Barak Shathur

On 11/5/2022 at 8:19 AM, Shiningbrow said:

I don't think anyone is missing the point of your original post. I think people aren't as convinced of its significance - and that's a significance largely along the lines of min-maxsing.

As a fairly simple analogy - why don't most people in the military carry around M60s (or their more modern equivalent)? Or even higher calibre? After all (going by your logic), they are the more powerful weapon compared to most others.

Or, why don't most melee fighters all go for a greatsword (or greataxe) if they've got the STR to use them?

For the dwarf/hammer thing, there's a very clear and obvious reason why - because they are smiths, and they have a LOT more experience in using a hammer than an axe. Besides which, (or along with this), they are also masons.  Axes are decidedly of narrow use to a subterranean species. And same with swords - only useful for combat. Sure, that's largely what the Iron Dwarves were made for, but their makers wouldn't have had a lot of skill with those, so how would they have imparted that to their creations? ANS: they couldn't.

Going back to my first point - just because something is much better than another, doesn't mean everyone should be doing/using it. How incredibly boring that would be!

Ok, I’ll try to do this one more time (hopefully the last). It is not a matter of min-maxing. It's about logical world building and simulation of 'reality' (which all BRP systems clearly strive for). It’s *not* that I don’t agree that dwarves would be culturally predisposed to turn their tools into weapons of war - I think this is a cool and believable concept. In fact, the first time I came across this was in MERP circa 1986. At the time, it seemed new and original, but at the same time a bit weird since the canon that the game was based on so clearly established other weapons as cultural for dwarves - axes, above all, but also swords, spears and war mattocks. The background skills for dwarves in MERP were so heavily focused on concussion weapons that it was pretty much guaranteed that a dwarf player would choose those over anything else. This was at least true for almost all the premade dwarf PCs that came with the ready-to-run adventures. Now hammers for dwarves was not illogical in itself, but it's an example of where the rules incentivise player choices that implement a game world that is somewhat at odds with the goal of the game, which in this case was to simulate adventure in Tolkien's Middle Earth. 

Now Glorantha doesn't have this literary baggage, and dwarves could be dreamed up any way Stafford and the other creators wished. Thank god, because they made something very original and creative out of them, as with so much else. So hammers for dwarves actually make more sense in this context, and for the iterations of RQ before RQG, it also made sense from a rules perspective. But as of RQG, blunt weapons have become decidedly inferior to others (zero or negligible special effect if you have no or low DB, as will be the case with most dwarves thanks to their low SIZ characteristic), and slashing weapons have become decidedly superior (double damage on special with no drawbacks, unlike impaling weapons that can get stuck at least). In fact, in the years since I started playing RQG and other BRP games, I’ve never, ever seen anyone choose a blunt weapon. For good reason. At the same time stats for dwarves, including weapons, have been carried over from earlier editions, while with the rules changes they no longer made sense. It's really a matter of statistical survival, from an almost Darwinian point of view. Think of how weapons developed in the real world. How some fell by the wayside as armour improved, while new ones were invented to counter the better armour. Do we agree that dwarves are a highly technically advanced culture? Do they have vast amounts of wealth, compared to others? Are they highly pragmatic, and are the different subtypes highly specialised for their tasks? Are iron dwarfs specially produced to produce weapons and use them in war? What seems logical to me is that iron dwarves then would use the most effective weapons available to them, and the way warhammers were implemented in RQG, before I pointed out that they should be able to impale, given that according to their description they 'punch through armor', they were decidedly ineffective. Impale has now been added to warhammers as a correction, and have become a logical weapon for dwarves once again. So as for my original issue, it has been resolved.

Your real world analogies don't hold up. An M60 to a M16 or whatever US soldiers use is more like a great weapon to a hand weapon. Not the obvious choice for all soldiers in the real world. Battle axe vs the earlier iteration of a RQG warhammer is more like an automatic rifle versus a single shot one. An impoverished army might not have enough M16s to go around, but the world's most technologically advanced culture? Would they choose hunting rifle for sentimental purposes, or because they liked to shoot ducks in their free time? And don't tell me that the dwarves don't know how to use axes or swords. It says those were the first weapons they learned to use when defending themselves against elves and trolls. They've known how to use them for millennia. Battle axes aren't that long hafted and could well be used in cramped spaces, and swords can be used to stab with. Spears or halberds might be more logical though, alongside one of those one handed weapons. And using a tool a lot does not make you proficient with it in combat. I use a saw sometimes. I don't think I could use it well in a melee. Maybe the motion would train my arm for stabbing with a sword or spear. And military war hammers are very different from smith's hammers. The chopping motion of hammering steel on an anvil all day would predispose you equally for using an axe or a war hammer.

