HP in RQG

[Mankcam]

I really didn't see a need for going back to how HP were calculated in RQ2, considering since the mid 1980s we have been calculating it as (SIZ + CON)/2 for RQ3, and almost every other BRP game.

I guess it means less conversion for RQ2 material to be used in RQG games, but that's about it.

I also suspect that players care little how the HP are calculated, just as long as they have enough of them!

Edited July 1, 2019 by Mankcam

[DreadDomain]

13 minutes ago, Mankcam said:

I really didn't see a need for going back to how HP were calculated in RQ2, considering since the mid 1980s we have been calculating it as (SIZ + CON)/2 for RQ3, and almost every other BRP game.

I guess it means less conversion for RQ2 material to be used in RQG games, but that's about it.

I also suspect that players care little how the HP are calculated, just as long as they have enough of them!

Yes, this one is bizarre as (SIZ + CON)/2 is easier than the table and gives better results (and by that I mean results that are more believable and more balanced with how damage scales). And as you say, is more in line with the BRP suite.

[PhilHibbs]

10 hours ago, 10baseT said:

I use the average of CON + SIZ. And if there's a 0.5 remainder, I even let the players keep it in their general HP. (they just note it with a little '+' sign by their HP). It didn't make things easier or harder, but i felt it reflected things better without any hassle or rework. (I play a duck and his HP are better than most. Of course i didn't mind, but I thought my house rule put things more inline.)

I guess there's a new rule that I need to implement in my character creation spreadsheet (it already supports RQ3-style category modifier calculations, i.e. 1 point per point or 1 per 2)

[Mugen]

I use the average of SIZ and CON. I also prefer StormBringer-style Major Wounds over localized hit points.

I don't like thresholds-based tables in BRP in general, as it makes some values much more valuable than others, and opens opportunities for min-maxing (even though there are de facto thresholds with Major Wounds, as it increases by 1 every 4 points of CON+SIZ).

 

[Kloster]

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

I use the average of SIZ and CON. I also prefer StormBringer-style Major Wounds over localized hit points.

I don't like thresholds-based tables in BRP in general, as it makes some values much more valuable than others, and opens opportunities for min-maxing (even though there are de facto thresholds with Major Wounds, as it increases by 1 every 4 points of CON+SIZ).

 

I hate the major wounds rule and very much prefer the localized HP, but I can not agree more than with your point on the tables and thresholds levels.

[Joerg]

6 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I really didn't see a need for going back to how HP were calculated in RQ2, considering since the mid 1980s we have been calculating it as (SIZ + CON)/2 for RQ3, and almost every other BRP game.

The formula is broken for high SIZ creatures (who often have high CON, too), but a modification of the formula for high SIZ critters would have been preferable to abandoning the formula for average SIZ critters.

6 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I guess it means less conversion for RQ2 material to be used in RQG games, but that's about it.

I also suspect that players care little how the HP are calculated, just as long as they have enough of them!

Players care about how HP are calculated for those big enemies...

[Jeff]

6 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I really didn't see a need for going back to how HP were calculated in RQ2, considering since the mid 1980s we have been calculating it as (SIZ + CON)/2 for RQ3, and almost every other BRP game.

I guess it means less conversion for RQ2 material to be used in RQG games, but that's about it.

I also suspect that players care little how the HP are calculated, just as long as they have enough of them!

Actually, this was a recommendation from Greg which I agreed wholehearted with. In RQ3, large monsters had an insurmountable number of hit points. Giants and dragons - creatures with a ton of armor and deadly attacks, gained too many hit points. The conclusion was that the total hit points per monsters made more sense in RQ2 and better reflected Greg and Sandy's vision of those monsters, than in RQ3.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

Actually, this was a recommendation from Greg which I agreed wholehearted with. In RQ3, large monsters had an insurmountable number of hit points. Giants and dragons - creatures with a ton of armor and deadly attacks, gained too many hit points. The conclusion was that the total hit points per monsters made more sense in RQ2 and better reflected Greg and Sandy's vision of those monsters, than in RQ3.

Which might be good for Glorantha but bad for everything else, as db now scales at a much faster rate that hit points. Anything larger than a troll can't take a hit from anything of the same size. 

[Joerg]

25 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Which might be good for Glorantha but bad for everything else, as db now scales at a much faster rate that hit points. Anything larger than a troll can't take a hit from anything of the same size. 

Many natural attacks don't get the full damage bonus, and then there is natural armor. Still, the duel between King Kong and the dinosaur might be over faster than in the movies.

