Armor Rules, Picts Drool

Ok

Point #1: whenever you write something that is d20 system/OGL the default assumption is that the SRD contains the standing orders unless the new rules explicitly contradict it. That is the entire point of having an OGL in the first place. So players can pick up a new system quickly becuse most of the rules are the same. Conan doesn't include any rules on being Blown Away. Does that mean that a character can stand in a hurrican with no problem? No, it means you consult the SRD. Conan doesn't include rules for heat exhaustion, or starvation, or suffocation/drowning, it doesn't include rules for the nauseated, sickened, or staggered conditions. Do all these things not exist? Check the SRD.

Point #2: I guess I wasn't clear enough above so I will repeat myself. The Conan rules do not specifically include a minimum damage after DR = 1 pt rule. Check what Conan says on pg 159 and then tell me if this looks familiar
SRD said:
DAMAGE
When your attack succeeds, you deal damage. The type of weapon used determines the amount of damage you deal. Effects that modify weapon damage apply to unarmed strikes and the natural physical attack forms of creatures.

Damage reduces a target’s current hit points.

Minimum Damage: If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of damage.

Strength Bonus: When you hit with a melee or thrown weapon, including a sling, add your Strength modifier to the damage result. A Strength penalty, but not a bonus, applies on attacks made with a bow that is not a composite bow.

Off-Hand Weapon: When you deal damage with a weapon in your off hand, you add only 1/2 your Strength bonus.

Wielding a Weapon Two-Handed: When you deal damage with a weapon that you are wielding two-handed, you add 1-1/2 times your Strength bonus. However, you don’t get this higher Strength bonus when using a light weapon with two hands.

Multiplying Damage: Sometimes you multiply damage by some factor, such as on a critical hit. Roll the damage (with all modifiers) multiple times and total the results. Note: When you multiply damage more than once, each multiplier works off the original, unmultiplied damage.

Exception: Extra damage dice over and above a weapon’s normal damage are never multiplied.

Ability Damage: Certain creatures and magical effects can cause temporary ability damage (a reduction to an ability score).
Thats right. The entire section on damage, including the Minimum Damage rule, is a copy/paste form the SRD. The Minimum Damage rule has always been there and has never prevented DR from negating damage. The equation has always been that on a successful hit your damage is:
((damage rolled + any bonuses - any penalties) with a minimum of 1 pt) - DR
And if you want to argue that Conan changes that rule then you are going to have to cite some other pasage than what is on pg 159 (hint: there isn't any) because we know the the Damage section on pg 159 is refering to damage before DR is applied.


Like I said before, if you like the idea of DR reducing damage to a minimum of 1 instead of a minimum of 0 then go ahead and do it (I wouldn't do it but I'm also not running your game). But don't think that it is the RAW. People who come here looking for information about the correct interpretation of the rules should walk away with the correct answer so that they can make up their own mind if they like the RAW or somebodys house rules better. Informed decisions are always better.

Later [/b]
 
argo said:
And if you want to argue that Conan changes that rule then you are going to have to cite some other pasage than what is on pg 159 (hint: there isn't any)

Well, actually there is another argument, although its officiality can be debated (which is why it is arguable). I asked MongoosePaul for a ruling on this subject, and he says his rule is Minimum Damage of 1 vs. Armour. Since he is one of the authors, I am going to go with that.
 
VincentDarlage said:
argo said:
And if you want to argue that Conan changes that rule then you are going to have to cite some other pasage than what is on pg 159 (hint: there isn't any)

Well, actually there is another argument, although its officiality can be debated (which is why it is arguable). I asked MongoosePaul for a ruling on this subject, and he says his rule is Minimum Damage of 1 vs. Armour. Since he is one of the authors, I am going to go with that.

:shock: :?

Point

I still think that IMC I am going to go with DR negating damage though.
 
I'm not sure if this has been stated in the past but....

Page 8 in the "rulebook" of Conan:RPG, it states: The first and most important rule of Conan The Roleplaying game is that if you don't like it, change it.

I believe this has been the basis on almost all the gaming books I've read since the 1st edition AD&D.
 
Okay,
I understand that they may have meant for there to be a minimum damage of 1 point. But, they made it as clear as mud. It would have made a big difference so it should have been stated in the section on Damage Reduction, especially when where it is stated it follows a statement that says "if the weapon penetrates armor..." which I took to mean "if at least one point gets through DR"

Let me clarify the Noble vs. Pict fight

Round One: Noble charages horde of 30 Picts, kills one with a Spirited Charge, cleaves and kills a second. Eight Picts surround him and the rest charge the remainder of the party at the ruined fort. Four Picts get a swing at noble, no effect.

Round 2: Picts all try to hit noble with clubs and hatchets, to no effect. Noble wounds one Pict with his sword.

