Monster Hit Points

[Akhôrahil]

My players took down Zeeth the Chaos Whale fair and square with no casualties (although one only survived because he had something like 40 HPs at the time - do not underestimate what berserking does for your HPs).

Critting and cutting off the tail in one stroke was pretty spectacular! It really needed those 26 points of armor to stay in the fight for several rounds, though.

Edited June 20 by Akhôrahil

[Jeff]

26 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

It will be super interesting to see if the heroquesting rules handle this. Fighting a Giant in the real world should be a lot about the physics and really tough, while Giant-killing in an HQ might be about other things, like your Hate Giants passion.

Maybe in your Glorantha. But fighting and killing giants were a trope in Greg's stories, and Greg and I both agreed that the (SIZ+CON)/2 approach to hit points meant that the rules of Gloranthan stories would be violated. So we went back to the RQ2 way of calculating hit points.

Which is where it is going to stay.

[radmonger]

Agreed, Rune Magic should be entirely capable of bringing Otherside logic into the mundane world; arguably that is what it's for.

However, In Dragon Pass/WB&RM, Argrath's giants are combat factor 15, triceratops are 10,  on a scale where the Red Emperor is 8 and Harrek is 20. That doesn't really match up with their stats in the RQ:G Bestiary (85% to hit, 13/10 typical location). They are not really creatures you can only fight using Rune Magic, more ones that are only dangerous if you try to skip casting any.

 

 

[Malin]

Not gonna lie, the GM book is the thing I am awaiting the most. I just want to see how my reverse-engineered rules (from their liveplay) holds up to the real thing.

[Jeff]

22 minutes ago, radmonger said:

Agreed, Rune Magic should be entirely capable of bringing Otherside logic into the mundane world; arguably that is what it's for.

However, In Dragon Pass/WB&RM, Argrath's giants are combat factor 15, triceratops are 10,  on a scale where the Red Emperor is 8 and Harrek is 20. That doesn't really match up with their stats in the RQ:G Bestiary (85% to hit, 13/10 typical location). They are not really creatures you can only fight using Rune Magic, more ones that are only dangerous if you try to skip casting any.

 

 

Keep in mind, those giants are entities like Gone Orta, Thor, or Paragua, and not some piddly 8 meter tall monster. 😄

[davecake]

13 hours ago, Jeff said:

Greg and I both agreed that the (SIZ+CON)/2 approach to hit points meant that the rules of Gloranthan stories would be violated. So we went back to the RQ2 way of calculating hit points.

I'm still quite convinced that it is a mistake. The issue with giants etc becoming effectively unkillable without ridiculous luck (just about anything is possible with enough critical of course) shouldn't really be an issue - stories may be stories about heroes who had ridiculous luck anyway, or who used any of a range of methods to kill them anyway (Poison, magic that attacks them directly like Sever Spirit or Multispelled Disrupt or Sun Spears, a critical becomes more likely with spells like <weapon> Trance, there are plenty of ways to kill a giant that aren't just individual characters humans attacking with melee weapons, and I can only recall a singleGloranthan story about a hero killing a giant through use of normal arms alone (and that was the story of Scala, who explicitly had ridiculous luck and knew it, and critical impaled the giant in the abdomen with a mounted rhino charge, which would kill a giant in any system*) - generally speaking stories about fighting giants are about using cleverness and tactics, or powerful magic, not just taking them on in straight melee as if they were a normal combatant. 

But if they did, a character who uses a weapon directly is still more than capable of injuring one, if they have access to magic - for example a Sword of Hunakt with a great sword, Truesword, Strength for a D6 damage bonus and Bladesharp 6, does an average of 2x(2D8) + 6 + 1D6, for average of 27.5. With a special that raises to 3x (2D8) + 6 +1D6 =36.5, for a critical that raises to max special damage, so (4 x 16) + 2D8 +6 +1D6 =  82.5. I don't consider this an extreme or contrived example - I've had a PC capable of doing this in more than one game, its pretty much by the book Sword tactics for this kind of fight, and I haven't added anything unusual like Damage Boosting, Lunar Magic, or even any of the Humakti damage enhancing sword geases (which would make it much easier). If you are taking them on with weapons directly, it's really hit points per location that is relevant. In RQ3, using the SIZ/CON average roll and scaling CON and SIZ, even an enormous 16m giant has 39 hit points and 21 armour points in the leg. So they can easily take them to damage exceeding double  Hit Points in the leg with a single critical, incapacitating them. 2-3 specials will take the leg out, causing them to fall, and even a standard hit will still do damage, enough that 7-8 normal hits will cause them to fall (so if they are being attacked by a party, probably a couple of rounds worth of attacks. Similar damage level can be delivered by a Babeester Gor Axe Lady, a ZZ Death Lord, etc. Of course not every cult does as well, but if we really wanted to do the calculations for Praxian lance charges, mass archery barrages, etc, and also look at the statistical spread of higher and lower attacks etc we might get quite a bit different, but not drastically so - giants are generally deferrable by a powerful magically boosted PC group. 