I think the main reason most players don't seem to choose great weapons is that they just haven't figured out how superior they are in RQG to everythig else. A shield is mostly good as a missile screen in this game. Coming to it as a player, I think we all (including me) just assume that a shield and sword is the safest bet. Another reason is that great weapons aren't cultural for many of the most common cultures.

To finish up, I agree that it would be incredibly boring for everyone to choose the most optimised weapon, or for all dwarf PCs to be the same. Hell, if a player wants to handicap himself for role playing purposes, go for it I say. But for a species as a whole to be constructed in a way that contradicts what the description and the game world implies about them, is worse. 

Sorry to take up so much space with this topic. I hope this will be the end of it as far as I'm concerned.

Given that the Mostali are so specialised, shouldn’t the stats for the various types be different? Since they’re produced for specific functions, maybe the spread should be smaller for the relevant characteristics. Maybe it’s time for a Mostali sourcebook…:)

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

Some dwarves are definitely smaller than ducks! In fact the smallest dwarves are smaller than the smallest ducks!

Hah! Now there’s an eye opener, and no mistake. Or maybe they are making swords for jolanti 😉

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

Humans had their SIZ increased to 2D6+6 in late revisions to RQ2, and then that was kept in RQ3. There really shouldn't be a statistically significance chance that a human being is smaller than a duck!

Ok, I hadn't seen those late revisions so I assumed it came with RQ3. Thanks for updating me on that. I agree humans shouldn't be too small, but not too big either! Wish they could have solved it some other way, as I said. Should dwarves be smaller than ducks though?

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

Dwarfs in RQ2 are the same as in RQG. The only change with humans is that their SIZ now averages 13 instead of 11. They have one hit point less than the average human despite being 6 SIZ points smaller.

Again, this is not a problem in our eyes. Dwarves are not intended to be combat monsters, any more than ducks are. And their ranged weapons and explosives should be far more threatening than fighting them up close where humans longer reach and greater SIZ gives them an advantage.

Part of this is how we look at the dwarfs. I view the dwarfs as being less like Gimli or Thorin Oakenshield and more like:

No, dwarves and humans have the same amount of hit points, 12, on average.
 

So I guess dwarves became more gnome-like between RQ2 and 3, which is fine. What stands out to me is that the description didn’t indicate this as far as I can tell, and again, that the same size relationship was replicated in other BRP games. 

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

Oops looked at the wrong stat block! But still a dwarf has an average of 12, which is 1 point higher than the average human. RQ3 needed to massively hike their constitution to get to the same result.

I am perfectly comfortable with the dwarf stats, as they reflect how we view the dwarfs. 

Average human hit points is also 12, both in RQ3 and RGG. So after RQ2, Dwarves became decidedly inferior to humans in combat stat wise, though in RQ3 they at least held an advantage in Fatigue points. I wonder if this was intended, or more an accident of the increased human size, which was done in order to get rid of ridiculously small human PCs as I’ve been told. 

I would prefer to put humans back at 3d6 SIZ, and resolve the tiny person problem some other way. Re-rolling 1s does it. Another version would be to set a min SIZ and re-roll everything under it. I think it’s just incredibly awkward rules wise to have every average human just 1 point shy of DB. I It doesn’t seem like a conscious design decision, especially since 1d4, when most hand weapons do around 2-8 points of damage, is huge. Again, it seems like an unintended consequence of trying to solve the SIZ problem. 
 

Some added thoughts: I think something in the Machine got a little out of whack in another way when human size was increased. A fantasy dwarf is typically about 2/3 the size of a human. 4-5 feet vs humans’ 6. And this was the case in the early iterations of RQ. With RQ3 this changed, and dwarves became half the size of humans. Now, was this a deliberate change in the human-dwarf relationship, or an unintended (or simply not considered) effect of the SIZ change? You might say yes, we decided Gloranthan dwarves are smaller than conventional dwarves, but this relationship carried over to BRP/BGB, so I don’t believe this was the case. Rather, an unintended consequence of a change to an established rule system that had deeper structural impact than the original purpose motivated. Like, I would assume, the increased proliferation of DB (now practically all humans have it) leading to the damage inflation that gave RQ the reputation of being ‘the game where PCs get their limbs chopped off’. Later versions of the BRP family, such as Open Quest and Legend/Mythras, seem to have recognized this problem and increased dwarf size and, in Legend/Mythras, reduced DB. 

