#217 – Simultaneous Attack

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You're listening to the Glitter Boys. In our continuing series of dives into combat options that you might not have thought of using in the past, Might just not have known they were there. This one, again, we're working with the Rifts Ultimate Edition. It's a simultaneous attack. This is written in the combat options on page 347 of the Ultimate Edition book. Simultaneous attack is something else I've— we've used in our ongoing Rifts game as an example of something that— I bet you didn't think about this one, did ya? It's a combat option that, well, here's how it works. When you are being attacked, someone's coming at you with a knife and, you know, you can dodge or you can parry that. That's pretty standard. You're pretty used to that. That's probably how most of your actions go. But let's say the person that's coming at you, you know, they've got a really high defensive skill and this fight has been dragging on for a little longer than you want it to.

Yeah.

And if you dodge and parry and then you attack them back on your turn, they're probably just going to dodge and parry and attack back on your turn. So, you know, tell you what, let's end this fight right now. They come at you, they swing that knife and they expect you to dodge or parry. So instead you stab them in the face.

You might get stabbed as well.

Yes.

There's a, there's a movie. Uh, I believe it's Rob Roy with Liam Neeson.

Yes.

And there, there's a duel between Rob Roy's character, who's your more bigger bruiser. And I think he's, He's not a flambé, but it's a, like, claymore, right?

Well, okay, he's using a basket claymore, which is not the traditional claymore. It's technically a one-handed sword.

But it's a big sword, and he's fighting an individual that's basically using a saber or a rapier.

Rapier.

Rapier.

And so Rob, the character, allows the guy to strike him, piercing him with the rapier, and holds on to it, and then takes the basket and just clobbers him. Now, Rob may die. But you know what? The other guy, the, the frilly little Frenchman, he dies first. And this is that, that perfect example of where I'm gonna sacrifice myself and I'm gonna hit you. And your lead-in on the person that you're fighting that has that insane auto parry and auto dodge and plus whatever to each one, and you just can't land a hit on them— fine.

This is how you kill the juicer.

Yeah, this is how, this is how I have killed juicers.

Now Again, it is a sacrifice attack. I almost wish it was relabeled that. But here's the kicker to it. If you have paired weapons, you now still have a parry and a simultaneous attack. Maybe you're holding that back in your back pocket. You're not using 2 weapons. You're just using one. Well, you got a bracer or something like that. And the guy comes at you with the sword and you're like, I'm going to simultaneous attack, but I have paired weapons.

Yes.

get my parry and I get to stab them in the face and they can't do a damn thing about it.

Yep.

Unless they also—

Unless they also have paired weapons. And then it is, might as well not have paired weapons. There's just an extra—

Hold on. You can take this a step further. Uh-oh. You're being attacked and you have paired weapons. Now you can parry and strike.

Or strike, strike.

Or, you know, you're like, I'm still going to take it. And now I'm going to stab them with both of my weapons.

And I have seen that.

And the look on the person's face, Because I will play an evil paired weapons bad guy that they don't know has paired weapons, and all of a sudden it's strike, strike. Mm-hmm. And they're like, what the heck was that? And they die, but now you might die too. And it gets— it's, it's really nasty, but it's also one of those very thematic cinematic type of things where you— besides that scene from Rob Roy, it's the scene of the 2 bruisers in the ring. Neither of them is Defender, and they're just slugging each other. The 2 heavyweights just beating the tar out of each other until one of them falls down. And a great concept here, which I think you, NPC, have talked about before— when your SDC drops down to 0, you still got some hit points, that's real critical damage.

Yeah.

And at that point, you might just say, I'm done. The bad guy might just go, I'm out of here, and then they're running away.

Yeah, right.

You don't have to kill them, but you just slug matched with them for a full melee round. You— they took 4 hits, you took 4 hits, and they're like, screw this, I'm out of here. How demoralizing. You're punching them and they're punching you, like, uh-uh, no, no, this was a bad idea. Break off, break off.

Yeah.

I'd also like to point out that nowhere in simultaneous attack in the 3 versions I've just looked at, uh, does it restrict how you attack back.

Nope.

So, uh, what happens if, oh, you decide to stab me with your nice little knife? Welcome to my body block tackle, which you now can't parry or dodge.

Uh, here's the problem. That requires 2 actions.

