Fantasy Hero lethality

[slikmar]

Hey all,

This is for all of you who have played Fantasy Hero for a while and/or run the game.

I have a couple of players wondering about lethality (or lack thereof) in Fantasy Hero. Looking at numbers alone, the average weapon damage would seem to be between 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 d6 killing averaging from 5 to 9 body done. If you take a normal fighter in plate mail - rDef 8(please no "plate mail should be rare" arguments, its not in most games or books, especially where dwarves are an inclusive race) or even chain - Rdef 6, it would appear that a very little if any body gets through. Stun doesnt appear to be a problem, but it does appear as if there is a real lack of lethality in the game. How do you deal with this, do you use a, if knocked unconscious and your side loses you are dead or do you find the lethality is ok.

I ask this question because I am planning on trying to run a Fantasy Hero campaign just as soon as my book comes and would like to answer peoples questions.

Thanks in advance.

[Yamo]

Enemies are smart. They will use placed shots. That 2d6 crossbow bolt is a little scarier to mister knight when it's aimed right between his eyes or at a completely unarmored point.

 

Another solution is to set strict DEF limits. Five or six, say.

[TechnoViking]

There was a web page the had expanded hit location and armor rules for Fantasy Hero 4th. The hit location rules were interesting since I took in account for joint hits.

 

Mike

[Herolover]

Well first, I think you are considering the worse situation and not looking at all the facts. Second, BODY damage isn’t really where combat is at. The STUN damage is far more important in combat than the BODY. You have a far better chance of being knocked unconscious than you do have having your BODY reduced to 0 or below. Of course, in most combats going unconscious is the same as death.

 

1) Let us look at the damage first.

Average person with average sword is going to be doing 1d6+1K or about 4 BODY. The problem with this should be obvious. Your players shouldn’t be fighting the average person

A routinely trained warrior (say a city watchmen) will have some extra STR and some combat skill levels with the sword. That means they will be doing an extra +1-2 DC or about 1 1/2d6K or about 5-6 BODY.

A well trained warrior will be adding extra damage from STR and extra damage from skill levels. This means he will be doing anywhere from 1 1/2d6K to 2d6K. That should put him in the 6-7 BODY range.

Realize also, that I haven’t even mentioned the warrior that is very well trained and has some martial maneuvers with the sword.

 

2) Now let us look at the armor.

You say Plate mail. Remember the Knight in Plate mail in his time was equivalent to the M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank of our time. It should be difficult to damage a Knight in Plate. In, reality, leather armors should be the common armor with scale and chain being only a little more common. This means most people will have DEF’s of around 3-6. When people are dealing out 4-7 BODY in a shot DEF 3-6 seems about right.

 

A lot of what you want to do depends upon what kind of Fantasy campaign you are running. In low Fantasy heavy metal armors should be rare with leather and scale far more prevalent. Yes, wearing armor will prevent you from getting hurt, but when you do get hurt you will be hurt for long periods and the wounds can have debilitating effects on combat. (More on that in a moment.)

 

In a high Fantasy campaign, such as your average D&D campaign, yes metal armors are far more prevalent, but then you have Magic, stronger and more skilled characters, and more “heroic†things to even the score.

 

I am going to assume for a moment that you want some serious lethality in your campaign.

 

1) Hero System is designed for the movie types of heroes. It isn’t really designed for reality. I can handle that, but if you want the reality of how lethal weapons really are double the damage on all weapons. This sounds like a lot, but when you consider how lethal weapons are it really isn’t. This makes the average sword do something like 2d6K. Deadly…which is what a sword is.

 

2) Use all of the “Optional†Combat Rules. Even without doubling weapon damage this can be deadly.

First Hit Locations. These are awesome, because now when you hit you can really cut someone down to size.

Impairment and Disabling rules. These are also really good because sure you might not be near dying, but you can’t use your sword arm.

Bleeding. This adds a lot to the paperwork, but man does it make things deadly. All of a sudden when you get wounded you keep loosing Body. Opps.

Lastly when a person takes BODY use the optional rule that they have to make an EGO roll to do something.

 

I am currently running a Fantasy campaign that has some magic, but it is what I would consider low level heroic. The characters are 75+75 and here is what I have done.

