For our Rot of Hiri Handia game, I want to run a fight even if it’s not a bid deal situation. We are tying to create a traditional d&d game feel. I love Bloody Versus and would use that system most of the time, but I was thinking that the players would love to script a full on fight as well. In fact I know they would because they have Reflexes of 5 and pretty high Steel’s too. Sword Singer and a Knight.
Have any of you ever ran a Fight with some of the fiddly bits omitted?
Can you forgo POSITIONING and just give an advantage die to the for attacking pools to whoever has the longer weapon, or shorter in tight spaces?
Can you omit Armor Checks and just give an advantage dice to Block pools for character’s that have better armor?
I don’t see a problem with this off hand, but its been awhile.
You could crib the armor rules from Burning Empires instead and have Armor Rating directly increase the wearer’s PTGS, and skip the roll for damage reduction. BE uses a 1-4 armor scale instead of 1-6 like BW, so you’d have to compress things down for balance so that platemail doesn’t turn you into a roving tank.
To add on to what Luke said. Perhaps the biggest issue with making armor +1D to block is that any time someone is attacking into anything but a block the armor does nothing.
One of the nicer things about armor in Fight! is that it can save you when you script strike vs strike. Even though you did not block the blow, you might still be able to avoid injury.
My advice would honestly be to just skip armor entirely until the PCs take a hit and the players go “Wait what about my armor?” THEN bring it in, maybe even skipping armor failure until you’ve got a few more fights under you.
Positioning I can take or leave for a few sessions. It adds some cool feel to the fight over competing over footwork and trying to keep the guy with the knife at bay while he tries to slip inside, but mostly what you lose out on is making the hands distance moves (notably Lock) a bit more powerful in fights with weapons but that is probably fine.
One of the greatest advantages to armor in BW is that it lets you not have to be defensive. You have a separate layer of defense that lets you dedicate your actions to hacking away at your enemy.
Having armor augment defensive actions would be a bad change, in my opinion. You characters spent a butload of rps on armor, probably. Don’t make that purchase worthless.
Luke’s comment about same length weapons negating the need for positioning is spot on, of course.
As a player, I love Fight! If I’m doing a conflict every session, I am a happy man. Maybe you could run a practice Fight! with your player and see how they feel about the system.
Right, positioning and armor are both things that can be saved until players want to use a tactic that requires them.
Also, limit the action selection! Start with Avoid, Strike, Block, Counterstrike and maybe Great Strike if you’re feeling jiggy. Leave Feint, Beat and other more nuanced options on the side for now. Introduce them one by one as players express their intent: “Can’t I knock that guy’s sword down?” Or “His defense is too good, can I fake him out?”