Combat - Decapitation and severed limbs?

[Archer]

Having run a game to test the rules, I have found several areas with the combat rules I find are problematic because they slow down the game or really does not occur at all.

First of all, while these are pretty negative, I do not mean to start a flame war, I want to discuss solutions, so keep the discussion calm, please.

Let me first begin with what the heading of this topic says. Reading about the effects of Major wounds on Limbs states that a Limb that has taken a Major Wound is mangled or severed. Unfortunately this will never occur unless the Gamesmaster is especially cruel, since nothing in the rules actually says it occurs. Instead the rules discuss the chances of surviving a Major Wound, how long you have to actually restore the limb etc.

Same goes for Head, Chest and abdomen. Though here you have to roll to see if you die or not.

So, to momentarily discuss another aspect of the combat rules that I realized during game play, before I go on to discuss Major Wound again.
Combat in this edition of RQ takes many times more when it comes to game time. Most combat rounds in older RQ or BRP are over quickly (a maximum of 30-50 seconds of time to play through), but running a combat round in Mongoose's RQ takes a lot more of time. Especially if any attacks really hit, the game almost grinds to a halt. All sense of speed, action and excitement just dissipates.
Mainly this is because the combat rules have added layers to each momentum of the rules, compared to RQ3 and BRP (mainly Stormbringer 5 that I am comparing with).
I contribute the slow combat to (note, I know that familiarity with the rules will speed things up a bit, but there are some things that can not be done faster);

1. Punching bag syndrome. Unfortunately my previous experiences with a system that uses only HPs on Hit locations repeats itself. Characters can take many hits before they are taken out of combat. Especially with random rolled hit location. The problem becomes even more exaggerated when you realize that HPs/Hit Location are not only the value you have from +0 to +X. It is the whole range from +X to -X before anything serious will happen to the character, and he will be taken out of combat. Add to this multiple hit locations and you have one of the main reasons why combat take much more time. Characters take hit after hit without going down.

2. Loss of combat actions. The added complexity of keeping track of how many combat actions each character involved in combat has lost, and how many more must pass before that specific character can act is another layer of complexity that takes away speed from combat.

3. And to tie in with the first thing this thread is about; Nothing bad happens before you die. You can take many hits to every part of your body. At worst a limb will be unusable until it has healed, or you go prone. You never loose an arm, you never loose your head, or get cut in half. Things that would have made combat faster, taken character out of the fight much earlier. Granted, you may become unconscious and get taken out of the fight, which brings me to the next "issue".

4. Resilience rolls per hit location that is in the "-" zone. You roll to see if you remain conscious for each hit location that has been brought down to the "-" portion of your Hit Points, adding another layer of complexity to be handled (not that it is difficult, it just consumes a lot of time and grinds what should be fast paced action to a halt).

All I have mentioned could so easily have been avoided. Unfortunately it would require a reconstruction of some aspects of the combat rules.

By removing the Loss of combat actions, the Resilience roll to remain conscious/dying, and introduce a Major Injury table we could speed things up greatly, plus we could finally get decapitated heads and limbs.

First of all I would start to change the dynamics of injuries;
+X to +1 are an injured hit location.

+0 is a Seriously injured hit location, effect; Disabled hit location (head, abdomen and chest means you fall unconscious if you fail a Resilience test, that is not repeated each round).

-1 to -X is a Major Injury and it is here the Major Injury table would take effect. For each hit location we have a list of effects numbering 1 to Y, with increasingly worse effects (from loosing a finger or being struck unconscious to loosing a limb, get cut in half etc.). You roll a d10 and add the "- value" of the limb to get the result. On some of these results you may roll Resilience to not fall unconscious or die from blood loss.

<-X is an automatic destruction of limb (smashed or cut off) from which it will not recover. Head, Chest and abdomen is automatic death.

Through the Major Injury table we have removed some of the parts in the combat rules that slows down the game just because you have to stop to make X resilience tests, or count how many Combat Actions have been lost.

Any more ideas regarding Major Wounds, speed of of combat, etc? lets get the discussion rolling, just remember to keep it calm and civil.

 

[babayaya]

on my midnight first rq session, i decided to do exactly the same.
if you really want to be more deadly with major injuries, use the one from stormbringer/hawkmoon...

