Looking for practical combat tactics for GMs

[Bill the barbarian]

On 3/10/2019 at 4:44 AM, PhilHibbs said:

On 3/8/2019 at 9:58 PM, Bill the barbarian said:

Love the troll (argan argar?) wearing obsidian shades, a very cool hipster hat and bling featured in Troll Pack (I am old, was this the corrrect origin?) by Sandy et al from the 80's. Wicked cool.

My troll's shades were a long duration Form/Set Darkness.

Shades of a different colour,  p'raps.

[styopa]

2 hours ago, EpicureanDM said:

That's one of the pieces that's been missing for me. Spirit "combat" suggests that it should have similar stakes to physical combat (injury, dire consequences, death). This comment suggests deploying spirits as hazards. If the PC loses the fight, there's a generally non-lethal or mildly harmful consequence. The stakes for spirit combat don't have to be high at first. A lost battle might result in a small penalty to certain skills until a possessing spirit's kicked out. A victorious guardian spirit might place a geas on the defeated PC to recover an item that will strengthen the guarded location (or to correct an existing flaw in the location's defenses). When reading old RQ material, I usually see spirits and spirit combat included as part of a fight to the death or involving disease spirits to harm the PCs. There are probably examples when that's not the case, so I acknowledge that I've probably got some confirmation bias going on.

To say nothing of the Ancestor Worship and animist traditions that WELCOME possession (I mean, granted, this wouldn't be a fight, but perhaps part of an initiation ritual is 'losing' a fight to a friendly spirit to 'open the pathways' to easier non-contested possession by such a spirit later)....or maybe an adventure where being possessed by the 'right' spirit lets you get past some otherwise impenetrable defense.

[styopa]

14 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Shades of a different colour,  p'raps.

It's a troll; the shades could be absolutely opaque, really.  As long as her ears were cleaned out, no problems.

[HreshtIronBorne]

In my experience we have never really had to worry about spells expiring in either 2 or 5 minute duration. We have very very rarely had a combat situation last long enough that we have to count the number of rounds and track Fatigue (RQ3) and all that jazz. Our biggest hurdle has always been effectively applying Magical augmentation in combat situations before we are engaged, we primarily played RQ3 with many a varied house ruling over the years. In RQ:G we now have Multispell as a stackable Runespell that is Common. I just recently put it to use with a little hitsquad my Humakti is leading on an adventure. We had an Agimori with a Spell Enhancing (Whichever one adds to variable spell intensity) Crystal POW 4 cast Multispell 2 and then Protection 4 (8 effective) and Bladesharp 4 (8 effective) on the while front line by the end of the second round. Made a HUGE difference against the 36 ghouls we were fighting. My Humakti has an item with Strength + Coordination + Mobility Linked together in Matrices which he uses with Multispell 2 to make everyone on the front lines a badass for a fight, he calls it Humakt's War Wind. Our Trickster with Shattering has realized he can cast a Multispell 3 on himself rather than several Shatterings and as long as he has MP to cast them, he can get more Diruption 4s off in a round then he can shatterings, like 3 times as many because of his DEX SR and how we calculate it.

In addition we have been using the Shaman in the party that has Spell Extension 5, Spell barrage 3, and Power Within 3 to ridiculous effect. He has been blowing up several (3-6) Ghouls a round with Ignite spells. Against regular dudes he throws out a couple diruption threes around. That is after he has covered the party in Protection 6s, Bladesharp 4s, and whatever else is appropriate. He doesn't need to spend resources on a Multispell every time he wants to buff the party quickly, it does take him a little longer as Spell barrage adds together the MPs of the Combined Spells so it takes way longer than the Multispell version for something like a Bladesharp 6 or a Protection 4 being cast on 3 party members, whereas Multispell has all the spells go off on the Highest of the combined spells SRs, so the Agimori with that sweet sweet crystal can cast Bladesharp 4 (Doubles to 8 )on DEX SR + 3 so, he could buff the whole front line in just one round, especially while under the effects of Coordination and Mobility.

 

End Rant. Sorry for my absolutely rubbish formatting.

[EpicureanDM]

1 hour ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

We had an Agimori with a Spell Enhancing (Whichever one adds to variable spell intensity) Crystal POW 4 cast Multispell 2 and then Protection 4 (8 effective) and Bladesharp 4 (8 effective) on the while front line by the end of the second round.

I should point out for new RQG players that RQG doesn't contain rules for creating Spell Enhancing enchantments that Hresht describes here (unless I missed it and someone can provide a page reference). It's an enchantment from RQ2 that hasn't yet been included in RQG. Hresht's post might be more valuable for getting new players into the mindset to develop their own combat tricks rather than a recipes that can be dropped directly into RQG.

[Joerg]

2 minutes ago, EpicureanDM said:

I should point out for new RQG players that RQG doesn't contain rules for creating Spell Enhancing enchantments that Hresht describes here (unless I missed it and someone can provide a page reference).

It's in the Adventure Book of the Gamemaster Pack of the boxed set, page 123, under "Power enhancing". I would have expected that heading for the description I find under Spell Reinforcing.

Crystals aren't enchantments but divine artifacts - there never were such enchantments in any incarnation of the rules I know about.

[EpicureanDM]

26 minutes ago, Joerg said:

t's in the Adventure Book of the Gamemaster Pack of the boxed set, page 123, under "Power enhancing". I would have expected that heading for the description I find under Spell Reinforcing.

Crystals aren't enchantments but divine artifacts - there never were such enchantments in any incarnation of the rules I know about.

Glad to be corrected on both the inclusion of the item and the difference between Enchantments and Crystals in RQG. Sorry, Hresht!

