Mythras Weapon Reach and engagement distances

[natty bodak]

This is for those of you who are more than just armchair Mythrasites, to what degree do you use weapon reach and engagement distances with your close combat?

 

[AsenRG]

My houserule is that when they come up, you need a Special Effect to close or to break the distance.
In practice, people tend to run from fights where their weapon is clearly inferior, so it seldom matters.

 

[Raleel]

I tend to use reach as a feature of combat, almost like an environmental effect. If I want reach to matter, I put in folks who have longer or shorter weapons. Most recent campaign we didn’t have piles of longer or shorter weapinsk so it became more of a thing where I tuned the opposition based on weapon length. Last game had a lot of ranged (firearms) however.

So, yea, it gets used regularly at my table.

 

[natty bodak]

Thanks. None of us who played were very conversant with RQ6/Mythras, but had plenty of general BRP background.

Because of the weapons on the pre-gens we were playing (one had a 2-h spear with a VL reach, and one with a spear (L) and shield) I thought it would come up more than it did, as it turned out most of the savages on the island were wielding spears. It helped keeping monitors as bay though.

The way we did it, and we were flying by the seat of our pants with the book open to the reach pages, if the shorter weapon wanted to get in to range it was an evade check against either the evade skill or combat style of the (in this case) spearman (spearman's choice). In the first case, if the evade got more successes then range was closed. In the latter (which we decided, perhaps wrongly, didn't cost an AP), if spearman hits then he gets to apply damage and any special effects, but the shortsword guy gets in.

Not sure we got it exactly right, but felt like it played out OK.

 

[Raleel]

nod, costs an AP to defend against the move in, whether a stab or a keep at bay. only really matters if there are 2 reach increments difference anyways.

 

[natty bodak]

nod, costs an AP to defend against the move in, whether a stab or a keep at bay. only really matters if there are 2 reach increments difference anyways.

Gracias! I enjoy having weapon reach matter in a game, but not having it intrude to much. This seemed about right.

Mulling over the session I have a few other questions that came up in play. I guess I might as well ask while I've got conch shell.

When fighting with a weapon and shield is it generally the case that someone will use a free action to passively block several hit locations with their shield and use their weapon to parry? At first blush that seems like the thing to do, unless you happen to be greatly outmatched in weapon size and need extra oomph of the shield.

 

[Raleel]

On mobile and no book in front of me, but yes, against equal or smaller weapons compared to your main weapon. You declare the passive block with the shield before the roll and the next declare active defense with the main weapon. That way if you miss you essentially force them to choose location to bypass your shield, which happens before location is rolled.

You probably are experiencing this, but shield and spear is quite strong in mythras.