Hmm, so the general concesus (I don't thnk I spelled that correctly), is that keep hand to hand combat vitality based and stick with critical hit, and called shot essentially for punching through vitality?

Harry Font

in fact we use to much hand to hand combat.. it should be a last resort.. some pepople use it as a primery attack..

perhaps we should say that temp damaged dodges dont work on stoping any critical attack ? make it less of a crew killer and more of a bar fight skill

stand up fights in the series last ages.. so burning through vitality is the way to go.. yest if you go for a quck kill the it makes it more lrathal to both parties

melee with weapons whould ignore vitality but due to the use of weapons citicals and all damaged dodges should work.. we see very little use of melee weapons..

dante73

I think we're starting to see more Melee all the time.

I blame Nash.

Leon.

comedyofhate

Yes it is al nashs fault.

I am fine with with the critical hit / on the nose lucky bastard / jammy bastard aspects of fights at the moment. If the body of players are happy with melee damage being based on vitality as opposed to body then all is good. I wonder if this poll functionality works. hmm.

MajorMasters

Would another alternative be to make hand to hand and melee more expensive training wise. Its easier to learn to point a gun then to be a deadly martial arts nutter surely

Olivia Chase

It already is.

Hand to Hand = 10 months
Medium weapons = 4 months, less than half the time.

So for a skill that takes twice as long to learn, and you have to take more risks to use, it is still overpowered, or merely over or incorrectly used?

Some characters use hand to hand for self defence because they can't use guns (above pistol anyway). So for them, last resort comes quicker than those with more firepower at their beck and call.

Harry Font

the thing is that as of recently the military have been stopping the enemy geetting to close

thirteen7

Has there been any change to Hand to Hand/Unarmed? I'm reading the rules as of May 08.

Fenric

Mali

question, how can punching someone be more lethal than shooting them???

Please discuss

Olivia Chase

With feats mainly, which can be countered but it can take a bloody long time. Strike comes of vitality first, and is only a single hit, to do anything interesting you need to blow a feat, and that's after surviving the journey to get close enough to the enemy in the first place.

I, as Livvie has found this skill very useful but mainly for the purposes of shaking of someone who tries to grab her (a sadly regular occurance), than actually causing damage to them.

A few critical hits followed by a killing blow should do it, but that is assuming none are jammied or blocked in response.

comedyofhate

punching them no, kicking an Admiral in the bollocks whilst shouting critical hit seemed to have the desired effect though. *stars at mali* Wink

Mali

lol, that was the highlight of the event for me, mainly because we had no idea who he was at the time.

Going back to my point earlier, why should hand to hand be more effective than a pistol? Because someone wants to look cool? Blowing a crit feat is the way forward in my opinion and represents the apprpriate level of training required to be effetive in H to H.