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Tupper

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  1. Hello again @Paid a bod yn dwp. I think if we're buying Jason's comment earlier (that cumulative damage can lead to maiming or shock), then (IMHO) the most coherent view of things is probably: The cap on x2 damage is on a *per wound* basis, not absolute. Subsequent wounds are associated with the limb. The reason I say 1 is that otherwise, you can't ever get to a limb being maimed except as a single blow, so Jason's point above (about maiming) would be superfluous. Once the character with 6HP in the arm hit -6, there'd be no way to get from -6 to -12 (although a single blow could still achieve maiming). The reason I say 2 is that in order to figure out whether you've reached maimed status, you'd have to associate the subsequent wounds with the limb. If the damage gets recorded as "general/total" HP damage, it could be hard to tell where it came from (of course this interpretation - as noted above - would conflict with Jason's earlier comment on the questions and answers thread). I think @trystero raises a good point about whether "surplus" damage (over x2 from a single hit) should be recorded to build up to maiming, but I'd say that's going to lead to odd paperwork (wounds on limbs with no associated total HP loss) and the book seems fairly specific that the surplus damage doesn't do anything: "Thus a 2-point arm hit for 5 points takes only 4 points of damage off the total hit points: the remaining 1 point of damage has no effect" (emphasis mine). Then again, I thought the repeated mention of "from a single blow" was fairly emphatic, and that wasn't the intended meaning ... 😀 I'm coming round to this (cumulative maiming/shock, along with 1 and 2 above). I guess it's just you've gradually had your limb damaged beyond the point of no return. At 17 damage, it was holding together, but that 18th point of damage was the straw that broke the camel's back, and now you're in the ER.
  2. @trystero In terms of what I think .... I'm still not sure I (personally) agree with Jason's ruling. I feel that someone who's taken 18 1HP wounds to their arm has a very sore arm (it stopped working after 6 HP damage) but since one hit ago, they could be healed completely using first aid, this doesn't feel like something that should require magical healing (as a mangled limb should). I feel that a mangled limb should have been caused by an 18 HP hit (reduced to 12 HP) so that's a *big* wound that's needing healing (and the need for magical healing seems readily apparent with first aid only able to heal 6HP tops).
  3. @trystero I follow what you're saying. To paraphrase: since a wound can mangle a limb without doing total HP damage of 3x the limb's damage (as per the example in the book where someone is hit for 8 points of damage to a 2HP limb and is maimed while taking only 4HP damage), we would need to track the contributions towards taking 3xHP damage from wounds that don't quite achieve it on their own. This does all start to look "messy" from a book keeping perspective though, don't you think? After all, we could now have HP damage to the limb that's *not* associated with total HP damage. If wounds are kept 1-to-1 then it's very clear that healing 1HP to a limb heals 1 HP to the total.
  4. Thanks to @Jason Durall for wading into this thread. However, I'm still sadly confused (as the original poster). Trystero's point highlights my confusion (although for mangling to be on the table, I think it needs to be 3 damage from the subsequent hit): I get that the first hit does me 6 points of damage. Now I've taken twice my arm's HP. When I take 3 more HP, what happens? I have 6HP damage to the arm and 9 HP to my total HP? I have 9HP to my arm and 9HP to my total HP? The former would suggest no mangling. The latter would suggest the arm is mangled. Jason's answer here suggests that the latter should be the case (and hence a limb could be mangled by many "small" blows). However, in the original discussion of this point (on the questions and answers forum) @Jason Durall said: "Yes. If you have 4 hit points in the right arm and a sword hits it for 9 points, your arm takes 8 points of damage, which is also considered in your total hit point damage. But if your right arm is hit again for 2 points, you (not your arm) take 2 more points of total hit point damage." Maybe I should wait for a more in-depth answer to @Paid a bod yn dwp's question on the "questions and answers" forum, but I can't resist asking, having spent a while thinking about this earlier in the year, and with illumination (almost) within hand's grasp!
  5. I was just thinking PDF (via RPGnow), so I guess map sizes are moot?
  6. I saw the 50% off sale notification, and thought it might be a good juncture to buy some RQ classic material, since it's compatible with RQG. However, I'm confused about some items. There seem to be two versions of a couple of the books, and I'm not sure which is "better". Notably "Borderlands" vs "Gloranthan Classics Vol IV: Borderlands and Beyond". I *think* the latter contains all of the former, plus "Runemasters" and "Plunder". Is there any reason to prefer "Borderlands" over "Gloranthan Classics Vol IV: Borderlands and Beyond" (apart from price)? "Griffin Mountain" vs "Gloranthan Classics Vol II: Griffin Mountain". I *think* the only difference is that the Gloranthan Classics version has more material added. Is there any reason to prefer "Griffin Mountain" over "Gloranthan Classics Vol II: Griffin Mountain" (apart from price)? Thanks in advance for any advice here!
