[Runequest] Advice Sought re Damage & HP

[devinc at aol.com]

The?fact that a system accounts for combat in detail has nothing whatsoever to do with the letahlity thereof. The original Traveller game had an extensive combat system, and even more than RQ you were well advised to stay out of combat if at all possible, as one good shotgun blast could take your 6 term mercenary out of the game in an instant.

Frankly, it's not really fair of you to claim that the designers of RQ were unable to realize the feature of their own system and that the lethality was an unintended bug. This is belied by the fact that the designers themselves TOUTED the fact that RQ combat was lethal. So obviously, it was indeed a feature and not a bug, albeit a feature you don't happen to agree with.

I don't think RQ scales badly at all. And lest you think I am some RQ purist or fanatic, I play D&D now exclusively and have for the last 15 years. Yes beginning RQ characters are fragile. But I assure you even rune level RQ PCs are relatively fragile as compared to comparable PCs in other systems, D&D most especially. 

In D&D, a 10th level fighter has absolutely NOTHING to fear from 12 kobolds. In RQ, a runelord will probably come out of a fight with 12 troollkin unscathed, but there is always that chance that a lucky critical or impale or what have you gets through and the runelord could die. That incentivizes the runelord to at least consider dealing with the trollkin in a different fashion. In RQ, if you fight for long enough, the sheer number of rolls thrown at you will eventually screw you. As such, the best strategy is to limit the number of dice thrown against you over your career.

You are, of course, welcome to say RQ3 is broken at lower levels. I have enough experience with the game to disagree with you and suggest that it might be the style of play rather than the system.

Devin


-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Sturgess <gazza666 at gmail.com>
To: RuneQuest Rules <runequest at rpgreview.net>
Sent: Mon, 26 May 2008 6:42 pm
Subject: Re: [Runequest] Advice Sought re Damage & HP



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

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