Natural Weapons

[Itto]

Unarmed combat is based on just STR. But skill of natural weapons of creatures in the Creatures book would indicate that their Natural Weapon skill was based on STR + DEX. The Broo head butt having the same chance in the basic write up as a Club.

Just doing the finishing touches to my NPC generator site www.runegoons.co.uk so I thought I'd find out what other folks thought.

Cheers

 

[canology]

I've always wondered about Unarmed being based on just STR, as it seems like it would be easier to hit with a fist than a sword.
I assumed that it represents the reduced chance of scoring significant damage with a fist or kick.

I would think that animals without the ability to use weapons would get to default to STR + DEX.

 

[weasel_fierce]

Using a weapon gives you more reach I s'pose.

I'd definately use str+dex for natural weapons, though. A bear is a lot better equipped to inflict harm than a human is

 

[Utgardloki]

A natural weapon is something that can do damage above and beyond the basic force of impact. Thus lions have claws and teeth that will slash you apart, in addition to knocking you around with great force. Humans just have fists, and therefore only do the base unarmed damage.

However, I think punching/kicking, etc should also be STR + DEX, like other weapons. A more dextrous opponent would be more likely to get a solid blow in in her Combat Action. It would also avoid another discrepancy that can't be easily explained.

 

[Durand Durand]

I think we will elect to go the STR+DEX option for our home games too, as it doesn't make a lot of sense to have it a lower skill than others as it is the one most people practice right from childhood. I'm not sure about the martial arts skill either. I'm almost of a mind to get the GM to scrap it.

To me Martial Arts simply represents intense training with the same weapons as a normal unarmed person. It would be like giving someone a sword and telling them to use it for a few years and then pitting them against someone with a lot of intensive training (i.e. Martial Arts) behind them. It represents training and technique, not some special gift a normal person wouldn't be able to acheive with a lot of practice and effort.

The first time I met a martial arts kid who wanted to fight me I put him down fairly quickly and without permanent injury. I had had a lot of fighting practive with my 3 much older brothers and neighbours, I knew how to fight and his city-kid karate didn't prepare him like raw experience. On hte other hand, my current housemate, with his highly-honed boarding-school freestyle grappling techniques wups me every time, and my Gung Fu instructor friend makes me look like a top poppet, since he has been in training for twenty years or so. I was going to propose to our group to simply use the 1/20th skill as added to STR to calculate damage instead of using a different skill, though this of course should apply to any melee weapon.

Another thing we thought was worth looking in to was the skills for other missile weapons versus Crossbows. Crossbows are a heck of a lot easier to use, and we thought we'd use a base skill for them of DEX+10% to represent this. Ever tried to trow a knife? The point and click interface of a Crossbow is much easier. We did consider using DEX+STR, but didn't want to overly advantage the muslce bound heroes that win out in melee already.

We elected to ditch First Aid and give everyone Healing as a basic skill. All first aid is is basic healing knowledge, so a Healing Roll at say (+20%) is equivalent to First Aid. Again, we thought it is something we are all used to from childhood. The number of split lips, toothless grins, stick wounds, broken limbs, cracked skills and such I saw as a country boy had me pretty used to some basic stuff by 12 (I never took a serious injury my self though). Here in Australia we tend to get shown how to deal with a snake and spider bites pretty early too, so there was debate over the treat poison skill too and it's application as an option of healing. Of course treating serious injury would require a more difficult penalties.

Another reason we merged First Aid and Healing is the ubiquity of magic. With magic healing so readily available in the community, we thought surgery would'nt be that common, as magic woudl replace most (not all) of it's function.

That's enough, I'm well diverged now.

DD

 

[weasel_fierce]

\
Another reason we merged First Aid and Healing is the ubiquity of magic. With magic healing so readily available in the community, we thought surgery would'nt be that common, as magic woudl replace most (not all) of it's function.

DD

That makes a lot of sense, IF magic is readily available. In a low / no magic game, I'd propably keep them separate still

 

[Durand Durand]

\
Another reason we merged First Aid and Healing is the ubiquity of magic. With magic healing so readily available in the community, we thought surgery would'nt be that common, as magic woudl replace most (not all) of it's function.

DD

That makes a lot of sense, IF magic is readily available. In a low / no magic game, I'd propably keep them separate still

I'd agree with that idea, and still keep Poison and Disease treatments seperate too.

I was thinking we should discuss this one a bit further in my group as I like the idea of some people having to resort to surgery when magic is absent (i.e. the healer is down/dead). Also, specialised surgical knowledge might be combined with Brawling/Martial Arts skills to make a neat Doctor-Fu legendary ability.

DD

 

[Utgardloki]

One of these days I'll add to the Runequest Wiki rules on specialization. Specialization has been discussed on this forum before, and I've found the concept to be very handy for issues like healing and fighting.

In my Runequest Modern formulation, there is an advanced skill CPR which is a specialization of First Aid. CPR is needed for certain tasks, and the CPR skill is added to First Aid to determine the character's effective skill in tasks where CPR applies.

There can also be specializations for treating poison, surgery, etc.

The same applies to fighting. I've divided Martial Arts into three skills: Martial Arts Strike, Martial Arts Block, and Martial Arts Manuevers. M.A. Strike can be added to Unarmed Attack for hitting someone, and M.A. Block can be added to Parry.

One disadvantage of using specializations is that it is much easier for characters to get effective skill levels above 100%, making rules the handle above-100% skills used much more often.