Old Man

GURPS Conan is excellent. Not sure if it's still in print though. I got mine used.

But this thread is an automaton... knock off the head, and it keeps coming! Muahahahaaa!

Too bad. This thread is lycanthropic, not undead, and it wears kevlar as a defense against silver bullets.

Elven hair makes really good underwear. Nice and soft, like silk. Aaaah....

Well, what you do is fillet them and then fry or grill up the fillets... kind of like chicken strips. I like them with a tangy honey mustard sauce.

Hey, I like elves. Them's good eatin'.

Originally posted by keithcurtis

The activation roll just lets me choose between two sets of defenses, armored and unarmored. Hit loctions require that roll to be indexed to a list and add in the possibility of called shots. More work, not a lot, I grant, but it's work we don't want to do. I have a database that handles all combat and can optionally do all that in one step, but it ultimately comes down to what my players feel comfortable with.

You don't want to make the effort to memorize a chart with at most a dozen entries... but you have time to make a database to handle all combat.

Also, the genre I am running can loosely be described as Post-Apoc sword and sworcery. In order to retain the look and feel of the genre (half naked barbarians swinging big swords who somehow manage to survive from adventure to adventure without disability), armor is scarce. If I were to enforce hit locations, that would make the illogicality of the genre stand out like a severed thumb.

Not realistic certainly, but neither is the genre.

Combat Luck.

How can good playing reduce the chance of a facial wound? I assume you mean by wearing a helmet.

No, I mean by dodging or blocking when someone takes a swing at you.

It sounds to me like you like modelling real-life medieval combat and that's cool. But no one in the Fellowship of the Ring for instance wears a helmet except Gimli. Not one has a missing eye or a long facial scar.

None of the characters I ran ever had a facial scar either. It's funny, but all my characters really didn't scar up much at all, even on those freak occasions when they did get hit in 3-5. Unless I thought it would look cool, anyway.

Again, you sound like you're deathly afraid of having your heroes get hit in the face in combat. To reiterate: it rarely happens, and if it does happen, so what? Hit locations do not force you to model gangrene and facial reconstruction.

It all comes down to what you are trying to simulate.

It all comes down to what's more fun to play, actually. Having a leg wound is more interesting to me than a hit point countdown. The possibility of sudden death is more interesting than wading into combat secure in the knowledge that I can take two solid hits from this guy's shortsword before I risk negative body.

How does this differ from using armor on an activation? Players can still go down with a lucky hit. The rules are't that different.

IMO what you have is a hit point system that takes longer. It has all of the drawbacks of hit locations and none of the benefits.

Actually I would go with a Summon and ask SuperSquirrel how he made his bunnies (lots of bunnies being able to combine)

If you do the MP thing, then the Villain can't really change his powers easily. If it's a Summon, you can cater the Summon to the bio material he has on hand.

Re: YES... RONIN!

Originally posted by RDU Neil

 

Other movies that make for good, "more realistic" style adventures.

 

China Town

Any of the Godfather movies.

The Bodyguard (yes, cheesy as it may sound, it's a solid DI adventure)

To Live & Die In LA (heck, the main PC bites it half way through the movie!)

Man On Fire

Platoon

Year of the Dragon

Heat and Manhunter from Michael Mann

Serpico

Taxi Driver

aww man, you forgot

HEAT

Re: re: Organization vs Characters.

Originally posted by misterdeath

And it blows to have spend many days devoting yourself to crafting a piece of artwork and watching it get mangled like a Red Shirt on classic Trek.

 

D

Now that might be a fun game to play in...

"Red Shirts"

Originally posted by keithcurtis

How can good playing reduce the chance of a facial wound? I assume you mean by wearing a helmet. It sounds to me like you like modelling real-life medieval combat and that's cool. But no one in the Fellowship of the Ring for instance wears a helmet except Gimli. Not one has a missing eye or a long facial scar.

It all comes down to what you are trying to simulate.

Only a few of the fellowship wore armor at all, but that's a movie thing. I would put that sort of thing down to Combat Luck.

That might work. It does seem like more work but something needs to be done to keep the tank fighters honest. As it stands they're just 8 DEF, all the time.

Oo, what about shield damage?

Armorsmith/weaponsmith skill should be fleshed out so that it's not as prone to abuse as the current weaponsmith skill. Too often have I seen players buy weaponsmith for their character and then claim they can crank out (effectively) magic items for everyone in the group. I'd like to see some kind of chart for what the penalties are wrt fixing and making various types of weapons and armor, and what kind of forge and tools and materials are required, and what level of weaponsmith should be required to build "superior" weapons, and how long it should take.

There ought to be some readily available info on this subject since blacksmithing is still treated as a trade. Base weaponsmith should be enough to make crude knives, arrow/spear heads, and farming tools. It should be harder to make swords and mail, and harder still to make articulated plate armor that fits.

