[Runequest] Advice Sought re Damage & HP

[Nick.Middleton at wrsl.com]

> 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).

Err, the system is built around making combat plausible and brutal - how
else would you suggest discouraging people from using combat as a solution?
Making combat low risk certainly doesn't work - take a look at any D&D
encounter between a high level party and a bunch of low level monsters.
De-emphasising combat by making it less detailed, easier to survive etc may
make it a less interesting solution, an d saying its not a good solution
may persuade a few players - but making it a high risk strategy is a
perfectly valid approach.

> 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".

And yet Rurik still died - the lesson of RuneQuest II/III IME has always
been - "avoid fighting except as a last resort - and if you DO have to
fight, make damn sure you have decent armour... and superior numbers... and
for preference missile weapons at range when the other guy has no armour
and is staked to the ground" :D

> 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.

Sorry - gamers bandy that word around far too much. Whilst I agree that
RQIII (and other flavours) can have scaling issues, I really can't agree
that it's "broken". Yes, combat is brutal, perhaps overly so to average
stat starting characters, but it's entirely playable and part of it's
unique atmosphere and appeal is predicated on that brutality IMO.

Cheers

Nick Middleton



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