ja_koniga

The mistress of the school, an elven woman, who learned all her knowledge about combat in different schools, and under some different masters, but noone knew if she had any real experience. She called for the dwarf again, and yet again. By the fourth time Dramderon noticed the call, and stood up. When he heard that he has to fight with the mistress, he was happy, he has just won a chance to beat that elven woman. He learned much about fighting against women, and he tried to remember everything, but it didn't made any sense. But he is still a dwarf, and can fight against taller oponents quite effectively. He examined that girl, and smiled, a high strike would be painfull, and it is hard hard to defend against it. If he would strike straight... that is equaly painfull, and almost as hard to defend, and he can strike at the legs too to gain advantage. So all the stuff about the weaknesses of female warriors were true, but a dwarf has other chances to abuse them to his own advantage. He prepared his axe, and walked to the podium, and watched as the elven girl prepared her sword. When she asked "don't you protect the edge of your axe?" he laughed, and shouted "more fun this way!"

When the elven girl was ready, almost everyone was surprised, she was taller than the dwarf, yet with her unusualy low combats stance, they began the fight as two persons of almost equal height. The dwarf had much problems with his planned tactics, and the elven girl has a longer reach. He tried to adapt to the situation, but had no real chance, the girl knew much more about combat and dominated the fight from the begining to the end. The student laughed at the dwarf, but soon, a human student had to face the mistress.

The fight with the human student was short, the mistress attacked at several heights at once, but the student had no hope to avoid all the blows, so soon the girl won the battle, and everyone seen, that a smaller build can offer some advantages in combat. And besides this, smaller opponent, smaller target, as they have learned it. But someone can easily compensate for both problems, with better reach, agility, and perhaps with some increased strength.

Geme system: Often you ask, why would you ignore modifiers in combat when you focus on roleplaying and need more "realism" compared to a quick hack and slash game. The reason is twofold, at first tactic is part of the fighting skill of your character and is often character knowledge, and also advantages and diseadvantages are often more complex than a simple "higher ground" advantage. IN many cases the same thing can be both an advantage and disadvantage depending on how your character builds on the situation, which is in turn, part of your characters combat skill (or Base Attack Bonus).