Living Up to Mythic Aspirations

[Tywyll]

So, RQ and Glorantha has always struck me as a somewhat mismatched setting and rules set. The world is replete with Major Hero NPCs, Heroquestors, and Horrific Fiends...all of which are so far beyond what PCs can seemingly achieve. While a lot of this (seems) to be a fault of lack of real Heroquesting rules (that I know of), another big problem seems to be a mismatch between the gritty realism of the rules versus the mythic setting. Also at high levels, the roll under mechanic seems to break. 

While the world has all these interesting and powerful figures, starting characters are rarely more than initiates. Even as Rune Priests and Lords they are still little match for some of the foes and NPCs in the setting (at least in the old Avalon HIll material...Dorastor, I'm looking at you). 

I find the same issue with Warhammer, where the wargame shows one High Fantasy setting, but the RPG limits players to dirt farmers and shit carriers that would barely rise above the standard infantry model on the battlefield in the wargame.

Does this bother anyone but me? Has anyone found a way around it? Are there any good Heroquesting rules out there? Any good ways of handling high powered characters that doesn't break the game? Or should players just resolve themselves to be secondary to NPCs in the setting?

[PhilHibbs]

RQG goes some way to fix this, characters are pretty tough to start out. They can all chuck rune spells around and the fighters can hit reliably in combat. They are ready to start playing with the big toys. But I agree in general, RuneQuest has always focused on the more "realistic" end of the power scale, and progressing to the higher power levels has always been a tough slog and required generous GMing.

Part of the problem is that a lot of groups like to start at the low end, and feel that starting out on the cusp of rune level, like RQG, is cheating somewhat. So it's difficult for one game system to cater to all tastes.

Edited December 4, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[drablak]

I don't know enough to answer your question but I'm wondering if you are talking about RQ2-RQ3 (or some other edition) or RQG? My impression is that RQG has more powerful starting characters than previous editions, perhaps this would help?

 

edit: ah! PhilHibbs beat me to it!  

Edited December 4, 2018 by drablak

[womble]

I'm looking forward to seeing how Heroquesting is handled in RQG. As Tywyll says, the d100 mechanic starts to creak once there's a lot of post-100 skills, and before this edition, there haven't been any 'official' D100-based Heroquest systems. We've got Wyters now (to support Hero Bands), though again I'm hoping there's more flesh going to be put on those bones in the GM handbook, to go along with the Heroquesting stuff. Rune Points and the way Enchantments work look like they're set up to support the higher level play we might expect out of the Hero Wars proper.

[g33k]

3 hours ago, Tywyll said:

So, RQ and Glorantha has always struck me as a somewhat mismatched setting and rules set. The world is replete with Major Hero NPCs, Heroquestors, and Horrific Fiends...all of which are so far beyond what PCs can seemingly achieve. While a lot of this (seems) to be a fault of lack of real Heroquesting rules (that I know of), another big problem seems to be a mismatch between the gritty realism of the rules versus the mythic setting. Also at high levels, the roll under mechanic seems to break. 

While the world has all these interesting and powerful figures, starting characters are rarely more than initiates. Even as Rune Priests and Lords they are still little match for some of the foes and NPCs in the setting (at least in the old Avalon HIll material...Dorastor, I'm looking at you). 

I find the same issue with Warhammer, where the wargame shows one High Fantasy setting, but the RPG limits players to dirt farmers and shit carriers that would barely rise above the standard infantry model on the battlefield in the wargame.

Does this bother anyone but me? Has anyone found a way around it? Are there any good Heroquesting rules out there? Any good ways of handling high powered characters that doesn't break the game? Or should players just resolve themselves to be secondary to NPCs in the setting?

