Various questions about opposed rolls, poisons etc

[Deleriad]

First, am I right to notice that dodges and parries may look like opposed skill tests but aren't really. For example, say that both the attacker and parrier roll successes then, normally, in an opposed test, the winner is the one who rolls higher. In an attack vs parry, however, if both succeed it doesn't matter who 'wins' as the result is the same regardless.

Diseases and poisons etc: these are based around opposed rolls and they all have a line saying if both disease/poison and victim succeed then the one who rolls highest 'wins' but under the effects it does not say what the effect of winning is.
I'm guessing that, basically, if the victim wins then the disease/potion has no effect while, if the disease wins it has full effect.

Poisons:
Manticore venom: 1D3 HP damage to location struck, duration 6D10 "minutes."
What exactly does this mean? Does it mean that the damage wears off after 6D10 minutes? Seems unlikely.
Does it mean that you keep taking 1d3 damage for the next 6D10 minutes? If so, how often do you take the damage? Every combat round? every minute? Some other time period?
Does it mean that every 6d10 minutes you take 1d3 damage?

Bruce

 

[GoingDown]

First, am I right to notice that dodges and parries may look like opposed skill tests but aren't really.

True. It is said in somewhere that combat rolls are not really opposed tests (and high skill rule is not affecting them).

Diseases and poisons etc: these are based around opposed rolls and they all have a line saying if both disease/poison and victim succeed then the one who rolls highest 'wins' but under the effects it does not say what the effect of winning is.
I'm guessing that, basically, if the victim wins then the disease/potion has no effect while, if the disease wins it has full effect.

I would say exactly the same.

Manticore venom: 1D3 HP damage to location struck, duration 6D10 "minutes."
What exactly does this mean? Does it mean that the damage wears off after 6D10 minutes? Seems unlikely.

I think it is so that you first take 1d3HP damage, and then after 6D10 minutes poison "fades" away - and you can be healed. But so long poison is affecting, you cannot be healed, quote below:

Duration: How long the poison, if effective, will affect the victim. The effects of the poison cannot be removed or healed until the poison itself has been neutralised or has dissipated in the victim’s system. Hit point damage caused by poison will not automatically heal – it must be healed through magical or natural healing.

 

[Arkat]

You can't heal the poison damage is what it implies but other wounds could still be healed.

The whole poison and disease system looks weak to me, it has no teeth anymore. Poison and Disease were FEARED in RQ, which made fighting Broos and Scorpionmen exceptionally tough opponents.

 

[King Amenjar]

Disease rules in previous editions of RQ were ridiculous - they made the Ebola virus look like a common cold. The one improvement MRQ has made is to allow more creativity about the effects of diseases.

 

[Arkat]

Then you were probably doing the rules wrong. Getting in a large scrimmage with a pack of Broo and being dropped to say 7 hp's and then having to make current HP x 5 tests to avoid contamination or further advancing the stage of the disease was quite deadly. Losing Stat points every hour for a highly advanced disease usually meant death if you didn't have a talented healer close at hand.

 

[gamesmeister]

Aren't you both saying the same thing...that Disease in RQ2/3 was nuts! :wink:

Anyway, while Poison may have been reduced slightly (and let's face it, you can very very easily introduce more powerful poisons), disease is still up there.

Take Rumbling Fever for example. First you have to resist using Reslience, for which you will have to have spent experience points to raise (rather than just using your naturally high CON). If you fail, that's -2 to STR and DEX - a combined Shakes and Wasting Disease. And on average you're going to continue making this test once per day or so until you succeed, or you die, whichever comes first. Not too shabby...

Again though, this is just one disease from the core rulebook. It's very easy to add the original RQ2/3 diseases to the list, and apply different severities to give different delay periods. I would imagine we'll see those maybe in the Companion, but more likely when Malia appears as a cult

Gerry

 

[Gnarsh]

Then you were probably doing the rules wrong. Getting in a large scrimmage with a pack of Broo and being dropped to say 7 hp's and then having to make current HP x 5 tests to avoid contamination or further advancing the stage of the disease was quite deadly. Losing Stat points every hour for a highly advanced disease usually meant death if you didn't have a talented healer close at hand.

