Monty Lovering

22 hours ago, svensson said:

As far as I'm concerned, that was the PERFECT ruling on the situation.

It knitted the story, the player choices, and subplot together in a very elegant narrative. Nice work on your part but also nice work on the Humakti's part to play the cult so well.

Two 'sidebar' things:

1. It would be great if the trollkin somehow got a player to play him earning initiation into Humakt [a stone bitch when you've only got a POW of 1 to 3 pts], and

2. I LOVE the idea of a 'krarshtkid queen'. That instantly went IMGU.

Screenshot of the Queen off my battle sheet.

She’s a bit spicy.

I also have spawn.  They range from 1 hit location 3AP 3HP nuisances to half size normal. 

It kinda made sense there’d be an ecosystem. 

And thanks! re. the DI. It worked well, narratively. 

Frank (the trollkin) is most definitely not a hero, and even though Bartath, the Humakti, is actually a member of Zarka Sword-Alone (weird ass Humakt hero-cult founded by a troll), it’s not Frank’s path. 

Now he’s got his life debt out the way he’s going to found a chitin craft shop in Pavis (he’s a paid NPC with a share in the loot, so has savings), and maybe in time further pursue his interest in freedom for trollkin. 

If I’d played Frank (originally called Shame Us by his brother who the party rescued him from) as a more martial personality then your idea would be perfect. But his brother used to make him take part in bare knuckle fights and fighting is just not his scene. 

14 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I disagree with this. We can apply descriptions to so many things, and name them in so many ways, that it becomes irrelevant.

The "straight sword" thing is applicable because it's the actual shape of the Death rune, whereas kopeshes and scimitars are not. (so, yes, I'd have it that daggers break or bend too).

 

To me it’s like Pascal’s wager. 

The idea that someone could believe in god ‘in case’ they exist is absurd as if one posits the existence of god then the idea it would be mollified by someone believing in them ‘in case’ is absurd. 

IMG the idea Humakt would say ‘oh hell you’re an apostate, but the long sharp-edged bladed weapon with a hand grip is definitely not a sword” is equally odd.

If it’s about the shape, then a sword with a non-cruciform hilt would equally be a get-out which reduces an extreme punishment for apostasy to a minor inconvenience. 

If you’re actually being really Bronze Age ish then cruciform swords were uncommon. 
 

So for me it’s the sword-ish ness not the cruciform-ish ness. 

Because the weight of a hauberk is distributed across shoulders and hips (as you’d never wear a hauberk or skirt without a belt of some sort), so although there is more of it it is no more of an impediment than a skirt. 

Ok so YT and Humakt are not just different choices. They are hostile and YT is apostate to Humakt  

So that particular swap is world of pain for the H->Y. Sword breaker effects curved swords IMG as look at the compound word ‘curved sword’. RP are lost. Humakti knowing the YT is apostate will at best shun them. Quite possibly challenge them to a duel. They will however be welcomed by YT and maybe helped on the path to a heroquest to be able to use swords again  

YT->H is less bad. RP lost. Humakti will regard them in very high favour. YT will possibly treat them even worse than Humakti treat exHumakt YT apostates. 
 

I grew up a Jehovah’s Witness and know EXACTLY how people get treated by their friends and family if they are considered an apostate so this is very much a deep personal MGV. 

On 7/29/2022 at 5:30 PM, Soccercalle said:

How do you let your PCs use Divine Intervention in a battle you are losing? My question is if a DI can be used to resurrect AND teleport to safety at the same time. Its of little help if your Orlanthi Wind Lord resurrects himself with DI and find himself alone and without RP surrounded by 5 Yanafal Tarnils Scimitars. Would Orlanth in that case resurrect him but also bring him to a safe position? Or is that another DI?

Well, if it’s a considered request, then they get to phrase the request. Can include others whether they like it or not. “Take me and my companions to our camp”, maybe some healing too  

If it’s a mortal blow that they’d be aware of then they get their life saved in an appropriate manner. Time to call upon their god as they stare at the transfixing spear and cough up blood but not to specify things. The dying character will end up in the nearest Holy Place of that god.

If it’s a headshot that instakills, then unless it’s actual decapitation (when they would still have the ‘oh so that’s what my body looks like Orlanth save me’ moment, then no DI. 

