Tales from the Rocket House
The basic combat system in Tarafore is pretty realistic given its level of abstraction. Its wound system, for example, is based on online medical data and online conversations with gamers who were also involved in, or knowledgeable about, the nature of physical trauma (one more “thank you” to rec.games.frp.advocacy). However, it is pretty abstract. Characters get one attack per turn. The +d10-d10 dice mean that things go from 1% to 0% (either you need a perfect +10/-1 roll or you can’t do it), with no room for the extremely unlikely things that tend to happen in emergency situations.
Additionally, melee combat is pretty simple: opposed rolls to hit, with no adjustments to hit for reach, weapon speed, etc. Characters can move into grappling range (by winning an opposed Prowess test), at which point they can use Strength(Wrestling) instead of Prowess(insert-weapon-specialty-here) for attack and defense rolls. A Basic Success moves the grappler into Grappling Range. A Special or Exceptional Success allows the grappler to roll a Strength(Wrestling) based attack, using whatever weapon he has at hand (or an unarmed attack, of course).
In MMA terms, this would be the “wrestling,” and “clinching” stage of things, with both attackers standing, but grappled and in tight quarters. From this position, either party could try to escape back to Melee range, keep hitting, or try to take the fight to the ground. Taking someone to the ground is a subject for another column, however.
To get out of grappling range, the grappled opponent must beat the grappler in an opposed Strength(Wrestling) test. Keep this grappling test in mind; it will be important later on.
Weapon Reach
This particular column is an attempt to add another level of detail to the combat system, making it slightly less abstract, and slightly more realistic. I’m no master martial artist, but I’ve done enough fencing, formal and informal (and enough study of HACA and historical fencing materials), to know that reach matters. A lot.
A personal example (which proves nothing, but was fun) involved a member of our gaming group. Some years ago, several of us would fight with shinai (bamboo practice swords) while wearing paintball masks (to protect our faces, duh). Ceili and I were the ones who won the most, and we were basically tied for first place. Ceili was faster and more inventive, with better timing than I had. I had the advantage of being a foot taller, and that reach advantage compensated for me being a big, clumsy dork (if I had been average height, I would probably have been the worst of the regular group. Tossing height out, Ceili was clearly the best, and Gloucester was probably the second best).
Now, personal experience messing around with bamboo “swords” is no basis for “realism” – or much anything else but in-jokes and Gatorade consumption. But every work I read made the same argument: reach matters. Other things matter more, but reach matters. Bruce Lee (yes, that Bruce Lee), Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings (the reason for using a short sword and a long sword is to have one weapon that is good at long range, and one that is good at shorter ranges), John Clements (author of Medieval Swordsmanship and Renaissance Swordsmanship and HACA advisor), and even fights in the UFC (watch enough of them and you’ll see some fights in which one participant has a big reach advantage, and it usually makes serious difference in the stand-up. At the very least, the shorter fighter has to plan a strategy to address the reach advantage. Tim Sylvia didn’t get to be UFC Heavyweight Champion by being the fastest, or even the strongest, but by having an 80” reach and knowing how to use it).
Now, I’m not the first person to consider weapon reach. I remember seeing the concept for the first time in Shadowrun (I had the first three editions). In that system, the character with the longer reach gets a -1 bonus, while her opponent gets a +1 penalty (in Shadowrun, the attack/defense roll is one roll, with the winner hitting the loser, regardless of whose turn it is – at least, in those earlier editions it was). Shadowrun used exploding d6’s, and if you get your target number down to 2, 5 out of every 6 dice will score successes. If you get your opponent’s target number up to 6, only 1 out of every 6 dice will score a success. Long story short, a reach advantage of 2 makes the fight a foregone conclusion, pretty much regardless of relative skill. It’s not that hard for a PC to get a reach of 2, and incredibly easy for a troll character. I thought it was a good idea, but when reach becomes the most important thing in a fight, I think it’s gone too far. Also, I didn’t see any way of reversing it, getting in so close that long weapons are a disadvantage.