It's not quite that deadly. Disease rolls are based of the stat that the disease affects. I don't recall that current hps ever had anything to do with it. Diseases start at the "one point per week" stage, and only advance higher if you fail multiple successive rolls. And in the case of just being exposed, you had to fail the stat roll the intitial time to get infected with any level of the disease.

While it's possible to fail a series of rolls in a row, I found it to be a pretty rare occurance. Disease typically was a once in awhile type thing. When it did happen, the players had to basically stop what they were doing and deal with it (or someone was going to lose a lot of stats over time). Unless your adventurers do nothing but fight Broos and Malia worshipers, it just doesn't come up that often. It was more convenient to use it as a method to force the players to stay in some small town for a period of time (while their sick members were recovering), giving me the opportunity to hit them with some minor side adventure involving the healthy members of the group.

Dunno. I always thought it worked reasonably well. And it's not like you couldn't arbitrarily declare that a given disease had a maximum effect level (preventing characters from accidentally dying due to silly/bad die rolls). The rules as presented were guidelines. And IMO, they worked pretty darn well. I certainly preferred them to rulesets from other games where a disease just affected you for X amount of time and nothing you did mattered (unless you had some kind of cure spell/ability). You can't "use" that for anything as a GM. Diseases in RQ were a plot device...

 

[Arkat]

Current HP x 5 rolls were RQ2 rules. I've run many combats where some of the pc's would fail multiple rolls in a row and end up with a chronic case of Creeping Chills or Soul Waste. It's especially lethal if your running an outdoorsy campaign such as Griffin Mountain.

The rules for disease (and poison) in MRQ are unclear as to how often you get dinged for being contaminated. Having a set duration for them just seems like your coming down with a mere flu and not something potentially life threatening.

A nice erratta or FAQ would be helpful..

 

[gamesmeister]

The rules for disease (and poison) in MRQ are unclear as to how often you get dinged for being contaminated. Having a set duration for them just seems like your coming down with a mere flu and not something potentially life threatening.

The rules are pretty clear regarding diseases. You make the reslience check, and if you fail you suffer the consequences. You then wait for the delay period, which in the example diseases is a random period but doesn't necessarily need to be so, at which point you make another resilience test. If you fail you suffer the consequences again, and wait for the delay period again, ad infinitum.

Poisons seem to be slightly more ambiguous, but that's only because we expect them to be a lot worse than they are - we just can't quite believe that Manticore venom only does 1D3 HP damage

Gerry

 

[Arkat]

So you catch Bubonic Plague and it merely goes away after 6d10 days? Oh I so don't think so Tim! Maybe you DIE in 6d10 days if untreated but these diseases shouldn't be minor maladies like the flu.

Where's the teeth!

 

[atgxtg]

So you catch Bubonic Plague and it merely goes away after 6d10 days? Oh I so don't think so Tim! Maybe you DIE in 6d10 days if untreated but these diseases shouldn't be minor maladies like the flu.

Where's the teeth!

All pulled. Same with combat. A character who makes his resilience rolls can be up and fighting after taking a 20 point head hit! Or a 50 point head hit. Sure, he will drop dead in a ten rounds or so, but that gives him plenty of time to insure that he doesn't die alone.

Everything has been greatly toned down.

 

[Rurik]

So you catch Bubonic Plague and it merely goes away after 6d10 days? Oh I so don't think so Tim! Maybe you DIE in 6d10 days if untreated but these diseases shouldn't be minor maladies like the flu.

Where's the teeth!

After each cycle of the duration you roll to resist again or suffer the effects again, and keep rolling. Plague would not have a 6d10 day cycle and could be pretty deadly if templated that way. The Black plague was not 100% fatal, somewhere between 50%-75% fatal. Higher if people burn you at the first sign of welts.

Even untreated Ebola is only 50%-90% fatal.

I like the disease template in MRQ. It is much more flexible than previous versions and can be quite deadly. A 100 resilience chracter will still fail to resist a 100 Potency disease 50% of the time, and the effects for failing can be made quite severe at GM's discretion.

While Incubation period and then the interval between saves IRL should be different (Plague can take days to show but works pretty fast once it takes, ditto Ebola) the system in MRQ works better than many systems.

