General Chat

Bringing the OOC discussion out of the narrative thread. Ella was not in favor of starting hostilities, and she certainly doesn’t want to kill these fellows. She assumes the operation is larger than a dozen halflings, so she doesn’t actually think we can just beat them on their turf. Then again we seem to have surprised them, and maybe this disorganizes their defenses and gives us a chance to disrupt the racket. Thing is, if we don’t hold the battlefield at the end, we’ve just forfeited the only ‘safe’ entrance we know of: the survivors will certainly hold these tunnels against us going forward.

I don’t think racketeers can allow a group of ‘clients’ to challenge their control of the territory and go unpunished. It would be an invitation for every passing party to just try their luck against these monsters. So even if we make a show of force, I’m not sure they would ever agree to allow us free passage, and even if they did, we could never trust them to uphold the bargain.

Then again, I was wrong in the matter of resisting the Darlings or not, and might be
Making the wrong risk assessment here too…

We have the upper hand right now, so I am thinking we can negotiate with the halflings Ella put to sleep after waking them up. Certainly I don't think we should massacre these guys in cold blood. Some measure of leniency may mean that they don't declare bloody vengeance against the party. Not robbing them blind might help too - we just want to be left alone. Best case right now would be for them to pretend we don't exist, in the future.

My idea is that we tie up and disarm them, then have a chat for info and maybe scare them a bit. It'd be good to know why they were so confident for one. Then we can leave them there to stew.

I agree!

@Burbage I'm happy to play RAW, but would like to bring up a point of feedback.

Could we streamline certain rolls during combat so that each round takes less time to resolve? Namely, I am thinking of initiative and declared actions. The GM could roll 1d6 for both sides, so there's no back and forth required for the first. For the latter, we could incorporate rolls into declared actions so that the resolution happens immediately, rather than having separate steps of declaration-roll-resolution.

What does everybody think?

Fine with me.

Thanks for the feedback, always appreciated.

Happy to make all initiative rolls if everyone is OK with that.

Also happy to be more flexible about declarations, with the exception of spells. Any spells must be declared before initiative is rolled.

I would also suggest that I roll for random targets when there is uncertainty over who has been hit in a multiple-opponent melee.

Another thing that would speed up combat from the players' side would be if you could narrate the outcome of your rolls, not just the rolls themselves. I will generally share the armour class of your opponents, so you will know whether you have hit or not and how much damage you have inflicted.

Any other suggestions from anyone? Or, if anyone has a contrary opinion, please speak up!

I’m okay with all these ideas. I do find the constraining nature of declaring actions beforehand to be productive, but I agree that it slows down action in PbP.

I'm good with those suggestions as well, that would certainly speed up combat when we're waiting on 1 or 2 to post, usually me ;)

Also...what's the rules for non-lethal combat, if any? I think Thrud would rather try and subdue Roskelly rather than outright kill him if possible. We could use him as a bargaining chip if he has reinforcements. I think our goal is to procure safe unharrassed passage rather than just killing them all.

Great idea!

I found the text under Damage & Death:

SUBDUAL DAMAGE

A weapon may be used to beat down, rather than kill, an opponent. When the player desires, damage inflicted can be composed of half "real" damage and half "subdual" damage that does not kill. Such subdual damage is recovered at a rate of 1 hp per hour.

Not all monsters may be subdued. Generally only humanoids and special creatures such as dragons will be subject to such attacks. Some creatures may voluntarily agree to accept defeat from subdual damage (this is common in knightly tourneys) but in this case, subdual must normally be agreed with the foe in advance.

The OSRIC 3.0 Player Guide is now available on DriveThruRPG (the pdf is free to download). I've only had a quick look through, but it tidies up a couple of things that we struggled with early on (including weapon specialisation), and also brings certain areas closer to 1st edition AD&D (XP thresholds, Monk character class). It will probably become our default reference, so please download a copy.

The cover's pretty, though I will miss the skeleton's jazz hands.

Done, boss.

Something particular in OSRIC 3.0 to take note of, since it came up in our earlier combat with Roskelly and company...

The other thing I noticed, which might be an OSRIC 3.0 clarification or something I simply hadn't appreciated before, is the difference between Rate of Fire (for missile weapons) and Attack Rate (for melee weapons), particularly with regard to weapon specialisation (page 69).

"RoF" means "rate of fire." Specialising in a missile weapon does not increase your attack rate, but it does increase the number of shots you can take during your combat segment when attacking with the specialised weapon.

The difference between "RoF" and "attack rate" is that RoF may give you extra attacks in your normal initiative segment (the initiative die roll, possibly modified by a Dex modifier). A better attack rate changes the initiative segment in which you attack (usually segments 1 and 10).

I'm having some trouble parsing that, actually.

Does this limit fighters that specialize in melee weapons to 1 attack per round?

If you have 3/2 attack rate, does that mean you attack first before an enemy in the same segment?

EDIT: Nevermind, I think I got it after going over the fighter classes again.

In round 1, a melee specialist can make 2 attacks, one each in segments 1 and 10. A missile specialist can make 2 attacks in their initiative segment.

In round 2, a melee specialist can make 1 attack in their initiative segment. A missile specialist can make 2 attacks in their initiative segment.

You've got it!