The Problem with Movement in DH
DH movement is based on the Agility bonus, and measures itself in increments of one meter. Increasing the agility bonus, as well as other talents or actions, can all cause incremental increases in movement. What this effectively means is that in order to properly reflect the rules for movement, players are practically forced to use miniatures and a map. Eyeballing distances is not going to account for the difference between someone with Ab 2 and someone with Ab 3. Writing down exact distances and doing the math on paper or in your head is going to be an exercise in frustration.
Should movement be tied to Agility bonus?
Agility is already a really powerful characteristic in this game and many others. I don't think that taking away its impact on movement is going to break the characteristic. Also, keep in mind that so long as movement is tied to a specific number, it's going to need a map or a lot of extra work to be properly reflected.
Abstracting Movement
This is actually a pretty simple port to make. Simply take the short, medium, long, and extreme ranges, the required movements of 1, 2, and 3, and use action points to reflect movement cost. All characters would use this movement.
What about fast characters?
Well, this could be reflected by a basic talent (AP costs to move or disengage are reduced by 1, to a minimum of 1) and a trait for unnaturally fast characters (AP costs for movement and disengaging are reduced by 1, to a minimum of 0, does not stack with the previous talent, once 4 ap have been spent, the turn ends). Remove the size modifiers for movement as replace them with those traits or talent (include one that increase movement AP for small characters).
How far can a character move?
A character can make the following movements with 4ap.
Engaging to something in short range 1ap
From short to medium, 2 ap
From medium to long, 3 ap
From long to extreme, 4 ap
From medium to engaged, 3 ap
I think the ap system actually takes care of the problem of characters moving way too far in wfrp3e.
What distance do these ranges represent exactly?
This could probably stand to be given an exact number. I'd say this could be calculated as follows:
Figure out average speed of a running person (assume 6meters per second).
Calculate how many meters this would cover in 5 seconds. (30m)
Assign that number to medium range. Medium range is 30m
Divide that by the 3ap it costs to go from medium to engaged to get distance (10m per 1ap)
Long distance costs 6ap (60m) and extreme distance costs 10ap (100m).
It will take 15 seconds to go from extreme to engaged at a rate of 6m per second (which would normally reach 90m in 15 seconds), so the movement is fairly accurate.
So our exact numbers are:
Short range 10m
Medium range 30m
Long Range 60m
Extreme Range 100m
What about distances greater than 100m?
Just add an AP for every additional 10m.
DH movement is based on the Agility bonus, and measures itself in increments of one meter. Increasing the agility bonus, as well as other talents or actions, can all cause incremental increases in movement. What this effectively means is that in order to properly reflect the rules for movement, players are practically forced to use miniatures and a map. Eyeballing distances is not going to account for the difference between someone with Ab 2 and someone with Ab 3. Writing down exact distances and doing the math on paper or in your head is going to be an exercise in frustration.
Should movement be tied to Agility bonus?
Agility is already a really powerful characteristic in this game and many others. I don't think that taking away its impact on movement is going to break the characteristic. Also, keep in mind that so long as movement is tied to a specific number, it's going to need a map or a lot of extra work to be properly reflected.
Abstracting Movement
This is actually a pretty simple port to make. Simply take the short, medium, long, and extreme ranges, the required movements of 1, 2, and 3, and use action points to reflect movement cost. All characters would use this movement.
What about fast characters?
Well, this could be reflected by a basic talent (AP costs to move or disengage are reduced by 1, to a minimum of 1) and a trait for unnaturally fast characters (AP costs for movement and disengaging are reduced by 1, to a minimum of 0, does not stack with the previous talent, once 4 ap have been spent, the turn ends). Remove the size modifiers for movement as replace them with those traits or talent (include one that increase movement AP for small characters).
How far can a character move?
A character can make the following movements with 4ap.
Engaging to something in short range 1ap
From short to medium, 2 ap
From medium to long, 3 ap
From long to extreme, 4 ap
From medium to engaged, 3 ap
I think the ap system actually takes care of the problem of characters moving way too far in wfrp3e.
What distance do these ranges represent exactly?
This could probably stand to be given an exact number. I'd say this could be calculated as follows:
Figure out average speed of a running person (assume 6meters per second).
Calculate how many meters this would cover in 5 seconds. (30m)
Assign that number to medium range. Medium range is 30m
Divide that by the 3ap it costs to go from medium to engaged to get distance (10m per 1ap)
Long distance costs 6ap (60m) and extreme distance costs 10ap (100m).