They dead. Nothing to consciously DI with, and if they’re already dead then they’re dead.

On 8/1/2022 at 9:50 PM, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Yes, the DI should fit the deity.  In our campaign, an NPC Storm Khan led an expedition under the Big Rubble into a maze of Krarshtkid tunnels that our party had discovered and briefly scouted.  They ran into serious trouble.  His DI did stuff to help their party, (I presume some heals, Impede Chaos, etc...) and to Tport his Ernaldan wife to safety.  But no way that Storm Bull will "save" you againt chaos.

A song about Khan Orat (based on Lord Franklin) here:

http://gloranthagame.pbworks.com/w/page/143253243/Khan_Orat

 

Those tunnels and DI.

Funnily enough on Monday my lot got a bit too confident in the tunnels beneath the Devil’s Playground. They’d found the centre of the hive and the Queen krarshtkid (I played around with the source) and the Humakti basically told everyone to leg it whilst he was all noble and held them back with Sword Trance and True Sword up the wazoo. All going well, then he got a gob of spit in the face obscuring his vision. 

He saved a trollkin some time back who has basically stayed on as a paid assistant, and they’d hung back to light his way to safety, but now blinded he tells the trollkin to flee )as he was basically going down in the next round or two) and the trollkin DI’d (losing 11 POW but repaying the life debt) to whisk them to safety. 

6 minutes ago, JRE said:

We thought quite a lot on this in our RQ3 days, mainly because, how much damage bonus can you add to a knife? Add a sorcerer with Boost Strength, and 2d6 damage was possible. And then we had discussions in how easy it was to use a troll maul.

So we used a house rule (that we ignore now as unnecessary, but it may return as Strength is stronger than in RQ3) that each weapon was made for a DB, and it could be used by the ones before and after. So most human light weapons are made for DB0, so can be used for DB -1d4, 0, +1d4, while heavy weapons are made for +1d4, so they can be used with 0, +1d4, +1d6. Troll mauls are made for +1d6 normally, so you need at least +1d4 to use properly, and they can give you up to +2d6. Giant clubs would need a giant DB bonus to use, as you need both SIZ and STR, though a very strong guy could use a small giant's club. So a giant with a human dagger would only get +1d4 damage bonus (how can he hold it?) and would be better off hitting with a fist. Characters with high strength either had to get custom weapons (an enchanted lead staff for +2d6 damage was a good example) or use natural weapons. It was not realistic, but it felt right when getting +20 STR to drop the puny dagger and go at it barehanded. 

We did not increase the base damage, but we increased the weight as you increased the DB of the weapon. So that +2D6 Staff was eight times as heavy as a normal staff (staff was in our light weapons class). Which is why lead was the way to go without increasing the size. 

How much free time we did have in the 80s and 90s!

I like that mechanic. 

My current campaign is ending in a month or two so I will be making some changes for the day I find a group of idiots who’ll let me GM for them again.

The “made for db” is a good addition.  

7 hours ago, g33k said:

At a certain point, I no longer care what the weapon is:  If the Giant rolls a hit, it's dodge-or-die:  YOU CAN'T PARRY THAT 5H1T (and be damned to anything different from the rules).

Very true. I think there might be a case for (in addition to making damage bonus less cartoony) actually doing some RQ3 stuff, like autoknockback if damage over SIZ. 

I mean, the system treats damage like the target does not react to the kinetics but absorbs it all. 

At a certain point the ouch gets converted to F=Ma, at least with edged and impact weapons. 

Obviously this makes a giant with a spear truly dreadful.

Bur even got crunch-obsessed people like me at a certain point lovely complexities lovely designed get dropped as they don’t add fun. 

9 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

But nobody wants to change the weapons table too much from how it was in 1978, so we're stuck with it. If anyone wants to make up a new weapons table and new damage bonus mechanics to go with it, then go for it!

Been there. Done that.

Might have been here or in the Fb Group I outlined it. 

I have changed SR to reflect weapon speed and how it’s used, so it’s no longer a size metric alone.

Weapons do less damage, so a dagger will do 1d4, +1 as it’s generally good vs armour, so can still  deliver a moral blow on a special or crit, but don’t on have the ability to 0LHP. Larger ‘small’ weapons with more kinetics/edge do 1d6, +1 or +2 if superior vs armour, so Small Axe is 1d6+1.