[Atgxtg]

14 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Many natural attacks don't get the full damage bonus, and then there is natural armor. Still, the duel between King Kong and the dinosaur might be over faster than in the movies.

But most attacks do get full db, and natural armor is not as strongly tied to db the way it was in RQ3 (or even in Gateway Bestiary). Kong vs. the dinosaur is one such example, but I'm more concerned with all those SIZ 30 ish animals and monsters. We have ample enough evidence that most fights between similar sized animals are not one hit affairs. But in RQ it often turns out that way due to the size of the db compared to the armor and hit point totals. 

Perhaps the db formula needs to be scaled down? Hit Points and Damage are obviously interrogated, and I think part of the problem with RQ/BRP has been that the flat +1d6 per 16 progression leads to die pools and bell curves which in turn make the db the major component to damage and almost require high hit point and armor scores to be able to soak a hit.  Perhaps a non-linear relationship between SIZ(and STR) and damage bonus would help here. Either with an increasing die size or some such.  If the dbs were lower than we wouldn't need high hit point totals to compensate, and big monsters would still be "fightable".

 

[styopa]

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

Actually, this was a recommendation from Greg which I agreed wholehearted with. In RQ3, large monsters had an insurmountable number of hit points. Giants and dragons - creatures with a ton of armor and deadly attacks, gained too many hit points. The conclusion was that the total hit points per monsters made more sense in RQ2 and better reflected Greg and Sandy's vision of those monsters, than in RQ3.

Ie scary, monstrous creatures were....too scary and monstrous?  7000kg giant has only 2x the body hp of a 70kg adventurer?

That's the same sort of logic that gave D&D the DDG book with gods with hp.  I mean, why should they be frankly impossible to kill, they're only gods....?

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Many natural attacks don't get the full damage bonus, and then there is natural armor. Still, the duel between King Kong and the dinosaur might be over faster than in the movies.

When in IRL, fights between larger creatures like bull elephants or sperm whales and giant squid generally go on LONGER (and are more often immediately inconclusive) than fights between smaller creatures like shews or ferrets which are over pretty quickly.

 

I'll save you all the the replies: "It doesn't have to make logical sense because there are dragons and magic, duh"  LOL, RQ's equivalent to "A wizard did it"

[Jeff]

12 minutes ago, styopa said:

Ie scary, monstrous creatures were....too scary and monstrous?  7000kg giant has only 2x the body hp of a 70kg adventurer?

That's the same sort of logic that gave D&D the DDG book with gods with hp.  I mean, why should they be frankly impossible to kill, they're only gods....?

When in IRL, fights between larger creatures like bull elephants or sperm whales and giant squid generally go on LONGER (and are more often immediately inconclusive) than fights between smaller creatures like shews or ferrets which are over pretty quickly.

 

I'll save you all the the replies: "It doesn't have to make logical sense because there are dragons and magic, duh"  LOL, RQ's equivalent to "A wizard did it"

The primary purpose of the rules for the game designers is to allow player characters (who are mainly human sized) to interact with NPCs (who might be small or gigantic), often through fighting. If the primary purpose of the rules for you is to model fights BETWEEN giant squids and whales, then I can't help you.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, styopa said:

Ie scary, monstrous creatures were....too scary and monstrous?  7000kg giant has only 2x the body hp of a 70kg adventurer?

Yes, why not, if the difference in bulk etc. is compensated with armor points - most wounds will be just a scratch, even if they draw some dermal blood. Hit points don't measure vitality in kg, but in proportional destruction of semi-vital to vital functions. A critical hit should have the chance to take out a hit location, though not necessarily to destroy it.

Yes, a tree trunk will provide some terrible damage, but it has a limit before it breaks on a successful attack (never mind parries) delivering significantly more damage than its hit points, especially if the force is lateral to the stem. While Truesword and Bladesharp emphasize the cutting/piercing effect of a weapon and bludgeon possibly the hardness of the impact at the impact point, vastly increased strength when wielding a human-sized weapon designed for use by a human would in all likelihood break the weapon. I'd hesitate to apply this to critical damage and am unsure about special damage.

 

1 hour ago, styopa said:

When in IRL, fights between larger creatures like bull elephants or sperm whales and giant squid generally go on LONGER (and are more often immediately inconclusive) than fights between smaller creatures like shews or ferrets which are over pretty quickly.