I'll note that good ol' 1970's D&D / AD&D had the same "starting characters aren't even strong enough to meaningfully kamikaze themselves against the bigbad's, they are just meaningless sacrifices if the GM were that sadistic".  1st level party vs. Asmodeus, or Tiamat?   yeahNO.  "YummySnackMorePlease"

I believe there were various HR's and proposed-solutions floated 'round the urWeb, Back In The Day.  I think even the authors of those weren't entirely satisfied with them... but maybe I'm wrong:  Simon's decades-of-RW-play RQ just recently finished up at world-shaking power levels:   https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/7919-our-runequest-gloranthan-campaign-the-river-voices-legend-of-the-arganauts-has-come-to-an-end/   seems pretty damned EPICALLY satisfying to me!!! 

Despite that, I think you're correct that there is not a any clear path in the "classic" rulesets from starting RQ PC's to mythic RQ PC's; AD&D at least defined the level1 - level20 path, and associated rules, and a level-20 party might reasonably hope to defeat any of the BBG's from the Monster Manual.

Laws' HW/HQ rules were, afaik, aimed in large part at solving this problem for Glorantha (I never got into those rules much, so I don't really know if they succeeded, or how well; but many Gloranthapiles seem to like them, fwiw ... ) .

 

I think you're looking at the older RQ1/2/3 era, though.  RQG is a MUCH more high-powered game.  In the Quickstart Broken Tower scenario, [SPOILER ALERT:  the PC's are expected to deal successfully with a previously-unknown demigoddess/demon, stealing her sacrifices or defeating her in battle or allying her with the clan or etc etc etc.  END SPOILER].  This is a Hero-level challenge!  I can easily see how, in the core rules of the existing RQG game, a solo adventurer might reasonably get to the level of doing the whole adventure as a lone quest.

Last but not least, for RQG:  the upcoming GM Book (not to be confused with the already-released GM Screen Pack) will supposedly have new Heroquesting rules in it, for even more PC-to-Mythic-WorldStriders action.

 

Edited December 4, 2018 by g33k
YSMP

[Thyrwyn]

@g33k the difference between Glorantha and early AD&D settings was that the big bads weren’t running around chewing on the scenery, following a timeline, and changing the setting canon.

@Tywyll that’s why I don’t set my games in canon Glorantha. Because especially in RQG, we aren’t playing with the full rule set (or, there are elements in the setting that are clearly beyond the current rule set). 

[PhilHibbs]

20 minutes ago, Thyrwyn said:

 

@Tywyll that’s why I don’t set my games in canon Glorantha. Because especially in RQG, we aren’t playing with the full rule set (or, there are elements in the setting that are clearly beyond the current rule set). 

I think that's something that everyone has to accept - your Glorantha will never be canon Glorantha, the amount of slavish restraint required to stay within the bounds would lead to a stifled campaign in which the GM's major job is to stop the players from doing anything interesting. (I played in a Lord of the Rings game like that once, and on the other side of the coin, a game where the first thing we did was rescue Isildur from the Anduin.) If the players have been doing anything significant, then any new material that covers the same area (e.g. Argrath's liberation of Pavis, after your players already did in or usurped most of the Lunars) will have to be adapted to fit.

[Tywyll]

42 minutes ago, Thyrwyn said:

@g33k the difference between Glorantha and early AD&D settings was that the big bads weren’t running around chewing on the scenery, following a timeline, and changing the setting canon.

@Tywyll that’s why I don’t set my games in canon Glorantha. Because especially in RQG, we aren’t playing with the full rule set (or, there are elements in the setting that are clearly beyond the current rule set). 

Yeah you nailed it. Most supplements in the old books showed beings that realistically had levels of power you couldn't achieve in actual game play. At least in Dnd you can reach 20th level in a campaign and reasonably take on Tiamat. RQ never felt like it allowed that. And you certainly could never hope to be the next Arkat as a Pc.

I appreciate that RQG characters are more powerful to start with than older editions, but they are still as chaff before the power of some older edition heavy hitters. 

Another issue I think comes from how damage is handled. As damage dice produce wide results, especially for large mythic foes with several dice damage bonus, but armor and protection exists in a linear line, the further you get from human expectations the more swingy combat becomes. Basically you either laugh off damage or lose a limb...there is little middle ground.