‘Normal’ sized weapons do 1d8, same pluses for armour performance. So a broadsword is 1d8, a spear 1d8+1 (which with the SR being lower makes a spear a superior weapon to a sword just like IRL). 

Use such a weapon with two hands it does 1d10, so a large axe does 1d8 +1 one handed, 1d10+1 two handed.

’Large’ weapons like great sword, great axe, etc., do 1d12 as a base with pluses if good vs armour.

Ranged weapons have a better range system and bows of the same construction come in different strengths so high STR characters can get more damage.

I did play with changing the damage bonus system effectively moving 1d4>+1, 1d6>+2, 2d6>+1d4, 3d6>+2d6, etc., but that got dropped.

I also played with weapons having a parry % multiplier (of the unified weapon skill in RQG), so like x1 for a sword or x0.5 for a battle axe to simulate some weapons are just better at parrying, but it was messy and got dropped.

But once you’re familiar with the homebrew table it’s easy to convert on the fly. But I tend to dump NPCs into a battle sheet in Excel, or an NPC character form if playing online, so it just happens automatically.

Obviously loads of people aren’t bothered by the somewhat eccentric weapons tables but for me it’s a value add.

You did ask…

OK I treat canon as the myths of the Greeks about the world and gods were to the real world. Except of course the gods are real.

So my Glorantha might be round. Myths say it isn’t. Mountains definitely disappear below horizon but there’s a theory that explains that on flat worlds. 

Gods are immensely powerful but might be part of a continuum of Runic and magical adeptness rather than a different class of being. Might be. But they’re not omnipotent or omnipresent. They don’t know you do wrong unless your guilt or someone else give you away.

My Glorantha is IronPunk. Just like SteamPunk has anachronistic technology in a Victorian setting, IronPunk has anachronistic technology in a Bronze Age setting. Dwarves have gunpowder and steam power, hell humans got that advanced in the Clanking City. But anachronistic items are rare and viewed as magical.

Iron is common place and forging low quality iron article possible. But it’s not better than bronze in that state. And any more than the weight of a spear head in close proximity to your body and you can’t cast magic. Trolls and elves don’t take double damage from it but can have allergic reactions to it. Enchantment stops iron disrupting magic, and the secret of forging and tempering iron so it’s better than bronze is a guarded secret. It does mean you can slap an iron collar on someone if they’re your prisoner and they can cast magic. Only way slave economies with magic work in my head.

There’s more but I need to sleep. 
 

With weapons I think it’s fair to top out the damage bonus beyond 1d6 if the weapon isn’t made to match the strength of the wielder.  

Those great troll body guards are gonna need extra big greats words to get that 2d6 damage bonus. 

And if it sounds silly a giant using a normal heavy mace would only get 1d6 damage bonus, think how awkward it would be to use one for them. 

Problem with weapon damage in RQ is it’s confused. One can say the damage bonus takes care of it but light maces do less than heavy maces. Because physics. A sword with a longer edge has more damage potential (drawing cuts) than one with a short blade. So I do have ‘giant weapons’ on my weapons tables that do a little bit more.  

But you can ride the impala into crazy town very easily and end up with some weapons doing more damage on large creatures. Which might be true but is a bit much to remember. 

3 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

刀 in Chinese is the word for knife, of various types. With different prefixes, you also get cleaver or meat cleaver. And, as above, also sword (by extension).

大刀 translates literally as "big sword", but might be what we think of as a Chinese "broadsword" - 1-2H, bit of a curve, thicker at the pointy end, with a sharpened bit at the end.

However, 剑 (Jian) is the fairly thin 2-edged "tai chi" sword we would think of. Quite a different skill set.

No extension of meaning needed really. It no more means single-edged knife than single-edged sword. It means single-edged blade.

And is used unmodified as dao to donate the single-edged counterpart to the jian you mention: both swords.

Only reason a Chinese person might not say sword if you asked him what the long blade at his waist was, is if it was a sword. As we only have sword. Just like the Greeks have five words for love compared to our one so too do some languages have two words for sword.

But no one in Warring States China or the Anarchy in England would call their sword by the classification we use today. They’d call it a sword. Not an arming sword or 大刀, not unless they had two and needed to disambiguate.