Elephant bulls (and bulls of any other species) don't usually fight to kill their opponent, but to subdue him. That's why they attack the best armored portion of the opponent (his tusks, antlers, horns, blubber... you name it).

Nobody has ever witnessed a fight between a sperm whale and a giant squid, and indeed one sperm whale was found that had missed its lower jaw for a long time but that had a belly full of squid remains. Apparently the hunting method consists of diving down, yawning widely while luminescent bacteria will clean their mouths of their last meal, with the squits swimming in seeking a cave to shelter in. I guess the Sperm Whale's swallow is matched vs. the strength of the squid's tentacles, which would account for the scars on their flanks.

Many a lethal large beast combat (like male lion vs. hippo, or lion vs. cape buffalo with lion winning) will continue because the opponent is in berserk mode and will not fail the CON rolls that easily.

 

[Bill the barbarian]

11 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Nobody has ever witnessed a fight between a sperm whale and a giant squid, and indeed one sperm whale was found that had missed its lower jaw for a long time but that had a belly full of squid remains. Apparently the hunting method consists of diving down, yawning widely while luminescent bacteria will clean their mouths of their last meal, with the squits swimming in seeking a cave to shelter in. I guess the Sperm Whale's swallow is matched vs. the strength of the squid's tentacles, which would account for the scars on their flanks.

Many a lethal large beast combat (like male lion vs. hippo, or lion vs. cape buffalo with lion winning) will continue because the opponent is in berserk mode and will not fail the CON rolls that easily.

 

I don''t know why Joerg, but 2 behemoths fighting has made me think of opposed contests and HQ.

 That fights between Kong and a dinosaur or a giant squid and a sperm whale may be beyond the scope of RQ rules (infidel, unbeliever, how dare you malign the noble RQ :) could HQ handle them better? We are getting built-in HQ rules soon, so... I have no problems imagining such fights to enter into heroic realms beyond the scope of mundane rune questing rules.  Maybe HQ is the answer for those who must battle monster vs monster ( I want to be the HULK™!).

Edited July 1, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Joerg]

2 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I don''t know why Joerg, but 2 behemoths fighting has made me think of opposed contests and HQ.

For some reason, two kaiju fighting mano-a-mano has lots of knockbacks but hardly any hit location damage. Maybe a tentacle or two flying off, but never a limb when the total quantity is six or less. Probably lots of parries.

2 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

 That fights between Kiong and a dinosaur or a giant squid and a sperm whale may be beyond the scope of RQ rules (infidel, unbeliever, how dare you malign the noble RQ

While that shouldn't really be the case - there may be situations where a heroquester may take on a virtual stature on par with that of the Black Eater -

2 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

could HQ handle them better,

I am not quite sure what you are suggesting. Are you proposing to use HQG for such conflicts inside a RQG game (let's say you found another Faceless Statue and direct it against the Watchdog of Corflu), or are you proposing that RQG heroquesting rules should provide a solution for such out of context altercations?

Yes, the HeroQuest 2 or HQG rules allow to have an opposed roll to decide the outcome of that battle. RQG has the Battle skill, too, and maybe that is good enough for a spectator battle between two kaiju-sized opponents.

 

2 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

We are getting built-in HQ rules soon, so... I have no problems imagining such fights to enter into heroic realms beyond the scope of mundane rune questing rules.  Maybe HQ is the answer.

Not sure about that. If you quest say along the path of Orlanth vs. Sh'harkar'zeel (add consonants or apostrophs to improve canonical spelling as required), either you remain Orlanth in the conflict and keep the dragon in the Mover of Heavens role, and behead the dragon, or you don't and may have to use the Enkoshons/Aroka method to deal with the dragon, or some other trick the enemies of the EWF figured out. Or you get eaten or grilled.

 

At one (I think still Hero Wars) games at Tentacles convention run by Greg, our party quested the Plundering of Aron quest, and when it came to the Sivin contest, I announced that my Helamakt warrior would perform the Sivin feat. Rather than rolling any dice, Greg said "that's what Helamakt does", described the outcome briefly, and we went on to the next stage.

 

[Bill the barbarian]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

I am not quite sure what you are suggesting. Are you proposing to use HQG for such conflicts inside a RQG game (let's say you found another Faceless Statue and direct it against the Watchdog of Corflu)

 

Yes, well, not strictly speaking. Apologies for not being clearer. 

