Hey, that reminds me, anyone know how criticals work in MQ? Someone said they no longer ignore armor. If so, just how do you whack on that Zorak Zorani Rune Lord with enchanted lead armor with a bazillion AP?
You're right. Criticals do not ignore armour, as far as I can see. They do "maximum damage", excluding damage bonus, instead of the old double damage (etc). Some weapons (basically shortswords and spears) also can "Impale". This involves more dice rolls. On an Impale, you can either leave the weapon where it is, which drags around in the opponent and hampers them, or try and pull it free, but you lose your weapon. To pull it free, you have to make an Athletics (?!?) roll. If you make it, you get to roll the weapon damage and add that to the full damage already caused. If you fail, you cause an additional 1d4 damage and the weapon stays stuck.
This means that if you critically hit someone with a "war sword", you do 8 points of damage plus your damage bonus. If you hit Average Joe in the head and he isn't wearing any armour, this isn't enough to potentially kill, but you might just knock him unconscious. If Average Joe is wearing chainmail, for example, (5pt) and has 5 HP in the head (average), you are going to need FOUR criticals to his head to cause any significant damage. As far as your Zorak Zoran Rune Lord is concerned, forget it. You're never going to be able to damage him with a "war sword".
The solution? Well, you could try the nifty battle magic (oops - RUNE magic) spell "Skybolt". This one's brilliant. For a mere 3MP you get to cause 3D6 damage on your opponent, IGNORING ARMOUR. That would be my tactic. Pile on shedloads of armour, get a POW crystal, get the Skybolt spell, and stop mucking about with these feeble "weapons". Only problem, the Skybolt spell is part of the "Chaos" rune - although as far as the rules are concerned this seems to be no problem for anyone to gain (tentacles, anyone...?).
Either that, or use "Precise Attacks" all the time, subtracting 40% from your attack every time and opting to bypass armour. Oh, and use a spear. No other weapon is worth wasting time on. Get half a dozen just in case you can't retrieve post-impale, they do 1d10, which is 1d10+10
on a crit, and go for Bypass Armour every time.
Nice'n'crunchy, eh? Lots of scope for "variable" tactics? Just make sure you've got loads of scrap paper around though - the book-keeping here is gonna be awesome, especially when you get multiple Combat Actions, equal number of Reactions, variable Strike Ranks, and multiple opponents! ("Hmm... it's my third combat action this round, and Broo #3 has already made 2 Reactions - I think - so may not have any left if I try and hit him again with my Bypass Armour attack this time. Or was that Broo #4? And what's our strike ranks this Round again...?")
Another question for those of us who have been lucky enough to play the game already. Simply, what happens if the attacker rolls a critical on both the initial and opposed rolls?
Good question. The rules don't say. There appears to be no difference between rolling an initial Critical followed by a second Critical and rolling an initial Normal Success followed by a second Critical - they both result in a Critical. Another big question is what happens if you roll an initial Critical followed by a second Normal Success. The rules say "the attack succeeds as normal" - I'm not sure whether this means it is or it isn't a Critical.
Hopefully Mongoose are making a list of the questions (etc) we're raising, and when they reach critical mass will enlighten us with some answers? I for one have no intention of "house ruling" this thing - I might as well stay with what I've got, it works & it makes sense & I can use the scenarios & background!
BTW - I am REALLY looking forwards to the 2A background!!! Even if the Rules are clunky, the new source material is something we're all eager to see!
Sarah