Broadsword is, funnily enough, probably the worst name for a sword as it is just so not bronze-age, has meant several things none of which are what it is in RuneQuest, including a now defunct term for arming sword, and now is basically the basket-hilted double-edged transition away from the arming sword in the early modern period before they died out in favour of back swords (single-bladed versions).

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

I know two kanji which can refer to "sword"-like weapons, 刀 (which can be read katana, tô or chi) and 剣 (tsurugi, or ken).

Although both can be used as a generic word for "swords", the first one is strongly attached to curved, one-edged weapons, whereas the second one commonly describes straight, double-edged, swords.

It also seems to me that 剣 is more generic, as it's used in kenjutsu (剣術) or kendô(剣道).

But even a hatchet is literally called a mountain katana (yamagatana/山刀), so...

 

The root word for sabre is ‘cutter’. Scimitar might just be an old Iranian word for sword as it’s etymology it unknown. 

The kanji for katana is the Chinese logogram for a single-edge sword which the Japanese have used with great economy. The curve of what we call a katana as opposed to other terms, as you know, was a later feature adapting the Chinese-inspired straight single-edged blade trust preceded it.  

As you not above, a two-edged sword or swordsmanship is 剣

All good fun but doesn’t really change my point that a curved sword is a sword. At least IMG the shattering thing is all about cruciform swords being Death runes. 

2 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Because the general mode a spear is used in, the thrust, it has the potential to be better against armor. If you get a good, clean, perpendicular hit against the plane of the armor.

Arrows, the same.

A sword in a thrust could have the same advantages, because they are not only used to cut.

The problem is, that most weapons in these categories are not (traditionally) designed to do this. If you look at most spears, arrow heads, and sword points, they are broad blades. Broad blades are not good at penetration against rigid items. They can penetrate, but the design of the head is not actually designed for that.

There are some spears, arrows, and swords with specialty points that are designed for armor penetration, but certainly not the majority.

So giving all spears (or any other weapon) a cart blanche +1 to all damage because its good against armor, feels a bit... off.

And back to my shortsword reference. My question actually was (should have been?), if a shortsword is NOT used in a thrust capacity (or if a Hewing Spear is NOT used in a thrust capacity), are you still giving it a +1 in your system?

SDLeary

Spear are better than swords against armour because history.

I have rolled back quite a bit of complexity after six months of play testing with my players.

I started off VERY crunchy.

I’ve trimmed stuff that added nothing to the fun and kept stuff I think makes the weapons more believable.

Your table might enjoy that detail.

5 hours ago, icebrand said:

I allow a 2nd attack with the offhand (at half chance and +5 SR). Its not that big a deal with the -20 for extra parry!

Off-hand must be SR3 or 4 ofc, no offhand battle ax attacks!

The RAW rules for dual wielding as regards SR are against most actual historical uses of two weapons. 

Very frequently it was something like a rapier (SR normally 2+2+2 = 6) and a dagger (2+2+4 = 8 ) which is impossible in RAW.

So I just put any second attack in on SR12. 

1 hour ago, SDLeary said:

I'm toying with the idea of simply lowering the parry chance of the defender if they are facing a dual wielder. Reasoning is that they have a more difficult time predicting the vector a successful attack will come from. 

So, the purpose of dual-wielding is NOT to confer any real advantage on the person fighting that way, but to confuse the defender in their attempts to parry/block things.

SDLeary

Duel wielding is not attacking “simultaneously” and confusing your opponent.

It’s often a substitute for a shield because shields are a pain in the butt to carry.

There’s a video game and RPG obsession with it as people think it means you attack twice as often.

It doesn’t.

Your offhand weapon is your parrying weapon. If your opponent misses their attack THEN you should be allowed to attack with the offhand weapon. If you want to attack with both weapons you get no parries.

IMG

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

The reason Humakt cares more imo is because Yanafal Ta'arnils was an ex-Humakti, and his trick of bending his sword so that it didn't break from Humakt's sword breaking apostacy curse (way worse than a mere spirit of retribution, as Humakt himself breaks the swords) might admittedly be a matter of some cult concern, if it is even the case. 