As I have never played HQ it might be a bit presumptuous of me to offer HQ as a solution, No, I was asking your opinion to that question, "Can HQ handle behemoths (not just giant monsters, and I have never felt that any of the monsters mentioned above are just giant monsters, they are too buried in our psyche for that, The sperm whale, giant gorilla, dinosaur and giant squid exist beyond our mundane world and invade our dreams) better than the modern RQ G with its flaws listed in the past day's or so, posts?".

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

 Yes, the HeroQuest 2 or HQG rules allow to have an opposed roll to decide the outcome of that battle. RQG has the Battle skill, too, and maybe that is good enough for a spectator battle between two kaiju-sized opponents.

Yes, I was thinking  more mundane than the fight being part of an actual Hero Quest (though odds are at that level I will bet you aren't in Kansas anymore.), Hero Quest opposed combat rules, per se. So would Battle  skill (RQ G) do this adequately rather than turning to HQ for a better way

 

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

At one (I think still Hero Wars) games at Tentacles convention run by Greg, our party quested the Plundering of Aron quest, and when it came to the Sivin contest, I announced that my Helamakt warrior would perform the Sivin feat. Rather than rolling any dice, Greg said "that's what Helamakt does", described the outcome briefly, and we went on to the next stage.

 

I have seen this done by the more advanced GMs in Edmonton. The best was the GM who ran an entire game lying back on an ottoman never opening his eyes. He told us to either roll, or imagine a character we wanted to play from our fave game, and then ran an adventurer for us adjudicating the conflicts in a like manner to which you describe Greg using and letting us either adjudicate our results or roll on our characters by the method of our game of choice. It was great! I played a Kzinti with all advantages and flaws (oh, and they are deeply flawed).

Edited July 1, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Bill the barbarian]

5 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

no post sorry

@Trifletraxor feel free to remove this post it you wish...

Edited July 1, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

For some reason, two kaiju fighting mano-a-mano has lots of knockbacks but hardly any hit location damage. Maybe a tentacle or two flying off, but never a limb when the total quantity is six or less. Probably lots of parries.

While that shouldn't really be the case - there may be situations where a heroquester may take on a virtual stature on par with that of the Black Eater -

I am not quite sure what you are suggesting. Are you proposing to use HQG for such conflicts inside a RQG game (let's say you found another Faceless Statue and direct it against the Watchdog of Corflu), or are you proposing that RQG heroquesting rules should provide a solution for such out of context altercations?

Yes, the HeroQuest 2 or HQG rules allow to have an opposed roll to decide the outcome of that battle. RQG has the Battle skill, too, and maybe that is good enough for a spectator battle between two kaiju-sized opponents.

 

Not sure about that. If you quest say along the path of Orlanth vs. Sh'harkar'zeel (add consonants or apostrophs to improve canonical spelling as required), either you remain Orlanth in the conflict and keep the dragon in the Mover of Heavens role, and behead the dragon, or you don't and may have to use the Enkoshons/Aroka method to deal with the dragon, or some other trick the enemies of the EWF figured out. Or you get eaten or grilled.

 

At one (I think still Hero Wars) games at Tentacles convention run by Greg, our party quested the Plundering of Aron quest, and when it came to the Sivin contest, I announced that my Helamakt warrior would perform the Sivin feat. Rather than rolling any dice, Greg said "that's what Helamakt does", described the outcome briefly, and we went on to the next stage.

 

My point isn't that RQ can't handle those fights, but merely that the GM shouldn't be rolling against the GM. The rules are intended for the players too... well, play. Not for the GM to try to figure out whether the Crimson Bat can defeat Cthulhu.

[styopa]

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

The primary purpose of the rules for the game designers is to allow player characters (who are mainly human sized) to interact with NPCs (who might be small or gigantic), often through fighting. If the primary purpose of the rules for you is to model fights BETWEEN giant squids and whales, then I can't help you.

Personally I'd say a "good" system of mechanics for 'fantasy gaming' should scale?  It's a facet where RQ3 absolutely had a more rigorous approach (in HP, anyway).  

Likewise my previously mentioned issues with the SR system: it doesn't scale up at all.

Don't get me wrong, RQ2/RQG has a sweet spot and in that sweet spot (humans, with stats in a moderate range) everything does work perfectly.  If someone's whole game is about traipsing after lost/stolen cattle and breathless negotiations over the price of wheat, I agree, my 'edge case' issues totally don't matter. 

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Elephant bulls (and bulls of any other species) don't usually fight to kill their opponent, but to subdue him.

