Longbow versus Swordsman: Against the Darkmaster

Different games have different degrees of fidelity when it comes to dealing with the handling of weapons and their individual characteristics. 

I’m going to step through the same encounter in several systems: 1 starting level character with a longbow, versus another starting level character wearing chain armor, wielding a shield and sword starting about 100 yards out.

This is basically a football field, so the swordsman has no choice but to hoof it towards the bowman with no cover aside from the shield. (wear it matters, he will also have an open faced helmet.)

Against the Darkmaster

Against the Darkmaster is a modernized iteration of MERP with quite a bit of streamlining and those legendary crit charts of yore…

Bob the Bowman is based on the ‘Gandrell Windblade’ pregen at the back of the core book who is a dusk elf with a longbow.

Steve the Swordsman will be based on 'Athelstane the Black', replacing his armor with chainmail and granting him a shield and longsword.

We will also treat Steve as an NPC with regards to spending metacurrency.

This system uses a phased system versus individual initiative. Declarations occur,then move, then magic, then readied ranged weapons, then melee, then ranged weapons that weren’t yet readied, finally spells that were not yet readied before it repeats.

If order is important it is resolved by skill, or in the case of weapons, reach.

Round 1. At 100 yards.

Bob declares that he is going to loose an arrow at Steve, and Steve declares that he is going to run towards Bob and devote all of his parry to using his kite shield.

Movement phase happens and Steve is running 30 ‘yards’ (meters, sue me). This puts him at 70 yards out when Bob shoots, rolling a 65 + 80 for his skill, minus Steve’s swiftness of 15, minus Steve’s shield bonus of 25 minus his Parry of 65(!)... Landing only a 40 and the arrow is deflected harmlessly.

While the Longbow has load time, Bob can reload as an action, so he can fire in the second Range combat segment each round going forward. 

Round 2. At 40 yards.

Steve repeats himself and is now at 40 yards. Bob gets a 96 on his roll which explodes, and rolls and adds another 90. 180 + 80 for skill minus Steve’s total defense is 155..

Ouch.

155 on the Missile table vs Medium armor yields 26 points of damage and a Lethal critical on the Pierce table.

Bob rolls 61 and adds 50 for the Lethal hit which is 111… This is one where if he is wearing rigid armor it would help. Chainmail isn’t rigid, so his lung is pierced, +15 damage, stunned and -50 activity… He will die in 6 hours.

Thoughts:

If it were not for some phenomenal luck, Steve may have gotten close enough to Bob, but the shield bought him the opportunity.

If Steve did NOT have that shield, he would have been unable to parry at all, and would not have enjoyed the shield’s protection bonuses… He would have applied a penalty of 15 to Steve’s rolls versus 105. 

Without a shield, that first deflection would have instead been 22 points of damage and a grievous critical injury.

If Steve were wearing the breastplate, that last hit would have still been a critical, but he would take 10 points less right off the top, and the same critical would have done less damage, caused bleeding instead and not killed him in 6 hours.

Next Savage Worlds...