Edited December 4, 2018 by Tywyll

[Jakob]

I actually consider everything mentioned features, not bugs, with regards to mythic play. If you look at the Odyssey, it is certainly not characterize by Odysseus having tons of HP, killing cyclopses left and right and succeeding at resistance rolls against siren's song. It's characterized by him being a smart and somewhat ruthless guy who keeps running into trouble, but who also knows when to tie himself to his ship and when not to pick a fight with a giant monster.

I'd say that works pretty well with most BRP games.

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Tywyll said:

Yeah you nailed it. Most supplements in the old books showed beings that realistically had levels of power you couldn't achieve in actual game play. At least in Dnd you can reach 20th level in a campaign and reasonably take on Tiamat. RQ never felt like it allowed that. And you certainly could never hope to be the next Arkat as a Pc.

I appreciate that RQG characters are more powerful to start with than older editions, but they are still as chaff before the power of some older edition heavy hitters. 

Another issue I think comes from how damage is handled. As damage dice produce wide results, especially for large mythic foes with several dice damage bonus, but armor and protection exists in a linear line, the further you get from human expectations the more swingy combat becomes. Basically you either laugh off damage or lose a limb...there is little middle ground.

As adventurers heroquest, they gain abilities that enable them to do things like shrug off damage and lesser spells, increase their hit points, do more damage, project their soul at distance, return from death, and so on. The hero characters I've made so far actually have far lower chances to hit than say characters out of Rune Masters, but can tear through them ("hey check out my augmented Lightning that does 2D6 per Rune Point, my effectively permanent Shield 6 spell, or my heroically augmented CON stat!"). They've gained their powers not through Super Skills, but as a result of questing in the Hero Plane.

[womble]

1 hour ago, Tywyll said:

Yeah you nailed it. Most supplements in the old books showed beings that realistically had levels of power you couldn't achieve in actual game play. At least in Dnd you can reach 20th level in a campaign and reasonably take on Tiamat. RQ never felt like it allowed that. And you certainly could never hope to be the next Arkat as a Pc.

I appreciate that RQG characters are more powerful to start with than older editions, but they are still as chaff before the power of some older edition heavy hitters. 

Another issue I think comes from how damage is handled. As damage dice produce wide results, especially for large mythic foes with several dice damage bonus, but armor and protection exists in a linear line, the further you get from human expectations the more swingy combat becomes. Basically you either laugh off damage or lose a limb...there is little middle ground.

One of the big problems with the 'damage curve' is the 'avoids *all* armour' nature of crits. I never understood how a projectile weapon could 'bypass' a magical sheath of armour. Or, if Protection/Shield/Armouring enchantments somehow always had leaky points, why someone didn't invent a kind of magic which didn't. If magic defenses always count, then standing up to the big greebly's megadamage just takes more sacced POW.

 

2 minutes ago, Jakob said:

I actually consider everything mentioned features, not bugs, with regards to mythic play. If you look at the Odyssey, it is certainly not characterize by Odysseus having tons of HP, killing cyclopses left and right and succeeding at resistance rolls against siren's song. It's characterized by him being a smart and somewhat ruthless guy who keeps running into trouble, but who also knows when to tie himself to his ship and when not to pick a fight with a giant monster.

I'd say that works pretty well with most BRP games.

That's partly true, but the problem remains that there are stats out there for protagonists that the party kinda should be able to attain parity with, and they largely can't in the previous editions. And RQ isn't really 'most' BRP games; in RQ someone is supposed to be able to kick Cthulhu's sorry ass back home to Daddy Azathoth's place, and the conceit is that it might be the PCs. Which takes some serious extrapolation of any published material to date.

 

2 minutes ago, Jeff said:

As adventurers heroquest, they gain abilities that enable them to do things like shrug off damage and lesser spells, increase their hit points, do more damage, project their soul at distance, return from death, and so on. The hero characters I've made so far actually have far lower chances to hit than say characters out of Rune Masters, but can tear through them ("hey check out my augmented Lightning that does 2D6 per Rune Point, my effectively permanent Shield 6 spell, or my heroically augmented CON stat!"). They've gained their powers not through Super Skills, but as a result of questing in the Hero Plane.