  7. How is the spell Control (entity) useful? The spell description suggests that the entity could be a spirit, but could also be something corporeal like a hawk, dog, or mammoth (to quote the examples given). I could see that it might be used to bind a spirit. However, Spirit Binding seems a more efficient way to do this, since you don't have to reduce magic points to zero. If you are fighting a spirit and reduce its magic points to zero, it can't do very much. If you are fighting a corporeal entity and reduce its magic points to zero, it is unconscious. I suppose you could command it to sleep on its back rather than its side, or to stop snoring, but it doesn't seem you could do anything very useful with your control. Does anyone know why this spell would be handy?
  8. On closer reflection ... maybe your example is off, since 12 points to the head even if cumulative would trigger the instant death criteria. There's no mention of "in a single blow" there, so presumably it can be cumulative (just as with the 2x hp results). So to paraphrase your example: someone who took 6 points of damage to the head followed by another 6 points to a different location dies at the end of the current round, but the same person taking 12 points to the head (either from a single blow or separate blows) dies instantly.
  9. That is a very good point, that I had not thought about. Thanks for pointing that out!
  10. I agree (almost) entirely with what's said here. The only bits I disagree with, I've edited in red: the single hit criteria is only for limbs (i.e. arms and legs). So you can get knocked out or killed from multiple blows to the head/chest/abdomen. Note however, that you're dead from total HP damage before you hit 3x location HP in head/chest/abdomen anyway! The other thing I'd clarify is that IMHO (and others differ here) the "total HP" damage that's being accumulated is always mirrored with damage to the location in question. The reason that this is important is natural healing, since this is done on a location-by-location basis (see my earlier posts about Bob and Alice).
  11. @Paid a bod yn dwp Thanks for keeping thinking about this! I'm still relatively unconvinced that there's a maximum (RAW) for any area. I do believe that Jason muddied the water in his comments by trying to read RQG (which is roughlyRQ2) with a RQ3 lens on it. However, let me make a few comments on your comments. I've bolded two other parts of the quote. Harmast has 10 hit points, and once the dust settles (after his 9 points of damage), he has 2. When I first read this example, I thought: that makes sense, he's capped at double damage to an area, so he only took 8 of the 9 points (10-2=8). But I agree with you that the way that section is laid out, the special rule for capping damage is arms/legs only: So clearly limbs are arms and legs (not heads), and I agree that heads, chests and abdomens are not covered by the single blow damage cap. Harmast should have taken 9 points of damage, be at 1hp and bleeding out. On the topic of the damage cap, if anyone takes 3x their head, chest, or abdomen, they are dead. The rule under 3x damage is superfluous, since the total hp damage will have killed them without need for a special comment that these types of injury are fatal. For example, if Harmast takes 12 points to the head, that's killed him outright since he only has 10 hp total. I double checked the bestiary, and this is true for all shapes and sizes of critter too. Perhaps there could be some weird magical effect where someone ended up with boosted total hp that might make this rule important ... but I don't think day-to-day it'll ever matter. So ... perhaps one could note that head/chest/abdomen have a maximum damage possible of 3x their hp, but it's moot, since a person is dead by the time they hit that level! Note that that's not true for arms. Harmast has 3hp in each arm, so technically he can survive taking 3x that hp. Arms and legs though, are (mildly) contentious. If you cap the total damage someone can take from an arm/leg at 3x that hp, then you can't kill someone by repeatedly hitting the same arm (although you can with a leg). If you cap at 2x, you can't kill someone by repeatedly hitting their leg. Of course, if you go with the "subsequent hits go to total hp (but not the limb per se)" then they can be killed that way. As mentioned earlier, I still think the most elegant interpretation is that hits are always associated with a location, individual hits to arms/legs are capped at 2x hp, but there's no overall cap. Others (yourself included) may disagree, but of course that's the role of a GM to decide what makes sense for their group, and roll with it. I figure we've sliced and diced page 148 six ways to Sunday in this thread, so folks who read it can make up their own minds about how everything should be interpreted! 😀
  12. I was trying to work through what the implications were of the two different interpretations of what happens after the major wound; to illustrate why one would (or would not) care about the distinction. I think my punchline was that I find the "switching to total hp damage after a big hit" a bit strange, in that Bob ends up in much rosier situation than Alice, even though they took the same two hits. Switching to taking damage from total hits could be a "bonus" from taking a big hit to a limb. However, Bob's situation is strange, he'd only end up like that if someone hit him after he was incapacitated. That's conceivable (albeit ungentlemanly) but I suspect that if he was incapacitated and someone took a swipe at him, he'd probably have taken a much worse hit than 4hp. That's true. I guess if one wanted to have an overall cap on total hp a location can take, it would change things. I'm pretty sure I've done that right. First aid heals *wounds*. Natural healing heals *locations*. Nobody's dying from their overall damage (everyone has 6hp (=18-12) left after the fight), so I didn't make much comment on that. The point was more the distinction between the 4hp being associated with a location or being purely total hp damage.
