knasser2

Definitely no to the first. If they drop it, it goes out., I suppose theoretically yes, to the second if they were a dual-wielder. I guess it would balance because now they'd be adding the extra endurane cost to their melee attack twice., And absolutely yes to Flaming Palindromedaries. That last one is definitely being added to my bestiary. It will surprise them if nothing else!

OIF? So essentially like this? 15CP HKA 1d6 Energy -1 Obvious Accessible Focus ============================ 8CP Note, I went with Accessible because it seems to me that a weapon is something that opponents can disarm the character of. Are there any concerns with this that the character is essentially getting to do two lots of damage with one Attack roll? Is that factored in? I suppose it's not different to the character having a power that just does 2d6 and doesn't need a weapon... Thanks for all replies, btw! All appreciated!

In my game, Energy Defence is much harder to get hold of than Physical Defence. Everything in my game is done by defined class levels and lists of abilities you can choose from. One of the big advantages of the class that gives this ability is that it provides ways to add Energy damage so whilst the Fighter is wailing uselessly on the knight's plate armour, the wizard can zap her with a lightning bolt. It's all a bit Rock, Paper, Scissors by design. But it's still a valid point that 2d6 and 1d6 are not as good as 3d6. However, it's less of a concern than you might think in my game. What sort of value should I put on the Conditional Limitation? I definitely don't want to add a whole separate Hit Roll either which probably throws the maths out. If I went with the Damage Shield approach (I am the GM so I hearby approve it not affecting to the subject) would it be something like this? 15CP HKA 1d6 Energy -½ Linked (to Greater Power) +¼ Area of Effect (Personal Surface) -½ No Range =================================== 9 CP I used the Electric Field example, 6E1,p385. This sort of does what I want, I guess. It seems a bit wonky but I guess it makes sense. Just wasn't what I was expecting.

This is unlikely to be of help as it's not mechanical, but in my game the gods are actual NPCs. The players may not meet them but they know the gods are not just buckets of special effects. Players are wary of offending them, and also occasionally ask for a sign which they may or may not get depending on the god, the player's behaviour and how much it is in the chosen god's area of interest. I think Judeo-Christian religions under which many in the West are brought up, have led everyone to assume gods are omnipotent and all-knowing by default. For a fantasy setting, I find it so much more rewarding to choose a Celtic, Norse or Greek model. Sure, the gods are powerful, but mortals can occasionally steal fire from them, a god can occasionally make a tit of himself by falling in love with an exceptionally beautiful mortal and if you delve deeply enough into the underworld, you might just meet the god of it. So I have no rules for it and yet it makes a noticeable impact on my game. For example, the players became edgy when after making an agreement with a goblin the goblin unexpectedly demanded they swear it by their gods. They knew that if they went back on their word now, there might be consequences. Or in the words of one of my players: "Damn this setting where gods are real and intervene in the world!" :D I honestly find it more satisfying than something like a "Deity Approval" rating or something. Its vagueness is freeing like taking off your underwear on a hot day. What will the gods think of the player's actions and will they notice? The players don't know and that is fun.

I want a power that lets a character ignite any weapon they pick up with Hellish flames (Lethal Energy Damage). I know how to build a HKA power. How do I cost it if it adds to an existing weapon that already does Lethal damage such as a sword? How do I add it to something that already does Normal damage such as a quarterstaff? So for two examples: the character has a sword that already does 1d6(L). They also have a quarterstaff that does 4d6(N). I want to create a power that would let them pick up either and add 1d6 of lethal to it that is added alongside the rest when they hit. (Single hit roll - anything else will both add unnecessary dice rolls and also lead to weird results where they both hit and miss with their weapon). Any help with how to build this, what limitations and what it costs gratefully received! Thank you! K.