*gasp*

I am stunned speachless at such a lack of common decency towards the faerie folk! How could you say such a thing! Sentiments like that are just...rude!

_______________

I am the ELFLOVER

Speaking of armor, an armorer or armorsmith skill would be nice to see.

Originally posted by keithcurtis

Going against the flow, here. I don't think it is in any way essential. We use hit loc.s for color only, ala Champions. We use armor on an activation. It all depends on the style you want to play. If you are playing high fantasy, you might not want your characters walking around with lopped off arms and facial wounds every third combat.

Ignoring hit locations makes combat faster and decreases the bloodlust of the characters. After all, if they can o for those x2 body locations, so can their enemies. Hot locations make combat more deadly and that may not be your goal.

How can you say that you use armor on an activation and then turn around and say that hit locations would slow down combat?

And, yes, hit locations do make combat more deadly, but probably not as much as you make out. "Lopped off limbs" and "facial wounds" are extraordinarily rare unless the player plays like an idiot. Conversely, there does exist the remote possibility that my character will be felled in one lucky hit, which goes a long way toward preventing boredom and complacency. I've had it happen, I think, four times in five years of playing.

Who'd have thought it would be so simple?

How do you make the blobs do damage to those that step on them before they explode?

Originally posted by Koshka

Depends on whether the engine was running (never seen Heavy Metal). If the driver didn't start it up until after landing, then no need for LS.

OK, stop right there. Go watch the movie. It's a classic that every fan of sci-fi should see.

Re: It has arrived!

Originally posted by Jhamin

Just picked up my copy of Terran Empire at my FLGS.

 

I'm impressed at the way it manages to span several hundred years maintaining a consistant setting, but still giving a sense of time passing.

It's been over five hours now. Where's the review? I'm waiting.

Hit location is a must. With it you have sectional armor, and the enhanced roleplaying of having an impairing leg wound rather than X body of damage. Without it what you have is hit points, which I for one have had my fill of.

The table will slow combat a bit at first but it'll quickly become second nature, especially when people learn the 2x BODY locations. It does make combat more lethal--if you have new players you might want to encourage them to play conservatively for a little while. But the way I see it, if there's no danger involved then the game is fucking boring. The adventures you remember most are the ones where somebody got killed.

I'd dump the 5th ed armor and encumbrance rules and go with the sectional armor chart and encumbrance from 4th, if you can find it. It's a lot better balanced. 5th ed encumbrance is broken in that fighters with high strength suffer no penalty for walking around in impregnable suits of plate.

The DCV penalty used to be based purely on weight in 4th. I'd go back to that for game balance purposes even if it is less realistic. Otherwise, your 20 STR stud fighter type (an extremely common archetype in FH) skips around in full coverage 8 DEF tankmail with no DCV or DEX roll penalty at all, or a net +2 DCV should he elect to carry a large shield.

I'm starting to wonder just how good the new FH is going to be. It seems as though Fred did all kinds of damage that would have to be superceded in order for FH 5th to be playable.

Sounds like a multipower to me...

How large of an area does extinguish cover? What are the special effects? Does the fire just die out or is there a sudden downpour of water?

1d6 EB splash of water, area effect, indirect

1d6 EB or 1 pip RKA oxygen removal, area effect, only to extinguish fires

Originally posted by Greenstar

My plans for armor damage were much more simplistic - but a lot easier to keep track of. Each time a location was hit and penetrated (e.g. the character took BODY damage), the rDEF of the armor in that location would drop by 1 until it was repaired. Nope, it's not nrealy as realisitic as what's been proposed here (and very good proposals they are, too!), but it may save me a few more calculations in a game that's already filled with them. Some of my players just aren't good with "mechanics" so I'll be doing a lot of that as the GM, freeing them up to just RP.

Simple and easy to use but your players are never ever going to buy DEF 1 or DEF 2 armor if they can help it. What would be the point if they have to buy a new suit after every other turn of combat?

Originally posted by Old Man

Perhaps a given material should be defined as a ratio of DEF/BODY instead of just DEF. So we could define wood to be DEF 2/BODY 3 per inch of thickness, while granite would be DEF 5/BODY 2 per inch. Then a 4" thick door would be 8DEF/12 BODY if wood, and if granite, would be 20 DEF / 8 BODY. That simulates the relationship between hardness and brittleness a little better.

 

This is a good idea and translates over to your aDEF idea. Using the above example, if the door took 6 BODY then it would be reduced to 4 DEF / 6 BODY.

END for wearing armor is kind of covered in encumbrance. I think there should also be a guideline for other penalties while wearing armor. Like DCV penalties or skill use penalties.

"You're going to Stealth behind the guard and knock him out...in your plate armor...um yeah."