And that, Jeff, is good to hear.

[Tywyll]

10 minutes ago, Jeff said:

As adventurers heroquest, they gain abilities that enable them to do things like shrug off damage and lesser spells, increase their hit points, do more damage, project their soul at distance, return from death, and so on. The hero characters I've made so far actually have far lower chances to hit than say characters out of Rune Masters, but can tear through them ("hey check out my augmented Lightning that does 2D6 per Rune Point, my effectively permanent Shield 6 spell, or my heroically augmented CON stat!"). They've gained their powers not through Super Skills, but as a result of questing in the Hero Plane.

Cool. What rules do you use for Heroquesting? How do you determine those super abilities?

[Tywyll]

17 minutes ago, Jakob said:

I actually consider everything mentioned features, not bugs, with regards to mythic play. If you look at the Odyssey, it is certainly not characterize by Odysseus having tons of HP, killing cyclopses left and right and succeeding at resistance rolls against siren's song. It's characterized by him being a smart and somewhat ruthless guy who keeps running into trouble, but who also knows when to tie himself to his ship and when not to pick a fight with a giant monster.

I'd say that works pretty well with most BRP games.

But none of that is RQ. Real world mythic figures don't do the high action hijinks of Runequestors. It's not a fair comparison. If you want to look at Greek mythology then hercules is a better example, and he's still probably weak sauce compared to Arkat or Argatha.

[Jakob]

30 minutes ago, Tywyll said:

But none of that is RQ. Real world mythic figures don't do the high action hijinks of Runequestors. It's not a fair comparison. If you want to look at Greek mythology then hercules is a better example, and he's still probably weak sauce compared to Arkat or Argatha.

That' s probably a point - I've been playing RQ3 back then, and we never used Glorantha (since there was practically nothing Gloranthan published for the German translation, which we were using). So RQ was first and foremost my system for "gritty, swingy, with a potential to get to either do something badass or die screaming for everyone." I can easily get that together with real-world mythology like the Odyssey or the Ilias, much better than any D&Disms.

If it hasn't been such a good match for Glorantha back then, I would suspect that this has been rectified with the new edition. I've been playing it for a while, and my character seemed pretty badass from the get-go on a mundane level (though she still has good reason to get very nervous about a fight against a troll ...), starting with Battle Axe at 95 (now 103). And while Glorantha has been presented to me as a world of great heroes and powers like Herak and the Crimson Bat, I don't experience them as such a dominant factor, and wouldn't consider their existence (or the ability to go head-to-head with them) as the core of what feels "mythological" about Glorantha.

 

EDIT: Thinking about it, I guess I got the original post wrong - sorry about that. I took it as the general demand that "mythical role-playing" needs to be high powered, when it was in fact about the very specific expectations generated by certain RQ supplements that I don't own and haven't read.

Edited December 4, 2018 by Jakob

[metcalph]

10 hours ago, Tywyll said:

Cool. What rules do you use for Heroquesting? How do you determine those super abilities?

My impression is that hero-points (kinda like rune points) are used to power ordinary magics but the ability to power a given magic must be quested for.  The mechanical impact of such magics is beyond my keen.

[Julian Lord]

On 12/4/2018 at 1:54 PM, Tywyll said:

So, RQ and Glorantha has always struck me as a somewhat mismatched setting and rules set. The world is replete with Major Hero NPCs, Heroquestors, and Horrific Fiends...all of which are so far beyond what PCs can seemingly achieve. While a lot of this (seems) to be a fault of lack of real Heroquesting rules (that I know of), another big problem seems to be a mismatch between the gritty realism of the rules versus the mythic setting. Also at high levels, the roll under mechanic seems to break. 

While the world has all these interesting and powerful figures, starting characters are rarely more than initiates. Even as Rune Priests and Lords they are still little match for some of the foes and NPCs in the setting (at least in the old Avalon HIll material...Dorastor, I'm looking at you). 