 

First, as in RL, metal armors are rare. The average armor is leather types or armor with some chain and scale being rare and the Kngiht in Plate being even rarer. This means the average DEF is around 3-6. See my discussion on weapon damage above. I am using the Hit Location rules, Impairment and Bleeding.

 

Also, consider how quickly people hill. In my world there are alchemical potions of healing, but the average person with bed rest might regain 4-5 BODY in a MONTH! So if they take 6 BODY they will have it for a long time.

 

Hope any of this helped.

[slikmar]

Hey again,

Herolover, good suggestions.

To clarify, my game will be high fantasy - dwarves in plate/heavy chain not unusual, and i think the argument from my players is there is something unheroic about the concept of knocking opponents unconscious and slitting throats afterward. I think maybe, the mindset in this is to just go with the assumption of -10 stun or lower = death if your side loses, or increase damage of weapons (my initial thought was to increase by 3 DCs all weapons, but doubling may work).

Thanks again for your help everyone.

[Herolover]

No problem.

 

See my statements on High Fantasy.

 

One way to get around the "slitting throats problem" is how you run your NPC's. When they go down, just call them dead.

Also, realize that when the NPC goes down due to being "stunned," maybe they bleed to death before the PC's get to him.

[MarkusDark]

The trouble is not that the game is 'less lethal', but that damage is calculated differently than what most people are used to. In D&D, the game is set that it is an all or nothing attack. If your swing is low, you do no damage. If you hit, you do the same amount of damage whether it is against someone with plate or someone without armor. In Hero, if you hit, your potential of doing damage is based upon the type of armor they are wearing. I actually find this much more realistic than the typical hit point based system.

 

In the times of plate, people would carry daggers to force the surrender or kill those wearing full plate. The reason being that you could bludgeon them onto the ground but you would still have to get on top of him, take a dagger and find a place to slip it past the armor in order to kill them.

 

How many movies have you seen someone take a full on chest hit, only to be 'nursed' back to health later? You don't get that in the hit point system. If you have one hit point left, you are just as functional as if you were at full. In Hero, you get the stun/unconcious/bleeding out and all the other combinations to have a good, dramatic flair.

 

There are so many modifiers in Hero (2x damage when stunned, etc) that fantasy combat can be a little more dramatic than "I have one hit point left, I'll still attack." Remember, it takes all of one phase after someone is unconcious to slit their throat.

[AnotherSkip]

Herolover pretty much hit the nail on the head.

 

The real big differences are how much Body healing you have and round by round Stun.

 

Look at body healing: for ten points you get 1-3 points of body healed per day. that is it, not much else you can do.

 

I have a character who was wearing leathor plus a 10 point armor spell got shot by six arrows simultaneously early in his career (multible attackers). Though he took no Body, he took enough stun to put him in the "recovers at Gm's option" slot. Three days later (all while being pursued by our enemy) a friendly NPC Shaman heals me to the point where i can recover on my own. I was and still am the only party healer. I can keep the party going _outside_ of combat, but inside of combat it really really sucks.

 

Locations are also important. There are four spots that are doubled body(3-5, 14), suddenly the normal damage for an average person with 1d6+1 goes from 4 to 8 body on the average, sure plate will still stop that but the stronger and better armed people still will get above that.

 

in Hero there is _nothing_ that guarantees success.

[Vondy]

Eh?

 

An opponent who is stunned and knocked to the ground is dead in a remotely realistic setting. He's down for the count and a called shot to a weak point in the armor is easy.

 

Futher, plate armor should make it hard to be killed outright from a single blow. That's what it was designed to do. People wore it for a reason. If you take a sword and beat on a guy wearing a full suit of maxamillian plate you are far more likely to bludgeon and knock him around until he goes down than to kill him outright. That or you train for techniques that go for weak points and jam your weapon in their.

 

The evolution of several specialized weapons occured because of plate armor. Military hammers and picks, which were designed to penetrate and the like. Crossbows, picks, and their ilk should probably be given an AP bonus, but beyond that I think plate is fine where its at.

 

It doesn't take much to kill a downed foe. I know that's not "heroic", but it is realistic

[sbarron]

Critical hits. I read somewhere Steve saying Hero didn't have critical hits. I don't know if that is technichally true or not anymore. But when we play Fantasy Hero, whenever less than half of what is needed to hit an opponent is rolled, it is a critical hit. Example: 15- needed to hit, 7- needed for crit. This is why being having a stunned opponent is a big deal. It makes the crit much more likely. We always played that crits were max damage.