21 hours ago, Ludo Bagman said:

The mismatch that I wanted to point out is that the characteristics (STR 4D6 etc.) are of an average dwarf independent of caste (there are no other dwarf characteristics) but skills etc. are of a heavily armored iron dwarf that needs a high strength (magical improved or not) to fight as intended. The average dwarf strength used in the example (14) works for the role, but if you consider all strength values instead of the single fixed value, the spread would be something like 11-24 or ideally 14-24 instead of 4-24, resulting in a higher number of dwarfs with a damage bonus that can use crushing weapons effectively (instead of 100% of the dwarf warriors having no damage bonus at all).

This effect is more noticeable with weaker races, e.g. humans (STR 3D6, average 10-11, but a heavy infantry warrior with a large shield would need at least STR 12, so just using the average human strength does not work in this case).

About RQ3: It used special knockback rules for blunt weapons on special hits, so the lack of damage bonus just meant that the target would be pushed back a shorter distance (a small disadvantage)—a DEX x 5 roll must still be made to not fall prone.

Ok. I would also bump iron dwarves’ strength, but that is purely up to GM discretion. Someone who didn’t bother to think it through might just go with the printed stats, and wind up with dwarves who are surprisingly ineffective in melee. And even with 1d4 db, crushing weapons are an inferior choice to slashing or piercing weapons due to the rules for specials. This has now been resolved since war hammers got Impale (as they had in RQ3.
 

By the way, even though humans have lower STR they are as a whole more powerful than dwarves physically because thanks to their SIZ, they are on average just 1 pt shy of db, while dwarves need 4. This discrepancy arose in (I believe) RQ3, where human SIZ went from 3d6 to 2d6+6, while dwarves stayed at 2d6. IMO, dwarves should have gotten 1d6+6 SIZ following this logic. 

These may be minor details to some, but they do have a subtle but meaningful influence on world building and outcomes. 

2 hours ago, Ludo Bagman said:

Another thing to note is that the iron dwarf from the bestiary has the average stats of a dwarf (STR 14 etc.) but he needs a STR of 11 to wield the hammer, a STR of 13/9 to wield the battle axe with one/two hand(s), and a STR of 14-15 to carry 14 ENC worth of iron armor and weapons without penalties (STR 9 to be able to move at all).

This means that the average STR of the encountered iron dwarf warriors will be higher than average. Those with very high strenght and a damage bonus of 1D4 can perform well in every role, those with high strength but without damage bonus will most likely stick to ranged combat. Those with lower strength will most likely not be encountered outside of the dwarven cities (creating and repairing weapons) or just in support roles (if their philosophy allows it, like lighter armored shield bearer to protect the ranged warriors).

I think you too are missing the point of my original post. The stats are given as an ’average’ iron dwarf you might encounter. He/she has STR 14 and a 1H hammer as his highest skill weapon. Now, in RQG a weapon with crush special is really only a meaningful choice if you have 1d6 or more in DB. Otherwise impaling and slashing weapons will give you much more bang for your buck. It just doesn’t make sense that a creature as focused on war as an iron dwarf wouldn’t choose the most optimal weapon available. It’s a matter of logical world building, really. Now Impale special has been added to war hammers, which makes sense since they are supposed to ‘punch through armor’. And voilà, war hammers are suddenly a good choice even for characters with low or zero DB. So problem solved (although battle axe would still be the better option). 
 

I think part of the problem is that it seems the weapons and stats were imported from RQ2/3, but with the new rule for slash specials, some high damage weapons like battle axes and great swords became much more powerful compared to others, where in previous iterations they didn’t have the double damage effect on specials. 
 

I think the weapon system was originally structured with the idea that only the impale special caused double damage, and therefore it breaks down when you change that. Another example  of this is the Swedish BRP system Drakar och Demoner from the 80s, which pretty much lifted the weapons tables straight from Basic Roleplaying, but removed the Impale function. In this game, only swords and axes made sense to use since they had the highest damage dice, and in practice this is what happened. 

On 10/28/2022 at 6:04 PM, Akhôrahil said:

I think spears make sense for dwarves as well - it would compensate for their poor reach.

Lately I've come to think of the 15th century poll axe as the perfect dwarven weapon. It has an axe, a hammer, and a spike - a weapon for all seasons, useful in narrow tunnels as well as in the field. It's quite heavy, but dwarves have great strength so they're well suited to handling it. 

From the Q&A thread as of today:

Change RQG page 209, W&E page 60:

Hammer, One-handed (1H) Hammer, War, Type C or I
 

Problem solved. I feel like I repaired a bit of the World Machine today 🙂

Yes. My post could have used a 🙂

1 hour ago, Barak Shathur said:

Wait, I can point out problematic rules and I’m not just yelling into the void? Somebody cares?