Compare the RQG equivalent. The 16m Giant has a CON 0f 16, and their SIZ is a little lower for 8x3D6 +18, for an average of 103 giving them 16+22 hit point= 38 hit point,  which I think gives them around 13 hit points in the leg. And I think with STR and SIZ of each average 102, Damage bonus is around 11D6, and so their armour points are 17. That means our theoretical sword, with his 27.6 points of damage on an average hit, needs to do only mildly above average on his damage roll to take our giant to negative hit points in the leg, causing it to fall, on a normal hit. Two normal hits will absolutely do it. A single special hit will take out a location easily, taking it to about -6. A single critical sever a leg, and probably killing outright on general hit points. So a giant that doesn't parry a critical hit dies in a single shot. That seems a bit too easy to me - a party of 2-3 heavy hitters should be able to take a giant down in a round or  two just on normal hits. 

I am doubtful that either you or Greg did something like that calculation, but please, if you did and thought 'wow, giants are so hard to kill, lets make it easier, so an adventuring group with a couple of rune lords can take down the biggest giant in a couple of rounds', just say. 

The point of looking at it in this details, though, is more than just showing that high powered characters really deal a lot of damage. It isn't really about their hit points, but about their armour points. RQ3 increased both, but only made an explicit general rule for the latter. Giants, and a few other variable SIZ things like Cliff Toads, are a rare example where the escalation of APs is explicit. In both cases it's what makes the different to the giant not easily going down to a reasonable number of normal hits and requiring damage boosting magic. RQ3 didn't just up the hit points, it generally upped armour points over RQ2. 

And personally I find that increased hit points isn't that big a problem. It is normally HP per location that matters, and it's usually not that huge. And for most combat, more minor wounds and less single hit takedowns on a powerful large opponent is good - it makes them a target that can take on a party and not fall to a single hit, have more disabling and less 'instant defeat' results, and generally make the combat more interesting. Armour Points which can make a special or critical required, are much more of a problem for a game, as they make it much more luck dependent. I'd also argue that this is why it is was good to remove Armouring Enchantment from the game, but not necessarily Strengthening Enchantment. 

Regardless, there is an issue, pointed to in the start of this post, with inconsistent implementation. In RQ2, things generally had a narrow range of CON, leading directly to a narrow range of HP. In RQ3, it was much more likely for large, dangerous, things to have a very high CON roughly matching their SIZ. RQG does not stick consistently to either way. If it is important that a giant has low hit points to be killable, why are dinosaurs so tough? A Brontosaurus has many more HP, because its CON is more than double, but a significantly lower SIZ. An allosaurus half the SIZ, about the same HP. Etc. 

Anyway, this took way too long, but I think the 'giants must be killable by heroes' idea has been debunked. 

* a mounted rhino charge critical impale does 22 for max impale damage with a 1d10+1 mounted lance, plus an average of 4D6 damage bonus for 38. OK, so it is possible that if Scala has an average rhino and hasn't boosted its damage in any way (probably neither is likely, as he is a Rune Lord/Priest of Waha, and his rhino is probably his allied spirit) and rolls average damage, it will still have a point or two in the abdomen if it is a 16m giant in RQ3. The story just says it is 'very large' giant. It also wouldn't instantly die in RQ3, just go unconscious and bleed out. 

[Joerg]

The best known conflicts between humans and giants happened in the upper Zola Fel Valley. While Pavis directed the Faceless statue against Waha and Paragua, the other giant followers of Paragua were defeated or sent away by Pure Horse Folk magic (and presumably archery, possibly couched lances, both on horseback). Thog's Jolanti might have been overcome with Mostali command codes. Thog lost his eye and an arm to Joraz Kyrem's magic, not his melee weapons. The arm was lost in a test of magic and will as Thog and Joraz were locked in battle for days. Sorry, but RuneQuest has no official mechanics to support that kind of struggle (yet).