I find the same issue with Warhammer, where the wargame shows one High Fantasy setting, but the RPG limits players to dirt farmers and shit carriers that would barely rise above the standard infantry model on the battlefield in the wargame.

Does this bother anyone but me? Has anyone found a way around it? Are there any good Heroquesting rules out there? Any good ways of handling high powered characters that doesn't break the game? Or should players just resolve themselves to be secondary to NPCs in the setting?

This is a complex area, but having said that, I'm actually one of the people who, completely unofficially and completely privately (and so off the grid, as it were) has made some serious attempt towards these questions.

One of the things that's been generally known about this since as early as the 1970s, and from the Chaosium's own serious attempts to write HeroQuest, is that a BRP version of HQ would need to be different in certain respects to RuneQuest, but that at the same time the two games (or two incarnations of the same underlying game) would also need to be both forward- and backward- compatible with each other.

And there's an underlying game system issue once you start contemplating Skill levels beyond not just 100%, but beyond 200% or even beyond 300% or more, as well as such matters as superhuman levels of STR or CHA or INT and so on and so forth, and what such things would mean, and how could one as much meaningfully as pertinently and in a not completely imbalanced manner represent such things in a RuneQuest game environment, but without turning it into a meaningless exercise and into a sort of SuperRuneQuest where the only real change were to be larger numbers ...

The solution that I came up with in my own campaign at the time was imperfect, and incomplete, was to keep all of the fundamental grittiness of RuneQuest (so that critical hits from feeble trollkin can still end up murdering powerful Heroes), but at the same time to put into place an overall simplification of such things as sources of magic points (improvable through an experience roll, for example), and NPC hit locations (to speed up combat), mass combat rules to represent and illustrate the heroic skill levels that the player characters have achieved (including variable magnitudes of time keeping), a "Heroic Success" chance beyond Critical, equal to 1% per full 100% of skill level possessed, and which worked exactly the same as a Crit, but with an instant second D100 skill roll at the exact same SR at the same skill % and exactly identical magic bonuses as the first, and then of course an avid amount of attention to ALL of the various sources of information about heroquesting/vision quests/hero's journeys/initiations and masteries and deep Spirituality, including as much the Issaries/Chaosium/TotRM/Mongoose/Design Mechanism/Avalon Hill sources as all other external sources of inspiration, gaming, literary, academic, religious, theological, mystical/spiritual, artistic, ANY and EVERY ...

Probably the deepest thing that I learned about BRP-HeroQuest through all of that process and gaming and rules-crunching though is that getting a successful design for it should be centred around scaling -- and not just upwards, but also downwards. If I were to take another stab at it, which is very unlikely because not only am I isolated down here and without a gaming group, and isolated down here from personal health issues, so that I'd be completely unable to test these things in any meaningful & useful manner, is that I'd probably redefine ALL basic human stats around a 3D6+6 value. Of course, the knock-on effects from doing so would be MASSIVE, in effect constituting a fundamental redesign of the game system.

But then again, by nature, that's what HeroQuest was always supposed to be ...

[Pentallion]

I am so looking forward to what Jeff comes out with, but in the meantime, I've run tons of heroquests using what I've gathered from official publications and things I've house ruled.  In my current campaign, it shouldn't be too much of a problem if Heroquesting turns out to be way different when Jeff comes out with the rules than what we'd have been doing up to then because of this wonderful little thing Glorantha has called "The Day the Magic Changed".  No one knows when this is, but for us it will be the day I get my hands on Jeff's Heroquesting rules.

So everyone is on board and we're all okay with plunging ahead using my long standing HQ rules.

They work like this if you'd like to go the same route:  Each heroquest is made up of stations built around a myth.  You give the PCs the myth and they make whatever preparations they think necessary.  Then the HQ mirrors the myth right up to the point where it inevitably doesn't.  Chaos always intrudes on the myth and no myth ever repeats exactly the same so HQing the same myth twice can turn out slightly differently each time.

