RQ2 goons

drdentista

Banded Mongoose
Does anyone know if threre are any nice rules for creating quick goons for RQ? It doesn't have to be MRQ2, it can be for any RQ edition...

I remember having seen something like it some time, but I can't recall where...
 
If you are wanting faceless mooks that the PC's can mow down, I typically give mine stats of 8 to 10, hit points equal to half con and their best weapon skill is around 40%, and go down from there

There is something in the new book that suggests that as well, but that's the method that's worked well for my group since MRQ1 came out

The mooks can still hurt the player characters (Especially if they gang up on them, as one of my overconfident combat monsters found out last week :) )
but you don't have to nit-pick over their hit points. As a matter of fact, I often just consider them to be 'up' or 'down' based on the kind of hit.

One other thing I do, and this is a cinematic thing, so YMMV, is if there are adjacent badguys and the PC does enough damage, I might let some of that damage carry over, if the attack type and the setup is right.

For example, the combat monster mentioned above was pinned at the top of a stairwell by 6 baddies, 3 adjacent to him and 3 waiting immediately behind, he told me that he was going to lunge as hard as possible with his sword, with the hopes of pushing through, throwing some of the baddies off balance.

He made a successful attack roll (Almost a crit, but not quite), and rolled max damage on both dice (for him that was 8 on the arming sword, 6 on the damage mod), and rolled a crit on his Athletics check.

I told him that he shoved himself forward, sticking his blade through the neck of the one in front of him (He had told me he wanted to go high for best leverage), shoving the man back and down, and as his blade slid out through the man's neck that he barreled into the next baddie in line, and stuck his sword deep into her gut, leaving her briefly trying to put her innards back in before she expired.
 
Un-named characters use general hit points (rather than hit locations), and 'Underlings' have HP equal to CON/2. They are incapacitated by Crits, and dead when they reach zero HP. If half the Underlings in a group get incapacitated or killed, the rest flee. (P96 Corerules)
 
Thanks Trippy, I knew I had seen something to that effect in my reading of the core rules, but since I already had a similar, and for me, working rule in place, I couldn't remember exactly where I had seen it.
 
I'm not entirely convinced that the General HPs rule works as intended.
In the example given, the foe with CON 12 & SIZ 16 has 14 General HPs. The same foe would normally have 6 HPs in each leg & the head, 7 in abdomen, 8 in chest, 5 in each arm. That means it's *easier* to disable most locations in a single blow in named NPC than it is to cause a critical wound.

You also have to consult a chart when dealing with un-nameds, making the resolution of a combat more time consuming.

It is easier to nibble a Gen HPs to death than a regular one because all damage comes off a central pool.

Using regular locational HPs for unnamed NPCs allows you to build in weak-points. E.g. Flying apes will have fewer HPs and APs in their wings than the rest of their body.

To be honest, having played most flavours of BRP, I can't see any great advantage to Gen HPs in RQII. The biggest complication I find is CAs. My players right now are in the middle of a battle featuring
4 PCs, 20 Orlanthi commoners and 10 Orlanthi warriors vs
6 warrior dragonewts, 12 EWF skirmishers, 6 warrior monks, 24 EWF regulars, 12 EWF officers, 3 triceratops and a Noble Dragonewt. It's not locational HPs that slow things up, it's CA tracking. It would be nice to have a simple system for abstracting that.
 
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