Spellcasting tactics

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by badcat

Girls with wings? hmmmm... yum?

"Fly the friendly skies."

[Atgxtg]

Based on what I've seen in the posts, I think rift between Enpeze and myself over SB magic is more literary in nature.

Enpreze appears to be a fan of Howard and that style of fiction.

I'm not. Elric is/was an anti-Conan, so the flavor is different. I'm not a fan of Fritz ieber, either, and he is another popular S&S author. I'm more into authors like Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen and suspect my fantasy RPGing styles are slanted towards that direction.

[Kloster]

Hello,

Another nasty trick is Haste.
It increase the MOV of your adversary, but as long as he is engaged, he can't use his extra speed, but he loses 1 extra FP per round per intensity.

I recomend not using more than intensity 1 or 2, just in case he can disengage.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[badcat]

That is a very interesting insight. I tend to be eclectic in what I read, but very finicky too. There are pieces from all four named writers that I like, and some that I don't. All four were capable of producing stories that I enjoyed, but none of the four are sure things for me. It has been frustrating for my wife at times, as she would point something out because I had talked about the writer, only to have me say 'meh'. I guess there are things I look for outside the setting or general ambience like dialog, coherence, character development, etc (I am not really sure what does it for me; this is just speculation). Although setting is important too...but internal consistency is an absolute must.

So, I like the early Elric stories, but not the rest of the EC story arcs; I like the Dilvish the Damned stories, but not Amber; Empire of the East but not the Swords books; Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser but generally not Lieber's sci fi so much; etc.

Wierd, huh?

In any event, there is some commonality between Elric and Conan that attracts a lot of readers to both; perhaps it is the very fact that they are a yin/yang pairing of sorts.

One big key for all of is that I think we like to emulate the fiction we like in the stories we read, I certainly do. I have always correlated a liking for games like Stormbringer (and BRP in general) with writers like Howard, Wagner, or Shea more than Moorcock or Saberhagen or even Lieber. It's the feel of the stories. A certain darkness, not necessarily sure doom...it is a very fine distinction. When all is said and done, though, probably most everyone on this particular forum have at least similar tastes, don't you think?

[Atgxtg]

I don't this it is that weird at all.

Some of the examples you give of preferences coincide with various times in a author's career, and authors do change is style as tie goes by.

Personally I prefer the early Elric stories to the latter ones too. Moorcock in the 60s wrote differently than Moorcock in the 90s. Likewise I like Changling Earth/Empire of the East but didn't care much for the Swords books (the concept, however could be used to good effect for an RPG).

Early Elric was written to be a sort of anti-Conan, turn what were then the sterotypes of heroic fantasy around. Instead of being a barbarian who wins a throne, Elric is a ruler who loses his. Instead of a warrior who slays sorcerers, Elric IS a sorcerer. Instead of saving his beloved, Elric slays her. For Elric to work, you needed the Conan stuff to play off of.

So I don't think your tastes are that weird. For example, I love the first five (Corwin series) Amber books, but am not fond of the second five (Merlin series).

Then sometimes you can like an author but not like a particular story or idea.

So not that weird at all.

But I think it is our own tastes that we reflect when we GM, at least to some extent.

[badcat]

Yes. Another big factor for me (I thought of it right after that last post, naturally) is that I like stories where the protagonist(s) are not helpless pawns. Such as, there being demons in the Conan stories, but they are killable. I would like the Elric stories much better if he had a chance to divert his fate...this is a VERY important factor in both games and fiction for me. At the same time, the story/game needs to put the protagonist in real peril. BRP fulfills both these items better than anything else I know of.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

You told to put the haling 2 at the end of the round, after you took damage.

No, I had the _prep_ for it then, not the cast. Once it was prepped, far as I know you couldn't interrupt the prep, just the casting. That was done on the following round (usually because there was no choice; most people couldn't prep _and_ cast a spell after being hit in a round, because the attack would likely land too late. Once in a while you'd have a high Dex type who could pull it off, or it could get done because someone had hit early in the round. But in those cases, usually there was no opposition who could hit anyway, because they'd already done their thing for the round. The only way you'd see otherwise was if someone was doing A's thing of standing around ready to interrupt, and that was a luxury tactic).

What I'm telling is that if you wait for the end of the MR, somebody that declares his action after you (=that has a higher DEX) cal land his attack right in the middle of your preparation and disrupt it.

