[Runequest] Advice Sought re Damage & HP

[Styopa]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 5:25 AM, <Nick.Middleton at wrsl.com> wrote:

> Royce,
> If you can find it, the RQIV:AiG weapons table "flattened" out weapon
> damage to single die's, so daggers stopped being so insanely dangerous to a
> normal human (1D4+2 is high if the average arm has only 3HP - an
> unexceptional dagger blow will render an arm permanently maimed / useless
> on 1 in 4 blows?!) and in general addressed the anomalies in the RQII/III
> weapon damages. Similarly one could use RQIV:AiG fixed DB's, or a die-size
> step table (+1, +1d2, +1d3, +1d4, +1d5, +1d6, +1d8, +1d10, +1d12 give s
> pretty good spread).
>
>
1) Since I spent some quality time on a farm as a teen involved in
slaughtering / butchering / rendering farm animals for food, etc. I might
have some insight that helps here.  (I certainly didn't appreciate that it
was 'quality' at that time, nor that it would be useful in this context, but
it has been.)  Dismembering a creature, even with a weapon designed for it,
and PARTICULARLY one that's alive, kicking, and presumably trying to avoid
the end result is EXTREMELY difficult.  It's without any reluctance
whatsoever that I (in every RQ game I run) declare simply that you have to
TRIPLE the location's hp to sever.  Arms are still particularly
damaged/disabled, but the battlefield doesn't look like a George Romero
homage every time.  Even that's pushing it, as a special success with an axe
and any strength bonus could still cleave through a normal fellow's abdomen
a goodly % of the time, which is ABSOLUTELY unrealistic.  A body is harder
to cut through (more give = less bite) through than a tree, and I challenge
anyone to cleave THROUGH a (relatively puny) 6" tree at one blow.

2) I think there was just a slight disconnect in the original rules about
averages, effects, and the (relatively) huge impact a single +1 or +2 could
have on weapon damage.  D4 average is 2.5, which, if the average arm has 3
hp, is about right.  But according to canon rules, ANY hit with a dagger
(3-6 damage or more) will disable an average person's arm?  I'd say either
recognize the dagger in particular is broken and should just be 1d4, knives
1d3, or simply bump up the hp/location by one, so the 'average' dude has 4
hp/arm.  I think the former fix breaks fewer other things.

I agree that RQ's lethality is shocking to someone acclimatized to more
'heroic' games, but I don't believe that makes it bad- it's a feature, in my
mind.
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