Round 3: Picts attempt to grapple, Noble using combat reflexes and cleave, kills one and prevents 2 others from making attempts due to Attack of Opportunities. 3 of the Picts make a grapple hit, but Noble beats them all on Strength checks

Round 4: 7 Picts gang slay the horse (it takes all 7 to do it because of horse DR) Noble kills another 2 Picts (5 left now)

Round 5 soldier arrives to help noble, with power attack and cleave kills 2 picts. Noble kills another.

Round 6: last Picts try to flee, shot to death by borderer in the trees nearby.


The disconcerting thing was round 2 when all those Picts did no good. And, round 4 when it took 14 attacks to kill a horse. Yes, the minimum damage rule would have helped a lot, and the noble would have taken probably 10 points of damage. If the Picts ahd had more time before being horribly cut to pieces by the soldier's bardiche, they would have had another chance at grappling.
 
From your description it sounds like the picts used fairly sensible tactics, but were just outclassed. The Noble was quite optimised to fight them, with combat reflexes & great cleave, so he deserved to do well.
 
I have to say I don't really think the rules are really designed for 12th level PCs, except as the culmination of months or years of play. Lower-level PCs vs picts of a similar level might have been a fairer fight.
 
Maybe people are thinking that I'm complaining more than I am. I wanted and expected the Picts to loose, and to loose badly. This was a one shot meant to test out the full range of combat options in the game to see whether we wanted to do a real campaign or not.

I expected the Picts to get crushed, but I expected them to do a bit more damage than they did. It's the high DR of the horse (especially) and plate mail vs the crummy damage of the club and hatchet that surprised me. For me, the mimimum 1 point of damage solves my problem. I just wish it had been more plainly explained.
 
[Pet Peeve]

DrSkull said:
I wanted and expected the Picts to loose, and to loose badly.

:arrow: I wanted and expected the Picts to lose, and to lose badly.

[/Pet Peeve]

Sorry. :oops: I'm a teacher and it gets to me sometimes so I have to let the monster out.
 
I am sorry about that, I am a teacher too, and was typing while I was supposed to be starting class and wasn't paying close attention.
 
This is a variant my group has been discussing...

We use the minimum 1 damage rule.

What I proposed is that the minimum 1 damage be subdual damage. This allows for more realistic combat, but makes book-keeping a little harder (not really if you do it right).

The reason I say more realistic is... Sure, you might be wearing mail hauberk and those picts might not actually cut you or damage you (meaning they can't get past your DR) and some of them might actually beat it and do "real" damage, but it is still going to hurt like heck and will wear on you.

Eventually, you could fall unconscious when the subdual damage reaches your real damage.

Thoughts?
 
I'm a little lost in this whole thread. Why should a bunch of poorly-equiped savages be able to whipe out a party of uber-leveled, plate-armored mounted heroes? I can't think of a game where they would stand much chance in a pitched melee, and if I could I wouldn't play it. Also, the outcome sounds pretty realistic to me. Medieval pitched battles often resulted in few if any casualties to heavily armored, mounted warriors but hundreds of deaths of dorks running around on the ground.
 
JM said:
I'm a little lost in this whole thread. Why should a bunch of poorly-equiped savages be able to whipe out a party of uber-leveled, plate-armored mounted heroes?

I don't think that anybody is saying that they should be able to do that. I don't think that the problem DrSkull had was that the picts hsd no chance of winning or even that they had no chance of placing the players in mortal danger but that they utterly failed to pose any threat at all. No threat = no tension = no excitement = no fun.

Looking at the breakdown of the fight that DrSkull posted I am not entierly convinced that there is a real problem with the rules here (aside from the horse's DR, that really is too high. In fact it seems to me that most of the DR given to the "normal" animals is too high.). For starters, as someone has already pointed out, this player was pratically designed to crush entire armies of mooks. Full plate, combat reflexes, cleave. No wonder he cleaned up. Secondly it looks like the picts used the right taticts, they just had bad luck. Noble prevented 3 grapple checks and won three more in a single round. If even one had made it he would have been at a severe disadvantage, if two made it he would have been in mortal danger. And the remaning picts could have tried again in round 4 if they hadn't had such trouble with the horse and round 5 if the Noble's back up hadn't arrived (there were still 5 picts left in round 5, with grapple tatcits that could still spell trouble). If a few die rolls had gone the other way it isn't hard to see a scenario where the Noble would have been badly hurt. He still probably would have won but he would have been hurt. I don't think that this example is proof enough to say things like a guy in full plate can stroll across the Pictish Wilderness alone without fear.

