Question about Picts

[argo]

I agree that I would not roll Hide checks for the Picts in the warband either. Just take 10 and call it even. Yes that means that the Picts don't risk rolling a 1 but it also means they can't benefit from rolling a 20. Let the "luck factor" come into play when the PC's make their rolls. This speeds up play as well.

As for booby traps. Yes the booby traps will be posted mostly on paths. Moving through trackless jungle is hard unless you have a good borderer to guide you. If you players decide to move off the trail have them face slow movement rates, random encounters with jungle monsters, and environmental hazards. If they stay on the trail they risk occasional boobytraps and will likely pass by hidden Pict sentinels. Its the rock and a hard place my friend. Throwing hard decisions like that at your players is how you make them loath and fear Pictland.

Aside: not all the booby traps have to actually be set to get invaders. Snares set on a game trail to catch food are perfectly logical and plenty deadly to the PC's.

Look, the Picts fail to conquer the Aquilonians because they have inferior weapons, technology and trainning (that changes when they finally aquire the mystery of steel, as seen in the Hyborian age essay). This is reflected in their character stats. At the end of the day they may be savages but they are still only human. If you simply match their character stat block against the PC's character stat block they will usually loose. But, OTOH, the Aquilonians fail to conquer Pictland because the Picts fight with the home field advantage. Most of the advice on this thread boils down to us saying that if you want your Picts to be feared you have to give them that home field advantage, and that isn't represent in their stat block.

Remember, the Picts know their forest. They know, from experience, what direction and down what paths outsiders will come, where they will go for clean water, where they will sleep. They don't have to monitor hundreds of square miles of wilderness, only a few key points. The picts know where all the dangers of the jungle lurk, they can evade them while drawing the outsiders into them. The Picts know how long it will take the outsiders to move, they can wait and watch the invaders while sending runners down secret trails (or using talking drums) to summon reinforcments and/or set ambushes. The Picts are patient, they will wait until night to attack while people are sleeping (or maybe sneak in and knife just a few victims, or destroy/poision some supplies instead). They will engage just to gang up on, and kill, a single target quickly then run. They wittle down the strength of the group over time (long-term thinking). If worst comes to worst they can pack up and move the village and let the invaders wander around the woods, finding nothing, until they get exhausted and go home depressed. Home field advantage.

Hope that helps.

 

[argo]

Something else I just thought of...

We don't want to be too down on the players. They are the heroes after all. So, say that your players do go into Pictland and kick ass. When they finally come back to whatever border post they left from, have them discover that while they were gone it was attacked and overrun. Nothing left now but cold ashes and three-day-old corpses.

The players may win the battle but they will lose the war.... :twisted:

 

[VincentDarlage]

Excellent touch, Argo. Excellent.

 

[Strom]

Something else I just thought of...

We don't want to be too down on the players. They are the heroes after all. So, say that your players do go into Pictland and kick ass. When they finally come back to whatever border post they left from, have them discover that while they were gone it was attacked and overrun. Nothing left now but cold ashes and three-day-old corpses.

The players may win the battle but they will lose the war.... :twisted:

Great idea! :lol:

Strom
Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 2:29 am    Post subject:
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As for implementing the same traits in game terms, remember that there is a world outside the PC's and events can be happenning that could determine the Picts strength. Maybe they overun the settlement the PC's just left. Now the Picts have the fort!

 

[argo]

Well, great minds ... something something something :roll:

What, you expect me to read the whole thread? :wink:

 

[MadDog]

If you want the Picts to surprise the player's, then they surprise the players -- not everything needs to be determined by a roll of the dice.

Imagine you are on of the players:

GM: OK, a bunch of Picts jump out of nowhere and you are surprised !
Player: Wait a minute, dont I get to spot ? How about Listen ?
Other players: (in a chorus) yah, what did the Picts beam in or something ?

Rules are there for a reason. As a GM I better have a very good reason to break them.

If you have a hard time imagining a forest full of unseen traps, then perhaps your Picts are more civilized than mine...

Consider the vastness of the Pictish wilderness. How many traps would you have to lay in 10,000 square miles for a party to have a 1% chance to fall into ?

