Tags: Hand, Close, Reach, Near, Far
How often do you focus on these in your game? What are their impact?
Do brass knuckles go toe-to-toe with longswords in Hack & Slash, or do you require clever combat maneuvers?
PC charges with dagger [Hand] and enemy has spear [Reach]? What about when the enemy charges with the dagger, and the PC has the spear?
I have my own opinions on this, but I’m curious what the community thinks! If someone can point me to a relevant blog, forum or G+ post, I would appreciate that too.
There was a nice talk about handling distances recently (http://goo.gl/8T2gdd). I don’t know if it is exactly what you are looking for but check out my very first response in the comment section of that post. It gives an example of how I handle ranges in my game. The general rule of thumb is, handle it in the fiction and allow whatever makes sense in the fiction on a per situation basis.
My rule of thumb is that closing with someone wielding a longer-reach melee weapon is Defy Danger. Fending off an attacker who uses a shorter-reach melee weapon is easy; until you roll a 6- and they’re inside your guard slashing and stabbing. 🙂
Every time it comes up, it gets focused on. You can’t fight a sword with brass knuckles, but you can get inside their guard so the sword is useless (Defy Danger to do so). Same with a spear. Always focus on the ranges, since they’re important to the fiction of the game and the basic bread and butter of the game’s combat.
If the enemy has a knife and and you have a spear, it means they won’t charge unless they have to; it means hack and slash can’t be triggered so its either dealing damage or defying danger. It means PCs have the advantage! So the enemies will adjust strategy to cope!
The tags almost never come up when I’m GMing. I think my players just take it from the fiction that trying to stab a spearman with a dagger is best done from behind, or they’ll just throw it. If they go for it I will make them Defy Danger. Hand vs Close and Near vs Far are basically ignored by me though, I guess it’s not important enough for me to remember.
From the enemy’s side, they just do their damage whenever someone rolls H&S 7-9 or sometimes on any move’s miss, without regard to weapon type. I’ve never had a player bring up the tags, as it always seems plausible in the fiction that a shorter weapon or fist might get to them when they mess up.
So in the specific case of an enemy with an obviously longer weapon, they have to Defy Danger. Otherwise, neither me nor any player I’ve played with has brought it up that I can remember. shrug I’d be interested to know how you use them!
Always, but only in comparison to each other.
Yeah, like Adam says, its the comparison that counts. Unlike Aaron, I hardly ever inflict the monster’s damage when they get an attack, I LOVE making the moves the monster has, which often involve throwing/pushing the characters to Near or Far, smashing/grappling the characters to Close or Hand.
I like thinking of ‘option reduction’ in making moves on the players… If they have multiple weapons that work in most ranges, take away their stuff and offer a situation that involves at the range where they have no recourse – it focuses their choices, or in most cases encourages creative ways to overcome obstacles.
Adam Koebel I’d like to hear your opinion of area of effect ranges. Would you use the same tags and how would you play it? The “fire ball” blast range says “near by”. Does that imply the near range? I do not have a problem with its vagueness, the problem is just that if you want explosions of different strengths one may need to be more specific. Thanks!