Now giants bodies are supposed to be rather resistant to magic, too, something that high POW might not model too well. A POW difference of more than 9 means that one side has only a minimal chance at coming through with their magic. Sure, you could send 20 decent magicians with Demoralize or Mindblast against a giant, or possibly with Befuddle if the giant is somewhat articulate, to even out the 5% odds, or have three or four Humakti cast Sever Spirit, expecting only to do the ersatz damage to the giant's hit points. All of this is just a variant of Death by 1000 Pinpricks, and not very satisfying unless you are into MMORPG boss fights that whittle away the boss. (If you are, RQ might not be the ideal rpg for that.)

In its early phase, Chaosium provided an idea how to fight a giant early on as a boardgame: Stomp! has elves pin down the sandals of the giant while trying to avoid being flattened.

[radmonger]

35 minutes ago, davecake said:

Anyway, this took way too long, but I think the 'giants must be killable by heroes' idea has been debunked. 

The math looks sound to me. However, the core issue remains; there is a printed bestiary book with with written statistics for creatures, plus innumerable creature stat sheets in Chaosium and JC scenarios. Meanwhile different GMs and groups have radically different expectations for combat. 

Some groups want no combat, some want combat in which PC victory is a statistical certainty regardless of tactics. Some want victory to depend on clever tactics, for varying definitions of clever. A certain portion of new players will not necessarily grasp tricks like 'cast truesword on sword'. Some want regular PC death, some want the risk but not the reality, others not even the pretense of risk. Some want hard power scaling, when Harrek will deterministically beat Argrath who will deterministically beat any PC. Others want a system where those wins are merely likely, not guaranteed.

The only reasonable fix is adopting house rules to taste. The trick is to adopt house rules that are downstream of printed statistics. This means that everyone, no matter their taste, can share the same publications.

For example, to deal with large beasts, here is a sketch of some rules:

Quote

 

Take the ratio of the SIZ of attacker and target, rounded down. Call it the Target Size Ratio, or TSR (as SR is taken). 

This has a value of 1 for humanoids, 2 for an elephants, ~5 for a brontosaur.

For each TSR:

• reduce the D20 usually used for hit locations by 1 step (D20 -> D12 -> D10 -> D8 -> D6 -> D4). 
• The base number of the hit location roll will depend on positioning
• increase the multiple of location hps required to cause incapacitation or death by 1 (2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6).

 

So if you are attacking a brontosaurus with TSR 5 from behind, you are guaranteed to hit tail or rear leg, but are extremely unlikely to instantly kill it.

 

 

 

 

 

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

stories about heroes who had ridiculous luck

Your post was quite long, so I have pulled this out to give it the emphasis it surely deserves. (IMO, anyway.)

There is no point in a story about brave Jill who was bound to beat the giant. But a story of her beating the giant against the odds might be a flier. (Beating the giant through cleverness or trickery is good, too.) Of course, we cannot draw conclusions about appropriate game rules from that without more premises.

IMHO, Gloranthans should tell campfire stories about taking down the LargeScaryThing™, but when they meet it, they should mostly break and run or get squished. There is a streak of “smart, adaptable humans are the coming thing and dumb, inflexible monsters’ days are numbered” in Glorantha, and it is always satisfying to kick against that. “In the 4th Age, there are no humans — their place has been taken by the newtlings.”

Spoiler

Whether your PCs should mostly get squished is none of my business, of course, and some will argue that the “giant-fighting rules” are not supposed to »ahem« simulate Gloranthan reality »sorry« but most of the time to give the results you would expect if the PCs were the protagonists of a “hero wins” story. NPC Swords of Humakt get squished left, right, and centre by GM fiat, but RAW give the PCs an edge against the LargeScaryThing™. It doesn’t appeal to me, but why should I piss on someone else’s chips?

[mfbrandi]

The Trophy Gold approach is probably worth mentioning — briefly — in this context: the PCs can whittle away at the LargeScaryThing™, but in order to take it down, they must put something at stake. Arguably, in an RQ context not enough at stake, but in TG PC death is supposed to be attritional, I guess.