Depending on version.

Yeah. Ah, true.

Depending on the wrestling version doesn't.

Yeah, there you go.

And and even though that requires two actions, I mean, nice catch, Blanco Nino. Yeah, it's like okay, I got a knife now. You've been body block tackled. How you feel about it?

Now now you may have that knife in your gut while you're on top of the person, but dude, I mean, I mean, it is I two of my concussions that I've experienced in my life are literally because of this.

What if? You have paired weapons, and both of your weapons are body block tackles.

So here's what's happening. I have my half ogre titan carrying two halflings skilled in wrestling. I am dual wielding body block tackle.

No, no, no! You're a Rahu man. They have four arms. Yeah.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You said it. Now I'm a 4-armed individual who has paired weapons. And now my simultaneous attack.

Well, depending upon your race and the description of that race, your paired weapons might be even cooler.

And broken.

Yeah.

If you look up the flying bug dudes. Oh geez. So you could parry the one and then strike 3 times.

Right. It could be a gun, especially if you are a gunslinger with paired firearms.

Yep.

You can parry with one gun.

You parry with your—

and just gut shot them with your other gun.

Well, you could simultaneously shoot someone too.

And if you really want to put that on steroids, grab your copy of Mystic China and look up gun fu.

Have you ever seen the movie Equilibrium, folks?

Oh my God. I mean, it's—

There you go.

Yeah. So simultaneous attack, I have seen this used more often than body block.

Same.

But it's one of those interesting maneuvers. And it also, in my mind, especially with the lethality of people who are using it, I once watched someone playing a dwarf who loved to run around with a plasma rifle and he was jumped by someone. And I think they were swinging something that was going to do 4D6 MD. I mean, it was nasty. And he shoved, he's like, fine, I'll take it. And he shoved the plasma thrower into their chest and pulled the trigger. And I'm like, what now? Like point blank, which plat— like that's a flamethrower. It's like, nope. And he, I don't think he died, but it came really close and it was nasty. But the bad guy didn't get up. Absolutely didn't get up.

If you are a natural mega damage creature, this is perfect. You know, you're a hatchling dragon and someone just comes up and stabs you and you just fucking claw them or something like it. Or you're a Seljuk in Faerûn and something comes up and, yo, I'm gonna hit you with my vibrosword. Oh no, no, I just took 12 MD. Here, have 300 from my smackdown.

Or yeah, maybe you are an armadillo in TMNT or a turtle and have a high AR, natural AR.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're like, doesn't say that the attack has to hit. It just says you don't defend against it and you attack. You may just rely on that high armor rating. Or maybe you're a knight in really heavy plate and you're like, screw it, stab me with your stupid dagger. I'm going to hit you with my claymore. Bam. You know, like that type of exchange, that very tactical thought process of the, the, the return on, you know, that investment of time and damage. Yeah, absolutely.

Yep.

Yep.

And the simple way to play it as we've already discussed is, you know, just countering, attacking, whether it's with paired weapons, without. I would encourage everyone to look at it as an entry maneuver to doing other things such as the aforementioned body block. Take a look at, uh, flip throw. There are other— disarm, incapacitate also works, right? Um, it is a great— what we call in grappling a transitional move.

Because they smack him with a dim mark.

There we go.

Oh God.

Because they can't, they can't defend against it. That's what you've done. You're actually the defender, right? This is your defensive role is I'm not going to dodge. I'm not going to parry. I'm going to smack you.

If you listen to our previous episode where we were talking about initiative and a, and what appears to have been Kevin's original intent on it. I would recommend taking that, if you're a ninjas and super spies head like me, go and start looking through some of the abilities and powers and realize how simultaneous attack plays in that game and how it sets up for swapping the initiative and changing it.

I would note though, if you really want to min-max it, Really want to min-max your options. And we're using the bubble system. We've decided the bubble system works great. And that's all we're ever going to use from this point forward. We're going to follow this initiative pattern. Tactically, from a munchkin standpoint, it would behoove you to use your most damaging attack on your simultaneous attack and then wait until your turn to then use something that takes away their initiative. Yeah, because now you get the extra turn, right? As opposed to if you had just taken away their initiative as part of your defense, the next turn is still yours. So you wouldn't really— you're gonna have the same effect.

And as long as you roll above a 4, you're guaranteed damage.