 

[RosenMcStern]

Well, WRT to severing limbs, the usual rule is that if the damage was done at one pass by a slashing weapon the limb is severed, otherwise it is maimed. This was clearly stated in RQ3, but not in MRQ, but I think everybody will adopt this crierion.

The actual point where I agree with you, Archer, is that there is no "automatic death" or "automatic incapacitation" result. A character hit by a trebuchet in the head for 50 damage can still make a Resilience roll to remain conscious, not to mention he is not automatically dead. Granted that Resilience is a skill, which can be trained to 100% or more, this means there is no sure way to take powerful characters out of a fight, as already pointed out in another thread with the almost-beheaded Dragon that stays active for two minutes and then suddenly dies of blood loss.

This clearly need some polishing. However, I would not go for the SuperMajor wound solution you proposed. Rather, I would just drop the Resilience test to remain conscious when a vital location is reduced to less than -HP (a la RQ3). In this case you are incapacitated, you can still roll each round to avoid death, but you will be dead anyway in (CON+POW)/2 rounds unless some friend heals you.

This is a simple fix, as it just implies an "automatically fail the Resilience roll" instead of making new rules.

 

[Archer]

on my midnight first rq session, i decided to do exactly the same.
if you really want to be more deadly with major injuries, use the one from stormbringer/hawkmoon...

The Major Wound table in Stormbringer makes combat quick and lethal, with body parts removed. A far more elegant solution IMHO than RQ. But I try to work with what I have. Still that Stormbringer Major Wound table (and others like it from other games) are in the back of my mind when thinking about how to deal with MRQ.

 

[AlphaStrike]

Isn't it odd how different people's experiences of a game can be? I've GMed three sesssions of a new RQ campaign, which so far has been combat-light. What we have had has felt gritty and dangerous. All combat has been humans vs. humans so far, with people dropping quickly - often after one attack.

I can see the problems posed by very high Resilience skills, but that hasn't come up yet. Most rolls have been failed, I'd say.

I wonder if armour is an issue. Because it hinders so many skills, most players have opted for no more than leather.

The one extended fight there has been was a gritty mugging in a back alley, with nothing more than fists and a dagger. This felt very real, with a PC just about managing to scramble free and get to safety.

There aren't many times where you'd run from a dagger-armed thug in D&D!

 

[Archer]

Isn't it odd how different people's experiences of a game can be? I've GMed three sesssions of a new RQ campaign, which so far has been combat-light. What we have had has felt gritty and dangerous. All combat has been humans vs. humans so far, with people dropping quickly - often after one attack.

I can see the problems posed by very high Resilience skills, but that hasn't come up yet. Most rolls have been failed, I'd say.

I wonder if armour is an issue. Because it hinders so many skills, most players have opted for no more than leather.

The one extended fight there has been was a gritty mugging in a back alley, with nothing more than fists and a dagger. This felt very real, with a PC just about managing to scramble free and get to safety.

There aren't many times where you'd run from a dagger-armed thug in D&D!

Very different indeed, the combats I have run has made me long for the lethalness of D&D, and that is not a good thing.

Characters taking hit after hit, continue fighting with three of four hit locations at negative HPs, Resilience ~80% so they just keep on fighting.
Compared to RQ3/Stormbringer 5 where a strike from a dagger would almost certainly drop you.

Armor definetly are not worth using with the armor penalty, unless you have a very high skill (100+). Something my players quickly picked up. Because when you go 100+ in a skill, you may as well use armor to avoid the halving rule (though that is not used in combat, armor penalty affects other skills).

The longest battle (meaning it took the most game time, almost two hours of real time, but only eight or ten combat rounds) was between two player characters and a brown bear. The characters keept hitting the bear, but not in the same location, so they never got it to negative HPs in any location. Meanwhile the bear kept biting and clawing them, hitting different hit locations. With their high Resilience skills, they did not go unconscious or died even though they were prone.

 

[Archer]

Well, WRT to severing limbs, the usual rule is that if the damage was done at one pass by a slashing weapon the limb is severed, otherwise it is maimed. This was clearly stated in RQ3, but not in MRQ, but I think everybody will adopt this crierion.

