New RQ - Designer Notes Part Three

[Guest Vile Traveller]

8 hours ago, Al. said:

Speaking only for myself I'd either use die based armour variability OR Hit Location; I'm far too lazy to use both

That makes sense to me. I had always assumed that variable armour in Stormbringer was there to model different armour values for different body parts in the absence of hit locations. No Idea where I got that idea because there was no intertube at that time, but I'm sticking with it.

[Jeff]

Just to let folk know, the new RuneQuest will definitely have hit locations (and general hit points are back in after much deliberation).

[nDervish]

20 hours ago, Baulderstone said:

...The Sunder card is going to spend a lot more time in the hands of people that can't use it. Same with Impale Impaling weapons should be able to Impale, and it feels odd to lock the result behind a card draw. Entangling weapons no longer seem worth having in the game at all. 

Certain SEs really don't feel like they should be restricted. Close and Open Range don't seem like things that should be restricted to showing up maybe once every other combat...

...I'm simply trying to identify issues that the system could create.

Definitely some good points there!  Also, one other issue that you haven't mentioned:  The same restrictions should reasonably apply to any NPCs, monsters, etc., which means that, as the GM, I'd have to either make extremely heavy use of the mook rules or manage a separate hand of SE cards for each non-PC combatant, which would quickly become its own organizational nightmare.

14 hours ago, styopa said:

Meh, I think "trip" and some of these others were artifacts of the extraordinarily punishing nature of SEs in RQ6...

"Extraordinarily punishing" in comparison to other RPGs, perhaps.  In comparison to actual combat, I think less so.

Or, as I told one of my players when he complained about prone being too harsh, "Lay down on the ground by my feet, then try to stand back up while I beat on you with a stick."

8 hours ago, Vile said:

That makes sense to me. I had always assumed that variable armour in Stormbringer was there to model different armour values for different body parts in the absence of hit locations. No Idea where I got that idea because there was no intertube at that time, but I'm sticking with it.

That was my immediate assumption as well when I first encountered variable armor points in BGB.

[Joerg]

58 minutes ago, nDervish said:

9 hours ago, Vile said:

That makes sense to me. I had always assumed that variable armour in Stormbringer was there to model different armour values for different body parts in the absence of hit locations. No Idea where I got that idea because there was no intertube at that time, but I'm sticking with it.

58 minutes ago, nDervish said:

That was my immediate assumption as well when I first encountered variable armor points in BGB.

My assumpption always was that this was a nod towards the iconic partial armor showing off biceps, decolletes, belly buttons or six-packs (or both) featuring strongly in the iconography for the sword and sorcery genre, whether Conan or Elric or Fafhrd and the Mouser (not to mention heroines). A hit could get blocked by a lucky scrap of protection, or bypass most of the ornamental metal or leather covering unstrategic parts of the body surface.

[K Peterson]

Stormbringer 1e and 4e state that variable armor points is due to the possibility of being struck in a location where the armor isn't present. Elric! described it as being due to weaknesses and openings depending on the type of armor used. So yeah, potentially a combined-abstraction of hit locations, armor coverage, and durability of armor based upon type.

[kpmcdona]

12 hours ago, Jeff said:

Just to let folk know, the new RuneQuest will definitely have hit locations (and general hit points are back in after much deliberation).

That's good to hear. To me and my group, it ain't RuneQuest if it doesn't have hit locations. General HP also always made sense to us. Nobody had a complaint about how that part of the game worked.

The resistance table wasn't a problem either. We never actually consulted the table. Even my math challenged brain can subtract two small numbers from each other and multiply by five.

Defense, on the other hand, was more of a nuisance. It falls into the general category of skill penalties though. If you don't have a problem subtracting penalties from target numbers due to circumstances then I don't see why Defense is a problem. If you are like me and hate stopping to figure out a new target number in the middle of combat then searching for an alternative solution like the one used in CoC7 makes sense.

[Charles VA]

12 minutes ago, kpmcdona said:

Defense, on the other hand, was more of a nuisance. It falls into the general category of skill penalties though. If you don't have a problem subtracting penalties from target numbers due to circumstances then I don't see why Defense is a problem. If you are like me and hate stopping to figure out a new target number in the middle of combat then searching for an alternative solution like the one used in CoC7 makes sense.

This is where preparation comes into play. If you have the GM screen, it's all there in print. If not, making a few notes on how the numbers are affected makes things proceed with a glance. Similar to making notes on characters and NPCs that include the effects of certain spells utilized by those characters.

[TRose]

1.  Add me to the camp that like hit locations and armor.
2.   For me at least Runequest characters should have that hard scruffy look , with well worn and stained    armor, looted  or bought from various sources.
3.  Knights in shiny plate armor belong in  different games.

[Harshax]

I hope to see a Hero Quest in the designer notes, soon. Something that illustrates how everything works together. 

I still have my copy of RQ2. I would love to have some demo material I could run through with some friends.

[Dissolv]

Hey all, just popped in to say how much I appreciate the designers notes series, and the fact that Runequest/Glorantha is getting it's "ultimate format" after all these years!

Unlike a lot of people it seems, I like it all.  Special Effects from RQ6 needed to be limited in some way to be interesting, otherwise the players did just pick the same one's over and over.  May as well just use the old Impale/Critical format in that case. A critical/special chart would also be highly welcome, as the Fumble table was always, always, always good for a laugh.  I'd like the RQ3 back straight up, honestly.