I just got a moderator warning for this comment being too sarcastic, and I see now it can be read that way. I want to make it clear that was not the tone intended, or the way it sounded in my head! Rather I was trying to express, in a joking way, my incredulous delight at there being a QA thread. 

1 hour ago, Kloster said:

You could (with the official errata), but not in the same SR.

Another example of when development actually is devolution. So often, new versions of games ‘fix’ things that aren’t broken, in the process breaking them. 
 

45 minutes ago, Scotty said:

If there are any issues that need flagging, please add them to the Q&A thread.

Wait, I can point out problematic rules and I’m not just yelling into the void? Somebody cares?

36 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Iron dwarfs are smiths, and smiths use hammers.

If that doesn't suit, dwarfs should be able to use axes as well.

Smiths use hammers for smithying. For combat, they use the best weapon available to them. In RQG, this is not hammers. 

3 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

One of the PCs in my group theoretically carries a shield, but never uses it in melee. The reasons are multiple.

1. He's better at Sword than Shield. (This only increases as he doesn't use the shield.)
2. When he augments Sword, it benefits both attack and defence.
3. Damage to opposing weapons, natural weapons in particular.

So it's not merely that 2H weapons are better than Sword & Board, it's that even when you carry a shield, it's better not to use it. Considering how outstandingly good shields were considered in the real world, this is a real problem.

It’s worse than I feared then. At least in RQ3, you couldn’t parry with a one handed weapon you had attacked with, and vice versa. 

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

Better in fact, as the "response damage" on parrying can really add up against natural weapons.

Something must be done. This is a travesty.

5 hours ago, davecake said:

In our Glorantha Dwarfs use all sorcery, so the Iron Dwarf can take the crazy expensive Stabilize Iron or whatever that costs POW to cast

Regarding this, have I got this right that you actually sacrifice POW to cast dwarven sorcery? In which case it's something to only use in exceptional circumstances? In the Bestiary it says "expend" rather than "sacrifice", but I take it this means the same thing?

1 hour ago, davecake said:

This is absolutely a factor. Some of the rules changes in RQG have quite far reaching consequences that are not obvious as they interact with other parts of the rules. 

Well, it’s been a few years. Just for fun, what are some things that work less well and could do with a bit of tweaking? 
 

I have a couple of candidates. Change Slash special to something more modest (keep Impale as it is, the risk of getting your weapon stuck balances it). Change the Passion effect to +/-10 with simple success or failure. 20 is just so extreme. Give shields some kind of defensive bonus, such as add half shield AP to the locations covered. And finally my bête noir of BRP games, reduce DB somewhat. +/-1d4 is too big a jump from 0, while large animals like bisons doing +3d6 is just insanely excessive. +2d6 is enough, when human limbs have only 4-5 hp. 

This turned into quite a wonderful discussion. 
 

I think the main problem is that stats for dwarves (and other things, like the above mentioned warhammer) were carried over from earlier versions, without the mechanics that were essential to make them function as intended.

1 hour ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

Did they? I don’t remember this. Do you have a citation?

It's in the Errata.

"When a flail, mace, or maul is used against soft armor, the value of the armor
protection is halved (round fractions up). Soft armor overlapped with hard armor
counts as hard armor."

14 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I think Pendragon, personally.

This I haven't played since about 1985 and I don't remember much about it, so I admit that's possible. What are the upsides in your opinion?  

27 minutes ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Just because the 1 sample dwarf shows 1 handed hammer and it isn't a particularly good weapon for Iron dwarfes definitely doesn't mean EVERY iron dwarf uses hammer as main weapon. Just give them whatever. It really isn't  that big a deal. 

Most GMs I've come across hate houseruling or changing anything. They go strictly by the book. 

37 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Apologies, I thought you were creating an adventurer:

I didn't realise you were referring to the sample Iron Dwarf. These are just standard Iron Dwarfs (same as RQ2) that you would find in the surface world, as with all NPCs just tailor them to suit your group needs. For the full experience just give them their proper weapons: Muskets (2D10) and Pistols (2d6+2), both impale.

Sorry if I was unclear. In the process of making a dwarf, I discovered that standard issue dwarves are nerfed. 

I thought gunpowder companies were a rarity, only used under special circumstances. And having muskets doesn’t obviate the need to be well equipped for close combat. 

51 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I'm not sure where you're referencing this from, but:

Bestiary, p. 57 has dwarves using 1H hammer at 80%, and Battle axe at 60%. If it was the other way, I might understand it. Keep your smith's hammer as a backup, why not?

