Structure Points in a wall

[Diana Probst]

The Create Fissure Rune spell came up in play last night, and we had to make a hurried ruling on it, because we were not sure how much damage a particular wall could take.

Can anyone let me know about how many structure points the city walls of Alda Chur would have?  It wasn't in any of the RQ books we could find at the time, and I'd like to know about how much damage we COULD have done.  (We went with a different plan.)

[jean]

I found some value in the following books

AH RQ3 Players's book page 83

BRP page 277

I'd say that around 30 HP of damage should create a human sized hole in the wall.

 

Jean

 

 

[soltakss]

RQG does not have Structure Points, yet.

However, the Book of Doom covers Structure Points, but they are a little less than the RQ3 values.

On that scale, maybe Alda Chur might have 20 point walls.

[Diana Probst]

So it looks like something between no and yes - not a sure thing, but given what Glasswall and Alda Chur are made of, you might be able to get through one of the cracked bits.  Thank you.

[Baron Wulfraed]

2 hours ago, jean said:

I'd say that around 30 HP of damage should create a human sized hole in the wall.

 

So, if unmolested, a character with a battle axe (1D8+2 => 6.5 pts average damage) only requires 5 hits to breach the wall... If they have the common +1D4 damage bonus, it only takes four hits to breach.

I'd suggest it is time to take up residence in some caves as the cave mouth is more defensible than multiple potential breaches spread across a long wall.

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

So, if unmolested, a character with a battle axe (1D8+2 => 6.5 pts average damage) only requires 5 hits to breach the wall... If they have the common +1D4 damage bonus, it only takes four hits to breach.

That assumes that nothing reducies the damage. I would expect that wood and stone either have some inherent armor value or that Structure Points would work like RQ3 Armor Points- that is they stop their value before being reduced. Taking an axe to a stone wall is probably going to ruin the axe long before the axe breaks through the wall.

[Squaredeal Sten]

Your Glorantha may vary - a lot in this instance -

but my own interpretation of that Book of Doom table is that it describes the stone walls of ordinary buildings:  probably less than a foot thick, and intended to hold the roof up.

But the wall of a well fortified ancient city has nothing to do with the wall of a house or your garden wall.  City walls would typically be stone or brick faced on both sides, and then rubble filled, and wide enough to walk behind defenders on the top. 

I don't think Alda Chur would be a big enough place to compete with Babylon - but take a look at pictures of the surviving remnants of the wall of Jericho, a neolithic city as well as bronze age, and evidently about 5,000 residents:  .https://www.google.com/search?q=Walls+of+jericho,+archaeology&client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=AOaemvJTMoNezA-L7PLbXTIXX7idhg6yyg:1631591094495&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=mObqKUH85TLXAM%2CUb7baf0jqqbcUM%2C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kTMo0pHzRTcwwIk97OdVELkLM3_Fg&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwie_Ou8xv3yAhUBX80KHekwDyEQ_h16BAgaEAE#imgrc=mObqKUH85TLXAM

I would interpret these walls as off the scale shown. 

So I would rain on the ax parade: Your axe person gets to dull their ax on the facing, but if you rule that they break through,  then your hero faces several feet of dirt (probably rammed earth, not the soft stuff you dig in the garden) or rubble fill to shovel away, and behind that another facing.  While all this work is being done the defenders get to shoot, to throw down rocks (including pieces of the parapet), and to use long spears from above. 

The Create Fissure rune spell does sound like a solution:  a fissure one meter wide and five meters long.  But the wall wouldn't be gone; rather it would collapse from the sides into the fissure, so the heroes don't walk in.  Instead your one meter fissure in the 15+ foot wall breaks the parapet and turns one meter of the wall into  a steep slope of loose rock and dirt, still maybe 10+ feet high.  Several such fissures would be needed to create a zone of collapse, then it's still an obstacle at ground level but you send a swarm of attackers to climb the slope.  This looks more like work for the Lunar College of Magic than for a single adventurer expending one rune point.

RW, city walls were not hacked into with an ax.  Instead, the Assyrian technique was to use a protected ram to lever out the big blocks in the facing and then dig out enough of the fill that the walkway collapses. Or tunnel underneath and then burn your props to allow the wall to collapse.   Siege techniques are not part of the RQiG rules, but we shouldn't regret that as they are the domain of combat engineering and not of heroes.

 

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by Squaredeal Sten
spell discussion

[Diana Probst]

As far as I can work out, Structure Points are not hit points in an ordinary fashion.  You cannot stab a stone wall to death.  I think Quality has something to do with the armour value, or the difficulty in damaging the wall, but fortunately that was not mentioned in the spell so I am assuming it does not matter.

I under-estimated the size of the walls, but I am OK with that given we did not go with the plan of trying to bring them down.

[David Scott]

23 hours ago, Diana Probst said:

The Create Fissure Rune spell came up in play last night, and we had to make a hurried ruling on it, because we were not sure how much damage a particular wall could take.

Can anyone let me know about how many structure points the city walls of Alda Chur would have?  It wasn't in any of the RQ books we could find at the time, and I'd like to know about how much damage we COULD have done.  (We went with a different plan.)

When my players use it, rather than focussing on damage we just inverted the size and collapse that. So a 2pt version that was cast, was 10m x 1m x 5m, fissured 5m above. It was then the player realised that they should have made it wider not longer as not much falls out of a 1m wide 5m high split. 5m x 2m x 5m makes a bigger split.