Well this one is easily answered, at least. If all the pieces in Chess are queens, then there is no longer the structure that makes it chess. It instead becomes something more like drafts (chequers to Americans, I think). Limits on choices are necessary for choices to be meaningful because the fewer limits there are on choices, the less distinct they become. If the player can mix and match manoeuvres between bites and claws, then bites and claws become more interchangeable and the choice less meaningful. Remember that I had TWO criteria - simple and tactically meaningful. Give someone a hammer and a screwdriver, you have a simple choice that has visibly different outcomes. Give someone a giant toolbox and tell them "hey - now you have LOTS of tactical choices" and two things happen - firstly you lose the simplicity. Secondly, choice diminishes which may seem counterintuitive to you but uninformed choice is not perceived as choice. This is a consequence of the first. A player only feels like they're making a choice if they're in control and they understand those choices. If the player does not, then they actually feel like they don't have choice, they have guessing. Or that they'll just end up doing what their GM tells them they should do which is again, not something that feels like tactical choice to them. In the above, you listed out Grab, Trip, Disarm, Legsweep, Multiple Attack and Combined Attack. In my scenario the player is sitting across from me and saying something like "Should I try to bite the knight which might work or be more defensive and knock him over so he can't attack me so well?" Maybe they do some very quick arithmetic on the two scenarios. It's meaningful and it's in their control. In your scenario, they sit there with the eight different options and if they want to make an informed choice, it's going to take twenty minutes of looking at rules and comparing numbers. What will more likely happen is the player retreats out of either confusion or lack of time to properly assess things and just guesses at what they think will be the best. And guessing doesn't feel like choice. So you see, with two clearly distinct options a player has a tactical decision to make. With massive flexibility, it turns into "I don't have the tools to determine which is best." The former is an exciting decision, the latter a disheartening spin of the compass. Which works absolutely fine for me and is what I've been asking for. But I don't know how to cost it. The system says "here are knockdown rules you can use" but it's just an option that you turn on or off system wide. It's not a Power or an Advantage that I can add. There are things that adjust how it works, but no cost for actually adding it as a special feature of an attack. The above is what I am wanting to do. I don't know how to cost it. They don't want to. Hero is more like a programming language than a program. They want to fight monsters and role-play, not read through two 400+ page books trying to figure out how to do this stuff. Hell, if it's taking me the GM this much effort to make an attack that knocks someone over, how do you expect a friend to manage who I've just invited round to try this thing called a role-playing game? Trust me - I know who I game with a lot better than you do! With respect, that doesn't for reasons given above - I don't know how to cost it because I don't want knockdown to be a general rule in the system. And as regards the suggestion that I'm dismissing lots of solutions, I honestly find the Martial Arts Maneouvres system in its entirety really confusing. Possibly just Linked Legsweep is the way to go, but rightly or wrongly, I genuinely struggle to understand all these rules and know when I've got it right. You talked about me discussing Multiform in the thread. I finally figured out where I was going wrong with that power after a LOT of re-reading and headaches - it's because there is a typo in the cost section of the Multiform power. It says "the most expensive form" and the body of the power description goes to some lengths to say that a character's "True Form" is one of their forms. The cost section should say "the most expensive ALTERNATE form", but it doesn't. I'm guessing that you've been playing Hero for a long time, but I am new to it and things like that throw me. I'm not embarrassed to say I struggle understanding all this stuff. It's very complex. In fact, it brings us back around to the beginning of this post where someone is lost through too many options. Give me two ways to do something, I'll manage somehow. I have around six in this thread and lack the tools to evaluate between them all. You see where I'm coming from? The problem with D&D 5e is that whilst it is simple, it has all the balance of a one-legged man in a landslide, is about as granular as a boulder and due it's maddening d20 "curve" and Advantage / Disadvantage mechancic (roll twice and pick the most favourable / unfavourable) is about as predictable as throwing darts at a wall. Hero 6e has the downside that it is very complicated, but compensates by being fantastic in many, many ways. What I'm trying to do is not go back to D&D, but get my Complexity Payments out of the way upfront so that I can enjoy all the good stuff it offers. I want to have my cake and eat it, basically. By far I want it to be the former. Whilst that might seem odd, I'm intending for powers like this to superceded as characters advance. So this is the first Bear form. As they advance, druids get access to the Great Bear and then Dire Bear versions of the power. Which will have higher strength but I can also re-calculate the power specifically for that form so the simplicity of a static -3 (for example) is pure benefit and no downside. Thank you. A hundred times thank you. This is by far the simplest in play, imo. The player makes an attack. If they hit, target must make a Dex "save". I think I will go with Str over Dex as you suggest because I like the thematic and game consequences of that. I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate you actually writing it out like that with the costs as well. I'm sorry to people generally in the thread if I appear to rail against the Hero system. It's a truly remarkable system. I just get frustrated a bit trying to work out some things which feel like they ought to be simple but are not obvious to me. Sometimes when you make complex things simple, you make simple things complex. It's a principle of design that is hard to get away from. But I have played many, many different role-playing game systems and Hero 6e is one of the three best systems I have ever seen and by far the best of its type. (The other two systems have different goals and are very different). Thank you very much to everyone who has taken the time to reply to this thread - every post in it has taught me something about the system and I appreciate it.

I could work with a resistance roll of some kind since that would get me away from the player having to feel like a warrior only needs to roll to hit once and they have to manage it twice. It would be even better if I could make it work somehow like a partial effect even if the saving throw were passed. E.g. Save for Half Damage or similar. Can you clarify what you mean by alternate to ACV? "No Normal Evasion" doesn't appear in 6E1 as a phrase so this is a custom power you made? And looking up ACV I presume that is the Alternate Combate Value advantage. But the description for that talks about swapping between OMCV / DMCV and OCV / DCV, rather than other attributes. Attack Versus Alternate Defence seems closer but I'm still unclear on what I would do or how much it would cost. Can you do a really simple power the way you would do it that uses a skill roll but doesn't roll to hit? Would help me understand a lot how you're costing this. Really appreciate the reply - am stuck on this one.