  13. Thanks for the vote of confidence! I agree that some Rune Fixes and more examples are in order. You've already seen my attempts at bumbling through strike ranks, wounds, etc.
  14. First, let me say that this is a very interesting conversation. I can't resist adding my 2c, as a newcomer to RQ, but a veteran of some other similarly gritty games (Rolemaster, Harnmaster). I think the purpose of the "over 100" rule is to allow a really powerful character (call him Goliath) to (almost) shut down the chance of a lucky hit by someone weaker than them (call him David). There's still the 1% danger of David scoring a critical, but the probability of a David getting a successful hit while Goliath fails the parry is being allowed to become miniscule. If you don't have that rule there, there'll still be a 5% chance that Goliath fails the parry, on top of which there could be 2-3% chance that David gets a critical, and suddenly we're close to a 5% chance that things go pearshaped for Goliath when he squares off with David. This is similar to Rolemaster, where there's always the danger that David is going to roll an open-ended attack (96-100) on Goliath, and do some vicious critical to him, even if he's been parrying prudently. While this may be realistic, if a player has put Goliath in a situation that he *should* win, it seems a bit rough to then kill Goliath with a 5% chance (from a game perspective). Put another way, if someone with 300 skill fights someone with 50 skill, it should feel one-sided. The second issue then, is: is it sensible for someone to drop 1 rune point and (say) 20+ magic points to have a combat skill of 300. It's a great deal if you're fighting people who *aren't* initiates (or animals). Then you can re-enact the Crazy 88 fight, or Hit Girl in action (and maybe playing some cool music would be appropriate). However, a lot of people who you're going to fight in RQG *are* initiates. And all initiates have access to the common rune spell Dismiss magic. So a fight is likely to look like: Round 1, Humakti casts Sword Trance. Kills someone. Round 2, Someone on the other team spends a rune point, dismisses the Sword trance. Now, you might point out that the Humakti can just recast Sword Trance for another rune point. But the problem is all the magic points he/she is burning. Even with 50 magic points, this will only be tenable for a round or two. Note that this is a very rational response by initiate opponents. They're not being cheap. They're just doing what the PCs would probably do under the circumstances. They saw their buddy get sliced six ways to Sunday, and shut down the magic that caused it to keep it off their backs. Remember that if many opponents the PCs fight are initiates, then the rune point economy favours the PCs opponents. There are 4 people in the party (say) and they have 3 rune points each. That's 12 to get through the adventure. If, in various encounters, they deal with 20 opponents, they might have 60 rune points between them, so getting into a war of attrition over rune points is not a good strategy for PCs.
  15. I *think* what should happen is that the parrying penalty gets applied before the adjustment for being over 100: Case 1 (sword vs 3 opponents) First opponent attacks. Parry at full 150. This is over 100, so reduce it to 100 and reduce the opponent to 5. Second opponent attacks. Parry is now at 130. Still over 100, so reduce it to 100 and reduce opponent to 20. Third opponent attacks. Parry is now "only" 110. Reduce it to 100, and reduce opponent to 40. Case 2 (sword and board) When attacking, you attack at 150. This is over 100, so reduce to 100, but reduce the target's parry to 5. If you parry with the shield, your first parry would be at 80. This is not over 100, so the opponent still gets his/her full attack of 50.
