A handful of combat based house rules.

[Agrippa]

I have a few ideas on spicing up combat for LL, Basic Fantasy RPG and certain other OSR games. Some of these are new, others are ones I posted before, just slightly polished up first.

#1: Rapid Shot Archery. Sometimes an archer might want to sacrifice range for speed. When this happens the fighter selects a number of arrows to fire in one attack, up to two extra arrows, against a single target in his short or long bow's short range. Make an attack roll as normal. Then subtract four from the original roll for the second shot and eight for the third shot. Each shot at or above the archer's THAC0 or Attack Value results in an arrow hitting its target. This is a fighter combat option.

#2: "A good old one-two knock-out punch!" When making an attack in melee a character or monster may follow through with another attack at a -3 off-hand penalty. However this off-hand attack comes into play only if the first strike hits.

#3: "Two halves of a single weapon. Don't think of them as separate, because they're not. They're just two different parts of the same whole." Any character with at least a 13 to Dexterity can attack with two weapons in one attack. When doing this the attacker makes a disadvantaged attack roll, inflicting damage equal to both weapons if he hits. He loses the disadvantage at Dexterity 16+. This is the default weapon style for the hook sword.

#4: Scale the giant. If you want to kill a giant you either need to be a giant, climb it or shoot it down. Right now we're talking about climbing the damn thing and stabbing it to death. To deal actual outright lethal damage to most creatures you have to be able to target it's abdomen to head. Depending on degree of success each climbing check made (whether with Climb Sheer Surfaces or a climbing general skill) lets you move a quarter of your land speed to your full land speed per round. All vertical movement when scaling giant monsters requires a once per round skill check. Attacks to the abdomen and above deal at least twice damage and allow you to damage it beyond half its full hit points.

#5: Shield bashing. Shields are counted as weapons for the purpose of weapon mastery. Shields carry no off-hand penalty to attack, but lose the defensive bonuses when used as a weapon. An especially skilled shield bearer can strike with his shield first to disorient a foe before striking with his main weapon for a +x bonus to hit.

#6: "With the longsword, your sword is your shield."

[rredmond]

#1 reminds me of Crow, from Hawk the Slayer.

Thanks for sharing!
--Ron--

[Spanningtree]

Gotta love Hawk the Slayer, that really brings back memories. I think I was playing with the red cover basic set back then (memories are a bit cloudy).

Great rules additions BTW, I may grab some/all of them for some of my future campaigns. I like that they don't introduce or rely on skill slots of some kind.

[Agrippa]

Okay then, maybe I should run a play test of some of these rules. Thinking out a coherent scenario for them all would be tricky though.