Agreed.  Yet fights between the smallest creatures are often to the death.  Then go back a step and ask why bigger creatures have evolved to NOT fight to the death that often?

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Yes, why not, if the difference in bulk etc. is compensated with armor points

Except that model (monster with massive AP and few hp) is brittle as hell...one crit and they die.  (Your solution was what they did in SPH for Bigclub...slapping massive armor on him hid the fact that he was fragile.  That's the exact opposite of the 'big creatures slugging it out for hours then retiring to lick their many wounds' model that we both agree seems to be how the biggest creatures often seem to fight.

[Bill the barbarian]

49 minutes ago, styopa said:

Except that model (monster with massive AP and few hp) is brittle as hell...one crit and they die.  (Your solution was what they did in SPH for Bigclub...slapping massive armor on him hid the fact that he was fragile.  That's the exact opposite of the 'big creatures slugging it out for hours then retiring to lick their many wounds' model that we both agree seems to be how the biggest creatures often seem to fight.

Personal opinon here (aren't most").

That is the best reason to have these debates. When making home rules listening to the wisdoms of styopa, Jeff, mankcam Kloster, or Joerg (though it could be any who posted here)  can clarify the situation and problems you are addressing and make them shine when you put pen to paper to .put your own spin on them before taking them to the table. 

Thanx all!

Edited July 1, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[g33k]

1 hour ago, styopa said:

...

Except that model (monster with massive AP and few hp) is brittle as hell...one crit and they die.  (Your solution was what they did in SPH for Bigclub...slapping massive armor on him hid the fact that he was fragile...

I have, interestingly, seen a similar approach taken in D&D, to pseudo-level-up a low-level PC by giving them higher-power magic items, so they can go adventuring in company with higher-level PC's.

They hit harder, courtesy of +5 swords instead of +1's, courtesy of 12d8 Fireball Staves instead of 5d8 Fireball Wands.  They're harder to hurt, courtesy of +3 Platemail of Etherealness instead of a +2 Chain Shirt.  Etc etc etc.  But in the end, one good BBG roll, or bad PC save, lets the BBG land a solid blow... and the low-level PC shows up as incredibly brittle.

 

I don't experience this approach as a good one...   YMMV.

 

[Lordabdul]

1 hour ago, styopa said:

Personally I'd say a "good" system of mechanics for 'fantasy gaming' should scale?

I think Jeff's point was that it should scale to what the players can realistically play, and in RQG that means it doesn't need to scale much higher than a Rune Lord king of some kind (Argrath et al). Now I've got no idea if it does scale well to that level, but at least it doesn't need to scale higher. If it was a generic system (like FATE/GURPS/etc) where you can play anything, then yes it should definitely be able to scale higher and lower but to be honest, even such generic systems don't scale that well to Godzilla/Cthulhu sizes anyway.

[Uthred]

On 6/29/2019 at 11:40 PM, galafrone said:

Hi there

i just wanted to know how the community feels about the HP being basically just a measure of CON with some little adjustments and not more the average of CON and SIZ

Actually with this system ducks have an average hp total of 12 and the dark trolls 13.. and if the latters are unlucky the can easily being worse than ducks.

So, fellow gamers, you are playing with the HP total as it is or ... not ?

I think it's fine. Hit points are an abstraction as is and I don't mind moving away from verisimilitude (or "realism" if you prefer) in order to make combat against large foes less of a slog against a bag of hit points. In some ways if this was a design goal I think they should have went the whole hog and divorced "hit points" from "meat points" entirely, adding in a bonus for POW is a nod towards that but a more clean division would have avoided any mental dissonance that not having SIZ play a larger factor creates. Quicker and more lethal combat suits what I want out of the system so I've been running it as is. 

1 hour ago, styopa said:

Personally I'd say a "good" system of mechanics for 'fantasy gaming' should scale?  It's a facet where RQ3 absolutely had a more rigorous approach (in HP, anyway).

It should only scale within the bounds its designed for, a "good" system is one that does what its designed to well, in this case (and the case for the vast majority of fantasy roleplaying games) that is to model roughly human scale characters fighting against a variety of different sized foes. The system is not designed to emulate big monster versus big monster battles. So while its certainly true that the system fails to make that interesting it also never set out to do so so the complaint feels orthogonal at best to the systems stated aims. Of course if your own aims are similarly orthogonal I can see how that might be a problem. 

Also I'm not sure comparing how large herbivores fight is particularly useful, most monsters are carnivores and it seems as valid to suggest a monster sized carnivore will fight like a bigger version of itself than like a whale or an elephant, this holds even truer for sapient creatures. 

