Appropriate challenges

[weasel_fierce]

yeah, shields are extremely important, especially against things with a large damage bonus.

Ganging up and wearing down his reactions works well, as can, if it works, a well placed spell or two

 

[Utgardloki]

Its also worth noting that RQ tends to lean towards a more reasonable/realistic attitude to violence and life, than D&D style adventures tend to assume.

You're going to be harder pressed to find the "holy genocide" where heroes enter a cave full of degenerates and hack them to pieces, while emerging unscathed. Maybe thats not a big thing either

It looks to me that, with a house rule that a successful Dodge avoids all damage from an attack, that the RQ rules may be more realistic than D&D, in the sense that a normal human is not going to survive a direct hit from a canon, RQ heroes are still heroic, in the sense of being hard to kill.

And I think I need that house rule, because the Iron Kingdoms setting features heavy hitters, such as steam-powered Warjacks. If I wanted PCs to go splat every time they were faced with one of those things, I could play Call of Cthulhu.

 

[weasel_fierce]

oh, I agree with you on that part. The present dodge rule works well for human type of opponents, but seems curious when fighting extremely strong creatures.

Alternatively, just minimize the damage bonus as well.

 

[Exubae]

It might be an idea to use one of the 'house rules' for parrying armour, We've upped the amount parried by weapons by 3, and shield by 6.
Folk still lose legs... (The latter because there is a bit more of a secure feeling hiding behind a big shield.)

 

[frogspawner]

Utgardloki, IMHO dodge negating all damage would, if you're not outnumbered/CA'ed and have 90%-ish, make it dead easy to beat even big things like trolls - too easy. Where's the heroism if there's no risk?

I suggest that dodge should just 'ride the blow', reducing it by a certain (simple to calculate) amount (I use 10), and by more (I use 20) or negate completely on a special/critical dodge.

 

[Utgardloki]

As a philosophical matter, to me Dodge means you dodge, and therefore are not hit, and therefore should take no damage, whether you are threatened by a pixie with a toothpick, or whether you are threatened by a Size 90 Iron Golem. A successful Dodge should mean you take no damage.

As for risk, well there is the risk that your 5% Dodge failure will fail. You can spend a hero point, and still fail. You're dead.

Also, to resolve the over-100% problem, I've implemented the house rule that an attacker can take a voluntary penalty in order to reduce your effective Dodge chance. Thus, if you have 110% Dodge, and you are facing someone with 145% weapon use, he takes a 50% penalty, and your chance to Dodge goes down to 60%. If you spend a hero point, your chance of escaping without damage ends up being 74%.

There is also the problem of running out of combat reactions. What if a bunch of mooks shoot at you, and you use your Dodge reactions to keep getting hit, then the statue you are ducking behind for cover animates and strikes at you. You might want to keep your last will and testament up to date.

This is looking a little like Exalted, where you can handle mooks with ease, but can still be challenged by intelligent or powerful opponents. It's a little bit wierd, because the case where a single human faces off against a single warjack very well may mean that the warjack doesn't have a chance, or at least, is not very likely to actually connect. But in this setting, warjacks are typically backed up by wizards, other warjacks, and guys with rifles. Mr. Single Hero will definitely need some strategy to get out of that area alive, in that case.

 

[Deleriad]

Dodging: this is the Legolas vs the Cave Troll problem. If playing RAW, the Cave Troll would squash Legolas instantly. Now you can argue that Legolas is a legendary hero with the legendary dodge ability (forget its actual name) but then you think there's more than one time that the hobbits dodged the cave troll and surely they didn't all have legendary dodge. You could claim that basically the cave troll actually missed rather than them dodging but then you end up heading towards special pleading.

I'm experimenting with using dodge and parry as "true" opposed rolls. If an opponent succeeds at an attack roll then, basically:

• If you make your dodge roll and you beat your opponent then you take no damage. In addition if you roll a Critical your opponent overextends
  If you make your dodge roll but fail to beat your opponent then you reduce the effectiveness by a step:
  Critical hit becomes normal hit
  Normal hit becomes minimal damage (plus damage modifier as normal).