It is a good rule, which would give you the decapitations I am after. However, taking into acount that you have to deal more damage than +HP to -HP in most cases for that spectacular one-strike-one-beheading strike, you need to use greataxe/great sword to get enough damage, and that might not even be enough.

Given that an average character (Siz 11, Con 11) has 5 HPs in the head, we would need to do 10+ damage (+5 to -5) in order to get a decapitation.

But as you say, the rule that if it is reduced to >-HP in one blow, the bodypart gets cut away, is a very good one and a great start.
I had forgot that RQ3 used such a rule (long time since I played RQ3, has been playing Stormbringer3/Elric!/Stormbringer 5 as my dose of BRP the last 10 years).

The actual point where I agree with you, Archer, is that there is no "automatic death" or "automatic incapacitation" result. A character hit by a trebuchet in the head for 50 damage can still make a Resilience roll to remain conscious, not to mention he is not automatically dead. Granted that Resilience is a skill, which can be trained to 100% or more, this means there is no sure way to take powerful characters out of a fight, as already pointed out in another thread with the almost-beheaded Dragon that stays active for two minutes and then suddenly dies of blood loss.

This clearly need some polishing. However, I would not go for the SuperMajor wound solution you proposed. Rather, I would just drop the Resilience test to remain conscious when a vital location is reduced to less than -HP (a la RQ3). In this case you are incapacitated, you can still roll each round to avoid death, but you will be dead anyway in (CON+POW)/2 rounds unless some friend heals you.

This is a simple fix, as it just implies an "automatically fail the Resilience roll" instead of making new rules.

It is a solution that I will have to think a bit about and try in game to see how it affects gameplay. It still does not solve the issue that keeping track of lost combat actions slows down the game though. :\

 

[RosenMcStern]

Given that an average character (Siz 11, Con 11) has 5 HPs in the head, we would need to do 10+ damage (+5 to -5) in order to get a decapitation.

A warsword with a slight damage modifier is enough to deal 10 pts of damage. Needless to say, rolling a critical it does help. In SP36, Mongoose suggested a revised weapon table that "facilitates limb severance", and indeed weapons deal more damage in this version.

It still does not solve the issue that keeping track of lost combat actions slows down the game though. :\

One of the last playtesters reported that dropped CAs are among the deadliest effects. In fact, waiting 2+ rounds licking one's wounds while helplessly watching your opponent cast Bladesharp for the final strike can be rather demoralizing. I think the overall effect is worth some additional bookkeeping.

I am running my first actual session on friday. I'll let you know after I have had the opportunity to playtest it myself.

 

[Rurik]

For players I think using d4's to keep track of remaining actions and reactions is the best solution. This will also work for 1-2 NPC's/Monsters.

I plan on using a log of checkboxes for multiple NPC's/Monsters per round. I don't see any way around this.

I have run a few combats between high skilled characters and the loss of CA's was significant in those. The advantage gained from scoring a good hit often leads to ending the fight in short order.

 

[Durand Durand]

Given that an average character (Siz 11, Con 11) has 5 HPs in the head, we would need to do 10+ damage (+5 to -5) in order to get a decapitation.

In the film even Conan the Barbarian took a couple blows to decapitate Thulsa Doom. I imagine most people will be hacked apart and not cleanly cut through except by expert swordsmen weilding top quality swords. This is not an nice thing to imagine. :shock:

I understand worry though.

If I were you I'd perhaps impose heavier penalties to staying consious than the basic rules suggest. Much like impaling penalties I'd introduce resiliance penalties for wounded locations. Also penalties increased with multiple wounded locations, increasing fatigue rolls for each wounded location, introducing general or specific skill penalties for each wounded location, and additional resiliance penalties for vital locations.

Lets try a few things then come back to the table here. I don't have a session until next monday, and a very busy schedule in-between, so somebody please try these ideas in various mixes and let us know the results.

- Each "Minor" or "Serious Wound" requires and immediate fatigue roll as a result of shock.
- Each "Minor Wound" introduces -10% resiliance rolls and skill rolls with that limb.
- Each "Serious Wounds" has -20% penalty to resiliance rolls.
- Chest, Head and Abdomen "Wounds" also suffer a further -10% penalty.