So, that said, I decided to create weapon reach rules for the Tarafore System. They work very well with the scale of Traits used (10 is average, and every 3 points is a standard deviation or serious step up). Each weapon has a reach rating, from 0 (unarmed) to 6 (spear/pole weapons). In standard melee, each character’s weapon’s reach is added to the attack and defense. If the character uses two weapons, the player can choose which to apply on defense. On attack, the character will be attacking with one of the two, and the attacking weapon’s reach will apply. Note that a character who has only one weapon is always assumed to have a second weapon – a fist – unless the primary weapon requires two hands to wield or the character is missing an arm.
This system could also work pretty well for extremely cramped quarters like inside a cave. You could rule that it’s so tight that the only way to use a long weapon is to stab straight ahead. This would allow stabbing weapons like spears and rapiers to work normally, but for other weapons, you could simply treat everyone like they’re already in grappling range.
Examples of Weapon Reach
This is not a complete list, clearly
- Fist 0
- Knife 1
- Short Sword/Large Dagger 2
- Arming Sword 3
- Long/War/Bastard Sword 4
- Great Sword 5
- Halberd 6
Examples, Please
Bubba McCoy and Joe-Bob Smith are at an Elvis impersonators convention, getting drunk at a local bar, and arguing about which of the two makes the better Elvis, Bubba, who dresses as the 1970’s jumpsuit-wearing Elvis, or Joe-Bob, who dresses as the early 1960’s, clean-cut Elvis.
Things are getting heated, and are about to come to blows when Joe-Bob, who’s about half Bubba’s size, grabs a pool cue as a weapon. The GM decides this will be Stun +2, Wound -4 (nastier than a punch, but only by +2), with a Reach of 4. Bubba’s just got his two hamlike fists.
If Bubba takes a swing at Joe-Bob, he’ll get +0 for his weapon (fists have a reach of 0) and +1 for his size (because Bubba is huge). Joe-Bob will get +4, for the pool cue. The same bonuses apply to when Joe-Bob attacks Bubba.
Joe-Bob wins the initiative roll and takes a swing at Bubba with the pool cue. Jim-Bob has a Prowess(Stick Weapons) of 11, and he’ll have +4 from the pool cue, for a total of 15. Bubba has a Prowess(Unarmed) of 14. Jim-Bob rolls +1d10-1d10 (+6/-3) and adds it to his Prowess(Stick Weapons) 11 and his +4 reach advantage, for a total of 11+4 +5 - 3= 17, a hit. If not for the reach advantage, it would have been a 13 total, a miss.
However, let’s say Bubba doesn’t like the idea of being on the wrong end of a long weapon, even an improvised one, and decides to tackle Joe-Bob. The “to-hit” roll would work just like any other attack, using Prowess with the same bonuses, but if it was successful, Bubba would have moved into grappling range. On his next opportunity to attack, he could attack with Strength(Wrestling), and the Reach bonuses would become penalties (Bubba’s +1 would be -1, and Jim-Bob’s +4 would be -4). Bubba’s stronger than Jim-Bob, thanks to a healthy diet of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and that will help the big man, too.
Once Bubba grabs him, Jim-Bob could keep fighting with the stick at a penalty to hit, or toss it aside. Bubba can’t get rid of his Reach of 1, since it’s inherent, but his greater Strength will probably more than compensate for it.
Final Thoughts
This is a pretty simple system, and I’m probably not the first one to do it this way, but I think it works pretty well to bring an under-utilized aspect of hand-to-hand combat into the Tarafore System. What I particularly like about it is that it gives those with longer reach an advantage, but allows those with shorter reach to “get inside” and take the advantage for themselves, rather than simply saying “longer reach = better.” Now, granted, it doesn’t have multiple range bands so that a man with a sword could slip past a spear’s tip and get into optimal longsword range, but it works, and it doesn’t add much complexity at all to the system. I think I’ll keep it.