But if you have an attack that doesn't take their initiative but does take one of their attacks away, that's when to do it. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

So these Options are things that if you were to just like sit down and play through the game with, you know, established players, they've probably got a system. They've got a flow that they follow. It's easy to fall into that flow. It's easy to just, okay, I'm gonna shoot. I'm gonna dodge. I'm gonna attack. I'm gonna parry kind of thing. You might not have read the extended combat section. You might not have noticed on your hand-to-hand skill.

Hmm.

that paragraph right before the list of abilities that tells you all these things that you can do? Body block tackle is just one of them. Simultaneous attack actually doesn't— isn't mentioned there.

Hmm.

When would you learn about this unless you were reading this page?

I don't think you would. It's not a called out thing you're trained. It's more of a Tactic. It's an exchange.

So now my question for you guys, because I don't have an answer for this— shields. How do shields work in this? Is what if you don't have paired weapons, but you do have a shield and a sword? Paired weapons doesn't mention shield anywhere. Does a shield assume you can do that just by having it and being good at it?

I don't use a lot of shields in Palladium, but doesn't shield just give you a bonus to your AR normally?

The parry bonus with a shield.

It's a parry bonus.

It's a parry and strike bonus with a shield in Palladium Fantasy.

So I would say in a simultaneous attack, you're basically opening yourself up and not using your shield unless you have paired weapons.

Right. I mean, with simultaneous attack, if you had, if you were running sword and board, shield and sword, shield and mace, whatever, if you did not have simultaneous attack, It's a moot point. If you did have simultaneous attack, well, then I know which of the 2 items I'm using to parry with.

You mean paired weapons? Yeah.

Paired weapons. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes. Sorry. Thank you for the correction.

But if you don't have paired weapons, but you are skilled, you are trained in a shield and the shield is an offhand weapon already. Right. Doesn't that imply that you could still parry on a simultaneous, like you could parry as you slip your sword in underneath?

I would say that the spirit of simultaneous attacks removes the shield.

Right.

Okay.

It moves the shield outside because the shield weapon proficiency gives you parry bonuses. It gives you some strike bonuses. It also gives you the ability to parry things that you normally can't parry, but I wouldn't—

But it doesn't say you can parry and strike at the same time. Right.

It doesn't say that.

Okay. Right.

Yeah.

Because there we go. It's normally assuming you're using auto parry to parry with it. Right. So it's, yeah, no. Yeah.

And the simulationist in me speaks to the fact that if you're doing, if you have a shield and some other weapon and you're doing a simultaneous attack, you're most likely fluttering your shield to be able to wind up to wallop them with your attack rather than the more defensive thing.

Fair. Yeah. That's all I have to say on that one.

Yeah. No simultaneous attack. It's a quick and dirty tactic and it's a sacrifice attack. And it's, it's kind of cool to see it used in play. I always get excited when I watch my players use it. They do not appreciate it when my bad guys use it at all.

Remember players, anything that you can do, they can do too.

Yep.

Maybe better.

Maybe better.

But maybe not. And anything they can do, you can probably do as well. So next time your GM pulls one of these out to you, Be like, how'd you do that? And if the GM doesn't tell you how they did it, fuck them. That's terrible. They really should. You got to be transparent with what you're doing unless it's like a special thing that like the Ring of Power lets them do or whatever. Yeah. But if they're just using a standard combat option, they need to fess up and let you know what that combat option is.

Absolutely.

Or allow you to do it.

Yeah.

If it's a house rule. Well, I think that's about it. Thank you very much.

Yeah, uh, just a small side note. If you have ever played, uh, Heroes Unlimited 1st Edition versus Heroes Unlimited 2nd Edition, make sure you read how it's written in whichever edition you're playing in. When I was looking up, I noticed there was slight differences. Uh, it's definitely one that is thematically very appropriate to that game setting. And, uh, you need to look at how your powers may or may not be synergizing with it. Yeah.

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Starships, magic, mystic martial arts, romance. All of these can be found in A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher. You might have heard my name before. I've done a lot of voiceover work for Breakfast Puppies, and I've recently released my first novel. It's available on Amazon as an ebook and paperback, and you can get it for free if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription. I do hope you'll support my work as you're supporting Breakfast Puppies. And it's been a pleasure talking with you today.

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