51 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Only Copper Dwarfs have War Hammers.

Well yes, when creating a PC I can do whatever I want. What I'm talking about is the standard NPC dwarf, which seems nerfed for no good reason.

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

One of the things about RQ weapons is that there’s no particular armor-piercing quality, which means that weapons that were used mostly for that purpose (like maces and war hammers) suck.

RQ3 was the pinnacle of BRP weapon design. Crushing weapons halved the AP of flexible armour, while warhammers could Impale. This has never been taken up in subsequent editions, forever dooming blunt weapons to not being very useful unless you're a troll.

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

House-rule such a property, upgrade the damage, or give them axes instead (which should be a much more reasonable weapon against both trolls and elves anyway).

I always wind up houseruling way too much. I shouldn't have to do that. I really wish we could have an official correction or something. Best would be to nerf slash special and bring back balance and usefulness to all weapons. Second best, add Impale to warhammers. Best of all, do both.

Anyway, I’m not the GM. And my current GM doesn’t house rule. 

53 minutes ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

I dunno about warhammers. Probably some mythical reasoning. The sample in the bestiary has a battle axe and a 1 handed hammer. PC generation for Iron Dwarf adventurers has melee weapon +40%, so you can pick whatever is most advantageous. Also, ALL their equipment is IRON. Which is both immensely expensive and incredibly fearsome. Double penetrating damage versus trolls and elves. Great defenses and nigh unbreakable gear. 

 

In our Glorantha Dwarfs use all sorcery, so the Iron Dwarf can take the crazy expensive Stabilize Iron or whatever that costs POW to cast or just take Boon of Kargan Tor and other awesome War Magic buffs. Even a warhammer without any DB or Special Effect bonus does decent damage with a 2 or 3d6 Boon of Kargan Tor, much less something better suited like a battle axe, broadsword, or what have you. You could give them Enhance CON or STR based on how Enhance INT works maybe, if you thought they were weak?

 

In our campaigns a squad of iron dwarf warriors on the horizon is terrifying because the players know they have guns and know how to use them. Lol. Then there are the powder kegs and all sorts of other hardware. Dwarfs are scary because they are smart, not brutes. Those are the trolls. Except the mistresses, they are terrifying AF. 

A big part of the problem is that crushing weapons are so weak visavi slashing and impaling weapons, due to the Special damage rules. Crushing weapons only make sense to use if you have at least +1d6 DB, and barely so even at that. At +2d6 DB they become fearsome. So why would a dwarf, given their stats and the extant weapon rules, choose a weapon that is in practice an inferior choice? According to the mythology, the first weapons they learned to make were axes and swords, so shouldn't those be their preferred weapons of choice? And if you want to give them hammers due to their smithying habits, a great hammer is a much better choice. 

Of course, if I was GM I might houserule something to balance this out. For example, I might nerf the slash special effect, since slashing weapons tend to have the highest damage dice anyway, either using the bleeding effect of BRP, or Drakar & Demoner's maximum damage for special successes. Slash seems overpowered compared to the other special effects in RQG. It would also make impaling weapons a bit more attractive, then being the only ones that do double damage. Or I might give warhammers Impale, as in RQ3, since a warhammer "often has a spike at the impact point rather than a flat head, and is used as a pick instead of a hammer. A nasty weapon, ideal for punching through armor". Under RQG rules, they are not ideal for anything.

But currently I am not the GM, so I'm stuck with what the rules say.

So I’m about to play an Iron Dwarf. Reading about Mostali in the Bestiary I see their preferred weapon is Warhammer, a weak weapon that, given most dwarves won’t even have damage bonus due to their small size, doesn’t benefit them whatsoever. Why would an Elder Race that is so used to war, and has so many enemies, choose to handicap themselves in this way? Can someone explain?

1 hour ago, RandomNumber said:

Agree with that. RQG and Glorantha are tightly coupled now which makes both sing but does make RQG less portable. That's fine. Mythras is a lovely system too and has a lot to like mechanically - I've played it in Babylon, Nostoi and Thennla.

More recently as I have been rediscovering Glorantha and RQG, I've pretty much found that most of the types of story I might want to discover or explore with another RPG (Conan, TOR, Symbaroum) I can do with RQG in Glorantha anyway. I'd still like to experiment with some other systems to see how they run and feel but the impetus to do so is less than it was.

There is always good old Big Gold Book BRP. It's not perfect but it covers a lot of what you might need. There is a fan made LOTR conversion, I am using it right now (with modifications, some aspects are a bit unbalanced).