I'd think even using just the first two of these idea's would quickly lead to some unconsious if not dead PC's and NPC's.

Lets try them.

DD

 

[Trifletraxor]

In old RQ3, a character with X hit points in a location, needed to take 2X damage in a single strike in that locaton to either get severed by a slashing weapon or maimed with a blunt or impaling weapon. As a houserule, I added that taking 3X damage in a single strike with a blunt weapon also led to a sever. This led to a lot of fun for Snagg the Hungry, a darktroll warrior wielding a troll maul, while fighting a bunch of newtlings (until they caught him in their nets and pulled him into the water of course).

SGL.

 

[babayaya]

To explain exactly the context...

There where 3 dorns high warriors (half viking/half celtic) in a cold north forest infested by orcs and led generally by a half orc/half ogre....
they thought they were enough sneaky to bypass such an encouter...missed!
so they had to plan quickly a combat, and at the end of the 1st round the mightiest of the 3 was reducted to (if i followed the rules) to -15 and he still wasn't dead because he had such a CON and resilience that he wasn't so much impared despite the maluses....
I say NO!!! he only had something like 8 or 9 or even 10 hp in the head how could this head reasonnably stay on his neck with such a blow?????
that's why i took a houserules as the olds rq system wich are easy to use (until there will be some fixing in a way)...

 

[Archer]

A warsword with a slight damage modifier is enough to deal 10 pts of damage. Needless to say, rolling a critical it does help. In SP36, Mongoose suggested a revised weapon table that "facilitates limb severance", and indeed weapons deal more damage in this version.

And it adds even more problems as Armor becomes even more useless. Not only will it hinder you through Armor penalties, it wont protect much either.
Increasing weapon damage requires increasing armor protection to keep things reasonably logical. So it is not really a good idea, as it then only affect characters without armor.

To get the "more lethal" effect the way character take damage, and in what amounts is the thing to change. That is why in my first post in this thread suggested the shift of the Serious and Major wound effects.

One of the last playtesters reported that dropped CAs are among the deadliest effects. In fact, waiting 2+ rounds licking one's wounds while helplessly watching your opponent cast Bladesharp for the final strike can be rather demoralizing. I think the overall effect is worth some additional bookkeeping.

True, it is a tactical disadvantage, and it can be a make or break deal for combat. During play in one combat encounter on of my PCs got pummeled by a duck with a mace and a shield, unable to fight back (lost CAs), and it looked like he was going to go down, until he managed to get a solid hit to the ducks head with his sheild, dropped the head down to -4, and the duck failed its resilience roll!

But the question is, is it worth sacrificing speed and sense of action for this? the combat rules was supposedly modeled after the fights in Star Wars EPIII, but they are not even close to recreate the "action" feel due to lack of speed.

Running Stormbringer 5, we handle about 4-6 combat rounds (and roughly as many dropped opponents) in the time it takes to run 1 combat round in RuneQuest. As such I feel that Stormbringer are much closer to what the RQ combat system supposedly set out to accomplish; being a combat system that immitates cinematic combat. Especially since we basically duel with the dice (the dice never stay still for long, as we roll, describe the action while rolling for the next, something that is not possible with RQ due to the added complexity).

So, I do not really feel that MRQ are a "simplified" compared to RQ3 or BRP. However, I would like to find a way for it to equal the speed which combat are played at in Stormbringer 5.

Unfortunately the first thing I see that has to go, is the loss of combat actions. At the moment I see no way to actually keep what they do in the game, and gain speed of play. If someone has a suggestion that removes the added complexity of having to roll 1d4 to see how many combat actions are lost, and then to keep track of them, but to maintain what this part of the rules achieve when it comes to how combat plays, I am all ears.

Using d4's to count down the loss of combat actions are not really an option either. It is a clever way to keep track of how many "losses" remains, but it is still a slow bookkeeping mechanic.

As for severing limbs, there are no alternative than to adopt the rule of "one strike to bring it down to -HP will sever it". Consdering that the rulebook discusses the effect of having lost limbs, I think they meant for a similar rule to exist. However, it was probably forgotten when they came around to writing the effects of Serious and Major wounds.