Spoiler

No point in rewriting RQG to be more TG, but at the scenario level it should be easy enough to give the LargeScaryThing™ a special feature which means it won’t die till the PCs gamble something of value. An item. Sanity. Maybe not everyone’s idea of game fun, however.

[Jon Hunter]

OK first off bringing any giant size creates into any combat system designed for human to human size combat is going to be diffiult and require compromise. Remmeber susyems are easy abstractions to contain a story.

I agree that the RQ3 system created pretty unkillable beast, the RQ 2 system makes them feel a little tissue page thin a times, and they could easily fall victim to a lucky peseant with a pitch fork. ( Hyoerbol used ).

We aren't limited to those two solutions and there could be more.  That again will be compomises but may scale better, within the effetcive range;

One possibility that jumps to mind is to make the bonsu on HP bonus for size( and/or power)  a gradient rather than linear, a couple of options below;

                      Linear             Progression           Hybrid

13 - 16              +1                +1                             +1

17 - 20              +2               +3                            +3

21 - 24              +3               +6                           + 5

25 -28              +4               +10                          + 7

29 -32              +5               +15                          + 10 

32 -36              + 6               +21                         +13

37 -40              + 7              + 28                         + 17

There is obvious a place where this scales and becomes silly, but i think thats well oustide what we create rules for.

I would note that HP location boundaries are set to increase every 3 extra hps, that probably does not translate to large monsters and ypu need to look at increasign ti every 4 or 5hp.

The other less nuanced suggestion si to just give massive monsters an extra hp special ability where you add 5, 10 or 15hp as a special ability.

[Akhôrahil]

3 hours ago, davecake said:

I'm still quite convinced that it is a mistake. The issue with giants etc becoming effectively unkillable without ridiculous luck (just about anything is possible with enough critical of course) shouldn't really be an issue - stories may be stories about heroes who had ridiculous luck anyway, or who used any of a range of methods to kill them anyway (

Agree. I think the trick about giant-killing isn’t to make giants really easy to kill, but to make giant-killers really good at their job. Where’s the heroism if it’s easy?

[mfbrandi]

On 6/13/2024 at 10:42 PM, Agkistro13 said:

A Brontosaurus has 50+ hitpoints because it's CON scales well with its other physical attributes. I don’t know if … their stats are holdovers from a different edition or what

People can thank or blame Sandy for this, it seems:

• [I]n most cases the average CON of a very large creature should not be less than about half the average SIZ of the beast … For those that don’t want to mess up their existing campaigns too much, [this] may be considered to apply only to reptiles and their close relatives.
  — Sandy Petersen, Gateway Bestiary: Dinosaurs (old paper edition, p. 49)

So it seems to have been an innovation in 1980. There is stuff about skin armour scaling with damage bonus, too. RQ3 had high CON for some big beasties, too — giants were 2d6+6 CON per 2 m of height (Creatures Book, p. 22).

Edited Friday at 08:04 PM by mfbrandi
CON for giants in RQ3

[Mugen]

On 6/20/2024 at 5:06 PM, Akhôrahil said:

My rules-intuition here is that you should start tracking wrapon sizes and penalize using weapons that aren’t big enough for the job. Doesn’t Mythras do this? And plus, you could make weapon reach important in the same solution, the way it isn’t now. Maybe even rescue shields from their current awful state?

In Mythras, parry reduces damage according to the weapons' Size.

If the parrying weapon is bigger or has equal Size, it blocks all damage.

If it's smaller by one step, it blocks half damage.

If it's smaller by more than one step, it blocks no damage.

Special Maneuvers can change the weapon's size, and a creature's SIZ sets its natural weapon's Size. A Weapon designed for a big creature is also bigger than its human counterpart.

 

Edited Monday at 11:22 AM by Mugen

[davecake]

On 6/21/2024 at 5:29 PM, radmonger said:

A certain portion of new players will not necessarily grasp tricks like 'cast truesword on sword'.

I would think new players should probably not take on 16m tall giants directly, unless the intention is for them to learn a serious lesson in the process. 

On 6/21/2024 at 7:59 PM, Akhôrahil said:

Agree. I think the trick about giant-killing isn’t to make giants really easy to kill, but to make giant-killers really good at their job.