With Parry:

• If you make parry and beat opponent then you block double AP
  If you make a critical parry and beat opponent then you block all damage with no knockback or can block double AP and riposte.
  If you make parry but fail to beat opponent then you block AP

I've been trying to find a way to keep it really simple and I do use degrees of success (critical beats a normal). I do want to give dodge some utility without making it all or nothing.

 

[Rurik]

Dodging: this is the Legolas vs the Cave Troll problem. If playing RAW, the Cave Troll would squash Legolas instantly. Now you can argue that Legolas is a legendary hero with the legendary dodge ability (forget its actual name) but then you think there's more than one time that the hobbits dodged the cave troll and surely they didn't all have legendary dodge. You could claim that basically the cave troll actually missed rather than them dodging but then you end up heading towards special pleading.

I'm experimenting with using dodge and parry as "true" opposed rolls. If an opponent succeeds at an attack roll then, basically:

• If you make your dodge roll and you beat your opponent then you take no damage. In addition if you roll a Critical your opponent overextends
  If you make your dodge roll but fail to beat your opponent then you reduce the effectiveness by a step:
  Critical hit becomes normal hit
  Normal hit becomes minimal damage (plus damage modifier as normal).

With Parry:

• If you make parry and beat opponent then you block double AP
  If you make a critical parry and beat opponent then you block all damage with no knockback or can block double AP and riposte.
  If you make parry but fail to beat opponent then you block AP

I've been trying to find a way to keep it really simple and I do use degrees of success (critical beats a normal). I do want to give dodge some utility without making it all or nothing.

I use a concept similar to the one you describe to use the combat table as printed in the rules with a 1 roll system as follows:

If the defenders roll is a success and he rolls better than the attacker, use the attacker misses row of the combat table, so a dodge avoids all damage and a parry blocks 2xAP.

If the defender makes his roll but does not roll better than the attackers roll, use the attacker succeeds row, resulting in a dodge blocking minimum damage and a parry blocking AP.

Presto, all results available, 1 roll only.

 

[weasel_fierce]

alternatively, and this may be heresy

But take a line from Stormbringer, and ditch the "reactions" number. Instead, each defense is at cumulative -20 or -30.
Solves the "invulnerable dodge" pretty easily

 

[soltakss]

Ignoring Dodge for the time being, you shouldn't prepare encounters depending on the abilities of the PCs.

What you should do is strike a balance between realism and good gaming.

If you PCs are in a village and attack someone in a bar, then they could expect to meet the full force of the Village Militia (6-12 men). If they defeat them, they may well end up being chased by a posse from several villages (10-20 men) or even by a company of soldiers (50 men). Of course, they won't always fight all of them at once, they might fight three or four at a time, kill them and move on to the rest.

As your PCs become more powerful, then a village militia unit won't be able to touch them, so they could, in theory, become bandits. But, then soldiers would come after them, or groups of bounty hunters, or angry Runelords, using standard escalation principles.

If they are fighting organised foes, base the numbers on what might reasonably be expected, If they attack a troll clan, they might fight 20 warriors, 40 trollkin spearmen, 100 food trollkin and 6 priestesses. Not all at once, but in organised groups. If they attack a Broo temple, they might meet a couple of hundred broos, in groups of various sides. Don't be afraid to match them against vastly superior forces, it just makes them think about the combat and how to proceed.

In RQ2/3, I always worked to the rule of thumb that PCs were as good as twice their number of lesser foes and were better than the same number of equivalent foes. So, face them with the same number of similar foes and the PCs would normally win. This is becuase of their enhanced combat abilities, superior tactical awareness and overall luck.

But, mob them with a zombie horde and see if they can take it, or will they run away screaming as they are crushed beneath a swarm of bodies?

 

[simonh]

In RQ2/3, I always worked to the rule of thumb that PCs were as good as twice their number of lesser foes and were better than the same number of equivalent foes.

Players will know and understand the different abilities, tactical options and trade offs for their own PCs far, far better than any GM will ever know any of their NPCs.

Players also use highly targeted and ruthless strategies that most referees avoid, such as for example all concentrating their attacks to eliminate the most dangerous NPC opponent first and kill it dead, dead, DEAD before picking off less dangerous foes. Most referees wouldn't deliberately have the NPCs pick on one of the PCs in that way for fear of alienating the character's player and so will have NPCs spread their attacks more 'fairly' among the players in most situations.

