Called Shots

[Earendil]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to TOR (though a fairly experienced GM in other games). I''ll be starting running my first game tonight, so this may be my inexperience talking, but I'm not really happy about how limited called shots are. I don't want to change the rules per se, just to add more options.

I don't like the idea that you can't do a piercing blow with a sword, or disarm with an axe. So I had an idea to kake them more flexible: rather than having just one option per weapon, I might allow heroes in close combat to use the called shot effect of another weapon, by adding +2 to the TN. (Obviously they'd have to declare this before rolling.)

What do you think?

[Rocmistro]

Not a great idea. At least not with a universal application.

Consider a hero armed with Great Axe who can change his called shots from "Break Shield" to "Piercing Blow". Once he gets to weapon skill 4+, and espeically if he starts adding bonus dice from Battle, he's pretty much going to be killing anything he wants with an Injury TN of 20 (or higher if he adds the +2 injury quality).

You'll run into problems.

[Glorelendil]

Rocmistro is correct. It would make Greataxe by far the most powerful weapon in the game against everything but Nazgul.

[Deadmanwalking]

Yup. What they said.

Making Disarm or Break Shield more universal is potentially viable (though it screws those weapons over if spears can do them and do Piercing Blows), but Piercing Blow is restricted to weapons with a base Injury of 16 at most at the moment, and there's a reason for that. Screwing with it is a huge game changer and makes axes way better (much better than any weapon is currently) and spears way worse.

If doing something like this, I might be inclined to keep Spears and Bows limited to Piercing Blows, but allow all other weapons to either Disarm or Break Shield. Those don't get used as much, so the power balance wouldn't change too much, and there's even some realism...breaking a shield or disarming someone with a spear is way less likely than with a sword or axe.

[Earendil]

OK, looks like it's a bad idea. Thanks, folks.

I'll leave it alone then, at least until I'm much more familiar with the system and can come up with a less game-breaking solution! (Maybe something like what Deadmanwalking proposes.)

[Rocmistro]

To be sure, Earendil, the biggest problem one is allowing Called Shot for piercing blows (with any weapon). I don't forsee a probelm with letting axes disarm people or swords break shields.