Longbow Versus Swordsman: Forbidden Lands

 

 

Forbidden Lands is a gritty sword and sorcery game focused on exploration and survival that uses a variation of the Mutant Year Zero System.

 It is a d6 pool system where sixes count as a success. Skills, attributes, gear and artifact dice can contribute to this pool. If you don't get a success, you can push and reroll everything that didn't show a 1. Any Attribute or Gear dice that do show a 1 after this reroll will cause temporary attribute damage as you strain yourself (this is how you get Willpower points as well) or in the case of Gear, degrade it.

Each player has a  Slow action and a Fast action. You may trade your Slow action for a Fast action, but now vice versa.

Movement and positioning is in 'zones', with everyone in your zone being Near, those in adjoining Zones are at Short , those in a zone beyond are Long, and typically most melee combat will occur at Arm's Length.

Our combatants:

 Round 1: Both combatants start at Distant

Steve wins the draw and Runs twice towards Bob, he is now in Short range.

Bob doesn't need to spend a Fast action to load his Bow due to a Talent. He instead spends it to Aim which grants a +1 to his attack and offsets the -1 range penalty.

Given he may literally only get one shot, he pushes his roll, which unfortunately damages his bow. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve is looking at 3 damage (base of 1 plus 1 for each success), but he can Parry with his shield, and if that fails he has armor.

His parry would offset 2 successes, and he chooses to trust in his armor as opposed to taking damage from Pushing.

 His chainmail easily catches the rest of the velocity of the arrow that pierced his shield.

Round 2: Combatants are at Short range.

Steve Runs once to get into Near Range, and he uses the Melee Charge Talent that let's him run into Arm's Reach AND Stab, Slash, Punch or Shove.

Bob doesn't have a shield, so can only Dodge. Knowing this, Steve chooses to Stab (as Slash is easier to Dodge.)

 Steve pushes his roll wanting to end this, and strains himself, dropping his Might to 4, but getting a point of Willpower which can be used to fuel some Talents.

Bob tries to Dodge, which will put him on the ground if he succeeds, unless he takes a penalty to remain standing.

Sadly, even Pushing he only manages to injure himself, while still taking 4 damage, which puts him at 0 Strength.

Critical time.

Since Steve Stabbed, this is on the Stab Wounds chart.

So Bob is down, apparently his attempt to Dodge out of the way just resulted in his foot being transfixed with a longsword.

Now one fun element of Forbidden Lands is that you can't just kill someone in cold blood. You need to to FAIL an Empathy check and take Empathy damage to do so. (Unless you take the Talents tree that initially negates this, and then helps you 'heal' everytime you murder someone in cold blood.)

"An opponent who has lost all Strength or Agility is defenseless. If it’s an intelligent being (with Wits) and you want to give him a COUP DE GRACE and kill him outright, you must fail an Empathy roll (roll for the attribute only). Even if the roll fails, you must spend one Willpower Point and suffer one point of damage to Empathy – killing in cold blood is not as easy as you might think. If you have the COLD-BLOODED talent you can kill defenseless enemies without these negative effects."

Steve attempts to muster the courage to end Bob. Steve passes his Empathy roll and finds himself unable to plunge his blade into the helpless form before him.

Thoughts: With nobody to protect the longbowman, he only had time for one shot. He had no Willpower to fuel a couple of his Talents which might have helped, but the shield and chainmail combo made it very unlikely that he could drop an armored combatant that was built like Steve. If Steve did not have the Melee Charge talent, Bob would have been able to fire again, and would have had a Willpower point to use a talent to bypass Steve's armor.

If Steve did not have a shield, it could have gone the other way, and if it was a wide open area, Bob probably should have spent his fast action running instead of Aiming.