Critical damage example.

[womble]

2 hours ago, StephenMcG said:

But hitting with a dagger or light weapon might prefer to avoid armour.  I need to look again but I think the critical avoids both armour and magical protection.  Well worth it for a trollkin spear-carrier, or beginning character with no damage bonus or much magic...

The choice provides some flexibility (IMO anyway!).

🙂

Stephen

Having gone back and had a better think about the numbers, it seems the break point for the decision is higher than I had initially thought, but the point is that most of the time you 'lose' (as the damage inflictor) less damage-inflicted by letting the armour and its magical backup soak some of your inflicted damage than you do by reducing your damage to half its maximum. An Enlo with 1d6+1 damage for their short spear does [14 points - location AP], if you take 'max damage' as your option, as opposed to 9 points (on average) straight up if you take 'negates armour' instead. So the target has to have 5 AP in the relevant location to make taking the 'negates armour' option the better. Broadsword goes 18 vs 11 (7AP breakpoint), Battleaxe is the same. It basically comes down to 1 less than the die you're rolling (2 less if you're rolling 2 dice) difference in armour. So there might, you're right, be more occasions than I originally thought when the 'Avoids armour' option is better, and I was in error when I included dagger level damage (most serious targets will have 3 AP).

With bigger weapons, the difference is still great enough that significant Protection/Shield will need to be present to make taking 'negates armour' as your choice the better. It seems to me to be an actual choice for the lesser combatants of the world, rather than those who should actually be going in harm's way.

[PhilHibbs]

On 10/27/2018 at 5:19 PM, Atgxtg said:

That  the reason why PC deaths haven't derailed your campaign is because of things you've houseruled as a GM, not because it doesn't exist. You've already taken steps to mitigate it. Also not every RQ/BRP game has that as an option, so GMs should be aware that the more dice rolling that goes on the more PCs will die.

Of course it exists, and that's why some people love RuneQuest, and not everyone feels the need to "solve" the "problem" in the way that Pentallion does. I could go on all day boring you all with character death stories. Dissolved by a gorp, killed by a Vigor spell, eaten by the party trickster, beheaded and added to a Thanatar belt, self-disemboweled in the first minute of the game... you don't get memories like those with most game systems, and I wouldn't change it for the world. If you see it as a problem, then by all means fix it. But it is core to the basic RuneQuest experience, and always has been.

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Of course it exists, and that's why some people love RuneQuest, and not everyone feels the need to "solve" the "problem" in the way that Pentallion does. I could go on all day boring you all with character death stories. Dissolved by a gorp, killed by a Vigor spell, eaten by the party trickster, beheaded and added to a Thanatar belt, self-disemboweled in the first minute of the game... you don't get memories like those with most game systems, and I wouldn't change it for the world. If you see it as a problem, then by all means fix it. But it is core to the basic RuneQuest experience, and always has been.

 I don't see it as a problem,  just something that a GM should be aware of. It only becomes a problem if the GM runs lots of combat, or ambushes. 

 

But "eaten by the party trickster" , is a new one on me, and I love to hear about it sometime. Maybe we should have a thread for memorable PC deaths. Probably some good stories out there.