Randombias
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Posts: 8
Joined: Thu 01 Jul 2021, 10:53

Alpha Rules: Brawling vs. Lack of Proficiency

Thu 01 Jul 2021, 11:21

Looking at the combat rules about Combat Proficiencies, I see that the penalty for using a weapon that you're not profient with seems much higher than the penalty for using an improvised weapon (aka "Brawling"). I wonder if this is intentional, because as written, the rules seem to suggest that in situations where the weapon-of-choice isn't available, characters are incentivised to fall back to random household items rather than use offbrand weaponry. I don't have a solution at hand, but to me it seems at least counter-intuitive that these penalities are so unevenly matched. And while this would certainly explain Sam's success with his frying pan, I find it very hard to imagine Gimli tossing a shortsword aside because he'd rather be using a dagger.
Page 65: Rolls made using Combat Proficiencies are resolved as Skill rolls, rolling one Feat Die and a number of Success Dice equal to the rank possessed in the Combat Proficiency used. If you try to use a weapon you don’t possess a rating for (rank 0), you roll only a Feat Die.
Page 67: Player-heroes performing an attack while unarmed, or using a dagger, cudgel, or an improvised weapon, roll a number of dice equal to their highest Combat Proficiency, but suffer a disadvantage: they lose (1d).
On a side note, and running the risk of overly complicating what aims to be an elegant combat system, I also find it a bit strange that being a good archer seems to help a lot with smashing things using a cudgel or a dagger. I can see that being a case for proficiency in axes and stuff, but if we're being realistic, there's probably very little synergy between the skillset needed to shoot orcs with a longbow and the ability to bludgeon them to death with your bare hands.

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