[HOE] HtH vs. ranged combat penalties

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

The other marshal and myself were having a discussion on ranged combat and
HtH combat penalties and I thought to open it to the list:

My concern was that it's really hard to hit in HtH. One way that my group
addressed this is that you only get 1/2 your fightin skill added to your
TN to be hit in HtH instead of all of it. We've had this rule in place for
awhile and it's worked out nicely for our group.

The next question was why it was harder to hit in HtH than range. The
argument was put forth that in HtH your moving around, in ranged combat
your not. This seemed odd until it occured to me that of late we've
finally been really enforcing darkness and movement penalties for ranged
combat. So with the -2 for shooting at a moving target (we do -2 for
walking, -4 for running) that puts your TN at 7. And if you are fighting a
compentant HtH foe with a 4 or 5 in fightin then that TN is 7 as well. So
it all worked out nicely.

So this was the question that was raised:
-----------------------------------------

Here's a marshal question for you. Do you think that darkness penalties
should apply in HtH the same as ranged? It seems like at range the
darkness makes it harder to pick out a target, but in HtH that's less of
an issue. 
That's why (well, one reason) people sneak up and knife each other at
night. It's easier to hit them that way.
Maybe 1/2 penalties?

	You know, I was kind of thinking the same thing.