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Critical attack damage to parrying weapon


Queegueg

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Hi, I usually find that if I keep checking this forum, I'll eventually find answers to any questions I have.  But I'm still wondering: in the new RQG rules, if a critical sword attack doing 18 damage is met by a normal parry, and the parrying weapon has 12hp, is the parrying weapon broken (as the attack & parry results chart seems to suggest), or is the parrying weapon just reduced to 10hp (as pg 200 suggests, under "parrying a critical hit").  Thanks!

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47 minutes ago, jps said:

Yep: the 12HP weapon would be reduced to 0 HP (12-18) and the 6 remaining points would be matched against the armor's location value ; let's say 2 in which case the location would suffer a 4 point wound.

Critical hits ignore armour.

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Weapons and Shields can go to a negative value equal to their HP, that 12HP weapon can go to -12 before becoming completely useless, from 0 it can be used at 1/2 skill. 

So in that example of 18 damage, does the weapon go to -6 but if so when does the excess carry? The wording says that the Weapon takes damage like hit locations, so going to -6 seems reasonable,  but says that any damage over the positive value carries through. So my reading is weapon to -6 with 6 damage carrying through. 

 

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45 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Critical hits ignore armour.

Looking at the attack & parry results chart, it seems that a critical attack is downgraded to a special attack with a successful parry, but I gather from the wording that the attack still ignores armour.

Have to say the wording of the chart is not consistent. It would help if the wording stuck to a consistent formula. For example:

Critical hit vs Successful Parry

“parrying weapon HP reduced
by the damage rolled. Any excess damage goes to adjacent hit location, with no armor protection.”

Here it’s not clear whether the weapons HP are subtracted from the damage first. I guess it does by looking at the other results, but nonetheless it should be clearly stated.

Edited by Paid a bod yn dwp
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17 minutes ago, Psullie said:

So my reading is weapon to -6 with 6 damage carrying through. 

Yes this is what I would say. But the wording of that section on the chart is not clear. It’s only through looking at other results that I came to that conclusion.

So as Psuillie says: Weapon HP reduced by 6, and 6pts damage carry through to the hit location, ignoring armour. 

Dont forget according to the chart that in this situation critical damage is taken down a step to special damage

Edited by Paid a bod yn dwp
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10 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Dont forget according to the chart that in this situation critical damage is taken down a step to special damage

there is no such thing as Critical Damage, a Critical Hit ignores Armour and does Max Special Damage, which is what the table says.

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19 hours ago, Psullie said:

there is no such thing as Critical Damage, a Critical Hit ignores Armour and does Max Special Damage, which is what the table says.

Yes that’s what I meant by critical damage - max possible special damage + Normal dam modifier, ignoring armour.

However according to the chart critical attack vs normal parry only does special damage 

 

Edit: As pointed out further down in the thread, my PDF was outdated, and the chart has indeed been changed in the latest version to  Maximum special damage.

Edited by Paid a bod yn dwp
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5 minutes ago, jps said:

My mistake, so it would be a 6 point wound

Yes, and make sure that the damage dealt in the beginning was Special Damage, not Critical (Max Special Damage).

The chart shows that even a normal parry has an affect against a critical attack, taking the damage down by one step to just Special Damage. 

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18 minutes ago, jps said:

Max special damage ignoring armor sounds like a critical hit to me

Yep that’s a critical.

Just saying to be mindful of the damage dealt in the first place. According to the chart if you score a critical hit against a normal success parry, the damage is down graded from critical( max special),  to special. 

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27 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

The chart shows that even a normal parry has an affect against a critical attack, taking the damage down by one step to just Special Damage. 

Ah, on my version is says: 'Attacker inflicts max special damage' under Normal Parry. 

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Thanks for your help.  I'm still trying to figure out what to do with what appears on the page after the chart/matrix, under "parrying a critical hit."  It says:

Quote

Though the target’s armor does not subtract any damage from a critical hit, a successful parry from a weapon or shield blocks the amount of damage it normally would. However, a weapon that parries a critical hit takes twice the damage it would take normally.

This sounds like it would take 2hp damage rather than 1.  But the chart on the page before says the weapon would take full hp lost from all damage rolled.  I'm using a version of the PDF downloaded on July 1 from dtrpg.

 

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5 hours ago, Queegueg said:

Thanks for your help.  I'm still trying to figure out what to do with what appears on the page after the chart/matrix, under "parrying a critical hit."  It says:

This sounds like it would take 2hp damage rather than 1.  But the chart on the page before says the weapon would take full hp lost from all damage rolled.  I'm using a version of the PDF downloaded on July 1 from dtrpg.

 

That sounds like a table from Elric!/BRP, where weapons didn't take damage the way the do in RQ.. Maybe they accidentally mixed that table with RQ? 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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Previously on this forum, Jason Durall explained how combat worked, and it seems to me critical and special attacks reduced a weapon's HP by an amount equal to the difference between damage and current HP (contrarily to normal attacks, that only reduce it by 1 if dmg > HP).