Back to the main topic. It's true that in RQ you can't realy get away with the party Vs massed horde situations you can in many other games because critical hits do happen, and can be devastating. That's less so in MRQ because of the lack of general hit points, and the Resistance saving throw coupled with judicious use of a spare Hero Point. There are other factors too which mitigate, but don't completely eliminate the traditional deadliness of RQ.

Still, you can get away with less in MRQ than in D&D. So how do you fight big ass trolls and giants? With Giants, mainly you try to be clever and use tactics. Realy you should be doing that anyway, as any sensible person should, but it becomes more imperative. Combine resources such as magicians boosting combat character's attacks. Strike from ambush. Target dangerous enemy magic and magicians. Use missile weapons whenever possible. RQ provides a wealth of tactics, abilities and options that many other games only dream of, but it can take time to get to grips with them and learn to use them effectively.

 

[Utgardloki]

I guess what concerns me most are fights that the PCs can not choose, either because they are ambushed, backed into a corner, or the PCs just have to get through this encounter or else terrible things will happen.

Certainly in situations where the PCs have the option to fight or not to fight, the scale of the opposition should be what is logical. If the PCs want to take on the army garrison, it is their responsibility to deal with any cannon and warjacks that could be used against them.

On another hand, I do like the idea of PCs jumping out of the way of a warjack's giant fists. The NPCs who command warjacks will normally be smart enough to know this, and plan accordingly.

One rule I'm considering, is that Dodge only negates all damage if the character moves as part of the dodge (say at least one yard per 10 SIZE of their opponent). A PC who can not or will not move, takes minimum damage on a successful Dodge.

 

[Exubae]

The other option is to use 'Goons/Mooks'....
Stock characters that only have a single hit point pool of chest points (No other locations).
All damage comes off that single location (usually let players roll locations and hum thoughtfully to myself).
If players use called shots then double damage and use the location effects as normal. (Mooks always fail their Resilience rolls)
Other locations fudge as necessary.

You still have to watch out for criticals from the mooks, though but it makes things run faster and weakens the npc to give the characters an edge.

 

[GianniVacca]

The other option is to use 'Goons/Mooks'....

GoonQuest (http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/ndaily/1994.10/6375.html) is what you need

 

[Utgardloki]

One of the things that made the original Runequest game Runequest was the fact that there weren't "cannon fodder" creatures like orcs and kobolds in 1st edition D&D. Any intelligent creature you came up against had stats and could potentially pull things like battlemagic spells against you. Going back to the goons/mooks model seems to be going backwards.

Of course, that does seem to contradict what I said about running through a labyrinth of monsters to get to a magic chamber at the center before the grand conjuction of Whatznot. Hopefully the PCs would have a good supply of Hero Points available if they ever have to do that.

 

[Rurik]

Trollkin were pretty much cannon fodder. Newtlings, Scout Dragonewts, etc, were all pretty fodder like. They are even more so now as most of the aforementioned creatures get a negative damage modifier when in earlier versions they didn't. Scout Dragonewts on the average get -1d4 damage in MRQ.

Though even Trollkin fodder still could be lethal.

Trust me on that last bit.

EDIT: Just stay out of the water when fighting Newtlings.

 

[weasel_fierce]

there's always cannon fodder, in terms of mechanics. However, keep in mind that these guys dont want to die either, and give them some javelins, a few traps and make them run away leading the party into an ambush (involving a pet bear or something )

 

[TRose]

One thing to always keep in mind is your charaters armor and weapons they face.. .23 enemies armed with hatchets, shortswords and light maces with no damage bonuses going against players in top armor , and the players have a chances..But a couple of great trolls with War mauls, even if their skills are in 25% range,well there a good chance some one going to die.
I only bring out the big weapons when I want to install some fear in my players. Just telling them they see some tough looking guards with large 2handed axes makes them look elsewhere to cause trouble.
Also magic will help even things out. If the players have some one that can heal well with plenty of power(say a full shaman with allied spirit) and they can protect him, that can also even the odds.