Oh, idea :idea: How about nets! Yeah, primitive people can produce them, they require a touch attack, put a sever cramp in the player's style, and the Barbarian's Versatility ability means that the fact they are a exotic weapon makes less of a difference. Yeah, makes sense too that it wouldn't take long for primitive Picts who live right next to Aquilonia to figgure out that nets are good against armored nights. Try that next time your Noble gets too cocky about his ability to slaughter the natives. :wink:
 
DrSkull said:
I am sorry about that, I am a teacher too, and was typing while I was supposed to be starting class and wasn't paying close attention.

Hey! That happens to me too! 8)
 
Dr Skull,

Is there some rule about multiple people attacking which gives them an incremental bonus? I'm just going by some comments I've seen here and there, but it looks like if you are attacked by 6 people (say), the second attacker gets +1, the third gets +2 etc up to the 6th who gets +5.

1) Is this correct?

2) Did the Picts get this bonus in your combat? I imagine it would make the possibility of the last one or two getting a finesse attack past his armour a little more realistic (although I'm only guessing here).

There surely is no feat as good as combat reflexes for preventing a pig-pile grapple situation!

Cheers
 
I did use the piling on cumulative bonuses for the Picts to hit. This was indeed how they managed to score several finesse hits --against the Horse!

At first I was hestitant about whether to allow Finesse attacks against the natural armor of the horse, but then decided to allow it, figuring it represented attacks against the horse's eyes, hamstring, and other more vulnerable spots.
 
DrSkull said:
I did use the piling on cumulative bonuses for the Picts to hit. This was indeed how they managed to score several finesse hits --against the Horse!

At first I was hestitant about whether to allow Finesse attacks against the natural armor of the horse, but then decided to allow it, figuring it represented attacks against the horse's eyes, hamstring, and other more vulnerable spots.

I don't really think an unarmoured horse should have more than DR 2, given that hard leather is DR 4. DR 4 for an ox, DR 6 maybe for a wild boar.
 
Ok, on this minimum damage thing, I think the official word is that minimum damage trumps armour. It's sensible but I don't like it very much no more than I like hevay armour stopping all damage, so here's what I'll do. Remember this is only my quick and dirty fix.

I'm not gonna allow actual minimum damage if the armour absorbs the blow because for me it opens a new can of worms : poisoned weapons. In my previous d20 games, I've ruled 1 hp loss from a weapon was enough to break the skin, so the poison get in. I don't want arguments with players over this.

So here it is : minimal damage in the case of armour soaking the blow is 1 subdual HP from melee weapons, 2 subdual HP from heavy bludgeoning weapons (heavy mace, warhammer, war club). If a power attack using one of these particular weapons gets in, add the power attack bonus to the subdual damage.

I'm not allowing minmal damage from missile weapons because I don't like the idea of knights being stunned by arrow volleys. I know this is a problem, but I don't know how to fix it simply. Besides this Conan Rpg, not Agincourt RPG :wink: !

That's it. I don't have much in the way of justifications beyond a cool feeling of 'we can't skewer the fucker so let's bash him into oblivion' and my favorite historical minis game (DBM) mentioning infantry units equipped with some kind of heavy mace whose specific purpose was to deal with knights.
 
Hyena said:
Ok, on this minimum damage thing, I think the official word is that minimum damage trumps armour. It's sensible but I don't like it very much no more than I like hevay armour stopping all damage, so here's what I'll do. Remember this is only my quick and dirty fix.

I'm not gonna allow actual minimum damage if the armour absorbs the blow because for me it opens a new can of worms : poisoned weapons. In my previous d20 games, I've ruled 1 hp loss from a weapon was enough to break the skin, so the poison get in. I don't want arguments with players over this.

So here it is : minimal damage in the case of armour soaking the blow is 1 subdual HP from melee weapons, 2 subdual HP from heavy bludgeoning weapons (heavy mace, warhammer, war club). If a power attack using one of these particular weapons gets in, add the power attack bonus to the subdual damage.

I'm not allowing minmal damage from missile weapons because I don't like the idea of knights being stunned by arrow volleys. I know this is a problem, but I don't know how to fix it simply. Besides this Conan Rpg, not Agincourt RPG :wink: !

That's it. I don't have much in the way of justifications beyond a cool feeling of 'we can't skewer the fucker lost let's bash him into oblivion' and my favorite historical minis game (DBM) mentionning infantry units equipped with some kind of heavy mace whose specific purpose was to deal with knights.

I think this is not only a good idea but one that is based in how things would work in real life. For my campaign, so far, we have gone with a hit always causes 1hp because that was the simplest, but I may change that.
 
Yuan-Ti said:
I think this is not only a good idea but one that is based in how things would work in real life. For my campaign, so far, we have gone with a hit always causes 1hp because that was the simplest, but I may change that.

Not my idea sadly, I just elaborated on something somebody said earlier in the thread. And for this real life thing it's a mere coincidence I assure you ! :wink:

I'm a little worried with missile weapons though, I really don't know what to do with them...
 
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