 

So in the example you gave of a character with a 2 1/2 d6 KA, a crit to the chest would result in 15 Bod and 45 Stun. After defenses (in plate) that would be 7 Body and about 29 Stun. This would be an impairing hit on most characters. It would stun almost anyone, and most likely put the victim into negative stun. That would (should) end the fight for most NPCs. I would let a PC heroically struggle on, and maybe a big villian, but no one else.

 

It can be very lethal to play in the Hero system. You just need to be sure to use the rules that reflect this style of play.

 

As a final note, Fred also states that for some fantasy genres, the STUN stat should be done away with entirely. Maybe you should consider that for you game. It would remove your players concerns about having to kill unconscious opponents. With no STUN, bad guys would stand up right up till they were dead, thus releaving your PCs of any guilt.

[Vondy]

Originally posted by sbarron

Critical hits. I read somewhere Steve saying Hero didn't have critical hits. I don't know if that is technichally true or not anymore. But when we play Fantasy Hero, whenever less than half of what is needed to hit an opponent is rolled, it is a critical hit. Example: 15- needed to hit, 7- needed for crit. This is why being having a stunned opponent is a big deal. It makes the crit much more likely. We always played that crits were max damage.

 

So in the example you gave of a character with a 2 1/2 d6 KA, a crit to the chest would result in 15 Bod and 45 Stun. After defenses (in plate) that would be 7 Body and about 29 Stun. This would be an impairing hit on most characters. It would stun almost anyone, and most likely put the victim into negative stun. That would (should) end the fight for most NPCs. I would let a PC heroically struggle on, and maybe a big villian, but no one else.

 

It can be very lethal to play in the Hero system. You just need to be sure to use the rules that reflect this style of play.

 

As a final note, Fred also states that for some fantasy genres, the STUN stat should be done away with entirely. Maybe you should consider that for you game. It would remove your players concerns about having to kill unconscious opponents. With no STUN, bad guys would stand up right up till they were dead, thus releaving your PCs of any guilt.

 

There is a critical hit option in UMA

 

If you make your roll by half of what you needed or more you do maximum body and stun (I think).

[Dauntless]

In settings that include plate mail the greatest danger wasn't getting stabbed or hacked to death, but running out of endurance or getting knocked unconscious. Either way, once that happens, you're as good as dead anyway.

 

In a battle between the French and English during Joan of Arc's time, some of the French knights had armor so heavy that they had to be hoisted onto their horses by a crane. It had rained the day before, and the field was extremely soggy and muddy. When the French Knights charged, the English Longbowmen had a field day, either mowing down the knights, or killing the horses and making the knights have to trudge through a muddy field in heavy armor to meet the English line. By that time, if they survived the arrow onslaught, they were so tired they got hacked to piecves by the English footline.

 

Platemail can be effective in one on one combat depending on what kind of weapon your adversary uses (imagine if he had a pick axe) but in mass combat, it's actually far less useful than you think.

 

As for damage ratings, remember to add in DC's from STR or from martial maneuvers...so that 1 1/2d6 sword could potentially turn into a 3d6 attack, doing on average 11pts of Body damage. That means one or two hacks and the average person will be dead even in plate mail. For realistic settings, I also always enforce the Wounding optional rule even for players. This also makes EGO a more valuable trait even if there are no psionics in the game.

[KnightWeaver]

Leathality

 

One of the things that I love the most about the Hero system IS the lack of lethality. As a GM I know the PC's are supposed to win the combats. Not easily but they should win. I like the fact that in Heroe's I don't have to worry about killing off a PC from a stray sword or arrow hit.

 

As many have said an unconcious person in battle is a dead person when there side looses. You also don't die from most woulds initially it's usually infection or bleeding that causes you to die.

 

Knight Weaver

[Chris Goodwin]

In real life, "plate mail" was rare. It was expensive as hell, which is why the only guys who owned it were nobles.

 

In most fantasy fiction, it is rare as well.

 

As I mentioned to Yamo in another thread, if you want it to be more lethal, restrict armor DEF. Plain and simple. If you're the GM, you can do that. I don't buy complaints that combat isn't lethal enough when you're letting characters have 8 DEF armor.