Ah, I see part of the issue; we never paid a lick of attention to declaration. People just did their thing when their strike rank came up. If they needed to change, they just started over from that point in the round.

But if you put the healing 2 at the start of the MR, I agree with you, almost no melee attack can disrupt it.

That was what I was refering to, yes.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

Trying to interupt the healing with a disruption does not preclude hitting him in melee. It is a complement.

Not unless you had two people who could do it, or one who was very fast. After all, you're talking 3 + Dex SR for the Disruption, plus the melee SR. I'm not going to say there weren't people who could pull that off, but I think it required a Dex SR of 1, a Size SR of 1 or 0, or both.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by badcat

Yes. Another big factor for me (I thought of it right after that last post, naturally) is that I like stories where the protagonist(s) are not helpless pawns. Such as, there being demons in the Conan stories, but they are killable. I would like the Elric stories much better if he had a chance to divert his fate...this is a VERY important factor in both games and fiction for me. At the same time, the story/game needs to put the protagonist in real peril. BRP fulfills both these items better than anything else I know of.

The irony here is that the reason why the Elric stories have the "weight of doom" on them is becase Moorcock orginally killed the character off early, and later stories were fit into the timeline after the ending was known. That the author was depressed at the time and had just gotten out of a bad relationship also played a factor in the Elric stories.

The Hawkmoon books are nearly so gloom, even though they are set in a post apocalyptic Europe being conquered by deranged Brits.

For me, free will is very important in an RPG, or at least the illusion of it. I chafe at adventures and GMs that Pull the players around by the nose. I consider it heavy handed, poor GMing.
A good GM can motivate the PCs so that they choose to do what he wanted. At least often enough to keep a campaign on track. A great will will have them thinking that it was their idea.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

We rarely would cast heal on ourselves while in melee. If some is badly injured he would usually pull back or seek help from others. Otherwise he either losses an attack or has a delayed Strike rank and could wind up back where he was before casting.

Pulling back was rarely practical, almost never if you were fighting opponents smart enough for this to be an issue; there was almost always too many of them for it to be doable. It was either Heal yourself or not. Again, keep in mind this was usually done with small Heals, so in practice it was very difficult to get it interrupted. The prep was done at the end of the prior round, and the cast first thing in a new round. That tended to mean that the prep took place after everyone's attack but any remaining archers (who usually had better things to do if there were any in play by the time this happened than focus on someone already in bad enough shape to be doing a healing), and the cast would take place before, again, anyone but archers.

Firing late is sort of a non-issue, thanks to bows going of at DEX SR.

Not if you were firing into melee and wanted to avoid hitting your own side; one of the options for avoiding that was going off at the end of the round.

Speedart and Multimissle both help with the low cancel thing, and also help to ensure that some damage will get through. Speedart was one of the nastiest

Speedart did; Multimissile made firing into melee _more_ of a problem. Even Speedart still left it dodgy, just less so.

Remember, I was talkinng about problems with this tactic when the healer was already in melee.

Nah, I requires a decent missile skill and Multimissle. A high DEX doesn't hurt.

Neither of these prevents you from getting clobbered by a melee attacker while doing it, or another archer, since you're unable to parry the latter, and can only parry the former poorly.

All it takes is multimissle and you have the foes outnumber and control of the battlefield. Unless you are up against some real heavy hitters, your new SMG

No you don't. You still have attackers that can close up an eviscerate you while you're doing it. You might get one set off, but if one set is good enough, you're already fighting downhill, since I watched high level opponents sneer at Multimissiles because they didn't do enough damage to penetrate their Armor plus magical protections.

will do the job. Toss in a few points of Mobility (another often ignored gem) and they can't get you.

That's what I mean by "control the battlefield"; if the area is halfway tight, the only way you can avoid them getting to you is to not have a line of fire.

One thing that helps is the declaration phase. If you know what the other guys are doing you can declare accordingly.

As noted, I actually have never seen anyone bother with declaration--including the author of the game. I'm not going to say whether its commonly done or not, because that I don't know, but I've never actually been in an RQ game where it was.

[quote]

Of course as with any other tactic, the situation makes a difference. One common tactic in RQ was to break the group up into three man teams with two warriors screening an archer.

[quote]

That works if you've got good enough people and no one on the other side is using longspears; otherwise they just reach right past the warriors and spike the archer.