Multiple Attacks

[Wbweather]

How about simplifying it so that if you kill an opponent with a blow, any excess damage can be applied to another enemy you are engaged with. So if your Snaga Tracker has 4 endurance at you hit him with 15, apply the extra 11 damage to a second opponent. Is that too simplistic?

[Glorelendil]

How about simplifying it so that if you kill an opponent with a blow, any excess damage can be applied to another enemy you are engaged with. So if your Snaga Tracker has 4 endurance at you hit him with 15, apply the extra 11 damage to a second opponent. Is that too simplistic?

Too frequent, in my opinion. I was trying to design it such that it really only works against weak opponents, and rarely.

I could maybe see, "If you hit an enemy with more damage than its maximum endurance, any amount over that may be applied to another target with whom you are engaged." So in your example you could apply 3 damage to another target. But that "feels" to me like a cleave...hitting two targets with one swing...which I find too cinematic. I was thinking more along the lines of making a second attack. Plus doesn't everybody like making attack rolls?

[Glorelendil]

By the way, I still like the general "when you slay an enemy" approach, but one nice feature of the "exceed TN by X" model is that you don't need stance requirements or modifiers; you get a bias toward Forward Stance for free.

[Wbweather]

Okay, it's late and I'm not thinking this through thoroughly, but what if you used the excess damage in a similar fashion to a protection roll on a piercing blow. So if you killed your first opponent with an excess of 8 damage, the LM rolls a feat die with a target of 8 for the second adversary. On a failure, you would be allowed to attack that foe in the same combat round.

[Angelalex242]

Well, recall there's a model for this already in Spear of the Last Alliance.

And the high elf has to roll a great success AND Hope Burn to pull it off...

So whatever other races do should probably be less effective then what the high elf has to spend a reward on. And hope.

[Glorelendil]

Well, recall there's a model for this already in Spear of the Last Alliance.

And the high elf has to roll a great success AND Hope Burn to pull it off...

So whatever other races do should probably be less effective then what the high elf has to spend a reward on. And hope.

Yeah, fair point.

Bleh.

[Rich H]

So whatever other races do should probably be less effective then what the high elf has to spend a reward on. And hope.

For me, that's the absolute priority for allowing any kind of multiple attacks for other characters. Everything else in the design comes a distant second.

I've played around with this a little and came up with the following for my campaign:

MULTIPLE ATTACKS (MELEE)
This allows a player-hero to attack multiple opponents that they may find themselves engaged with.

A character must be in the Forward Stance to employ multiple attacks and must spend one point of Hope.

Resolve such attacks in the following way:

• Determine which enemies your character wishes to attack and split your character's success dice between the attackers as you see fit - each opponent you wish to attack must have at least one of your character's success dice assigned to them and you cannot attack more opponents than your Valour score

• Now roll to attack each of the identified opponents and resolve the results as per the standard rules

• All attacks must succeed or else none will cause any damage

If I recall, it's been used twice so far. Not sure whether that means it's of use, balanced, or something else but would seem to be an option that is only 'exploited' under specific circumstances due to the risks to success.

[Glorelendil]

Thinking more about this, what I'd probably do* is also change the High Elf reward. I've never liked that reward, and would never take it. Mostly I don't like the Hope cost: spending Hope should guarantee an outcome, in my mind. Maybe if the spear were reworded such that the Hope is refunded if you miss the extra attack.

So what I'd have is:
- My extra attack rule (some variant of "when you completely wtfpwn a mook, whack another one but roll fewer dice")
- Change the spear to: "When you get an extra attack, don't reduce your dice. Only usable once per turn."

*That is, if I ever used House Rules. This is all just an intellectual exercise in game design for me anyway.

[Rich H]

Thinking more about this, what I'd probably do* is also change the High Elf reward. I've never liked that reward, and would never take it. Mostly I don't like the Hope cost: spending Hope should guarantee an outcome, in my mind. Maybe if the spear were reworded such that the Hope is refunded if you miss the extra attack.

I think we've chatted about this before... I'm fine with Hope usage to activate things like Virtues or special options that are born out of a character's innate ability/capability but I'm... not a fan... of Hope being used to power the effects of items. This and a couple of the rewards within the main rulebook are set up this way and I've largely revised/changed them for my game where the players have such characters.

With this in mind, how would you change the spear?

[Glorelendil]

Thinking more about this, what I'd probably do* is also change the High Elf reward. I've never liked that reward, and would never take it. Mostly I don't like the Hope cost: spending Hope should guarantee an outcome, in my mind. Maybe if the spear were reworded such that the Hope is refunded if you miss the extra attack.

I think we've chatted about this before... I'm fine with Hope usage to activate things like Virtues or special options that are born out of a character's innate ability/capability but I'm... not a fan... of Hope being used to power the effects of items. This and a couple of the rewards within the main rulebook are set up this way and I've largely revised/changed them for my game where the players have such characters.

With this in mind, how would you change the spear?

I'm also ok with Hope powering abilities (maybe even items) but it shouldn't then require a roll with a good chance of failing. So as I suggest above, refunding the Hope on a miss would work (although it's inelegant). Or tying it to and improving another house rule on multiple-attacks.

Or how about just giving the second attack a free attribute bonus, since you already spent Hope? It would be equal to a lot less than a regular attribute bonus, since you might hit without it, and you also might still miss with it, but it significantly improves the chances of hitting. Yes, it can still fail, but odds are much lower.

Any more ideas?