  16. @Paid a bod yn dwp (or others who also rolled a critical on their Truth rune and still care about this pedantry!) I thought some more about this situation this morning, and about what the two interpretations of subsequent damage mean. Consider two characters, Alice and Bob. Each have 18 hp, 4 in the arm, and heal rate of 3. Alice gets hit once in the arm for 4hp damage, and then again for 9hp damage. Bob, on the other hand gets hit first for 9hp damage, and then for 4hp damage. We'd both agree that Alice has two arm wounds (one for 4hp and one for 8hp), but we'd disagree about what Bob has when the dust settles. Let's talk about Alice first: Alice will be in shock (from her maximum damage blow). Let's suppose someone gives her first aid (bringing her out of shock), and healing 3 hp between the two wounds (2 on the big wound and 1 on the small wound). Alice now has 9hp damage in her arm. She needs to heal 6 points for her arm to work again. This will take 2 weeks to heal. Now let's look at Bob: Option 1: damage still goes to limb after a big (2x hp) wound Bob is in shock (like Alice). Someone gives him first aid (bringing him out of shock), and healing 2 hp on the big wound and 1hp on the small wound. Bob has now (like Alice) 9hp damage in his arm. He needs to heal 6 points for it to function again, which also takes 2 weeks. This wouldn't surprise us because Bob took exactly the same wounds Alice took, just in opposite order. Option 2: damage goes to total hp after a big (2x hp) wound Bob is in shock from the big 8hp wound to his arm. He also has a 4hp total hp wound. Someone gives him first aid on the arm wound (bringing him out of shock). Can he be given first aid on the total hp wound? Not totally clear; the corebook says "Use First Aid once on damage from one injury to a specific hit location." So maybe Bob can't get first aid on the total hp wound. However, the 8hp arm damage is the more annoying problem: it is stopping him using his arm. Say he got 2hp recovered from his First Aid on that wound (like Alice), he now has a 6hp damage on his arm. One week later, he will have healed 3 of those points, and his arm is good to go. Further, his total hp damage will have healed from 4hp down to 1hp. So it looks like (with option 2) Bob gets a much better deal than Alice, even though they took identical injuries, just in a different order (and received identical medical treatment). One week later, his arm is functional, and two weeks later, he's good as new. Alice one week later still can't use her arm, and takes three weeks to be fully healed. Now before things go too much further, I would point out that Bob's situation seems pretty unlikely to come up very often. When he took the first (9hp) wound, he would have been in shock, so why did he get hit a second time? This is going to be a pretty unusual situation! Hence I suspect you could jump either way on this one, and quite probably never see it come up. Me, I like option 1, because it treats Alice and Bob the same way for having the same wounds, whereas option 2 seems like a "sweet" deal for Bob. He's playing tennis a week later, while Alice is stuck watching Shortland Street reruns for a fortnight.
  17. RQ3 is quite different (barring the pistola reference): Now there's some clear wording for you! Double damage (whether from one blow or many) maims the limb, and that's the most the limb can take. I suspect that a lot of people here (probably including Jason) have played so much RQ3 that they read the RQG rule and subconsciously apply RQ3 thinking to it (like capping the damage a limb can take). That said, this is clearly quite a different rule to the RQ2 rule. My understanding of RQG is that it's supposed to be built off RQ2 (although I do note that the heading "Damage Equals or Exceeds Double the Location's Hit Points" and paragraph heading "Limb" is taken from RQ3). My feeling is that RQ2 proves the more effective old source when craving enlightenment for RQG...
  18. Hmmm... he certainly does suggest that there (although, as we agree, some of his Q&A answers on this topic seem a bit contradictory). The following is the wording from RQ Classic Edition: For ease of side-by-side comparison, here's a recap of the RQG phrasing from my post above: To my mind, someone's copied the former passage, removed the discussion of bullets vs swords, and then tried to tidy things up by putting "total" into the "further blows" sentence to mimic the wording in the example. My guess of RAI in RQ Classic is that all the damage goes to limbs (although you could argue that the "total" in the example suggests that the heavy blow does "total hp damage" instead of regular limb damage). Dunno if that leaves us further forward. It's hard to say if the intention of the new wording was to change a rule or not. My guess would be not, but Jason Durall's comments may suggest otherwise! 😀
  19. Let me be crystal clear: I completely agree about point 1. 😀 It's point 2 that I'm not so sure I'm on the same page with. There I'm unclear that a location has a maximum amount of damage it can take. The example in the book (that I think you're referring to) is: That showcases point 1. Poor old Harmast gets his damage capped at 8 because he can only take 4 points there normally. It's also not that helpful because he's getting hit in the vitals. The only piece I can find in that section that mentions a maximum hp for a limb is (page 147): This suggests that things are open ended as to how much you can take in a location. We do have Jason's comments and However, this latter seems to run contrary to what we agree is the rule for being in shock (that it has to be a one off blow) and suggests further that a limb can be severed by many small blows. So I'm not sure his answer here is consistent with what the rulebook is saying. I think he's taking an RQ3 spin on the rules ... which makes me reluctant to take either quote as a great interpretation of what the rulebook actually says. I do increasingly like the "simple" read of it (i.e. that the remark about total hp just reminds you that subsequent blows can keep applying wounds to the limb). Makes things pretty easy to summarise: Hit for less than twice the hp of the limb. Take the damage to the limb. Hit for twice the hp of the limb or more. Take twice the limb's hp as damage to the limb. You're in shock. Hit for three times the hp of the limb or more. You don't have that limb any more, so subsequent hits there pass on to adjacent locations. [In addition to the effects from twice or more] Cumulative limb damage equal to or more than the limb's hp, the limb is useless.
