Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Twig
The biggest reason people do not use special tactics is because of limited resources, usually time. Like you said, is it better to throw sand in their eyes and hit them later or just hit them now and be done with it. Obviously the second option is quicker and that's fine!
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Well, perhaps oddly, it depends on how quick and dirty the rules you are using are.
Say for example, you are a couple of metres from your opponent for some reason and there's some sand to hand. Now if you believe that it's a good idea not to worry about moving into combat then you would always just attack. If on the other hand, you say that moving into combat allows the opponent to hit you on the way in then suddenly using a missile weapon is potentially a good idea because you might be able to rush your opponent while they're clearing the sand from their face.
Of course the problem tends to be that a good warrior might be 120% at hitting with swords, 100% at dodging and only 40% at throwing sand in which case throwing sand is always going to be suboptimal. This was a frustration I always had when playing in RQ3. I had a couple of characters that I was always trying to do cool combat tricks with and no matter what, it was never efficient. I did it anyway.
As a GM using MRQ I've tended to implement tricks through using the Influence, acrobatics and athletics skills. E.g. to pull off the "behind you" trick a character can make an opposed Influence roll as an action. If successful, the character's next attack is at +20%. This is useful when you're fairly evenly matched or outmatched because odds are that the opponent hasn't boned up on their Influence. Essentially you're sacrificing a standard combat skill in order to have an unexpected edge. This works nicely in MRQ as I use the opposed roll combat system so most things work the same way. Possibly wouldn't work as well in BRP.
On the actual topic of this thread; every game has something to learn from. I think the designers are doing interesting things with D&D4. A lot of what it reminds me of is a complex board game that in some ways takes the "game" side of role-playing games back to their roots. It seems to me that if you write a RPG as a board game then those who want to ignore the board and play in their minds can do so. On the other hand, if you don't provide the "board" it's a lot harder to create it. Now I've played D&D twice in my life and have no real interest in the system but it seems to me that there's an awful lot of systems analysis that's gone into the new edition and I'm looking forwards to reading the SRD (if there is one).