Over the years I had a number of player's characters battered to their heroic death via total hit point loss, so yeah, I am in for that too. 

Add the Pendragon passions -- great!  Not sure I want them THAT powerful though.  Think about it -- Hate Chaos at 20, err 100%.  Storm Bull characters would be locked on rails to fight/suicide against every chaos horror that they came across, while at the same time trivializing every encounter of feral broos or such.  How about Hate Law or Hate Life from the bad guys -- it would get nasty very quickly.  My solution: cap the possible impact of hatreds unless aligned at a Rune level.  Yes this could take away from the clan on clan feuds, but the pure Pendragon mechanic was too powerful when applied to combat.  For some reason no one ever minded the passions from being able to allow a love poem to be written though....  Big swings of combat power I'd rather see coming from Rune manipulations.

Last long standing personal bugaboo -- Two Handed weapons vs. one handed weapons.  Two handers just seem the choice of the standard monster hunting hero, while the classic Broadsword + Shields seems anemic by comparison.  RQ6 got around this with passive blocking (although can't you just SE to not the shield every time???) but while in Pendragon most characters wouldn't part with the 1H + shield, most of my RQ players gravitated to 2 handers as they were simply vastly better at penetrating armor and getting an incapacitation. 

I'd also love a statement somewhere about the rarity of armor, mainly to make it clear that the players don't start born with mail -- unless they are, of course ;-)

 

Dissolv

[Al.]

On 20 February 2016 at 7:35 PM, Al. said:

Not worrying about it (And selling suits in complete sets)

Speaking only for myself I'd either use die based armour variability OR Hit Location; I'm far too lazy to use both

EDIT: 

Just looked at my (barely legible) notes and if someone enters combat without their head protection* the AP is 3/4 of the listed (2 not 3 for Boiled Leather, 3 not 4 for Leather-and-rings, 4 not 5 for Ringmaille, 5 not 6 for Plate, 6 not 8 for Full Plate, etc) which I think I stole form a post about Pendragon somewhere

I never had a player (lucky!) enough to own character with the wear no armour on X geas if I did I'd rule losing similarly losing 1/4 AP for an unarmoured trunk, lose 1/4 for one or both unarmored arms, 1/4 for one or both unarmored legs

 

*foolish or unlucky

 

EDIT: grrrr clicked QUOTE not EDIT last time, so I've inadvertently become the kind of arse who quotes his own posts

Edited February 22, 2016 by Al.

[trystero]

17 minutes ago, Al. said:

I never had a player (lucky!) enough to own character with the wear no armour on X geas...

One of my players took "Wear no armour on your head" as his Humakti geas. Hooray for called shot rules!

[styopa]

On 2/20/2016 at 3:47 PM, hkokko said:

The name is perhaps wrong - they used to be called combat maneuvres or something similar earlier I think. i think the happening frequency is just about right - they are taking the place of the specials, crits and fumbles from earlier editions. It also makes it necessary for players or opponents to parry or they endanger themselves to a SE - or they might go for pure attacks and truat that opponent does not succeed with SE.  Puny opponents are mooks (rabble and underlings) - they cannot do SEs - there were some special effects which big opponents do not worry about...

Actually, they take place FAR more frequently in RQ6.

Consider a fight between 75-skill combatants.

In RQ3, each has a 15% chance of crit/specials and 1% of fumbles.  So 16% chance of 'something' happening to each, or (with the two of them fighting) adding probability, roughly a 32% chance of "something" happening.  Now, there's a bit of a cancellation effect with some crit vs crit results, and a critical parry or dodge vs any attack isn't a  special effect, simply nothing happens.  Call it somewhere around 25% chance of something happening, up to maybe 30%.

Contrast that with RQ6, where (p143: "...any resulting difference in success levels indicates an opportunity for Special Effects to occur..."), increasing crits to 10%, removing specials, and increasing fumbles to 2% means the math's a little more difficult but as I calculate out of 10000 possible results, more than 48% of them are where one or the other has at least one level of success over the other.  (We always said that you had to at least succeed to get an SE, but that doesn't materially affect that 48% actually...)

That's a HUGE difference.  Not only does it impact frequency of what might be a combat-ending event, but it also might mean that every other combat action someone's got to scurry off and check the table.

Unless my math's off, which isn't impossible.

[soltakss]

On 2/22/2016 at 0:42 PM, Harshax said:

I hope to see a Hero Quest in the designer notes, soon. Something that illustrates how everything works together. 

I still have my copy of RQ2. I would love to have some demo material I could run through with some friends.

Seconded. With the new 13th Age in Glorantha concentrating on mythic adventuring, it would be good to see more HeroQuests in RQ, It is the Hero Wars, after all, when HeroQuestors change/break/fix the world.

 

[GianniVacca]

On 20/2/2016 at 1:11 AM, fmitchell said:

A "Defense Score" subtracted from all attempts to hit?  No "Dodge" skill?  (Granted, Dodge in some d100 variants can get a little unrealistic: what sort of contortionist can avoid three separate attacks?)

 

Defence is one of my favourite features from RQ2. As you recognise it yourself, Dodge is often unrealistic.