Answer: too many for the Picts to be able to lay down and maintain

Random traps are only effective if there is some sort of channeling going on. Traps on paths, roads, or other obvious avenues.

But the Picts (in my campaign at least) are not of this world... they come from an earlier age. They hit fast and disappear. And they take trophies... can you imagine what sort of impact that would have on the moral modifiers of a party if they see the head of a friend on a Pictish pig pole?

The Picts wont accomplish anything on a group of players if they only fight a round or two (barring a number of critical hits). Whatever light wounds they inflict can usually be handled by the first aid skill. In order to kill a typical player, the Picts have to stand and fight, and that becomes a battle of attrition the Picts cant win except at high odds (4:1 or more).

I have run several battles where the Picts stand and fight. It isnt pretty. The last one had 20 Brb-1 and 1 Brb-4 vs five, 2nd lvl Pcs wearing light armor. Meeting engagement, 90 feet initial distance, medium woods. Only one of the PCs had a bow.

After a number of rounds, 1 player was knocked to -1 HP and 10 Picts were down. The players borked a lot of die rolls and attack the Picts like a bunch of crazed Cimmerians (ok, one of them _is_ a crazed cimmerian).

I need to improve the Pictish tactics, esp when it comes to scouting. I also need to use more finesse attacks.

Mad Dog

 

[MadDog]

If I had to adjudicate a situation like this in my game, I would probably leave the die-rolling mostly to the PCs and use the "take 10"-rule for all unimportant NPCs (don't know if "take 10" should apply to things like this, but I like the rule ). So if the PCs were ambushed by a warband of 20 picts I would just say that it was a DC 24 (or whatever) Spot check to detect them.

Sorry if this seemed like a little divergence into Hide/Spot probabilities, but it sounds to me that some of the disagreement in this thread is that people are saying that picts are masters of their environment, and MadDog is saying that this isn't really supported by the rules.

There needs to be some sort of Group Move Silently roll or some way to render down a large number of die rolls into a single roll. Maybe Average Hide vs Average Spot.

Mad Dog

 

[MadDog]

great thread, i'm joining the fray! for options on class i think borderer with the skirmisher combat style is a great choice for picts. the favoured terrain feature of borderers would suit them nicely, improving dodge dv and hide and move silently bonuses.

Picts already get a circumstance bonus to the skills so the Borderers bonus wouldnt not stack.

Mad Dog

 

[MadDog]

Remember, the Picts know their forest. They know, from experience, what direction and down what paths outsiders will come, where they will go for clean water, where they will sleep. They don't have to monitor hundreds of square miles of wilderness, only a few key points. The picts know where all the dangers of the jungle lurk, they can evade them while drawing the outsiders into them. The Picts know how long it will take the outsiders to move, they can wait and watch the invaders while sending runners down secret trails (or using talking drums) to summon reinforcments and/or set ambushes. The Picts are patient, they will wait until night to attack while people are sleeping (or maybe sneak in and knife just a few victims, or destroy/poision some supplies instead). They will engage just to gang up on, and kill, a single target quickly then run. They wittle down the strength of the group over time (long-term thinking). If worst comes to worst they can pack up and move the village and let the invaders wander around the woods, finding nothing, until they get exhausted and go home depressed. Home field advantage.

It sounds like the best way to implement this is to assign some sort of automatic Spot roll for each area of Pict territory. Or perhapts make the Spot roll time dependant. Each 4 hours the players spend in Pictish territory increases the auto-Spot roll by 1, matched against the players Hide rolls.

Mad Dog

 

[MadDog]

To continue my last thought, once the players are spotted, this starts a new "clock". The longer the players stay in Pict-land, the bigger the response.

Mad Dog

 

[Korppis]

Imagine you are on of the players:

GM: OK, a bunch of Picts jump out of nowhere and you are surprised !
Player: Wait a minute, dont I get to spot ? How about Listen ?
Other players: (in a chorus) yah, what did the Picts beam in or something ?

Rules are there for a reason. As a GM I better have a very good reason to break them.

They don't need to know if you break the rules
As a GM i usually roll spot and listen checks for player characters myself, so that my players won't know the actual results. This is to prevent my players to know if there isn't anything to spot/hear or if they just failed their rolls.

