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Check out some of the Martial Feat archetype packages starting on page 45 in the core rules. These represent 6th 7th maybe 8th level characters (with a martial bent). The combination of their feats work together to make them really dangerous.
If you have monsterberg 2 in particular there’s another 10 characters that are somewhat “optimized”, which can maybe give you ideas.
Did you have a sense of what was causing some of your fights to go slowly or end up in stalemate?
I don’t mind answering questions I love talking about all this stuff! Just mentioning the situation in case there’s a long delay in replying (like if my phone service loses internet too) and to apologize in advance for typos and weird conversions that my phone does changing words when I’m trying to use voice to text.
If you’re having long, inconclusive fights then something’s wrong.
Armor can skew the lethality a little bit, but the key to the system is really stacking up your dice. In other words, instead of waiting for a critical you kind of force it to happen. You do this through gaining Free Dice from Martial Feats and circumstances in the rules.
For example using Martial Feats like Meisterhau in attack or Distance Fighting in defense (better yet with a buckler). Always using an aiming support like a wall or a tree limb every time you shoot your crossbow or your arquebus gives you a Free Dice. Many of the Martial Feats combine together. A 6th or 7th level character can be very lethal if they leverage their capabilities. Combat in a lot of RPG systems is set up to interfere with min-maxing, but codex actively encourages it. Harness that instinct to apply the system as well as you can, customize your fighting strategy to your character, and that’s how your PC becomes powerful rather than just having 300 hit points or a Power Word Kill spell.
That said, really good armor can still be very protective. It becomes necessary to use special armor piercing weapons and rely on grappling. It’s also recommended to use the hit point ceiling 2X or 3X the Constitution is good threshold. Also take advantage of the rules like twist The Blade, Artful Strike, Charge etc.
When you’re introducing new players to the system which of course can be a challenge since it’s quite different, I have two recommendations. First start simple- you don’t have to apply every single rule at first. Get them used to how the Martial Pool works. You can layer in new rules as they run into problems that sort of beg for them if you get my drift.
Second do a “session zero” and let them fight a few opponents that aren’t too tough. That should give them a taste for it. I have run games with Hema people who kind of naturally grasped the ideas, and I’ve run them with hardcore gamers that were not used to anything like this and have probably never been in a fight in their life. I found it wasn’t too hard to get people into the system. Obviously it helps a lot if you know it beforehand. Doing little solo battles is a good way to figure it out.
The first exchange in that video which they show twice once fast and once a little slower, is a failer. Anton, the guy on the right, probes with his sword on his opponents left (Antons right). His opponent strikes at Anton’s sword to fend it away (parry),but somewhat overcommits. Anton’s already in mid-air and switches over to the other side avoiding contact with the blades, and hits the guy real hard on his right (Anton’s left).
Hey Caldreas.
Sorry for the slow response again. Hurricane recovery here has been a bit, “challenged” I guess is the word. Our internet went out again 2 days ago and there’s no indication as to when it’ll be back so I’m responding here on my phone.
Codex was designed specifically not to need a grid or miniatures. We developed it before the proliferation of some of these new online tools like Roll20, one of our playtester groups for monsterberg used that. I don’t know the details of how they coded it in their system but onset means everything up to the outermost striking range for a handheld weapon. Therefore it would actually be a different physical distance depending on the weapons you had, the base for 3.x OGL as I understand it would be two 5 ft squares for a reach weapon or one 5 ft square for an ordinary ‘melee’ weapon. In codex a pike or lance could be twice that. It just depends how granular you want to get.
The general rule of thumb on skill checks is that if you’re rolling a “one die” skill check, it costs no MP. You can spend an MP to add an extra die to a skill check like to give yourself advantage in 5e terminology. A feint is kind of an interesting outlier or special case, because the assumption is that you’re making some kind of physical effort to trick your opponent into thinking you’re attacking.
The Failer is kind of an ” Attack Feint” you make an attack, it’s intended to be a feint but if they don’t defend, you will probably hit them. If they defend overzealously you can trick them. Their focus and momentum shifts in one direction and you attack in the other. I’ll post a pretty good example for some tournament footage it’s super fast so it’s hard to see what’s happening even in slow motion but if you wanted a couple times you’ll get the idea.
So for the failer no there’s no extra MP cost for the feint. The initial attack is the feint. It’s definitely an advanced technique which requires good timing and proprioception (which is basically covered by the CHA modifier in OGL). If done properly it’s extremely effective. In practice it’s a little bit like the Zucken, but with more emphasis on the bluff and less on the fuhlen, since ideally you won’t even make contact with their blade (you might, but probably very lightly).
The rule is that in a bind, if one person is using a weapon in two hands (usually a TH or HH weapon) and the other has a weapon held only in one hand, the former combatant gets a Free Dice. We use it as a house rule but we thought it would be a little too much to remember for people learning the game, so we didn’t include it in the published rules (yet). It might appear in a future suppliment. The Free Dice applies to any action that exploits the bind, including the various Martial Feats like Winden, Mutierin etc., but also things like breaking the other weapon.
