Milodiah
2014-08-02, 12:45 PM
Hello all,
I'm a veteran tabletop player, although it would surprise you to hear that (somehow) D&D has not been one of those tabletops until recently. I'm running my first campaign, and I've caught on to one of the factors that bothers me about the D&D (3.5, anyway) combat system. I don't know a thing about 4th or 5th, it may be fixed there, and I'm hoping someone here may have already done this or is aware of an obscure Unearthed Arcana rule, but...here's the situation:
A man with a spear is entering the threatened area of a man with a dagger, in order to make an attack. The man with the dagger, as per standard 3.5 rules, gets to make his attack of opportunity before the man with the spear is able to attack. But that guy has a dagger. And this guy has a spear.
Obviously, anyone who is at all familiar with hand-to-hand combat knows that the main benefit of a polearm is being able to keep people with shorter, smaller weapons at bay while you're still in attacking distance. There's simply no way the guy with the dagger could get in an attack without getting past the spearman's defense. Now, while I'm aware there's about half a dozen or so weapons that have 'reach', which addresses this issue, I hate how there's just the two categories of 'reach' and 'non-reach' in which a dagger and a halberd can end up closer to one another than a halberd to a pike. As a result, it feels like weapons just turn into damage and crit values instead of the myriad tactical factors an actual medieval combatant takes into consideration when selecting an armament.
My attempt to fix that is breaking down the non-reach weapons into categories, based on their length and size, as well as piercing vs. bludgeoning and slashing. I've got that list sorted (it also makes a handy tool for deciding how to penalize various weapons in confined spaces, by the way), but now I'm at a loss on how to adjust things mechanically. I'm considering making attacks of opportunity not an automatic option for people defending with smaller weapons than their attackers (they'd have to win a BAB+Dex roll-off or something with the weapons adding quite a bit), or making it to where the longer weapon gets the first attack regardless of whether it's the opportunity or the normal, but I was hoping someone here could come up with a better idea.
To further overcomplicate things, I'm trying to incorporate the concept of being able to get inside someone's defense, meaning that once the dagger wielder gets past the point of the spear, he would then have the advantage. Of course, that's hard to do when there's pretty much no official zone between "grappling" and "standing five feet away"...any help on that?
Thanks for reading, I know I ramble, but I really hope to get some feedback on how to pull this off!
This gentleman's video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-6x8H9yI6c) explains my point fairly well; reach, steps needed to enter, getting inside someone's guard, etc.
I'm a veteran tabletop player, although it would surprise you to hear that (somehow) D&D has not been one of those tabletops until recently. I'm running my first campaign, and I've caught on to one of the factors that bothers me about the D&D (3.5, anyway) combat system. I don't know a thing about 4th or 5th, it may be fixed there, and I'm hoping someone here may have already done this or is aware of an obscure Unearthed Arcana rule, but...here's the situation:
A man with a spear is entering the threatened area of a man with a dagger, in order to make an attack. The man with the dagger, as per standard 3.5 rules, gets to make his attack of opportunity before the man with the spear is able to attack. But that guy has a dagger. And this guy has a spear.
Obviously, anyone who is at all familiar with hand-to-hand combat knows that the main benefit of a polearm is being able to keep people with shorter, smaller weapons at bay while you're still in attacking distance. There's simply no way the guy with the dagger could get in an attack without getting past the spearman's defense. Now, while I'm aware there's about half a dozen or so weapons that have 'reach', which addresses this issue, I hate how there's just the two categories of 'reach' and 'non-reach' in which a dagger and a halberd can end up closer to one another than a halberd to a pike. As a result, it feels like weapons just turn into damage and crit values instead of the myriad tactical factors an actual medieval combatant takes into consideration when selecting an armament.
My attempt to fix that is breaking down the non-reach weapons into categories, based on their length and size, as well as piercing vs. bludgeoning and slashing. I've got that list sorted (it also makes a handy tool for deciding how to penalize various weapons in confined spaces, by the way), but now I'm at a loss on how to adjust things mechanically. I'm considering making attacks of opportunity not an automatic option for people defending with smaller weapons than their attackers (they'd have to win a BAB+Dex roll-off or something with the weapons adding quite a bit), or making it to where the longer weapon gets the first attack regardless of whether it's the opportunity or the normal, but I was hoping someone here could come up with a better idea.
To further overcomplicate things, I'm trying to incorporate the concept of being able to get inside someone's defense, meaning that once the dagger wielder gets past the point of the spear, he would then have the advantage. Of course, that's hard to do when there's pretty much no official zone between "grappling" and "standing five feet away"...any help on that?
Thanks for reading, I know I ramble, but I really hope to get some feedback on how to pull this off!
This gentleman's video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-6x8H9yI6c) explains my point fairly well; reach, steps needed to enter, getting inside someone's guard, etc.