Dueling

[Matijs van Zuijlen]

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 01:25:58PM -0400, Choinski, Burton wrote:
> The following are prototype dueling rules I have thrown together for any
> Dirllar stuff. Please feel free to go over them and comment on them
> (playtesters welcome, if you have sucke...err...players in the region :)

General comment: I think this is very nice.  It may be generalised to
other situations where there is no fight to the death or the
unconsciousness (other duelling weapons, or just needing to wound
someone (for, e.g., delivering poisons or pathogens)).

> ------------------------------------------
> [snip data on foil and parry skills]

Where does the parrying skill come in? When do you roll for it?

> DUELING PROCEDURE
> Dueling is similar to normal combat, except that due to nature of the nature
> of the blades and the stance of the duelists, parries are much more common.
>
> In any phase, each duelist rolls 1d10 and adds their AB and "IB" (figured
> off intelligence, just like Agility determines AB) - the attack order goes
> from highest to lowest.
>
> On his turn to attack, the aggressor makes his combat roll, subtracting foil
> skill and adding any defensive modifiers from the target.  In this case a
> miss is always a miss, and a shield hit is considered a parry.  In any case,
> the aggressor notes the type of hit.
>
> The defender now makes his own combat roll in defense (attacker may add in
> his defensive modifiers against this).  If the level of his "hit" is better
> than that of the attacker (i.e. he "scores" a severe hit when the attacker
> only managed a normal hit), then he has beaten back the attack or turned it
> aside, and no damage is done.  It is now the next combatant's turn.

This is the next combatant's turn in the same phase, right? So the
events described in the previous two paragraphs happen twice per phase,
in the order determined by the dice throws for that phase.

>  If the defender beats the aggressor's attack by two levels or more (i.e.
> the defender "scores" a severe hit when the aggressor got a shield hit), the
> defender gets an immediate counter-strike.  The defender keeps his level of
> hit and the former attacker must make his own defensive roll.  If the
> attacker can beat back the counter strike, the current aggressor's turn is
> done and initiative goes to the next person in the attack order.
> If The attacker beats the defender by 2 or more,

This is impossible: The aggressor has to start of with a shield hit, so
to counter-strike, the defender needs a severe hit. The aggressor can't
beat that by two levels (unless he's invisible and strikes a fatal :)).
So, the best he can do is beat back the counter-strike without any
damage done.

> he counter-strikes and the defender must try to beat that (and so on,
> until a hit actually lands or is blocked).

Luckily, this doesn't happen, so I won't have to worry about an infinite
number of events happening in the same 3 seconds. *sigh of relief* :).
(This was going to be my original question, until I realised it wouldn't
happen).

> Due to the nature of the blades, deadly hits max out at 2d10 damage - we are
> not talking brute strength here, we are talking finesse.
>
> At any time a duelist may "pull" his strike and shift down a hit type in
> damage (i.e. pulling a deadly blow to do only severe damage). Pulling a
> normal hit does 1d3 damage instead of 1d6.

This is a very interesting option, and could be used in other cases as
well, such as the famous (in our group at least) "breaking your magical
broadsword by striking a 4D10 deadly hit against a goblin" problem.

--
Matijs van Zuijlen