Wraith Combat Death & Damage

[Erol of Backford]

I was reading in the old RQ2 book Borderlands & Beyond about Wraiths (page 56 in the book) and found their deadliness to be shockingly strong. One roll and if they overcome the pertinent characteristic, a PC loses the wraiths power in that characteristic!? with an average power of 16-17 that one roll will kill most characters. Even if they fail to overcome the character would lose half the characteristic. In RQ3 Creatures Book Page42 they do d6 damage to a mistle location...

Are there other sources or samples of wraith combat someone could point me to in any of the RQ variations, I want to better understand "wraith evolution" in the game and see about how to make them special and or unique in certain scenarios?

Also are they not bound to items or places similar to ghosts? Could you not run out of their range before they attack if you were fast enough?

Would a detect spirit spell locate them? I assume it would also ghosts as well. Not many people walking around with detect wraith and detect ghost spells?

Thank you all!

[soltakss]

21 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I was reading in the old RQ2 book Borderlands & Beyond about Wraiths (page 56 in the book) and found their deadliness to be shockingly strong. One roll and if they overcome the pertinent characteristic, a PC loses the wraiths power in that characteristic!? with an average power of 16-17 that one roll will kill most characters. Even if they fail to overcome the character would lose half the characteristic. In RQ3 Creatures Book Page42 they do d6 damage to a mistle location...

Wraiths are scary and deadly, sure they can only use their main attack once, but it is a doozy.

21 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Are there other sources or samples of wraith combat someone could point me to in any of the RQ variations, I want to better understand "wraith evolution" in the game and see about how to make them special and or unique in certain scenarios?

Here's how it went in a convention scenario I played in recently:

• Wraith appears.
• Adventurers ask "Is that an angry ghost or a wraith?"
• Wraith attacks.
• Adventurers scream and run away, or hack at it with magical spells and weapons.

What actually happened was:

• Wraith appeared
• Wraith attacked me, matching MPs against INT and rolled low, reducing me to INT 2, because I had INT 17
• Everyone cast Spirit Block
• Adventurers promised to do a service to the Wraith to calm its restless spirit
• I burbled in the corner
• Wraith let us go

In another encounter with a Wraith:

• Wraith appeared
• Wraith attacked, devastating someone's CON, but just failing to kill them as someone else cast Vigour on them
• Adventurers cast Spirit Block
• Wraith attacked again but failed to overcome CON
• Adventurers cast Bladesharp/Truesword/Fireblade
• Wraith tried against a third Adventurer and failed to harm them
• Adventurers hacked at the wraith, rending it with their magical damage.
• Wraith vanished in a fit of pique

It is a good job that Wraiths only do half their POW in damage. Beware the wraith that has the "Power Doubled" Chaos Feature.

Wraiths also do double the MP damage in Spirit Combat to a random Hit Location. Fortunately, they only do 1D3 damage in Spirit Combat, so can only do a maximum of points of damage, but 6 points of damage should take out most Hit Locations for most people.

To me, as a veteran RQ Player, Wraiths are deadly, dangerous and feared.

As a GM, they are lovely.

Edited September 16, 2022 by soltakss

[Puckohue]

According to the gloranthan bestiary the wraith attacks by ”a special form of spirit combat” where is has to overcome the target’s magic points.

Is this preceeded by the normal opposed roll of the Spirit Combat skill, or does it replace that opposed roll?

(Also, it says the characteristic loss discussed in the first post is ”half the current magic points of the wraith.”)

[Erol of Backford]

So are magic points total including spirits, storage crystals, allied spirts, elf bow magic points or just basic character magic points remaining from the character's power?

[Puckohue]

3 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

So are magic points total including spirits, storage crystals, allied spirts, elf bow magic points or just basic character magic points remaining from the character's power?

According to Remembering Caroman it’s basic character mp.

[Erol of Backford]

So wraiths are even more deadly then we thought...

[Puckohue]

Oh sorry, I meant the characteristic loss. The other one I don’t know.

[Erol of Backford]

To be clear I was thinking that a PC with a power of 15 and 15 magic points plus a storage crystal with 6 magic points would have a total of 21 magic points to resist the wraith's attack.

Is that correct? Thanks!

[jajagappa]

18 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

To be clear I was thinking that a PC with a power of 15 and 15 magic points plus a storage crystal with 6 magic points would have a total of 21 magic points to resist the wraith's attack.

Is that correct?

No.  Different crystals have different uses/abilities.

The standard MP storage crystal has no benefit here.  RQG W&E p120: "The magic points in a storage crystal can be used to cast spells, but they do not count in magic resistance."

What you need is the Spirit Supporting Crystal.  RQG W&E p121: "Each point of the crystal’s POW adds +10% to the user’s Spirit Combat skill, for purposes of both attack and defense."

(I don't believe these abilities have changed since RQ2.)

The only other addition to defense in spirit combat is to be a shaman and have a Fetch.