So, a weapon dealing 18 damage to a 12 hp weapon would have reduced it to 6.

If this rule still applies, and critical now double this amount, according to the attack/parry table you mention, your weapon would lose 12 hp on a crit and be destroyed.

Edited by Mugen
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9 hours ago, Queegueg said:

 

Thanks for your help.  I'm still trying to figure out what to do with what appears on the page after the chart/matrix, under "parrying a critical hit."  It says:

Quote

Though the target’s armor does not subtract any damage from a critical hit, a successful parry from a weapon or shield blocks the amount of damage it normally would. However, a weapon that parries a critical hit takes twice the damage it would take normally.

This sounds like it would take 2hp damage rather than 1.  But the chart on the page before says the weapon would take full hp lost from all damage rolled.  I'm using a version of the PDF downloaded on July 1 from dtrpg.

 

 

I can only conclude that has been mistakenly included in RQG. 

I think the fact that the trouble has been taken to update the results on the chart shows that the chart should take precedence. 

Edit: Also I imagine changing or removing such a big block of text at this stage would cause too many headaches with the layout, which is why imagine it’s still there 

Edited by Paid a bod yn dwp
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It seems clear from the chart on Attacks & parry results, that a critical hit on a successful parry passes on its full damage to the weapon ignoring the protection of its HP. Though the weapons hit points still offer protection to the adjacent hit location. 

So If we look at the contradictory text on p200:

"Parrying a Critical Hit

Though the target’s armor does not subtract any damage from a critical hit, a successful parry from a weapon or shield blocks the amount of damage it normally would. However, a weapon that parries a critical hit takes twice the damage it would take normally. If the attacking weapon is a long-hafted weapon or an impaling weapon, the parrying weapon takes no damage.A shield that parries a critical hit receives twice as much damage as normal, and any unabsorbed damage strikes the parrying adventurer."

So to be consistent I would say that the sentence I've highlighted in bold should be replaced with something along the lines of - However, a weapon that parries a critical hit takes the full damage direct to its Hitpoints

Edited by Paid a bod yn dwp
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I feel there ought to be a difference between parrying a slash/crush weapon versus an impaling weapon, and a deflecting parry vs a blocking parry. Deflect vs Impale, for example, should do nothing to the parrying weapon. Room for house rules here, or a magazine article maybe.

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13 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

I feel there ought to be a difference between parrying a slash/crush weapon versus an impaling weapon, and a deflecting parry vs a blocking parry

Makes sense,  but I prefer to keep it a bit more streamlined in my games. Though young RQ3 me would be saying yes :) 

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  • 8 months later...

Sorry to necro this thread, but the inconsistency in still present in the rules and came up in our session today while trying to get a group of players new to RQ familiar with the combat rules.

There are two very different rules describing how much damage is done when a Critical Attack meets a regular Parry.

Chart on Pg. 199

Quote

Defender’s parrying weapon HP reduced by the damage rolled. Any excess damage goes to adjacent hit location, with no armor protection.

Pg. 200

Quote

Parrying a Critical Hit
Though the target’s armor does not subtract any damage from a critical hit, a successful parry from a weapon or shield blocks the amount of damage it normally would. However, a weapon that parries a critical hit takes twice the damage it would take normally. If the attacking weapon is a long-hafted weapon or an impaling weapon, the parrying weapon takes no damage.
A shield that parries a critical hit receives twice as much damage as normal, and any unabsorbed damage strikes the parrying adventurer.

Since a weapon normally takes 1 HP against an attack that overwhelms its HP, this would mean a Critical Hit just does 2 HP. That is clearly not the intent of the chart on pg. 199.

The chart seems to be the intended rule, but the inconsistencies between the chart and the fuller rules descriptions is extremely frustrating.

Our Humakti successfully parried against a critical attack from a battle axe doing 22 damage ((1d8+2)x2 + 1d6). His broadsword has 12 HP.

One version has his broadsword being almost completely destroyed, dropping to -10 HP. The other version has it dropping by 2 HP down to 10 HP. Quite a discrepancy.

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I asked the question on Runequest core rule questions thread, and got the following response from Jason Durall:

As per the chart, the defender's weapon takes the damage rolled and the excess goes to the defender. In this case, "twice the damage it would normally" is a clumsy way of saying it takes critical damage

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42 minutes ago, Queegueg said:

I asked the question on Runequest core rule questions thread, and got the following response from Jason Durall:

As per the chart, the defender's weapon takes the damage rolled and the excess goes to the defender. In this case, "twice the damage it would normally" is a clumsy way of saying it takes critical damage

That might be the intent, but that is clearly not “twice the damage it would take normally.” I understood that the chart was the intent, but it confused my players reading the incorrect text version. It needs to be corrected.

Edited by daskindt
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