After each station, if any power is marked or any skills are marked, the PCs automatically go up.  This is how characters can HQ to improve themselves dramatically.  It's also how they get skills well above 100%.  Power gained HQing can go above maximum, but it doesn't establish a new maximum.  So on the mundane plane they can't improve POW if it's already above max. 

If they crit on the HQ they get some small power related to the nature of the crit.  Example:  A PC critted climbing Stormwalk Mountain.  I ruled he can't fumble his climb when climbing mountains anymore.  Next time he did the same HQ he critted again same thing!  So now I ruled as long as he's lead climber on a mountain, no one on his team can fumble their climb.

If they fumble on the HQ, bad things happen.  We currently have a thief who can't succeed in a fast talk vs other criminals.  I never tell the player the nature of their disability if it's not immediately apparent.  So the thief has yet to realize his problem.

And of course, the heroquest itself generally can give out powers or treasures.  The PCs have some idea of what they're trying to get out of the HQ before they begin.

[Pentallion]

On 12/4/2018 at 9:09 AM, Tywyll said:

Yeah you nailed it. Most supplements in the old books showed beings that realistically had levels of power you couldn't achieve in actual game play. At least in Dnd you can reach 20th level in a campaign and reasonably take on Tiamat. RQ never felt like it allowed that. And you certainly could never hope to be the next Arkat as a Pc.

I appreciate that RQG characters are more powerful to start with than older editions, but they are still as chaff before the power of some older edition heavy hitters. 

Another issue I think comes from how damage is handled. As damage dice produce wide results, especially for large mythic foes with several dice damage bonus, but armor and protection exists in a linear line, the further you get from human expectations the more swingy combat becomes. Basically you either laugh off damage or lose a limb...there is little middle ground.

I've had TWO players be the next Arkat because I've played Argraths saga twice now.  Ask them if they can reasonably take on Tiamat and they'll tell you sure, there are levels to RQ, you just have to play long enough to discover them.  Everyone knows when the party just "levelled up" and they can even tell new players what they need to do to do so.

As for damage, lopping off PCs limbs can put a lot of tension into a game. Some of our most memorable moments came when the best warrior in the group went down to signal the start of hostilities and the party had an "oh S***!" moment.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Pentallion

[womble]

8 hours ago, Pentallion said:

As for damage, lopping off PCs limbs can put a lot of tension into a game. Some of our most memorable moments came when the best warrior in the group went down to signal the start of hostilities and the party had an "oh S***!" moment.

Yeah. I 'converted' some DnD characters for a 'shared GM' group once. They were pretty tough, by RQ3 standards with high armour and Damage Restistance (?) Sorcery, so when they got hailed with javelins and one of them went down with one through their leg (and they couldn't heal it without removing the stuck javelin), they were pretty taken aback.

[Tywyll]

9 hours ago, Pentallion said:

I am so looking forward to what Jeff comes out with, but in the meantime, I've run tons of heroquests using what I've gathered from official publications and things I've house ruled.  In my current campaign, it shouldn't be too much of a problem if Heroquesting turns out to be way different when Jeff comes out with the rules than what we'd have been doing up to then because of this wonderful little thing Glorantha has called "The Day the Magic Changed".  No one knows when this is, but for us it will be the day I get my hands on Jeff's Heroquesting rules.

So everyone is on board and we're all okay with plunging ahead using my long standing HQ rules.

They work like this if you'd like to go the same route:  Each heroquest is made up of stations built around a myth.  You give the PCs the myth and they make whatever preparations they think necessary.  Then the HQ mirrors the myth right up to the point where it inevitably doesn't.  Chaos always intrudes on the myth and no myth ever repeats exactly the same so HQing the same myth twice can turn out slightly differently each time.

After each station, if any power is marked or any skills are marked, the PCs automatically go up.  This is how characters can HQ to improve themselves dramatically.  It's also how they get skills well above 100%.  Power gained HQing can go above maximum, but it doesn't establish a new maximum.  So on the mundane plane they can't improve POW if it's already above max. 