And yes, i think that now and then it is ok to break the rules if that would help the atmosphere in a campaign.

 

[Trodax]

Imagine you are on of the players:

GM: OK, a bunch of Picts jump out of nowhere and you are surprised !
Player: Wait a minute, dont I get to spot ? How about Listen ?
Other players: (in a chorus) yah, what did the Picts beam in or something ?

Rules are there for a reason. As a GM I better have a very good reason to break them.

Yeah, I can agree with that. I would definitely let the PCs make Spot checks, and if they rolled well enough, they should discover the picts sneaking up on them. Otherwise I think PCs who have invested in Spot will feel a bit nerfed. As argo pointed out earlier, the PCs are the heroes and their fate should, at least partly, lie in their hands.

There needs to be some sort of Group Move Silently roll or some way to render down a large number of die rolls into a single roll. Maybe Average Hide vs Average Spot.

That would be the "take 10"-rule right there.

 

[Greymane]

If you want the Picts to surprise the player's, then they surprise the players -- not everything needs to be determined by a roll of the dice.

Imagine you are on of the players:

GM: OK, a bunch of Picts jump out of nowhere and you are surprised !
Player: Wait a minute, dont I get to spot ? How about Listen ?
Other players: (in a chorus) yah, what did the Picts beam in or something ?

Rules are there for a reason. As a GM I better have a very good reason to break them.

That is very true, but as I also said in my post, and which is written in the main source book, if you don't like the rules - change them.

As a GM, it should be part of your job to break the rules when necessary - now, just hear me out before anyone takes that the wrong way.

If it is your playstyle to strictly follow the rules and let the roll of the die determine each and every aspect of the game, then so be it.

If your playstyle is more geared toward bending the rules in order to have a situation - in this case a sneak attack - to occur regardless of whether or not the Picts make or fail their Hide/Spot checks, then so be it.

If your playstyle is to chuck the die check system altogether and just "roleplay" it, then so be it.

I agree that if you are going to break the rules you had better have a good reason - and that reason should be your players.

When all is said and done, whatever happens in the game should happen to the benefit the main characters of the story or tale you are trying to tell - your players. If you have to fudge a die roll so someone can escape the gallows noose or allow a dagger to administer a killing blow even though the rules state that it couldn't penetrate the DR of the armor the villain was wearing - which way would you and your player's like to see that go?

The die roll can be too random and too cruel sometimes, even though it is technically the best way to determines many of the actions in the game.

But as a GM - you are the final arbiter. You have the power to say yay or nay on ANY situation that arises. ANY.

Which includes die roles, armor values, Hide/Spot checks, how humanly or inhumanly possible it is to cover 10, 000 miles of wilderness with traps and snares... and to address that matter: your players aren't walking over every square mile are they? Nope. They are walking through an area you have brought them too - an area that is home to the tribe they are going to be ambushed by - or was this just a random encounter?

Forgive me if I step on toes or get long winded about this - but I'm a great lover of these types of games and the adventures that grow out of them. I just feel that the roll of the dice shouldn't determine each and every aspect of the game - if anyone else does feel that is the case, then ignore me entirely. Its your session.

 

[Tim]

Role playing is group storytelling. The rules are just there to help the group tell its story, not to run the story. its not the GM vs. the players but a team effort inwhich everyone wins if you have fun. The original edition of D&D stated in the GMs manual that the rules are just guidlines for play.

That being said the picts are highly skilled in their environment. When building a pict ambush remeber, a group of level 2 warriors could have 5 ranks in hide and move silently, stat bonuses of +2, familar terrian +2, Situaltionals of +5-10 for density of woods lighting conditions etc. (lets use +5), and a further bonus for preparation +2. Also don't forget leaders can ad to a groups skill roll as well +2. Conceivably they could have an Hide rolls of 18 +D20 (call it an 11 for average) or a 29 result. Thats a tough target for most players to meet. In my current group the higest (they are 4th to 5th) is a +10, with the average being +8. if you have a player with significantly more than this then he deserves a roll, after all he had to go to extra effort to have a high spot roll and should get the chance.

