Combat
Melee:
SAFETY:
Melee combat in a boffer LARP can be stressful for some especially new players. Also it shouldn't be under stated that adrenaline is a hell of a drug. However this is a "Light combat Boffer LARP" which means it is a lightest touch system meaning any contact regardless of how light to a valid target area is a legal hit and must either be taken or defended against with an in game effect.
Terms:
Valid Target Area: For melee this means any area of the intended target that is not the head, groin, or hands. Hits to the hands head or groin are not valid melee hits and as such should not be taken or defended against. It is important to note that intentionally hiding all Valid Target Areas from an assailant or as its commonly referred to "Turtling" will open the "Turtler" to strikes to any exposed areas. In the event you feel that a combatant is intentionally targeting non Valid Target Areas you should bring it to the attention of a Player Rep.
Turtling: The act of intentionally hiding all Valid Target Areas behind commonly a large shield but also any other obstruction i.e. door, tree, or other player. If a player is Turtling they open them selves to legal hits to any exposed areas regardless of their "Validity" under normal circumstances.
Punch/slap blocking: This refers to an offense committed by the recipient of melee attacks. punch/slap blocking is the intentional striking of incoming Melee boffer attacks with either an open or closed hand as "hands are not valid targets" so the logic is that the recipient does not have to take the damage since the strike landed on an invalid target area. ALL damage from hits that were intentionally deflected by the recipient with their hands will count and refusal to count such hits by the recipient will be regarded as cheating.
Heavy Swing: This means swings that are harder than they need to be to be effective. If someone is Heavy Swinging during a combat this is generally rectified by simply either making eye contact or pointing towards them and saying "check your swings". In the event this is done and it continues to be an issue you may then choose to speak with a Player Rep. about it. Additionally Heavy Swings may only be called by the recipient of the swing as this is horribly subjective and may very person to person. There are several of us within this LARPing community that do occasionally like playing rough with each other. This behavior is either acceptable and you know it or it isn't if you have to stop and think about if your buddy will be mad at you or not if you were to swing heavy its probably better that you don't.
Swing Through: This is when a combatant intentionally swings at a valid target area that has a held boffer blocking it in an attempt to knock the boffer out of the way thus landing a "valid" hit. This is not acceptable as even if the Swing Though is successful it is NOT a valid hit and thus will not be counted. This is intended to dissuade combatants from the temptation of utilizing a Heavy Swing to score a legal hit.
Held Weapon: refers to any approved boffer weapon rep or shield that is being held by a player with skill in said weapon or shield and it is being held correctly per the rules. A small shield may be held with a single point of contact where as a medium and large shield must have two points of contact, generally a handle and arm strap. Two handed weapons must be held with both hands unless utilizing an in game ability such as "One Handed Block" there is no other way to legally hold a medium or large shield other than stated above. All held weapons that block an incoming melee swing count as having blocked the attack except in rules specific circumstances such as a "Massive" attack or a spell delivered through a weapon strike. All other boffer contact not discussed as above does NOT block an attack such as a boffer weapon stored in a weapon ring on a belt or a weapon or shield slung across a back does not count as a "Held Weapon" and thus any Melee attack striking it would be a legal strike and either be taken or need an appropriate defense called against it.
NOTE: This section talks about the force of swings but does not specifically discuss the speed of a swing nor the arc of a swing. These things are absolutely indicators of a Heavy Swing but do not necessarily dictate that if a swing is quick that it will be heavy or that if the swing of greater than 90 degrees would be heavy. There are several people within the community that have been doing this for a very long time and thus are completely capable at swinging quickly or over 90 degrees and the hit not landing heavy. The main thing is I'm pretty sure that none of us are Bruce Lee and as such have sizable limitations when it comes to melee combat. I cant say this loud enough or often enough IT IS YOUR RESPONSABILITY TO KNOW YOU PHYSICAL AND MENTAL LIMITATIONS and act and fight accordingly.
WEAPON CALLS:
Weapon calls look like this:
(Vector) (Number) (Effect) (Carrier/Flavor) (x-to-hit)
Vectors tell you how you can defend against a given attack - if you have a Resist Magic, for example, you can stop any attack that opens with "Magic". Common Vectors include Magic, Poison, Natural, and Elemental. That list isn't exhaustive; Arcane is not nearly as common in Anteris as the mainland but is still around. Sonic occurs in a couple of places, usually Secord weaponry, and others exist that aren't cataloged. It's important to note that every Vector has a corresponding resistance somewhere.
If the Vector isn't included in the call, it defaults to Physical. You may still hear Physical called for clarity, usually on non-damaging effects. "Three Normal" on a sword swing is pretty obviously Physical, but a brigand with a lasso might call Physical Bind - he could just call Bind but it'd be confusing and the point here is to reduce friction.
Number is the amount of damage that strike inflicts if it's not defended. It's optional, and calls without a number do not inflict direct damage. This can get a little tricky, though, because some effects cause damage despite the strike not doing so itself. If, for example, you receive "Magic Slay", the strikes does no damage and instead inflicts the Slay effect. Slay then causes its usual 100 points of damage.
Effect is just what it says - the result of an undefended strike. Any effect can be delivered (outside of some odd corner cases) by any delivery method on any Vector. "Sonic Stoneskin" is an odd call but legal. Effects are optional but every call should have at least one of Effect/Number. A call without either doesn't really do anything when it connects.