I’m sorry, I take that back – that bind thing is a house rule we have used in playtesting but it’s not published (yet).
There is a small table in the Core Rules (bottom of page 52 in the current version) which lists modifiers for using weapons one vs two handed, conferring +1 damage to using a one handed weapon in two hands, for example, and penalties to speed and defense for using Hand and a Half (HH) and Two Handed (TH) weapons one handed.
We like to keep Codex highly customizable and it’s meant to be fine tuned to your own campaign, players, and personal preferences as GM. So take below with a grain of salt, remembering Rule Zero for Codex is “Use Common Sense / Go with your preferences.”
1. Do you use sneak attack?
(It seems redundant with Twist the Blade)Don’t use it, though aside from ‘Twist the Blade’ we also have a Sucker Punch MF and an Ambush Special Ability (see Players Guide) which confers extra damage.
2. Do you use a flank bonus?
(It seems redundant as enemies just run out of MP anyway when they are ganged up on)We don’t use it, as you said running out of MP is already a major problem. To alleviate that we have MP like Situational Awareness etc.
3. Question regarding Distance Fighting: Does the free die include the weapon or shield defense bonus? For instance, my fighter has an Active Defense of +8 using his weapon and +4 for just voiding.
Do I roll 2 dice and add 8 to each one, or do I add 8 to the actual “parry” and 4 to the “dodge” when the character steps away?You roll both dice, decide which one you are using and discard the other, and then apply the bonus for weapon and / or voiding, shield etc. Whether you void or not is up to you, but extra distance also makes parrying a lot easier.
4. Do you give two-handed weapons the 1.5 strength bonus? For instance, in Pathfinder my weapon is 1d8+4 in one hand or 1d8+6 in two.
No, the extra damage for TH weapons is basically already factored in. We do have the Wrathful Strike rule as well. One of the major advantages with two handed weapons though is you gain a Free Dice in any bind.
5. Question regarding Bind: The text states “This means the physical die roll, not the modified die roll?” Could the modified die roll count as a bind, too? For instance, would a modified die roll of 17 versus a passive defense of 17 count as a bind?
The normal default rule is that it’s the ‘natural’ die roll, meaning you rolled a 15, so before you do any math see if your opponent rolled a 15. It is also the Die That Counts, so if you used two dice, and rolled a 15 and 14, and both would qualify as hits but the 15 will also be a bind and you don’t want a bind for some reason (like maybe you have a light staff and he has a halberd), you could choose the 14.
There is an optional rule however that says you can use any tied die roll to call a bind, and MF like Fuhlen which also confer that ability, and Sprechfenster which makes any attack into a bind.
Yes I have data on this from Breslau / Wroclaw, Frankfurt am Main, Krakow, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Lübeck, Hamburg, Bologna (13th C), Bruges, Gdansk / Danzig, Riga, Cologne and Zurich, mostly for the 15th Century.
The consensus during our discussion on the Strasbourg laws was that they were not very restrictive except for lower status (knechten) and non-citizens, and even there exceptions seem to be made. But it did seem to be getting more strict over time.
I certainly wouldn’t rely on data from London for anything about Central or Continental Northern Europe.
One of the fun things about Codex is that you can use the strategies and kit they used in real life to solve the various problems listed above – and they work!
I think the Quick Start is the only doc still out of sync, though I could be wrong. You are right about armor check penalty, that is one of those 3.5 rules we have replaced. The Core Rules book and Players Guide should be consisdered ‘Canon’ for all this. We think MP penalty is a lot easier to deal with, less arithmetic involved.
Good observations!
Yes swords are versatile. That is basically their role. They are kind of the ‘do-everything pretty well’ weapon. They are also harder / more dangerous to grab than a hafted weapon.
Shields are easy to destroy – so long as they are made of wood, or other (historically very typical) light materials. But if you are dealing with an iron buckler or a steel rotella, it’s much harder to destroy them and you’ll need another strategy.
This is similar for armor – light mail you can maybe punch through, and any kind of armor incorporating textiles can be degraded or ablated, but heavier metal armor (including better quality mail) is a lot harder to defeat, unless you have special armor piercing weapons (and even then it’s pretty hard).
OA is more dangerous if your opponent has certain Martial Feats like “Point Control”. You’ll notice in the Core Rules there are some ‘Feat Packages’ which are for different kinds of fighting archetypes (this starts on P 45 in the current version). Try playing around with a few of those at some point you may find it enlightening. The basic strategies you outline above do hold true in general, but depending on equipment and skill, that balance can change a lot.