It will take 15 seconds to go from extreme to engaged at a rate of 6m per second (which would normally reach 90m in 15 seconds), so the movement is fairly accurate.
So our exact numbers are:
Short range 10m
Medium range 30m
Long Range 60m
Extreme Range 100m
What about distances greater than 100m?
Just add an AP for every additional 10m.
I think the addition of a "speedy" talent would take care of differentiating things a bit. Maybe a connected talent to that that reduces disengagement by an additional 1 as well (assassin could engage, strike, disengage, engage someone else/move into cover).
I actually sat and thought about how to tie agility bonus into movement and honestly could not think of a good way to do it with this abstracted system that wasn't overly complicated or too much of a rules exception. The problem comes with the Agility bonus scaling in increments of 1, up to 9 or more, and an abstracted system in increments of 1 to 4 needing to make increments of 1 represent a greater amount than the difference of 1 agility bonus represents.
I think the slowed condition and its being tied to heavy encumbrance works. Perhaps the use of some weapons or gear could inflict an automatic slowed condition unless the character has the bulging muscles talent. That would account for the heavy slow tech priest.
I think leaving the agility bonus to add to initiative would be a good balance for it, but I would change its use for first aid. I also think RoF for melee weapons could be split between strength or agility, based on the kind of weapon being used. This would lead assassins to favor some weapons, with heavies favoring others.
I actually sat and thought about how to tie agility bonus into movement and honestly could not think of a good way to do it with this abstracted system that wasn't overly complicated or too much of a rules exception. The problem comes with the Agility bonus scaling in increments of 1, up to 9 or more, and an abstracted system in increments of 1 to 4 needing to make increments of 1 represent a greater amount than the difference of 1 agility bonus represents.
I think the slowed condition and its being tied to heavy encumbrance works. Perhaps the use of some weapons or gear could inflict an automatic slowed condition unless the character has the bulging muscles talent. That would account for the heavy slow tech priest.
I think leaving the agility bonus to add to initiative would be a good balance for it, but I would change its use for first aid. I also think RoF for melee weapons could be split between strength or agility, based on the kind of weapon being used. This would lead assassins to favor some weapons, with heavies favoring others.
I like the abstract distances idea. In a game withoug miniatures, using exact distances always felt counter-productive to me, since the GM will determine them based on gut-feeling anyways, whilst players are left asking every round: "How far is the enemy away? How about now? Now?"
Not to mention having to calculate weapon range modifiers anew every time you pick up a new gun. Ugh.
Getting rid of exact distances means that differences between weapons would become somewhat less granular, however. This is not necessarily an issue (and many other RPGs have no probem with this), just something to keep in mind.
As far as Agility being tied to Movement is concerned, I think this "Speedy" talent might be a good idea, but I'd have it translate to movement as well. Having the talent yield a 1 AP discount on movement actions could be a good representation of such characters being quicker than others. Similarly, high equipment weight could add an "Encumbered" penalty where movement costs 1 AP more.
Yet another approach would be to assign automatic traits based on a character's AG bonus rather than it requiring a special talent (but still using Nimsim's movement table), such as ...
- 20 AG: Slow - characters have to spend +1 AP for any move action (this state can also be triggered by encumbrance or fatigue)
- 30 AG: Normal - baseline human value, no bonuses or penalties apply
- 40 AG: Agile - AP bonus to engage/disengage
- 50 AG: Swift - character gains a free AP to spend on or add to any move action they take
- 60 AG: Ghostly - character treats long distances as medium, and extreme as long
Note that the above is just a very basic idea born of my persistent dislike of talents that suddenly seem to transform a character's physical body over a natural stat-based evolution.
the other component of the the abstract range system from WFRP3e was that weapon ranges were given the "Engaged/Short/Medium/Long/Extreme" range bands. Since the weapon ranges for DH are all already pretty much woefully inaccurate to realistic weapons to begin with, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to just make them fit the abstract distances as well. The nice thing about this is that it allows weapons to have "effective" ranges that they work best at. For example:
Sniper Rifle: Long/Extreme
Shotgun: Short/Medium
Autopistol: Engaged/Short
Flamer: Medium
The nice thing about this is that it would eliminate the Close Quarters quality and just have weapons get a -20 penalty when used at 1 less or 1 more than their normal range, and being unusable at more than that.
