Solomoriah wrote:Longman, to be honest, I don't want to see Combat Options changed at all. It is perfect, or as near as can be to perfect, in my opinion. It has the high degree of simplicity of application that I expect from Basic Fantasy supplements, and I use almost all of it in my game more or less "as is." I have no interest in anything more complex than the supplement as it now exists.
I do understand that others have differing views on the subject, though, and do not want to be (nor to appear to be) a petty tyrant.
Hey, it's cool. I don't think that of you, at all. But judging from the lack of response to this, no one else is particularly interested in seeing the Combat Options supplement changed either, and the project as I envisaged it is maybe moving too far away from the 'Basic' spirit of the game.
For the record, the changes I suggested were to improve the situation of fighters relative to other classes.
Existing classes like 'Ranger' and 'Paladin' and even 'Great Way Adept' have buffs which can be more powerful than current buffs for fighters in Combat Options. If such characters can
also employ 2 weapon fighting, it seems to me that things are weighted towards those classes, and the additional exp cost for those classes is insufficient to pay for the extra power.
The sticking points for me are:
- I think two-weapon combat should be for fighters only, and should cost a rank to obtain. It is pretty powerful.
- I think proficiency ranks should be obtained faster - or at least, there should be the option for that.
- I think the table for weapon specialization should miss the 3 attacks / 2 rounds phase. If someone wants to totally specialize in a weapon, they should end up with 2 attacks a round by 7th level, in the average game.
By 7th level, a Ranger is getting 3 attacks per 2 rounds with the bow anyway, the Paladin is a fairly powerful healer and can cure diseases, and the mage can turn people into toads!
Also, a lot of players of the game seem to imagine thieves to be tougher than the basic rules suggest, and are always looking for ways to buff them up - like two-weapon fighting. My solution is that they need to become
fighter-thieves to get access to that sort of fighting style. The ordinary specialized thief is not actually a combat wombat and shouldn't act like one, otherwise the fighter gets left behind, again.
That's been my experience with this game, and other versions of Dungeons and Dragons I have encountered: the ordinary melee fighter gets left behind. It happens when buffed up characters from supplements or splat-books are in a party with the fighter character from a basic rule-set. The other characters are always better.
But hey, if you have been running Combat Options and it has been working fine in balanced games for many years, then I can see why you would want to keep things the same.
In that case, it would be easily possible to make another 'Fighter Options' supplement that focused entirely on different uses for specialization slots and didn't change any current rules. Most of the raw material is already there, in mine and Clever Munkey's drafts.
I'm happy if someone does that, but it wasn't what I intended.