Carrier/Flavor are mutually exclusive because this combination is perhaps responsible for more combat friction than any other single factor. It should be possible for a fire elemental (for example) to swing "fire sever" - it makes intuitive sense and doesn't pose a balance problem. It's just difficult to disambiguate the less-obvious cases - if a Zombie hits you with "3 Disease", is that a flavor like "fire" or a carrier like "paralysis" that inflicts Disease if it reaches body? Arguments over this point have plagued us for decades. In the interest of minimizing this, then:
Carriers cause their stated effect if the swing causes damage to a character's unaugmented body points. Carriers that strike bonus body granted from spells, foods, attunement powers or any other source do not take effect.
Flavors are a kind of tag. They have no inherent effect, but interact with other tags in various ways. Most PC's will take "5 Fire" as five points of damage. Some creatures are vulnerable to fire damage and will take ten points from that same swing. Some are resistant to fire and will only take two points. Some are outright immune and remain unaffected regardless of the weapon landing a legal blow.
You can easily tell whether a given swing is a Carrier or a Flavor. Carriers are effects, across the board. Nothing in Anteris swings Disease as a flavor, for example, in deference to this rule. If you're not sure, consider what effect you'd take if the attack succeeded - there are rules for Disease and you could look up what it did to you. There's not a rule for what happens to you when fire hits you. Fire is a flavor, disease is a carrier, and every monster in Anteris follows this rule strictly. There are zero cases overriding this.
X-to-hit is the last bit of the call, and is usually silver or magic. There are some corner cases here - there's a beast living in the West Coast Woods that requires copper to hit, there are some shapeshifters that take gold to hit, but those are rare unless you're specifically hunting for them. Don't spring for a weapon that swings copper unless you know you have that need. Silver or Magic will hit almost everything that has a to-hit requirement.
If a character, PC or NPC, requires such a weapon, that type must be included in any call to affect that character. Vector and flavor are not by themselves enough to break x-to-hit. Specific characters may be affected by specific exceptions, holes in their defenses - consider a vampire that requires silver to hit but will take Fire damage from any source - but this is not reliable and should not be counted on. It doesn't hurt anything to call "fire silver" and hits silver-to-hit whether or the target is vulnerable to fire.
As noted above, vectors default to Physical. Flavors do not. "Arcane Kill" is untyped and can only be defended with defenses to the vector or effect. Untyped effects are powerful and rare; most Npc's will follow the more common vector/effect/flavor pattern and allow a third defense option.
Strikes are all or nothing. If a character can defend against any portion of a strike, the entire strike is canceled. This is a playability concern, not a balance of power issue. Working out which parts of which strikes affect which targets bogs down the game, and the mechanical symmetry we gain from it is not worth the slowdown and confusion.
Guns:
Safety:
Guns are capped at 140fps muzzle velocity and there is zero latitude on this - your weapon is disqualified at 140.1. Honestly, we'd prefer to see more in the 120fps range and use the distance between 120 and 140 as a buffer. 140 is not an invitation to mod your springs until you shoot exactly 140 every time you pull the trigger. If you lack for a chronograph, there are no Nerf-brand blasters that exceed 120 out of the box. Dart Zone blasters occasionally do get to 120 but not to 140, unmodified. If you're getting your dart blasters from the usual toy story sources, they're probably fine. This rule is here for enthusiast blasters, the kind that require eye protection just in case and recommend some protection elsewhere, too - I have one in the garage that shoots at 260 unmodified and will absolutely leave bruises if it's too close to its target.
Guns have a minimum range limit and may not be fired at people any closer than polearm reach - we would prefer ten feet but estimating distance is challenging for some people and ‘melee range’ is a more realistic standard. While within that range, gunmen may voice-deliver their effects, firing in some safe direction (straight up, into the ground, anywhere that’s not going to hit someone) - this is here to prevent turning a six-shot revolver into a Hollywood sixgun. Please make every effort to re-establish range; we are aware of how this rule interacts with shields and overriding that effectiveness is an undesired side effect, not the point. Gun using classes are equipped with Initiative for this express purpose (although other uses are certainly fine, too).
Performance
Darts are capped at 50 per minute. How you arrive at that is mostly up to you. Rate of fire is capped by your ability to call damage on a shot, which rules out the speed-fire electric/automatic dart blasters. Within that tolerance, if you can dump 50 darts in 30 seconds and manage to enunciate the damage calls, you’re free to do so. If you’d prefer to sustain and take larger pauses between shots, that’s okay too, and the vagaries of combat will tend to suggest one approach over another. (Editor’s Note: That cap isn’t fixed. It’s a starting point. It’s derived from a couple of other places, including darts/second on standard issue single-action springer blasters. Also, we’re coming it at this way because attempting to tune for the desired result by influencing the underlying factors (rate of fire, capacity, etc) is both complicated and prone to unintended consequences. It also means we have to be very careful about future gun mods and how they interact with the RoF and Capacity rules. By lifting the underlying caps in favor of attacking the actual undesired effect, we can put out all kinds of cool stuff and still feel safe that we’re not going to have Arnold Schwarzengger mowing down modules with a GAU-8/A Avenger.)
One special note: Hanging out at Whattaburger and talking about the event over lunch or after the game is common. It's never great to talk about killing people when you're out in public and most veteran larpers have stories about trying to explain this to onlookers. It's much less great to talk about shooting people; the words 'gun' and 'shoot' attract attention from law enforcement. This is not a conversation you ever want to have to but you especially don't want to have it while you're dressed up as an elf. Nothing says 'mentally stable individual' like a guy with elf ears talking about dumping mags and clearing rooms.