[Runequest] Advice Sought re Damage & HP

[Gary Sturgess]

2008/5/27  <devinc at aol.com>:
> The lethality of RQ combat encourages players to try to find other ways to
> solve problems beyond hacking and slashing.

The thing is, nothing in the RQ rules says anything about "this is a
game where combat is supposed to be de-emphasised". There's an
extensive fumble table, lots of weapon skills, many combat oriented
spells (which in prior versions of the game are called BATTLE
magic)... and the majority of introductory scenarios include combat as
well. It's not really fair to claim that the lethality of RQ is a
feature rather than a bug - if it was intended to mean "don't fight
unless you have to", then they went about it fairly poorly (IMHO, of
course).

I think it might be significant that of all the BRP descended games
(Mongoose RQ, Elric, Call of Cthulu) AND Glorantha descended games
(HeroQuest, Pendragon Pass, and of course Mongoose gets in here as
well), ALL of them have made combat less lethal than it is in RQ2 and
3 (if only by removing hit locations).

It also scales badly. Beginning PCs are indeed extremely fragile. Rune
level PCs generally have more armour than hit points, which means that
they can wade into combat caring only about critical hits (which even
a normal parry can stop). Combat isn't anywhere near as lethal once
you get some decent armour - the real message that RQ teaches, IMHO,
isn't "avoid fighting except as a last resort" but rather "get
yourself some decent armour, as soon as possible".

RQ3 is one of my all time favourite games, but I've run enough
beginning level games over the years to convince myself that it is
broken at that level - YMMV.
-- 
GAZZA