It does raise the issue of whether a Humakti illuminate like Yanafal who is repeatedly resurrected, thus openly flouting the cult's principles, is actually subject to the "spirit of retribution", given that the spirit of retribution is a God. 

My point was not "it isn't extreme therefore it doesn't exist".  My point was that if even the extremists are not likely to take the issue seriously, who else will?  Sorry if you missed that.

Given that swords we now call by names like sabre, arming sword, scimitar, broadsword, long sword, katana etc. were all called swords by the people who used them - katana even means ‘sword’ it’s not that curved swords are not swords which stops them breaking. 

Humakt is not stupid. He knows it’s a sword even if it’s curved. 

The reason they don’t break is they don’t look like Death runes. 

IMG

One could posit that non-cruciform swords are also immune to the curse.

Quite how Humakt knows an apostate Humakt is using a sword shaped like a Death rune is a different question. Deep dark magic? A personal retributory spirit who follows them around? The guilt of the apostate? I don’t go for omniscient gods. 

28 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

But in general, they aren't. They just give you the advantage of reach. 

Even assuming they were, would you then lose the additional +1 if you were fighting someone without armor? Same for the other weapons mentioned.

And if you going this route, does something like a Gladius do more when thrusting? That's what it was optimized to do. 

I'm all for this. Currently, I do envision it a bit differently though:

• If you are brought to 0 or below Total HP through normal damage, then you have CON – (amount taken below CON) Hours to die
• If you are brought to 0 or below Total HP due to a Major Wound*, then you have CON –  (amount taken below CON) to die
• If you are brought to 0 or below Total HP due to a Critical Wound**, then you have CON – (amount taken below CON) Melee Rounds to die

* A single blow that exceeds the value of the location

** An actual Critical Hit that takes you below CON

SDLeary

Compared to a sword cut, spears are better against armour. Arrows too. I started with the + only being in place for more than 3AP. Dropped it as too complex for my group - they were all newbies. Might work with another group. 
 

And shortsword gets a +1, as does dagger, as does 2H long sword and greatsword, all based on historical styles of usage where the point was used against armoured opponents. 

The weapon groups thing you guys have been taking about I do too. So for example any 1H axe is the same skill unless you pick up a totally novel form mid combat in which case there’s a penalty. But that goes after a moderate period of adaption. And you get 1/2 skill in 2H axe.  Same with other weapon types like Mace and Hammer, with Dagger, Rapier, Shortsword, Kopis, 1H Cut/Thrust and 1H Slash, 2H Cut/Thrust and 2H Slash as different sword skills all granting 1/2 skill in the others. And I’m stealing the idea of any melee combat skill having some universality by saying you get 1/4 in other melee skills unless it’s something exotic like net or whip  

As for the damage thing, here’s mine. There are similarities. 

21 hours ago, davecake said:

And I’d add one more category - paired swords (or paired anything really). The RQ way of treating fighting with an off hand weapon as two entirely unrelated weapon skills seems entirely unlike the way traditions of two weapon use, whether it is paired weapons like Kung fu ‘butterfly’ swords, or rapier and main gauche, are actually taught. Goes for paired stick fighting as well. 

Still not happy with dual wielding rules. 
 

Thing is both shield and weapon and dual weapon wielding are dynamic. Your shield will get used as a weapon in a fight far more than RQ allows. Dual wielding is highly dynamic with it switching between attack and parry and dual attacks depending on how the opponent performs. 

I’m kinda thinking of allowing a follow-up action if an opponent misses their attack and the parry of the missed attack is made successfully.

Battering at an opponent’s weapon in such an instance is not realistic. Someone misses you, you’re going to try and use that opportunity to attack them.

Instead it would allow (with shield and weapon) a shield attack or knockback at -20% or (with two-handed weapon) a second attack at -20%.

Dual-wielding would allow an attack with the offhand weapon at normal skill if the opponent misses their attack.

But maybe it’s all too complex for a normal group and requires a set of crunchy rules nutters to make it work. 

19 hours ago, SDLeary said:

The way I read this is that they think the damage should come from skill and strength as opposed to the weapon itself. So think of it somewhat like Pendragon (or PDP) modified somewhat by skill (though I could easily be wrong about skill, and they were just thinking success level).

SDLeary

Not quite. 
 