EDIT: Ugh, why did RQG's designers revert to using the term "POW storing crystal" when they've also included the term "Magic Point Enchantments" from RQ3? They perform the same function, don't they? It's just that RQ2 requires that adventurers spend POW to fuel spirit (battle) magic whereas RQ3 and RQG changed that to magic points. Am I missing some nuance? Same comment about the crystals in the Adventure Book being able to bind spirits. Isn't that a conflict between the old RQ2 rules and RQ3/RQG's Binding Enchantment? 

I suppose the benefit of the crystals is that they're flexible: they can act as both Binding Enchantments or Magic Point Enchantments (excluding Powered Crystals). But doesn't it seem like RQ2's rules were sloppily copied over to RQG without trying to conform them to the new edition?

Edited March 20, 2019 by EpicureanDM
Additional thought

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, EpicureanDM said:

I should point out for new RQG players that RQG doesn't contain rules for creating Spell Enhancing enchantments...

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

It's in the Adventure Book of the Gamemaster Pack of the boxed set, page 123, under "Power enhancing".

Also available as a preview sample chapter if you subscribe to Chaosium's RuneQuest pre-release newsletter:

https://www.chaosium.com/blogrunequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-is-comingsign-up-and-well-let-you-know-the-moment-it-launches/

(Yes, it already relesaed, but the newsletter is still called pre-release)

[HreshtIronBorne]

The Enchantment the Humakti is using is just linked Matrices for Strength + Coordination + Mobility. The Agimori is using a "Power Enhancing" Crystal POW 4, one of the strongest ones we have seen in classic adventures. Though RQG Rules say they can roll ridiculously high doubling POW now. These crystals have existed since we used to play RQ3, generally a Gloranthan staple of High Level Play.

[EpicureanDM]

4 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

The Agimori is using a "Power Enhancing" Crystal POW 4, one of the strongest ones we have seen in classic adventures. Though RQG Rules say they can roll ridiculously high doubling POW now. These crystals have existed since we used to play RQ3, generally a Gloranthan staple of High Level Play.

Yeah, I was wrong to suggest this was a mistake on your part.

[soltakss]

On 3/20/2019 at 11:57 PM, HreshtIronBorne said:

The Enchantment the Humakti is using is just linked Matrices for Strength + Coordination + Mobility. The Agimori is using a "Power Enhancing" Crystal POW 4, one of the strongest ones we have seen in classic adventures.

Hah! Soltak Stormspear had a 9 Point Power Enhancer, rolled up as a 6 pointer and then got an extra +1d4 on a HeroQuest. I could blast off Dispel Magic 18, Detection Blank 18 and Countermagic 18. Pity we played RQ2 not RQ3, otherwise I'd have had Bladesharp 18 and Parry 18. 

[styopa]

21 hours ago, soltakss said:

Hah! Soltak Stormspear had a 9 Point Power Enhancer, rolled up as a 6 pointer and then got an extra +1d4 on a HeroQuest. I could blast off Dispel Magic 18, Detection Blank 18 and Countermagic 18. Pity we played RQ2 not RQ3, otherwise I'd have had Bladesharp 18 and Parry 18. 

Of course, campaigns at this power level (like mine) the bad guys have evolved to comprehend (and s-l-o-w-l-y the good guys are figuring it out)  that a hefty blast of dispel magics or 2 at the start of a fight can work WONDERS for stripping all sorts of fancy one-shot buffs from they-believe-themselves-nearly-undefeatable opponents.  Or, as mentioned above, stalling to parley at the front end of fights can be infuriating to PC's that don't want to be obvious murderhoboes but feel their short term buffs tick-tick-ticking down as polite, civilized discussions take place.  LOL

[Ultor]

On 3/6/2019 at 3:35 PM, EpicureanDM said:

Please do. My party's also in the Big Rubble, but we're only a couple of sessions in. The PCs still have that new-car smell.

 

So...the planned encounter with a couple of Zorak Zoran priests (one also a shaman), some experienced troll warriors, trollkin slingers, and a variety of Dehori and spirits never occurred because for once the players decided to talk it out first...

The Death Lord on the other hand later on released his shades, had his allied spirit cast darkwall, cast seal wound, hammered against the Humakti's shield and broke it...and was promptly decapitated by the Vingan, who critted to the head despite the -75% penalty for the dark (so much for the allied spirit healing and supporting). The large shade did take out the Humakti and the Vingan, and a medium shade took out the shaman - all with fearshock. However, elementals are very easy to hit, and the Champion of Pavis armed with a composite bow and Multimissile 3 (3 magic arrows per shot, 3 times a round thanks to 19 DEX) and a quick NPC with Speedart were together able to make short work of them.

At some point I will have an encounter where the PCs are actually up against roughly equal numbers of similarly-skilled opponents or larger numbers of less skilled, and I'll try to post a summary here.

[styopa]

17 hours ago, Ultor said:

So...the planned encounter with a couple of Zorak Zoran priests (one also a shaman), some experienced troll warriors, trollkin slingers, and a variety of Dehori and spirits never occurred because for once the players decided to talk it out first...

The Death Lord on the other hand later on released his shades, had his allied spirit cast darkwall, cast seal wound, hammered against the Humakti's shield and broke it...and was promptly decapitated by the Vingan, who critted to the head despite the -75% penalty for the dark (so much for the allied spirit healing and supporting). The large shade did take out the Humakti and the Vingan, and a medium shade took out the shaman - all with fearshock. However, elementals are very easy to hit, and the Champion of Pavis armed with a composite bow and Multimissile 3 (3 magic arrows per shot, 3 times a round thanks to 19 DEX) and a quick NPC with Speedart were together able to make short work of them.

At some point I will have an encounter where the PCs are actually up against roughly equal numbers of similarly-skilled opponents or larger numbers of less skilled, and I'll try to post a summary here.

Please do!