  20. @Paid a bod yn dwp: would you mind giving me a reference to one of the in play examples that clarifies this? Just a page number would do (no need for a quote). It would probably help me set my mind at ease on this. I'm not trying to be obtuse ... just trying to wrap my head around what's going on (I'm new to RQ, unlike most of the people who are helping me out here!).
  21. To highlight the ambiguity here (regarding the cap on what a location can take), this is the passage from the core RQG book (page 148) My initial read of this was by looking at the "limb" paragraph: we're talking about someone who's taken twice the possible points of damage from a single blow, and then "further blows to that arm affect the total hit points of the adventurer, however" refers to someone who's just taken that big single blow (i.e. the sentence before the example). Paid a bod yn dwp is seeing the "further blows" clause as referring to the section heading: i.e. someone who's already taken "damage equal or exceeding double the location's hit points". Yet a third interpretation (which no-one's raised here, and has just occurred to me now) is that the "further blows" clause might just be clarifying that you can take further damage to the *limb* from subsequent hits (after all, the example mentions that the adventurer takes "4 points of damage off the total hit points", not bothering to mention that it's associated with the arm). Suddenly I'm starting to find that third interpretation appealing ... It has a certain elegant simplicity to it: normal combat blows are always associated with hit locations, and total hp damage is reserved for poison, sunspears, etc. I like a lot of stuff in the RQG book, but this feels like a section that could have used some cleaner wording.😀
  22. Good question. I think opinions vary! Historically, I think RQ2 stressed the need for a single (x2 hp) blow to trigger adverse effects on an arm/leg. RQ3 (and maybe the subsequent Mongoose/Design Mechanism versions) switched to it being possible with multiple (smaller) hits. So how one reads the RQG rules perhaps depends on the lens one views it through. There are three things being said in the limb (x2 hp damage) section: You can't take more than x2 your limb's hp from a single blow. This seems unambiguous. Subsequent damage goes on your total hp. My read of this is that this relates to the situation of having just taken at least x2 your hp from a single blow. Psullie and Paid a bod yn dwp argue that this starts happening as soon as you pass above x2 the limb's hp (even if this happened from multiple blows). When you take x2 your limb's hp, you are in shock. This is the RQ2 vs RQ3 point; does it have to be from a single blow, or could it come from multiple blows? Opinions differ. Perhaps this is a case of YGMV? 😀 Although it may not be an important situation as getting hit repeatedly in the same location (without being knocked out/killed from overall damage) isn't going to come up that frequently.
  23. I should probably clarify what I mean by "forcing" the use of an augment. A player says they'll sneak across the bandit camp and into the cave. GM thinks about it and says: "That's a move silently task, but I also think hiding is important, so I'd like you to augment your move silently with your hide." The GM is suggesting that two skills are relevant here, and is using the augment to handle that, rather than a Player suggesting a skill, or one PC helping another PC.
  24. @Kloster Sorry, my query was unclear. I thought you were saying that the extra MP spent wouldn’t count for dispelling. If they do, that’s going to be a heck of a spell to get rid of if someone dropped a rune point plus 10 or so MP on it.
  25. The discussion of group tasks lead to me reading the section on augments rather carefully. The section starts out as: “Where appropriate, one ability—whether skill, Passion, or Rune—may be combined to augment another ability of the same or a different type ... Only one augment may be attempted per ability, and an ability can only be used once per session to augment a task being attempted.” So if I’m reading that right, you can only augment with a *skill* once per session. This seems odd to me. I understand wanting to stop PCs “spamming” runes and passions (GM rolls eyes; “You’re not using your movement rune *again*...” scenarios). But skill augmenting might not be consensual from the PC (“Wait, did you say I have to roll Sing as an augment? I’m terrible at singing...” scenarios). The rule as written would mean that the GM can’t *force* the use of a particular skill augment more than once on a player in a session. In particular, this seems at odds with the advice for Hide and Move Silently (that one will often augment the other). Second time it came up in a session, the PCs would skip the augment. How does everyone else interpret this?
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