If they crit on the HQ they get some small power related to the nature of the crit.  Example:  A PC critted climbing Stormwalk Mountain.  I ruled he can't fumble his climb when climbing mountains anymore.  Next time he did the same HQ he critted again same thing!  So now I ruled as long as he's lead climber on a mountain, no one on his team can fumble their climb.

If they fumble on the HQ, bad things happen.  We currently have a thief who can't succeed in a fast talk vs other criminals.  I never tell the player the nature of their disability if it's not immediately apparent.  So the thief has yet to realize his problem.

And of course, the heroquest itself generally can give out powers or treasures.  The PCs have some idea of what they're trying to get out of the HQ before they begin.

Could you share more examples of the rewards you gave them and how you decided what they should be? 

[Tywyll]

8 hours ago, Pentallion said:

I've had TWO players be the next Arkat because I've played Argraths saga twice now.  Ask them if they can reasonably take on Tiamat and they'll tell you sure, there are levels to RQ, you just have to play long enough to discover them.  Everyone knows when the party just "levelled up" and they can even tell new players what they need to do to do so.

As for damage, lopping off PCs limbs can put a lot of tension into a game. Some of our most memorable moments came when the best warrior in the group went down to signal the start of hostilities and the party had an "oh S***!" moment.

I'm not saying that that shouldn't still be a risk, but what I'm pointing out (and was pointed out by others above) is that as damage is boosted, because of the way it works in RQ, extra d6 are more swingy the more you add. A character might have 12 or 18 points of armor, but if that soaks an average hit from foes they face, a good damage roll is almost guarenteed to be a serious injury. There seems to be little wiggle room...they laugh it off or they lose a limb. 

How did you address this?

[womble]

4 hours ago, Tywyll said:

I'm not saying that that shouldn't still be a risk, but what I'm pointing out (and was pointed out by others above) is that as damage is boosted, because of the way it works in RQ, extra d6 are more swingy the more you add. A character might have 12 or 18 points of armor, but if that soaks an average hit from foes they face, a good damage roll is almost guarenteed to be a serious injury. There seems to be little wiggle room...they laugh it off or they lose a limb. 

How did you address this?

In RQ3 you could, with the application of POW, in the form of Strengthening Enchantments, have locational HP that were proportionate to your protection levels, if you chose (and had enough POW). We've not seen Strengthening and Armouring Enchatments yet in RQG...

[Pentallion]

12 hours ago, Tywyll said:

I'm not saying that that shouldn't still be a risk, but what I'm pointing out (and was pointed out by others above) is that as damage is boosted, because of the way it works in RQ, extra d6 are more swingy the more you add. A character might have 12 or 18 points of armor, but if that soaks an average hit from foes they face, a good damage roll is almost guarenteed to be a serious injury. There seems to be little wiggle room...they laugh it off or they lose a limb. 

How did you address this?

Two ways, though I prefer the former and only slowly add in the latter:  Early on in my campaigns I give them item(s) enchanted with regrow limb and/or Resurrection.  This offsets the odd "oops, I fumbled, sorry buddy" dice rolls.  the latter method is to once in a blue moon give out Strengthening Enchantments.  Of course, in RQG that currently isn't an option anyways, but I understand that soon they will be.  In our campaigns, you can receive one when you become a Rune Lord/Priest and whenever you do something epic for your god he might reward you with one.  But I'm incredibly stingy.  You can't go buy the things.

Edited December 7, 2018 by Pentallion

[Julian Lord]

I had a mechanism giving something like a SIZ-based kinetic resistance of a few points, which worked like AP but couldn't be bypassed by crits, which worked OK even though I was never able to playtest it sufficiently to get the kinks out of it and balance it properly versus a higher value STR+SIZ Damage Bonus ... the damage taken by characters remained about the same, though it did change the dynamic of combat versus larger and smaller opponents somewhat, but the value was added to HP for determining the mangling or severing of limbs

Hardly a solution to the problem of limbs being chopped off right, left, and centre, and only a mitigation, but it did seem to help a little bit to keep combat a bit more "realistic" (ahem !!)