 

[Blue]

I was never a big fan of the D&D "wearing tougher armor makes you harder to hit" setup. I realize their argument was that this "to hit" deals with the weapons ability to penetrate too, but to me that was always a little silly.

 

Then you get into the WotC/TSR contention that your attack round is not just one attack but actually a series of attacks that add up to the damage you did. Every single person who makes an attack and rolled well considered it to be a "great hit" not a great "series of hits".

 

Just makes more sense to have one swing = one roll, defenses seperate from your ability to avoid being hit.

 

But then I'm off on a rant, aren't I? What were we talking about again?

[CrosshairCollie]

Personally speaking, I don't want combat to be too lethal. In my experience, games where PC lethality is commonplace means that people don't put a lot of effort into making their characters special or memorable, or just don't put a lot of effort into it at all. If the character's going to die 20 minutes into the game, why go through the trouble?

[Old Man]

Conversely, if there is practically no risk to characters in a given fight, then combat becomes a boring exercise in dice rolling.

 

Game lethality is one of those fuzzy things where everyone has their own comfort level. I'm of the school where combat ought to be dangerous, otherwise there's nothing heroic about it.

[Gary]

Don't forget the haymaker! Against stunned or unaware opponents or if fighting with a spd advantage, you add +4 DC's! Those plate armors are going to be penetrated pretty quickly once those 1 1/2D6 attacks become 3D6. Or attacks such as passing strike while mounted.

[Blue Angel]

Haymakers are a great move for weaker NPC's to use. I had a bandit start using haymakers. He connected on the second attack and took a PC right out of the fight.

 

I find with hit location body multipliers there is plenty of room for lethality without making things Cthulhu deadly.

[Toadmaster]

There have already been a number of good suggestions so I won't repeat them.

 

I played in several FH campaigns over the years and one of the GM's I played with a lot twice converted the campaign back to D&D because he felt HERO was to lethal.

 

As far as heavy armor, it does tend to make one immune to damage, but using all the optional rules it becomes less so, multiple attackers bonus, hit locations, etc. I had one character with a set of DEF 8 plate, at first I could just wade into battle but after a few battles the GM got smart, many of the bad guys would gang up to get the multiple attackers bonus, then somebody with a pick or maul would take a head shot, as I recall the chracter died in the first battle the GM tried out his new tactics.

 

Another thing to limit heavy armor is make sure to include all the down sides, use long term endurance, game out putting on or taking off the armor (it takes quite some time), nothing like getting attacked while sleeping and having to fight in long johns while the leather wearing rogue becomes the tank for the day. Metal armor is hot and noisy, and it sinks, put the characters on a boat now and then. In general if the game includes much travelling as opposed to just dungeon crawls most players will probably willingly opt for scale or chain at the heaviest.

[Blue Angel]

Ouch Toadmaster.

 

Nothing like being the victim of an experiment gone right.

 

When considering lethality I usually consider the likely extreme rather than the average. The average damage assumes the low roles count. In general they don't mean anything (or at most very little).

 

With a single dice the likely extreme is a 6. With any larger number of dice I consider the likely extreme to be an average of 5 on each dice. With two dice this comes out to a role of 10. This is significant damage fo DEF 6 armor, especially if there is a body multiplier involved. A vitals or head hit would cause (10-6)*2=8 body. A pretty nasty hit.

 

The first day of my campaign the party faught a single Ogre for several turns. They just couldn't get a solid hit. Eventually (after suffering some serious injuries and a near decapitation) the Ogre just dropped dead from blood loss. One player was seriously amazed that the system could represent something being able to fight while bleeding to death. Hit point systems can't do that. Hero's way is much more heroic.

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by Gary

Don't forget the haymaker! Against stunned or unaware opponents or if fighting with a spd advantage, you add +4 DC's! Those plate armors are going to be penetrated pretty quickly once those 1 1/2D6 attacks become 3D6. Or attacks such as passing strike while mounted.

 

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the DC's are halved with Killing Attacks, like all maneuvers. Still, it boosts the 1 1/2d6 Attack to 2d6+1, and some STR and a few levels can boost it still higher.

 

HERO can be extremely lethal with the right assumptions. Allow Haymakers left and right. Use Called Shots. Use levels to add to damage (the standard for Heroic Level games). And so on.

