Houseruling Speed vs Rate

[magnificentmomo]

Hello all.


So I know we are counting the months/days/hours until 3e, which makes it much harder to throw ourselves into anything 2.5.


But I've got an itch to scratch so I was gonna start up a 2.5 game, but there was one last rule that bothered me. There are two stats that denote how quickly and often you can attack- Rate and Speed.


So to try and reconcile this I thought of a simple change-


Speed is only for if you make a single attack, and all flurries take 5 ticks.


Now a low speed high rate weapon isn't double dipping.


Thoughts?

 

[Thorn Darkblade]

I've never had a problem with flurrying low speed weapons, as they usually tended to have a much smaller damage rating. That combined with a multiple action penalty meant you were pinging things to death. Anything with Hardness could handle it easy enough. Then again, I haven't seen it exploited too much, because my players have the unspoken agreement if they twink, so will I...

 

[magnificentmomo]

I don't really see it as an OP sort of thing, more of a cognitive dissonance. Why have two stats that supposedly model the same quality? At least this way, to me, makes a bit more sense. Speed is how quickly you can attack with a weapon, and rate is how flurry-able it is.


It kind of came about when I was having to introduce some new players to the system and looked at something I had taken for granted with fresh eyes.

 

[gatherer818]

The small weapons are both easier to hit with multiple times at once, and easier to recover from attacking with. A few weapons have disassociated Rate and Speed values - high Rate high Speed or low Rate low Speed - because of how they work, but most weapons should have both together. For example, the short daiklave's rate isn't as good as the standard daiklave's rate, despite the short being faster. This is because you have to get in closer with it since it's shorter, making it harder to stay in striking range without exposing yourself to excessive danger from your opponent. The shortklave user darts in, strikes twice, spins away, and repeats a bit sooner than the bigger blade, while the larger daiklave can score more hits in a single burst of activity - because you don't have to stick quite so close to your opponent - but is heavier and slower to set up for your next burst.


They're not the same stat repeated. Flurry-ability and recovery time are different enough to use different stats for, and I'm going to miss the Speed system when someone manages to pry my second edition rulebooks out of my hands and force me to pick up third