Two Weapon Fighting / Traits

[TIE]

Hi,

I have some questions about the rules. Like you see in the topic it´s about how to fight with two weapons and the charakter traits.

The books arrive a few weeks ago and I got some free time to read over the last days.

At first a short question to the charakter traits.

Did I understand it right that you can only spend creation points on traits, not expirence points later in the game. I found no hint to improve traits after the charakter creation (for example train to build muscles).

If this is right I think I will allowed the player to spend xp on traits later in the game if they will, accordingly to the creation points (60 to go from -4 to -2, 30 to go from -2 to -1 and so on).

Second, the more complicate Question.

I am new to the Trudvang ruleset and the combat points mechanic. I am a long time D&D 1st edition / AD&D Player/GM and have some expirence with RPG´s.

At the moment I think I dont understand it right how two weapon fighting work. I understand the combat points you got from the skill, the disziplin and the speciality and you can spend them on both weaponhands.

I understand that you can performe 4/3/2 Weapon actions with the different weapon types if you wield on in the weapon hand

I understand that you got a -15 penalty for the off hand if you dont skill ambidexterity (and the previous points).

But what I didnt found what is the benefit of it.

Each attack cost you a certain number of combat points and to spread them over more weapons seems pointless if you can make all attacks with one weapon.

For example it´s seems useless to make 2 and 2 Attacks with two knifes or 4 with one. Also to spread the combat points over 4 Attacks seems very bad because the attacks weaken and the hitchance fades away.

A player need´s to spent so much points to be effective with two weapons...but for what!?

I hope you understand my problem and I dont miss the point.

[Kaeam]

Hello,

Lets say that your character has the following skills:

Agility lvl. 10
Body Control lvl. 5
Ambidexterity lvl. 5
Fighting lvl. 10
Armed Fighting lvl. 5
One-Handed Light Weapons (Right) lvl. 5
One-Handed Light Weapons (Left) lvl. 5

This means that the character is completely ambidextrous (no penalty to attacks made with the shield hand) and has...

10 CP available for Fighting
5 CP available for Armed Fighting
10 CP available for One-Handed Light Weapon attacks made with the right hand
10 CP available for One-Handed Light Weapon attacks made with the left hand

The character is armed with two knives and makes 4 attacks using...

Only the right hand: Knife (Right) SV 7, SV 6, SV 6, SV 6 (25 CP utilized)
Both hands: Knife (Right) SV 9, SV 9, Knife (Left) SV 9, SV 8 (35 CP utilized)

As we can see, using two weapons allows a skilled character to make the same amount of attacks with better skill values.

However, two-weapon fighting requires heavy investments as you have to purchase the one-handed weapon skills separately for each hand and maximize Body Control and Ambidexterity to negate the shield hand penalty.

I hope that my explanation helped!

[TIE]

Hey Kaearn,

many thanks for your explanation!! Thats help a lot.

Maybe the knive (or even all light one hand weapons) are a bad example because of the overall high attack rate.

With heavy one hand´s the skill becomes more effective.

I hope I understand it right.

With heavy one hand weapons you got 3 attacks. I think thats counts for each Weapon you wield? If thats right you can highten your attack# with that skill.

3 with right hand 1 with left hand, or two and two, or any other combination and got the same SV like with your knife example. I think spread the SV over more attacks makes no sense because of the vanishing SV.

Thats put the skill and the points you need to master it in a slightly better light.

[Kaeam]

Hello again,

I think that each weapon you wield has its own pool of Weapon Actions, so a character wielding two knives could make up to 8 attacks/parries each turn. However, you don't have to take the maximum amount of Weapon Actions available if you don't want to.

For example, the two-weapon fighting character from my earlier post could instead make just 2 accurate attacks using...

Only the right hand: Knife (Right) SV 13, SV 12 (25 CP utilized with 10 CP remaining for left-handed parries)
Both hands: Knife (Right) SV 18, Knife (Left) SV 17 (35 CP utilized)

The benefit of making lots of attacks is that you have more chances to hit and will also deal lots of damage if all those attacks hit.

In addition, making multiple attacks becomes much more viable when you are fighting larger opponents. For example, a human (size 1) fighting a jarnwurm (size 10) gets a +4 bonus for each attack

[TIE]

Hey Kaearn,

we think the same.

I read the rules like you. On the other side I am not a native english speaker and missintrepte some thing. But in all parts about weaponaction it reads "if you wield one weapon..." and so on. So I think yes, up to 8/6 attacks are possible.

And yes you are right against big enemys that can be very helpfull.

On the other hand it seems that two-handed-weapons are a little bit on the loose with "only" two attacks with the possibilitys above.

Mybe after some playtesting I will introduce some buffs for that type of weapons like

- ignores 2 points of armor (bcs. of heavyness)
- size modifiers -2/+2 SV´s against shorter weapons

but it´s far to early for that...just ideas

[Kaeam]

Hello TIE,

Did you notice that Two-Handed Weapons skill gives you an extra Weapon Action at levels 3 and 5? This means that a skilled character can make up to 4 two-handed weapon attacks each turn, which is pretty good as two-handed weapons have Open Roll 8-10 (30% chance to keep rolling extra damage).

[TIE]

No, I didn't notice it!

Thats sounds good!