I think weapons should ideally have a damage range starting at 1, with the base die being based on the “kinetic potential”. So small (dagger) 1d4, medium (small axe) 1d6, large (broadsword) 1d8, go up a die if used two-handed, allowing a +1 for weapons with superior performance against armour, +2 for outstanding performance against armour.
 

So broadsword 1d8, 1H spear 1d8+1, because a spear is better vs armour.  Large axe 1d8+1 as likewise better than a broadsword against armour, war hammer 1d8+2 as its better than an axe against armour. 2H spear 1d10+1, as it can do more damage wielded two-handed. Likewise large axe two-handed 1d10+1.
 

This obviously gets you into situations where you have larger versions of weapons used 1 or 2H (large axe, war hammer) used 2H only like great axe and great hammer, so they do 1d12 plus whatever they get for their armour piercing characteristics.

So weapons are important in determining basic damage dealing ability. Just toned down a little.

The weapon SR are also twiddled with so a large axe vs broadsword vs spear choice is a trade off between cheap with slightly better damage but slower strike of the axe or the expensive but greater speed and slightly less damage potential of a sword or the ultimate cheapness, reach and penetration of a spear. 
 

Which means IMG spear are as universal a weapon as on Earth. Your sidearm shows your culture or status.

Very IMG.  

19 hours ago, davecake said:

I don’t really understand this. Could you explain a little? A dagger thrust with a real fighting weapon is absolutely capable of stabbing through to the heart, and thus both disabling someone and very quickly killing them. Sure, not every blow is going to manage going straight through the rib cage etc - but it’s certainly something that the weapon is capable of. And it is really not that hard for a head blow to be both disabling (up to unconsciousness) and potentially lethal, when inflicted with something hard (and even unarmed brawls are dangerous, especially if they cause someone to fall hard onto a hard surface). 
I do think the RQ rule of instant death through general hit point loss is unrealistic though - people who are unconscious and who have a potentially lethal injury can survive a surprisingly long time, and often survive terrible injuries if got to a modern emergency department, especially with even minimal first aid - and let’s assume Heal Body is pretty much as good. 

Ok, so in RAW a dagger does 3-6 with an average of 4.5 damage. 
 

That is on average more or less automatic incapacitation for an unarmored opponent with 4-5HP in vital areas. And at minimum damage it will take out an arm. 
 

There are plenty of mechanisms for maximising the damage a weapon can do. Crits and Specials for example. Which means a dagger can do up to 12 points of damage possibly ignoring armour. Enough for an instakill on head and abdomen. But with the RAW damage, nothing to reflect a less serious wound. Which obviously happen. 

So if you have daggers do 1d4, say, then you go to 1-4, average 2.5, Crits and Specials take that to 8, again possibly ignoring armour. Enough to have someone down and bleeding out. 

Its even worse if you go to the ‘mega weapons’ that do 3d6 (3-18, 10.5, 36) or 2d6+2 (4-14, 9, 28). With the latter that’s incapacitation 97.23% of the time on an average unarmored human.

Just not realistic.  Add in a damage bonus and it’s even crazier.

I also have death taking longer to happen; below 0 THP, you lose 1HP per MR and die at negative 1/2 CON. So with you on that one.

57 minutes ago, davecake said:

I find the idea that only short spears can be used 1H, or thrown, to be quite odd for a game that is supposed to cover a broad range of cultures. Australian indigenous hunters used spears around 2.7 m for hunting, and could be thrown a good distance - and were accurate at a huge distance with a woomera (much the same as an atl-atl). 
Plus the spears we know were used 1H by hoplites would be longer than an RQ short spear - a doru was about 2-3m long, wielded 1handed, and could be thrown. 

I just have my own weapons tables for this and other reasons. This is an especially odd one though. 

On 4/25/2022 at 10:34 PM, Baron Wulfraed said:

Tell that to the creators of the Fairbairn-Sykes dagger and the special ops forces that used them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbairn–Sykes_fighting_knife#Design

Any weapons can just deliver a light wound. No matter how good a dagger the FS was, a blow did not on average  knock most locations on an average human down to zero. 
 

But it you landed a good blow it could certainly take someone down. That’s why we roll for damage rather than having fixed values and why we have special and critical damage. 

