Re: Repel attempt bonuses
Although I'm a realism fan I'm cautious of attempts to understand ancient combat in a mechanistic fashion ie you do that, I do this . . . We simply don't know alot of the answers and can't be reasonably epected to.
What we can do is have a fair idea of the overall strength of troop types versus each other and the likely results of there interactions. From details provided by ancients we get clues as to the fashion in which one troop type defeated another and Dom does a reasonably good job of resolving a the combat in a way related to the details and still (hopefully) giving the right result.
The repel rules are an abstraction which represents the advantage of longer weapons. the main advantage of repel other than the morale hit is canceling the incoming attack which is huge. It is quite reasonable that the success of the repelling (or is repellant?) soldiers attack is resolved in their phase as they have just canceled their enemies attack and should they survive till their turn we will find out wether they managed to impale their opponent.
My doubts around the repel rules are wether or not weapons used in a largely irregular fashion should repel at all. Say barbarians with two handed swords vs men at arms. I find it difficult to imagine what the barbarians repelling the men at arms represents here? I tend to think repel is a function of a formed, drilled unit using weapons which utilise reach as part of their way of fighting - or even legionaries using their shields. But hey its not like I'm seriously concerned and if you changed this you would have to strengthen the weakened troop types in other ways . . . and so I think the existing abstraction is fine.
Cheers
Keir
[ November 06, 2003, 04:48: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]
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