 

Take the Heavy Longbow: 2d6 Killing. Assuming I've been doing this right, Haymaker makes it 2 1/2d6 Killing. Every 2 levels (3 point levels or above) can give it another DC, so with 8 levels you are firing a 4d6 RKA's at people with around an 8 Resistant Defense.

 

That's a really good archer, you say? This is true, but that boy that was pulled into the military, fed meat regularly to increase his arm strength, trained heavily, and so on, doesn't need to be more than a 50 point character (25+25 Disads) to pull this off. Adventurers would do well not to mess with a town with even a small contingent of such troops unless they are really tough.

 

And the leader and trainer of these guys? 50+50, he actually has some life experiences outside of archery (Skills, some Characteristics perhaps, and some more Disads). And a few Penalty Levels for placing his 4d6 Killing arrows through the selected eye.

 

If lethality is what you want, it's there. This is why I don't bother increasing the damage of weapons.

[Alibear]

Originally posted by Dauntless

 

As for damage ratings, remember to add in DC's from STR or from martial maneuvers...so that 1 1/2d6 sword could potentially turn into a 3d6 attack,

 

Erm no. 3d6+1 actually.

 

 

And someone else said location 14 doubles damage, that should be location 13.

[Markdoc]

My advice would be: DON'T increase the damage of weapons - and I have been GMing Fantasy Hero games for nearly 20 years.... I've played in an FH game where the GM did this (remember, adding +1 DC to the weapon allows the player to add in another DC for STR/martial arts/levels...)

 

After a few adventures we quietly shifted weapon DC back (it was like "My, where did all these dead characters come from?")

 

I'd suggest you enjoy the fact that heavy armour characters are largely immune to small attacks - they can munch through low point opponents armed with small weapons, but they are still vulnerable to good hits or heavier weapons.

 

Doing your calculations off average damage gives an inaccurate impression. Sure many attacks will do little or no harm - but it only takes one or two good hits to kill or maim, and you can easily rack that up in an evening's play. Players don't remember the 15 hits that did no damage - they remember the arrow in the face that did 8 BOD. Remember, too, the difference in BOD between the mighty barbarian and the wimpy mage is often only 5-7 BOD - in other words one or two good hits. If you are coming from DnD, it's easy to overlook that.

 

If Trom Kothron wades into bunch of goblins in his heavy dwarven DEF8 armour then yes, the attacks that do 4 BOD are not going to inconvenience him much. But it only takes a few rolls of 9, before he is leaking blood - especially if they hit him somewhere sensitive.

 

In my no-magic game, I had 150 point PCs capable of cranking out 3d6 damage with high STR, levels and halberds or two handed swords (the sort of weapons favoured by heavily armoured knights, funnily enough...)

 

At that point, you are putting 3 BOD through on an AVERAGE hit, and a good roll (13, or 14 points of damage, not maximum, so we are talking about one hit in 6, or so) is going to put anyone into a world of hurt, even if you miss the soft squishy bits.

 

It was not normal by any means, but for the "mighty fighter" types in the party, one-shot kills on heavily armoured foes were not unknown. The rest of the party could crank out max damage between 2d6 and 2 1/2: still enough to put down a heavily armoured foe in one or two good shots.

 

And if you go to lightly armoured characters - ugh! You can trust me on this: you do not want players running around with 3d6 killing attacks.

 

That's the in-game rationale. But it meshes pretty well with real life - most people have a grossly exaggerated idea (from movies and TV, I guess) about how easy it is to kill someone with a blade (the same is true of guns for that matter). However in reality, in the west where the victim can get treatment, only about 3% of stabbings are fatal (that's inclusive of multiple stabbings, which account for about 20-30% of cases, but the vast majority of fatalities). Most victims are not wearing any kind of rDEF

but of course their attackers are usually only using 1/2 d6 to 1 d6 HKAs - say 1 to 1 1/2 d6 damage. Remember, most deaths are due to bleeding in the 300 to 400 TURNS after the stabbing so this damage level seems reasonable.

 

Looked at in that light, adding +3 DC to weapons is not only bad from a game balance point of view, but unrealistic as well.

 

Cheers (Dr.) Mark

[AnotherSkip]

heh Could You imagine the D&D players screams for the Party Medic/Cleric if they continued to lose HP's from blood loss say one per round/every shot that did 5+ points of damage......