Yes. Get a metal chain or a magic rope and trip one so it falls over, for example. Get the Trickster to get it to run off a cliff, or drink something alcoholic (or poisonous) the size of boat. Lure it into the path of something like the Sun County Harpoon and shoot it with a bolt the size of an electricity pole (but sharper). Have a whole regiment worth of sorcerers Enhance your STR and SIZ and CON and then take it on. Charge it with a Controlled Triceratops. Keep attacking its face with an Air elemental until it clubs itself in the head. There are so many possible good stories about defeating giants that don't require you to nerf them to make it easy just so someone can fight one without even putting any interesting thought into it. 

[Malin]

Had a discussion about this in the car on a long drive, and I think the consensus we came to is that if we made a character that was really focused/good at killing things (Humakti/Babeester Gor/Stormbull etc with all the rune spells, spirit magic, and augments to get the skills up to like 150%+) then we'd damn well want to be able to take down a basic giant in single combat. Named giants though? They'd be heroes in their own right and would most likely have a lot higher skills; just like that Humakti is far better than a normal farmer. We always saw the bestiary stats as average creatures, not the pinnacle of their kind. Especially when it came to the skill numbers.

[davecake]

Yes. I character who specialises in combat, has reached a decent level of power, and has really got their best magic on, should expect to be able to take down an average giant. Giants are maybe a bit different because a full size one is also ridiculously old, so might be more than just a big idiot, but they should be expecting to take on very physically dangerous, but unintelligent, opponents and expect to win without too much trouble - a Humakti in one of my games killed an allosaurus basically in straight melee. Taking down a giant still is dangerous, and still merits a bit of Reputation, but shouldn't be impossible (though it shouldn't be easy). 

But yes, want to give them a real challenge, it is easy to develop a giant into something beyond a big dumb mass of muscle. Take Boshbisil from Griffin Mountain (not that many PCs would want to fight him, it would just upset Gonn Orta), if a giant is also an experienced Rune Priest and has some friends and allies, they are a real challenge of a different level. Try one that has joined ZZ and can go Berserk (if you presume their natural resistance to emotion influencing magic doesn't apply to magic cast by themselves) or bump their club attack up, or just get some magic defences, Seal Wound if you really want to get your players running in terror, for example - and you just know they might come back up as a zombie too. A Lodril 'fire giant'. A Foundchild dinosaur hunter with a tree sized javelin, a Maran Gor dinosaur lover with Command Dinosaur, and who has learnt to ride one. One who has joined the Seven Mothers, he has finally found someone who accepts him (and gives him cool spells like Reflection). The absolute terror that is a vampire giant. Most alarming of all, the Eurmal giant. Giants are potentially very cool and entertaining and easily customised. 

And then you have an opponent that is memorable, gives a cool story, and maybe gives PCs other than your 'heavy hitter' combat PCs a reason to be in the story.

And a final point - a lot of the stats in RQG are more or less RQ2 or RQ3 stats and haven't been rebalanced, or much, and RQG differs significantly from  both, its not just Hit Points. The rules for attacks over 100%, and a generally higher weapon skill, for example, makes a big difference. A lot of creatures become a lot less terrifying when you consider that a parry over 100%  subtracts from attack, and RAW Axe and Sword Trance add to parries as well as attack, and suddenly a lot of creatures are nowhere near as dangerous as they should be. Sometimes encounters are rebalanced for the new rules, sometimes rebalanced in ways that seem big changes in an unexepected direction (the Crimson Bat, for example, now only attacks at 100%, and so its attack can be reduced to 0% by many heavy hitters, though its acid damage, which doesn't obey normal parry rules, probably means that trick only works a couple of times before your weapon melts - but it is a big difference to RQ3s 750% attack, admittedly probably a number Sandy picked out the air). Lots of animals are given no defences at all. Sometimes rules that used to make a big difference to encounters no longer exist (very much the case for giants without the knockback and sweep rules from RQ3). Sometimes just the way RQ3 used to throw huge acid or poison numbers around often makes encounters crazily  dangerous. It is a weird mess. And the RQG editorial position seems to be 'why are you even expecting any of this to be balanced or practical, you fool, you absolute idiot who doesn't understand balance is irrelevant to good gaming', not understanding that often if a creature is too dangerous, or not dangerous enough, it just messes up using it in games. So - let a thousand house rule flowers bloom, YGWV. I'd love to see some community collected suggestions and comments (though very much doesn't sound like it's a JC thing to me)