I use the quick and dirty method of assigning a combatant a die based on how hard to kill and effective at killing they are.  
 

So, average untrained with poor equipment gets a d4. Less if they have no real martial equipment. A decently equipped individual with competent skills a d6. A Rune Master might get a d20. It’s all relative and as a battle rages on you might make the side that is faring badly all drop down to a different die. 

In an fight with even numbers you just roll the dice in pairs. The higher roll forces the loser to re-roll. If they roll less than their opponent’s original roll, they are out of combat. If they roll less than half of it they are dead. 

So a fight could go:

Trolls 8 x d4 trollkin, 2 x d10 dark troll, 1 x d20 Rune Lord

Elves 9 x d8 normal, 2 x d20 Rune Lords

First minute:

Trolls: (d4: 1, 1, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3, 1) (d10: 7, 9) (d20: 12)

Elves: (d8: 3, 6, 4, 2, 7, 3, 8, 4, 5) (d20: 17, 9)

Just match the rolls up from weakest combatant to strongest with any imbalance of weak to strong just being how it goes  

So six trollkin need to re-roll, & one dark troll & two normal elves and one  elven rune lord. Five trollkin fail the re-roll, and no elves. These rolls show there are five dead trollkin, one is out of combat as is one dark troll, and three elves including one Rule Lord are out of the combat.

The fight now has uneven numbers. So you just roll the dice pair for the smaller group first.

Second minute:

Trolls: (d4: 3, 2), (d10: 7), (d20: 15)

Elves: (d8: 4, 5, 1, 6)

The re-rolls show that only one trollkin is left fighting, the others die, two normal elves are dead and another is out of combat.

But the elves have 3d8 and a d20 left over: 1, 2, 4, 14. 

When there are rolls left over then they can either be matched against rolls made by the opponent that we’re already matched against in that minute, including adding several rolls together.

The only logical way to do this given the rolls is to add all four spare elf rolls together and match the sum (20) against the troll RuneLord roll. But when you do this only the highest of the rolls is used for matching the re-roll. So the troll Rune Lord’s 15 is less than 21, but the re-roll is against the 14.

They just make it so are out of combat leaving one trollkin and one darktroll vs three elves and and an elven Rune Lord. 

At this point there are seven dead trollkin, one is out of combat as are one dark troll and the troll Rune Lord. Two normal elves are dead and four and an elven Rune Lord are out of combat.

What out of combat means is up to you. Surrendered? Maybe but not in this fight. Fled? Withdrawn with injuries they don’t have enough magic to heal? On the floor bleeding out but saveable? DI’d?

It’s quick. It’s dirty. It means you can in five minutes resolve a battle that would take ages. I’ve used it to determine an off screen combat between Sun County militia and broo whilst the PCs were under Rabbit Hat farm.  

1 hour ago, JRE said:

It probably is semantics, but I believe that to have a working pike phalanx, rather than a shield wall, you need a lot of people, as you need a minimum frontage and depth, specially if you want to be able to adopt a hedhehog formation to protect all sides. I would expect a minimum of 64 (8x8), which is probably out of most games. Lunars might well settle on 7x7, but prime numbers are unwieldy compared to base 2. 

Alexander's silver shields, his elite phalangites, fought in rough terrain and sieges in a similar way to what later would become the thureophoroi, a relatively loose formation with long thrusting spear and javelin, though probably keeping their tell-tale silver shields rather than the later oval thureos shield. It is supposed that is also the equipment when acting as royal guards, as it makes no sense to use pikes for that.

Ancients were not fools, so pikes would be used only when appropiate, and in other cases they would adapt. Of course a sign of elite status is the number of different situations you can cope with. 

This is why I have a different set of rules for:

a/ a single rank where the shield of one member don’t benefit the person on their left, and parry and dodge are allowed, but the line is coherent enough an opponent cannot pass through without allowing attacks of opportunity. This is typically only used in situations where the ends of the line are protected by walls, as in three people advancing up a corridor with shields overlapping. It requires 60% skill in participants and a Battle roll to maintain, and allows strikes from the second rank with long thrusting weapons.

b/ at least one rank where the shield of one member benefits the person on their left. No parry or dodge. Some benefits of a phalanx but more mobile. Can be smaller than a phalanx, even 2x2.

c/ phalanxes.