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, styopa said:

Personally I'd say a "good" system of mechanics for 'fantasy gaming' should scale?  It's a facet where RQ3 absolutely had a more rigorous approach (in HP, anyway).  

Well, way back (and this is slightly tangential) I handled Kaiju using RQ3 hit points, along with the old Suerworld SIZ table (i.e the mass kept doubling). This kept Showa Gojira at something like SIZ 157, and worked out fairly well.  

3 hours ago, styopa said:

Likewise my previously mentioned issues with the SR system: it doesn't scale up at all.

I had an idea for that, using a base10 log for SIZ (x10 mass = +10 SIZ, so the table repeats making it easier to convert, and to scale). 

3 hours ago, styopa said:

Don't get me wrong, RQ2/RQG has a sweet spot and in that sweet spot (humans, with stats in a moderate range) everything does work perfectly.  If someone's whole game is about traipsing after lost/stolen cattle and breathless negotiations over the price of wheat, I agree, my 'edge case' issues totally don't matter. 

Pretty much all RPGs are designed for a "sweet spot" and tend to get more out of whack the further one deviates from that spot.

3 hours ago, styopa said:

Agreed.  Yet fights between the smallest creatures are often to the death.  Then go back a step and ask why bigger creatures have evolved to NOT fight to the death that often?

There could be several reasons, the first one I can think of is that larger creatures tend to be more territorial, so there is less chance of their running into/overlapping territory with others of their own kind. Smaller creatures tend to overlap more. So two tigers or bears and less likely to run across each other than two rats or squirrels. 

 

I think a second factor might also be that the samller creatures are probably more fragile and are more likely to take serious or mortal injury before the fight is over.

3 hours ago, styopa said:

Except that model (monster with massive AP and few hp) is brittle as hell...one crit and they die.  (Your solution was what they did in SPH for Bigclub...slapping massive armor on him hid the fact that he was fragile.  That's the exact opposite of the 'big creatures slugging it out for hours then retiring to lick their many wounds' model that we both agree seems to be how the biggest creatures often seem to fight.

Yeah, I think the problem here is that realistically the wounds would probably scale up more proportionally than they do in RQ. So lion vs. lion should probably be a bit closer to house cat vs house cat but in RQ it turns into one hit fights. I think it's probably due to the increasing db. 

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, styopa said:

Agreed.  Yet fights between the smallest creatures are often to the death.  Then go back a step and ask why bigger creatures have evolved to NOT fight to the death that often?

K-strategy vs. r-strategy? Small creatures tend to have high reproductive rates and great losses to predators, which makes death a different proposal compared to a species that has a two year pregnancy followed by a two year period of lactation before the next fertile period (as elephants or mammoths have).

 

5 hours ago, styopa said:

Except that model (monster with massive AP and few hp) is brittle as hell...one crit and they die. 

One unparried crit and they are decapacitated. Death requires mangling the prone body for quite a bit. Parry armor still applies.

5 hours ago, styopa said:

(Your solution was what they did in SPH for Bigclub...slapping massive armor on him hid the fact that he was fragile.  That's the exact opposite of the 'big creatures slugging it out for hours then retiring to lick their many wounds' model that we both agree seems to be how the biggest creatures often seem to fight.

The worst fight between large animals that I have seen (in a documentation) was a polar bear massacring a whale (IIRC a beluga) in the last remaining breathing hole, wherein the polar bear failed to land a crit and kept shredding away its victim's blubber to exhaustion. Polar bears and orcas are the only remaining large carnivorous beasts attacking huge prey bigger than a hippo. Pleistocene beasts like the short-faced bear are more likely to have been powerful scavengers than killers.

Carnivores (behavioral, not the mammal clade) fighting carnivores is rare - there is one viral video showing an inconclusive three-way fight between a cape buffalo, a small pride of lions, and a huge crocodile, but that's about all the material I can think of besides mating or territorial fights between bears.

 

But then, tieing hit points directly to life energy is a rules mechanism that needn't be optimal. Before I started playing RQ, I used to play a similar skill-based, damage-reducing armor system that had two kinds of hit points - life points that were lost only on un-defended hits (or falls, or...) and endurance points which were lost on successful defenses (and which doubled as magic points). A system like that makes the fight and retreat scenario more likely. In the end, there are other places in the rules that may create a better simulation, and RQ and related systems don't cover all those options.