Some questions that came up at our most recent session

[klecser]

Some questions that came up last night:

1) Vasana's Bison: Her Lance attack (on the version of the sheet my player has) has +2D6 damage at the end. That is only if she charges with the Bison, correct? A stationary attack does not do that bonus damage?

2) How do you determine hit locations for an unmounted person attacking a mounted rider?

3) Does Multimissile happen concurrently with an attack or before an attack? The text seems to imply that you cast Multimissle FIRST, and then do your attacks at a later time. Generally you only cast one spell or make one attack in a round. So, the "procedure" for Multimissile is to cast it one round and attack the next round?

 

 

Edited October 27, 2019 by klecser

[soltakss]

44 minutes ago, klecser said:

1) Vasana's Bison: Her Lance attack (on the version of the sheet my player has) has +2D6 damage at the end. That is only if she charges with the Bison, correct? A stationary attack does not do that bonus damage?

Yes, she gets the extra Damage Bonus when attacking with a moving bison.

Stationary or on foot, she gets her own Damage Bonus.

The rationale is that a moving animals gets the momentum of the beast, whereas a stationary one just gets the arm strength of the rider, in a way.

46 minutes ago, klecser said:

2) How do you determine hit locations for an unmounted person attacking a mounted rider?

The rider rolls 1D10+10 for Hit Location and the unmounted person rolls 1D10 for hit location against the Rider, but 1D20 against the mount.

For really tall mounts, such as someone riding a giant, the unmounted person cannot hit the rider but rolls 1D10 for the mount's Hit Location. It also applies to High Llamas, but that makes the front legs hard to hit, which is an odd consequence.

49 minutes ago, klecser said:

3) Does Multimissile happen concurrently with an attack or before an attack? The text seems to imply that you cast Multimissle FIRST, and then do your attacks at a later time. Generally you only cast one spell or make one attack in a round. So, the "procedure" for Multimissile is to cast it one round and attack the next round?

You cast the spell on an arrow, then fire the arrow separately.

If you have enough Strike Ranks, you can cast Multimissile and then shoot in the same round. At least, that's how it used to be, when you could do 2 things in a round (2 of Attack/Parry/Spellcast), the rule might have changed, but that's how I'd play it.

[Zit]

On 10/27/2019 at 3:17 PM, soltakss said:

You cast the spell on an arrow, then fire the arrow separately.

If you have enough Strike Ranks, you can cast Multimissile and then shoot in the same round. At least, that's how it used to be, when you could do 2 things in a round (2 of Attack/Parry/Spellcast), the rule might have changed, but that's how I'd play it.

I always played (RQ2 rules) that since Multimissile is labelled as temporal, it lasts for 10 MR, so you have 10MR to shoot your missile and get the Multimissile effect. We however never thought about the fact that the missile could be reused and probably be multiplied again as long as it is shot during the said 10MR, which makes it possible for a target to shoot it back against his atttacker and makes the spell somehow uncertain - unless the missile is broken or unusable in some way.

[Akhôrahil]

On 10/27/2019 at 3:17 PM, soltakss said:

If you have enough Strike Ranks, you can cast Multimissile and then shoot in the same round. At least, that's how it used to be, when you could do 2 things in a round (2 of Attack/Parry/Spellcast), the rule might have changed, but that's how I'd play it.

This is mostly correct. Outside of melee, you can do whatever you have the strike ranks for. In melee, you can defend and either attack or spellcast. 

[gochie]

12 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

This is mostly correct. Outside of melee, you can do whatever you have the strike ranks for. In melee, you can defend and either attack or spellcast. 

It's honestly very confusing. 

 

Under Magical Attacks and Strike Ranks:

 

"However, casting a spell such as Bladesharp or Fireblade on a weapon held in the hand and striking with it in the same round only involves adding the normal strike rank to cast the spell to the normal strike rank for that weapon for that melee round."

 

But then under Multiple Activities Within Melee:

 

" While an adventurer might throw a spell at an oncoming foe and then engage that foe in combat within the same round, an adventurer cannot, while engaged in combat, attack both physically and magically.
This means that an adventurer who starts a round physically engaged in melee may either:
. Attack and defend normally; or
. Defend normally and cast spells."

[Akhôrahil]

51 minutes ago, gochie said:

Under Magical Attacks and Strike Ranks:

"However, casting a spell such as Bladesharp or Fireblade on a weapon held in the hand and striking with it in the same round only involves adding the normal strike rank to cast the spell to the normal strike rank for that weapon for that melee round."

This is about having a free hand - for non-obvious reasons, you need a free hand except when you cast a spell on a weapon you hold in that hand. This rules text only means that you don't have to free up that hand - it has nothing to do with allowing attacking and spellcasting in the same round in melee. However, I agree that the text is seriously misleading.

I think the entire system is pretty clumsy - there's really no reason you couldn't simply count strike ranks in all situations, including melee. (One of the few downsides would be that it would be super important whether you can squeeze in two melee attacks in a round, but that's really no different from whether you can make two ranged attacks in the same round).

What I personally think is by far the biggest weakness of RQG is that it's obviously a case of pasting old rules-text into the document at start, and then not cleaning it up properly afterwards. The editing is downright shoddy in places, and the game really needs a new edition to clear this up, or at least a 1.1 edition. The good parts of the game are really good (things like actually including Runes and making Rune-Magic work), but in places (combat in particular), the rules design is sloppy. (As an example, check out the "clarification" on two weapon fighting, which is essentially a total errata saying "it's the exact opposite of what the rules text actually says". Or the almost complete mismatch between attack/parry outcomes in the text and in the table.)

Edited October 30, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[gochie]

42 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

This is about having a free hand - for non-obvious reasons, you need a free hand except when you cast a spell on a weapon you hold in that hand. This rules text only means that you don't have to free up that hand - it has nothing to do with allowing attacking and spellcasting in the same round in melee. However, I agree that the text is seriously misleading. 

Except that it does mention casting and attacking... I requote

"However, casting a spell such as Bladesharp or Fireblade on a weapon held in the hand and striking with it in the same round only involves adding the normal strike rank to cast the spell to the normal strike rank for that weapon for that melee round." 

And yes, I agree that the rulebook really could've used an extra level of editing/review. 

Edited October 30, 2019 by gochie

[Akhôrahil]

17 minutes ago, gochie said:

Except that it does mention casting and attacking... I requote

"However, casting a spell such as Bladesharp or Fireblade on a weapon held in the hand and striking with it in the same round only involves adding the normal strike rank to cast the spell to the normal strike rank for that weapon for that melee round." 

And yes, I agree that the rulebook really could've used an extra level of editing/review. 

Yes, I know. The problem is that the rules in some sections (like here) are so poorly written and internally inconsistent that you basically have to go with what seems to be the more core and dominant rule. In this case, the rule about what actions you can perform in melee combat in general definitely strikes me as the dominant one, while this is a rule about when you need to have a free hand, and then tacks on a contradictory rule almost as an afterthought. This is why I can't imagine that it's intended to do what it actually says. Further, this rule makes sense if you interpret it as working with ranged weapons but not melee weapons. Basically, when rules contradict, you have to go with whatever makes more sense, because whatever you go with, it will contradict an explicit rule.

It makes some kind of sense that you can cast a spell on a weapon while holding it without having a free hand. It makes no kind of sense that casting a spell on a weapon would suddenly let you bypass the normal restriction of either casting a spell or attacking in melee.

This game needs an errata collection ASAP.

Edited October 30, 2019 by Akhôrahil