Combat: default hit location?

[Psullie]

If you were to drop Hit Locations you would need to up the total HP of your PC and NPC. One advantage of hit locations is the cap on damage and that you can survive multiple woulds. 

[HreshtIronBorne]

I think it comes down to nonlethal locations and strong healing magics like regrow limb. RQ has always had that sense you could be disabled and not killed, unlike a D&D bag-o-hitpoints.

[Tywyll]

22 hours ago, NickMiddleton said:

In a fixed AV system plate armour always stops e.g. 7 points. There is no variability in the performance of the armour, only in the rating of the strike against the armour (the damage rolled). In a variable AV system the random amount of damage rolled represents the strike; the random AV rolled represents the passive defence achieved when / where the strike lands.  You clearly don't find that description / concept compelling. Others do.

Except via crits, where it doesn't.

Having two variable factors to achieve the same narrative results is clunky and unnecessary, as well as time consuming.

[Tywyll]

22 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

1D6+2 (Elric! ringmail) is "objectively worse" than 4 (RQG Ringmail) or even 5 (RQ3 ringmail)? Plate armour 1D10+2 is "objectively worse" than RQ3 (8) or RQG (6)? Ok, 1D10+2 is 0.5 points worse on average than RQ3 plate. But at that level, you could say "RQG armour is objectively worse than RQ3 armour".

You are forgetting to compare Stormbringer armor to their iron equivalents, which you would have to do for a fair comparison (the Young Kingdom are not a bronze age society).

1d6+2 vs 7 (mail plus padding) all the time is objectively worse, when 66% the time it stops less.

1d10+2 vs 12 or 10 is again, much worse. 

There are ways to fix this that wouldn't have been too challenging, but they tried to roll in two aspects of the combat narrative forgetting they had already accounted for them in other aspects of the system, making a clunky, objectively bad mechanic that needs to be overhauled.

[Tywyll]

20 hours ago, The God Learner said:

The distribution of the roll is indeed uniform, but recall that each location is hit on a range of numbers. So for the head it's 19-20, that is, 10%. Right leg 01-04 = 20% (if the table I just found somewhere on the internet is actually from RQ2). And so on.

That only matters over time. Every single swing has the same chance of rolling a 20 as every other number you roll. It should have been done like HERO system handled it (3d6).

20 hours ago, The God Learner said:

Good point. I have sometimes, in the same "vein" if you will, wanted to ghoulishly interview trauma doctors, ambulance staff and the equivalent regarding how these things work out in real life, to serve as the foundation of the ultimate wound system. Well, perhaps next year.

 

😁 

To be clear, I am always happy to sacrifice realism for playability, I just get tired of hearing how 'realistic' RQ combat is compared to DND or other systems with more abstraction when it really isn't. It just includes some more bells and whistles that those systems don't and has it's own abstraction and assumptions built in (and that's okay!).

[NickMiddleton]

3 hours ago, Tywyll said:

Having two variable factors to achieve the same narrative results is clunky and unnecessary, as well as time consuming.

Except that in my experience it’s none of those things and adds descriptive richness. Please stop generalising your personal preferences into universal objective truth: they are not (neither are mine, obviously).

Edited May 4, 2019 by NickMiddleton

[Rob Darvall]

On 5/3/2019 at 5:15 PM, The God Learner said:

Hit locations are for accountants.

Tell that to my pre-teen nephews. The semi-terror of missing and vast excitement generated every time a leg comes off is worth the bookkeeping.

[BalazarLightson]

30 minutes ago, Rob Darvall said:

Tell that to my pre-teen nephews. The semi-terror of missing and vast excitement generated every time a leg comes off is worth the bookkeeping.

Absolutely... 'It's all fun and games until someone looses a head'.

[Rob Darvall]

9 minutes ago, BalazarLightson said:

Absolutely... 'It's all fun and games until someone looses a head'.

Even then.

Edit: Especially then

Edited May 5, 2019 by Rob Darvall

[PhilHibbs]

12 minutes ago, BalazarLightson said:

Absolutely... 'It's all fun and games until someone looses a head'.

4 minutes ago, Rob Darvall said:

Even then.

Edit: Especially then

Or like happened in my game, "My torso! My precious torso!"

 

[Rob Darvall]

41 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Or like happened in my game, "My torso! My precious torso!"

 

ROFL Why does this not surprise me?

[Beoferret]

Thanks for the input everyone. I got distracted by "real life," so forgot to check up on responses to my question. Again, I personally like hit locations and for a variety of reasons. But some of the people I'd like to introduce to RQG may not be so thrilled "too much bookkeeping," asif constantly revising your bag o' hit points current hp isn't a fair amount of bookkeeping.) I mentioned GURPS, since the way that combat system is set up you could have individual players using random hit locations, targeted shots, or just going with a default location all in the same combat if'n you want to. I was simply wondering if there might be a RQG equivalent. 

 

 

[Shiningbrow]

On 5/4/2019 at 7:43 PM, Tywyll said:

 I just get tired of hearing how 'realistic' RQ combat is compared to DND or other systems with more abstraction when it really isn't. It just includes some more bells and whistles that those systems don't and has it's own abstraction and assumptions built in (and that's okay!).

Ummm, but it is. Objectively so.

Unless you've got a DM who's being really precise and pulling lots of sideline or house rules, you won't have someone get hit 3 times, and then have their leg or arm incapacitated.

(I admit to not having the latest ruleset in my head at the moment, but...) Pick up a shield. What's its armour rating? What if you don't have training in using it properly? Do you really need to spend feats on the shield skill to be better at it (IIRC, only by another 5%... +1). That level of abstraction clearly makes it less realistic... thus, we have the definition of 'abstraction' in play!

Granted, RQ and similar aren't "fully realistic", but it's certainly a lot more realistic than D&D.

[RosenMcStern]

On 5/7/2019 at 12:44 AM, Beoferret said:

 I mentioned GURPS, since the way that combat system is set up you could have individual players using random hit locations, targeted shots, or just going with a default location all in the same combat if'n you want to. I was simply wondering if there might be a RQG equivalent. 

No, there is not. Hit Locations are ingrained by design in RQG and other rulesets of the BRP family. But there is a "generic BRP" equivalent. Revolution D100 is modeled like GURBS, allowing you to use locational and non-locational damage at will, even in the same combat if desired. And in theory, this should be possible with the Big Gold Book, too.

[Lordabdul]

On 5/6/2019 at 3:44 PM, Beoferret said:

I mentioned GURPS, since the way that combat system is set up you could have individual players using random hit locations, targeted shots, or just going with a default location all in the same combat if'n you want to. I was simply wondering if there might be a RQG equivalent.

Remember that GURPS uses Hit Locations only for attacking, i.e. whether the attack roll should have any kind of penalty for hitting a specific spot. Once you hit, the damage still comes off the global pool of Hit Points (with some threshold and additional modifier based on the location). In comparison, RuneQuest has separate HP pools per Hit Location, and that means that it's indeed more ingrained into the rules than in GURPS. Defaulting to the chest would actually be an advantage since you would bring more attrition to a specific body part.

If the people you want to introduce to RuneQuest are GURPS players, I frankly wouldn't worry too much, they can probably take it   If they're used to more abstract rules, you could consider using HeroQuest instead... but maybe it will just be fine! After all, there's a nice little body drawing on the character sheet so "you take 2 hits in the left arm" is actually very fast to write down.

Edited May 8, 2019 by lordabdul