RAMBO! or, First Blood part 2

In an attempt to cull out decisions from the 20 posts currently on the Fist Blood issue, we have the following

 

First, and easiest, is that since ladegardis willing to take the hit to his PC's abilities, the new rule is that in a formal 'duel' setting people can't be caught flat footed. They also get a chance to determine their stance (normal, fighting defensively or fully defensive) and set their Expertise modifiers before the fight starts. This will help out AC in the beginning of the fight, but it will force Rogues to make feints to get their sneak attack in.

 

That still doesn't resolve the issue of what should constitute First Blood, initiative, hit points, or having no tension due to high HP. The options are

 

1) First Blood is first HP loss, change nothing else. Advantages: Simple (one word, but it's an important thing!). Disadvantages: the dodging/parrying aspect of HP is ignored; Duels to First Blood will be decided by initiative roll more than half the time, worse as game proceeds. Other duels will get long as HP increase.

 

2) First Blood is shed after 1/3rd of HP lost. Advantages: doesn't change any rules, just the visual interpretation of HP; the dodging/parrying aspect of HP accounted for in duels. Disadvantages: not as empirically simple as first HP loss. After a few levels first blood dues are still not a potentially lethal situation.

 

3) Change HP rules to reduce HP (as used in a variety of d20 products). Advantages: keeps duels, even to first blood, feeling dangerous as the game progresses. Disadvantages: requires a sizable amount of work by the GM to handle HP for monsters and other things; Armor class becomes much more important and would need to be boosted. Damaging bumping special abilities (sneak attack) and spells that go up based on level would either need to be down-powered or they'll be really powerful.

 

Then there's the issue of AC, which matters most if we take options 1 or 3.

 

Right now the PCs have 'man about town' dueling ACs of 12 to 15, which is common among their peers. (The highest a duelist can get without magic or illegal armor is 21). This doesn't count Expertise or Fighting Defensively, both of which boost your AC by dropping your attack chance, and only Expertise is a 'fair deal' and it's the only defensive option that increased AC with level.

 

The PCs have attack bonuses of +2 to +3, which means that with each attack their chance to hit is somewhere between 35 to 50%. That's pretty high if we're looking for a lot of back and forth passes when it doesn't take many hits to end the fight. As they go up levels their chance to hit goes up while their AC doesn't, so if we're going to reduce HP but not AC then fights will be over almost immediately at higher levels. If we don't have HP involved in the visuals of defense then First Blood fights will be much the same.

 

Any options for boosting AC? Have it be a class ability as it is in Nyambe: African Adventures? Have the skills that boost AC (balance, perform, tumble) give more of a bonus as the PCs skill goes up? Don't change it but have HP above X amount count as parrying for visuals?

Emirikol, Part II, scene 3

( I'd like to corner the dart concession in this area... )

To be continued.