Areal Combat rules?

psychoph

Member
Are there any?  Onyl thing I found is 3 paragraphs in Player's Guide about fly by attacks, which is air to ground and pretty superior once having taken off.


Anyone have any homebrew rules for actual ship to ship combat in air or solar to lunar or lunar to lunar?


I ran into huge problem last night during game having an NPC who had taken off dive bomb people from the air using the fly by attack rules.  3 of the players have flight abilities but i was forcing them to take turns to get off the ground where by the NPC in flight had free attacks.
 
psychoph said:
Onyl thing I found is 3 paragraphs in Player's Guide about fly by attacks, which is air to ground and pretty superior once having taken off.
Which is why flight is far superior when attacking someone on the ground.


In my current story, I have a player using a Solar glider racer and so I've had to start using the fly-by attack rules, as well as generate some Charms.  I follow the rules from Players Guide, since they make sense, but I've added my own ruling that is similar to the fighting while mounted rules for horseback. If the glider rider's Sail Ability is higher than their combat Ability then they cap at their Sail score.  This way, I feel that the character is having to still focus on controlling the glider as well as attack.  If a character is using Charms to fly, or has wings, then they don't suffer this problem.


One question: How did the flying character have free attacks?  Why wouldn't they only act on their inititive?


~FC.
 
Clarify. Free attacks I meant the NPC  could attack without being struck back because none of the player, all lunars, have counter attacks, which I read in the fly by attack that was the onyl way to strike a person with flight besides a ranged weapon.


The NPC was not in a glider it was a creation of my own that was equvilant to a LUNAR in DBF with Pion's Wings.  Which allows you to go up to 35 mph soaring or swooping.  Since it was in the air already I took the limited rules to mean it could swoop into hand to hand range strike and swoop out of hand to hand range without being attacked.


My problem however still exists that Exalted has Air combat capabilites but no air comabt rules.  There is nothing about menuevering that i have found, but I have not researched it drastically so if their are air sailing rules I need to read those too.


By air combat i mean things like loops and getting into blind spots under the sun, swooping in from a high vantage point giving you bonus to attakc, how fast you can rise, what skill it is based on for a winged creature liek a hawk or Lunar with wings in DBF.
 
Well I guess that such rules would be useful, but I think that the reason they're not included is that, understandably, there are limited circumstances where they'd be useful, and there'd be a lot of stuff to cover there.  I guess WW just left it to your own house ruling inguinuity!
 
psychoph said:
Clarify. Free attacks I meant the NPC  could attack without being struck back because none of the player, all lunars, have counter attacks, which I read in the fly by attack that was the onyl way to strike a person with flight besides a ranged weapon.
1. Win init against NPC.


2. Hold action until NPC init tick.


3. Swing away.


 Not all STs will allow this, but...
 
Yeah I was looking for something more, but since it seems that no one else either deals with areal combat or just uses stunts for everyhting I will have to make somehting up that works for my players who believe that the lack of areal combat for the 3 of 5 lunars that can fly, means they can do all the wa spiff they should be able to.
 
By the way it's spelled Aerial it think.  My main char Obsidian Silence has wings of the Raptor and the Claws of Distance thingies from night caste, has for the last 5 years.  with the new rules he has become insanely good at killing things, especially since he also has a freedom stone. One of those rare combinations that just lucked out in making him very strong in the new rules, combat wise.  We have been using aerial maneuvers as stunts since it is pretty much a free medium to move around in, same as water, so long as you have the means to do so. Of course common sense does apply as gliders stall and there is a turning radius for most things. But then of course well described stunts do tend to remove the physical limitations of things.  Unfortunately he is a martial artist and one of the things we have ruled is that in the air you cant really be in a form because you can't touch the ground.  Wich leads me to ask if someone can design me an aerial martial arts tree now that i think of it.
 
My current npc is an Abyssal named Raptor Seeking the Wicked Spear who uses a glider for aerial combat (hence the Abyssal Sail Charms I've been trying to complete) combined with a Bone Harpoon (BoB&E) and firebombs (BotN).  Cool stuntage all round really.


~FC.
 
Obsidian Silence: I know it's your house rule but I don't really see why he'd have to be in contact with the earth in order to activate a form?  (unless it's earth dragon maybe!)  Did I miss that in the rules somewhere?


I can totally see a character activating his form in mid-air as he soars over a target.
 
This is what we came up with for house rules.


Aerial Combat


All movement is limited by the following rules:


  1. You must move a minimum of half the movement in the horizontal direction


  2. You cannot move more than half the movement in the vertical direction


Standard movement


Strength + Athletics + 24 yards


Full action movement


(Strength + Athletics) X 3 + 36 yards


Combat dive


Move up to 24 yards down then take a standard movement.


Power Dive


Characters may move between 24 and 64 yards down with no horizontal movement as a full action.


On the turn after the character stops diving they must make a strength + athletics roll with a difficulty equal to the number of turns spent diving to pull out of the dive.


Attacking


Characters roll their normal attack: dexterity + ability


Combat Modifiers


Characters attacking from below suffer a -2 penalty


Characters attacking from above gain a +2 modifier.
 

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