I do not know where to turn, but putting forth the question "How does one loose a limb?" to Mongoose so that we could get an official answer in a future Players Guide would be a good thing. Perhaps then we could know how they meant that it was supposed to work as written.

I am running my first actual session on friday. I'll let you know after I have had the opportunity to playtest it myself.

Please, let us know. I just wonder, what BRP-systems are your previous experience? just to know what your references are when you compare.

 

[Vadrus]

Also has anyone run MRQ with a largish group of players yet?

My weekly group is GM plus 6 or 7 players, so I need rules to be fluid with minimal bookkeeping as combat is slow enough just due to the numbers of PCs and NPCs involved in many of our combats.

My fear is that if the PCs all have 3 actions (yes they do tend to roll high, especially if I'm busy), the NPCs all have 2 or 3 and appear in enough numbers to challenge the party, then a single combat round could easily have 40 to 50 combat actions to roll and keep track of :shock:

So if anyone tries with a largish group (min 4+ players) then let me know how you went on.


Vadrus

 

[Archer]

Two players against two NPCs at a time was time consuming enough. I can not really see myself running a combat with 5-6 PCs and perhaps and equal amount or more number of NPCs/Monsters. That would take some serious preparation. Be prepared to spend a signifciant amount of the evening (or whenever you play) just running through the mechanics of combat to get to the end of it.

 

[Vadrus]

Two players against two NPCs at a time was time consuming enough. I can not really see myself running a combat with 5-6 PCs and perhaps and equal amount or more number of NPCs/Monsters. That would take some serious preparation. Be prepared to spend a signifciant amount of the evening (or whenever you play) just running through the mechanics of combat to get to the end of it.

That's what I feared from reading the rules, just wanted to see how other people fared in practice.

Having such a large group does cause significant problems when choosing what to play, mind you it used to be worse, the group was up to ten just over a year ago.


Vadrus

 

[zanshin]

I did a simple combat with 3 players vs a troll and 2 trollkin and it all went smoothly. Beginning characters.

I was using a houserule counting down strike ranks for actions (every 6 srs = 1 action) , and it made it easy to keep track of what was going on - when people lost actions due to injury you just score off the actions they would have taken.

Takes a little bit of bookkeeping.

With low resilience rolls everyone drops pretty fast.

 

[babayaya]

a very good old rule is the table turn.....
fisrt, the quickest then when the "mass" comes to act then, this is where the table turn arrives, it works enoughly well (something like 15/17 years of 5 to7 players around the table in all rpg....).
this is the most efficient one...because the players all have a time to speak a another to think before acting...

 

[RosenMcStern]

I have ran RQ3 for some fifteen years, with some Call of Cthulhu as "divertissements". I never really tried Stormbringer as I do not like Moorcock's stories that much.

I am not very afraid of slowish combats. When my original group learned RQ (they had great experience with TheFantasyTrip, which is a hypertactical system), combats were endless. Players and GMs alike tended to consider SRs as the real turns and interject a lot of tactical movement and change of intents in the MR sequence. This is not the way RQ2/RQ3 was meant to be played. When I understood the "game philosophy" and enforced the "You do what you decided in your Statement of Intent, period" principle, things started to go smoother. Note that MRQ changes this, as it has no Statement of Intent phase.

I think players with previous experience that experience slowish combats should just get accustomed to using CAs, which are very different from MRs/SRs, in the correct way. Incidentally, this is a mechanics I like. I just feel there should be more tactical options that "burn" CAs to achieve results, like feinting for a -40% to opponent's Dodge/Parry at the expense of one CA.

 

[Rurik]

I just feel there should be more tactical options that "burn" CAs to achieve results, like feinting for a -40% to opponent's Dodge/Parry at the expense of one CA.

I proposed precise shots taking a CA to set up to help balance them, and thought it captured the feel of waiting to the last SR in RQ2/3 for called shots.

I tested it and found in practice 'burning' CA's does not work. Any time a combatant uses a CA to set up an action all the defender has to do is perform a Fighting Retreat with his next action to step out of range of the attack being set up (this test led me to the realization that with the RAW the Fighting Retreat is a pretty much broken action as long as you have room to keep backing up).