 

[Greymane]

Role playing is group storytelling. The rules are just there to help the group tell its story, not to run the story. its not the GM vs. the players but a team effort inwhich everyone wins if you have fun. The original edition of D&D stated in the GMs manual that the rules are just guidlines for play.

Exactly.

It's group thing. I cheer with my player's when they succeed, and mourn when they fail.

 

[Hadrathas]

We just started a campiagn in Pictland - All level 12 Characters - Bossonian, Cimmerian, Hyrkanian, South Islander, - also have a zingaran and Shemite(who took no part so far.)

Well we assisted the Turtle Tribe in ambushing the Wolf Tribe - Launched the ambush and in about 5 rounds of combat killed or wounded about twenty picts without getting so much of a scratch - and this is 4 player characters - they were just mowed down! Then a Tyranasaurus came at the behest of some female shaman or something - 2 of us failed our fortitude saves and went to -1, another was swallowed but somehow survived before the creature was killed. We had actually tactically retreated into the forest but the female Hyrkanian was spotted, then the Cimmerian attacked the creature, who was attacking his woman...then The bossonian joined in and finally the South Islander...It was a tough one!

 

[MadDog]

They don't need to know if you break the rules
As a GM i usually roll spot and listen checks for player characters myself, so that my players won't know the actual results. This is to prevent my players to know if there isn't anything to spot/hear or if they just failed their rolls.

I like doing the secret checks too, but froma pure math standpoint, 20 picts hiding are probably going to blow at least one die roll (unless they took 20).

Another good tactic is just sometimes roll dice and ask different players what thier Spot skill is. For no reason. : )

Mad Dog

 

[MadDog]

Which includes die roles, armor values, Hide/Spot checks, how humanly or inhumanly possible it is to cover 10, 000 miles of wilderness with traps and snares... and to address that matter: your players aren't walking over every square mile are they? Nope. They are walking through an area you have brought them too - an area that is home to the tribe they are going to be ambushed by - or was this just a random encounter?

You are hitting on main point, random vs fixed. In random encounters, it is virtually impossible to use traps or ambushes without fudging. Fixed encounters, on the other hand, can use these.

The first Act the players went through in our recent games had the Picts ambushing the players caravan. In this case the Picts know the caravan arrivesonce a month, they know the path it travels, and they can spot it long before it arrives to the ambush site. This allows the Picts to Take 20 in thier Hide, which made them un-spotted. They could of laid traps too.

For me, and at least some of the players, consistency is part of the fun. Its no fun if you know the Picts can break the rules easily, while the players cant.

Mad Dog

 

[Greymane]

For me, and at least some of the players, consistency is part of the fun. Its no fun if you know the Picts can break the rules easily, while the players cant.

I find it admirable that you and your group are so mindful of the rules ... I wish I was more that way as it would save time, not to mention some awkward moments when scrambling to look up something...

Back to the origin of the post - how to make the Picts more effective against PC's in battle - what about sheer overwhelming odds?

If your Players were able to wipe the floor with 20 Picts, why not pit them against 40? 60? Heck set up a massive battle using the Mass Combat rules!

What could be more pulp or Howard than that?

 

[MadDog]

I find it admirable that you and your group are so mindful of the rules ... I wish I was more that way as it would save time, not to mention some awkward moments when scrambling to look up something...

Back to the origin of the post - how to make the Picts more effective against PC's in battle - what about sheer overwhelming odds?

If your Players were able to wipe the floor with 20 Picts, why not pit them against 40? 60? Heck set up a massive battle using the Mass Combat rules!

The problem is that Pict war parties travel in groups of 20-30 (according to AtTR if I read it correctly). If you make the war parties bigger, there will be less of them floating around, so less random chances to meet them.
Now, if the Picts accumulate enough intel on a group of Pict-slaughtering players, then they might form a larger group to go stomp the players.

Where 20 Picts failed, 30 Picts would probably succeed, and 40 would easily overwhelm the players.

The object, in my humble opinion, is for me to set the table with what is a "realistic" set of conditions and let the players do thier own thing. I cant change the conditions without a good reason.

Mad Dog