Daggers are definitely nasty. “Fight finishers”. One of the things that always used to bug me about RPGs back in the 70s and 80s was that a 12″ knife was treated as if it were a mere nuisance weapon. A knife that big will kill quickly.
Real glad to see you enjoying the system, and appreciate the continuing feedback.
For your convenience: http://oldcodexintegrum.irvingsoft.com/forums/topic/using-ogl-3-5-feats-with-the-codex/
We originally had a long list of compatible and incompatible Feats for use with Codex, as well as guidelines on how to use them. These are in the Legacy version of Core Rules (version 2.X and 3.X, which was originally made for OGL 3.5). We kind of integrated the 3.5 Feats with the Codex ‘Martial Feats’, with one type serving as prerequisites for the other and so on.
But last year when we re-released Codex we found that other than Pathfinder players, most OGL gamers we spoke to were not familiar with 3.5 Feats and were kind of put-off by them (frankly we got a lot of grief over it). Meanwhile most of the (small number of) 5E Feats are not even included in the SRD. So to simplify matters we removed the 3.5 Feats and all references to them (and to stuff like BaB), and the current (version 5.2) release of Codex Core Rules is basically “version agnostic” and self-contained… and is essentially meant to be easily adapted to 5E or OSR games. So it is limited to the Codex Martialis Feats.
The Quick Start has not been updated in a while and still has some of the 3.5 references in it, which may be a bit confusing.
If you want I could send you the old 2.X version of Core Rules which has a lot more of the 3.5 stuff in it. Meanwhile I will post the old section on 3.5 feats in another thread and link it here for you.
Hey Calderas! Sounds like an interesting scenario you had going there!
To your questions:
1. Does purposely targeting a shield create an Opportunity Attack option?
Personally, I would generally say no, it’s kind of like targeting the armor. I let people target shields at basically no risk – but there are different schools of thought on this in the HEMA world, and targeting weapons usually does draw an OA in Codex rules, so I’d leave this up to the GM. Basically for me in real life fencing matches against a sword and buckler fighter I’ll routinely beat on their buckler a few times just as a provocation without seemingly encountering much risk.
2. Is that opportunity attack against Passive Defense or can the sunderer try to block it?
So long as you have MP in your pool, you can always use them for Active Defense if you want to. One nuance – Active Defense can mean parrying or dodging / voiding.
3. If sunderer chooses to block opportunity attack does that affect his original sunder attempt? (it seems like it should “spoil” his sunder attempt.)
This is another GM judgement call but I’d say yes – IF the original attacker (‘sunderer’) uses Active Defense. If they ‘ignore’ the attack and relies on his passive defense, then I’d say his original attack can proceed as normal. This is actually the purpose of techniques like Mezzo Tempo and Contra Tempo, to interrupt the other guys attack and force them to spend time and attention defending themselves instead of focusing on their attack.
In a real fencing match, when you cut ‘long’ – targeting your opponents head or body, and they get inside your tempo and target your hand or something, you ‘shorten’ your cut, the Germans call this a sturzhau or kurz-hau. I teach my guys to do this to avoid getting their hands cut. It basically means your original attack is aborted though you’ll have a chance at a bind.
Overall I’d say you handled it right, usually there is some flexibility on interpretation of the rules and I like to keep things moving. In the case you described above, (if I parsed that right!) I’d probably give the original attacker a ‘Free Dice’ to attack again, since he generated the Critical Success. Another GM call on that one though.
As for 8th level guy vs. two newbies – yeah interesting scenario! Getting ganged up on with the Codex rules can be very risky. I remember one guy on our old forum described attacking his mid-level party with a large number of Kobolds, something they would normally almost laugh at, but with the Codex rules, as you get ganged up on you use up all your MP, so it gets dicey quick (pun intended) he said the party had a tough time with the Kobolds and had to beat a hasty retreat which they turned into a fighting withdrawal, making brief stands at choke points and then falling back in sections. They apparently had a great time with the encounter which otherwise would have been pretty routine.
Grappling, as you probably noticed, is also quite powerful. A strong person with some Grappling feats, especially if they are armored, can cause serious problems for less capable opponents by throwing them down, taking weapons etc. In one of our playtest campaigns we had a guy who was an alchemist and a good shot with a crossbow, but didn’t have a lot of other fighting skill and wasn’t very strong. As he leveled up, he kept getting more grappling feats. After about 4 or 5 sessions, he was quite a dangerous opponent, moving in close with a dagger, and a shirt of mail under his clothes that opponents usually didn’t notice until it was too late. He’d rush in and throw them down or toss them on their head. He ended up being one of the best fighters.
This is great! I can’t remember if this was related to your work or not but I was discussing some of these ordinances with Olivier Dupuis recently. The interpretation of the raw data is a bit of a challenge. I’m working on a guide to Strasbourg for HEMA fencers right now so I’ll definitely draw upon your transcription, if you don’t mind, and of course I’ll credit your work.