 

[atgxtg]

I like the disease template in MRQ. It is much more flexible than previous versions and can be quite deadly. A 100 resilience chracter will still fail to resist a 100 Potency disease 50% of the time, and the effects for failing can be made quite severe at GM's discretion.

Hero Points do take quite a bite out of diseases and poisons. It is certainly worth holding a few in reserve to ensure you resist the effects. Course you got to get them first.

 

[Rurik]

I like the disease template in MRQ. It is much more flexible than previous versions and can be quite deadly. A 100 resilience chracter will still fail to resist a 100 Potency disease 50% of the time, and the effects for failing can be made quite severe at GM's discretion.

Hero Points do take quite a bite out of diseases and poisons. It is certainly worth holding a few in reserve to ensure you resist the effects. Course you got to get them first.

True, but that is a seperate issue. Hero Points would have helped resisting diseases in RQ 2/3 too if they were around.

I think it is kind of unfair to say they pulled the teeth from diseases. They provided a template for defining diseases and their effects that can be as deadly as what was before if the GM wishes, and is much more flexible.

You know I'm not usually on the fanboy bandwagon but I thought they did pretty good here.

 

[atgxtg]

I like the disease template in MRQ. It is much more flexible than previous versions and can be quite deadly. A 100 resilience chracter will still fail to resist a 100 Potency disease 50% of the time, and the effects for failing can be made quite severe at GM's discretion.

Hero Points do take quite a bite out of diseases and poisons. It is certainly worth holding a few in reserve to ensure you resist the effects. Course you got to get them first.

True, but that is a seperate issue. Hero Points would have helped resisting diseases in RQ 2/3 too if they were around.

I wasn't so much complaining about Hero Points but pointing out how useful they are for resisting disease. True they would have been helpful had the existed in RQ2/3, but they didn't so they weren't.

I think it is kind of unfair to say they pulled the teeth from diseases. They provided a template for defining diseases and their effects that can be as deadly as what was before if the GM wishes, and is much more flexible.

You know I'm not usually on the fanboy bandwagon but I thought they did pretty good here.

Well I think it is a fair statement to say that MRQ isn't as lethal as RQ2/3. And yet this does extend to posions and diseases, in part because the effects of losing hit points and charactersitics are less. Come to thinkof it, is there a penalty for STR or DEX going to 0? It used to mean the character was paralyzed, loss of CON meant death. IS that in there somewhere?

 

[gamesmeister]

Well I think it is a fair statement to say that MRQ isn't as lethal as RQ2/3. And yet this does extend to posions and diseases, in part because the effects of losing hit points and charactersitics are less.

In some ways, yes it's not as lethal. But not always - flurry is a good example of the latter. 2-4 consecutives attack, even at -20, can quite easily be deadly where you take your opponent down before he even has a chance to strike back. The recent thread regarding Surprise and ambushes is another example of how deadly MRQ can be.

I haven't played enough MRQ to decide whether there's really that much difference between the two. And the other point of course is that less lethal isn't necessarily 'worse'...

Come to thinkof it, is there a penalty for STR or DEX going to 0? It used to mean the character was paralyzed, loss of CON meant death. IS that in there somewhere?

Can't remember, but there will be in my game, that's for sure.

 

[Rurik]

Well I think it is a fair statement to say that MRQ isn't as lethal as RQ2/3. And yet this does extend to posions and diseases, in part because the effects of losing hit points and charactersitics are less. Come to thinkof it, is there a penalty for STR or DEX going to 0? It used to mean the character was paralyzed, loss of CON meant death. IS that in there somewhere?

I don't see how you can say that about diseases being less lethal. MRQ has not given a complete set of diseases, but a template and rules for designing diseases. The GM can make a disease as lethal as he wants.

Try this one:

Quetzalcoatl's Curse.
Type: Ariborne
Delay: 6d20 minutes
Potency: 100
Full Effect: Character suffers 2d6 to STR, CON, DEX, INT, POW, and CHA. If any statistic is reduced to 0 the character dies. Once resisted a character will only gain back one half of the statistic points lost at the rate of one point a week.

Again, if I were to change anything I would have delay broken into an incubation period and then cycle. But I think the system works well, and can be as deadly as you like.