Is this possible? I'm creating spells for my wizard class and I have all of them requiring a Spellcasting skill roll. I'm baking it into the magic system for any type of spell from Flight to Magic Missile. However, for attack spells this then leads to a player having to make two consequtive rolls just to hit someone. Which effectively quarters their chance. So for example, I want a minor spell like Magic Missile that does damage roughly equivalent to being hit by an arrow. All well and good except the wizard has half the chance of actually doing that damage than the archer because of the additional 11/- (at current levels) Skill roll. Plus the Wizard will probably have a lower OCV as well. Is there a "No Attack Roll Required" Advantage or way of doing this? It would only be a modest cost increase to add a large area of effect (with Selective even!) and mean that for practical purposes there was no attack roll required. So the effect desired is actually achievable in the system but only by a very overkill method.

The bolded part is something that I explicitly do not want. My goal here is to build a system that is both simple to play and forces interesting tactical choices. The player does not get a detailed breakdown of Active Points, Real Points and other such things that - I'm sorry to say - will instantly disengage my players. They get a bear with two attacks - one of which is a straight bite, the other of which is weaker against armour but also knocks people over. It's meant to be ( a ) immediately graspable by the player and ( b ) mean that the player is making a straight-forward choice between two desirable options. They don't get to make one of the options as useful as the other and void that choice. You also have to understand that I am the ONLY person in the group dealing with power construction, and designing the available powers. I'm honestly staggered that this is up to four pages by this point because to me it is the simplest requirement in the world: I want people who are hit by the bear's claws to have a chance to fall over and people who are hit by other attacks not to be subjected to that risk. There is no further nuance, no options, no choice, no freedom, no variation, no complexity to it than that. Honestly, in D&D I would be long since home by now. It would be something like "Claws: 1d8 damage, Dex Save or be Prone." People keep coming at this from the exact opposite point of view than the one I keep saying I want. They tell me to use knockback rules everywhere - I don't want that. I want this to be a special feature of a special attack. They tell me to make it optional. I don't want that. I want this to be a special feature of a special attack. The complexity is boggling my mind. I just want ONE single attack to knock people over. Nothing less and also nothing more.

Thank you both. I think the point of confusion has been found and it's a doozy. So I looked at the cost given in 6e1 and it's listed as follows: Further down it says this: Taken together these confused the Hell out of me! It seemed to be going out of its way to emphasise that any one of the forms including the "true" form could be the one that costs are calculated from. Indeed, that is what the section at the top says. In the second paragraph there is something that explains how it should work but the word I highlighted in Red got past me: I was costing it based on the Summary section at the top which doesn't say anything about it only applying to Alternative Forms and the first paragraph seemed to be telling me that the "true" form was included in the list of forms. Maybe it's just me but somewhere in the six paragraph explanation of how multi-forms work, it lost me. Honestly, that summary section should read "1 Character point for every 5 Character Points in the most expensive alternate form. As written, it is incorrect. And as it is the simplest explanation it is the one that people, when they find something confusing, go back to for their starting point. Just to check then, the Cost in the summary section at the top of the power description is incorrect. It's 1CP per 5 in the most expensive ALTERNATE form. Which can be any of the player's choice.

Thanks to all. It seems like Lightning Reflexes does what I want (with a bit of fiddling to get it to be +2 to a specific action which isn't on the Cost table). It is a lot cheaper than Boost to Dexterity even with the Limitations that I added. Not that the cost really matters because this is just equipment they'll buy with gold, like a dagger is a HKA power that doesn't require CP points, either. Cheers!

If your magic system uses spell points in some manna (pun intended and awful), then perhaps a character's magic roll determines how much manna they draw for the spell. If they don't draw enough, the spell goes off. If they do, then the spell works. And if they draw too MUCH, then the excess has to be soaked by them - perhaps something equivalent to Long Term Endurance derived from their Manna Pool attribute. The player chooses how much manna they wish to draw when they cast a spell (Xd6 where X is a value chosen up to the character's magic attribute). Now obviously if they are very conservative then they run the risk of not being able to cast their spell. If they're more reasonable, the spell will probably go off but they're at a higher risk of rolling too much and having to soak the excess magic. Now if they're casting spells that cost 8 manna then no big deal - they roll their 4d6 and are pretty confident that their spell will fire and they probably wont have to soak more than five or six extra magic "burn". But when they are attempting a mighty spell that costs 20 manna well now they have to ask themselves whether they want to be very cautious and roll say 6d6 or if they want to draw a lot of manna to make sure their spell goes off but risk an abnormally high roll. Maybe a player uses their character's entire Magic Attribute of 9 to make sure the spell goes off. But with 9d6 in play, minor variance means that the chance of rolling significantly higher is increased over smaller dice pools. Of course a character's magical soak goes up with level as well, but the more dice in play, the greater the variance can be. There are several nice things with this: It works not only with large spells but also with too many spells. As it accumulates (like Long Term Endurance) then consistently going over your limits by a small amount has repercussions just the same as going over your limits by a large amount once - either way you risk burn out. It puts the risk-reward scenario directly under the players control thus adding tension. Do they want to play safe? Do they need to take a risk? It can be pegged easily to existing characteristics. If you have a manna pool in your game, just make a Long Term Manna attribute similar to Long Term Endurance in that it's the same value but used differently. It captures what you describe from the novels you talk about. It can easily be tweaked to add story effects like Voldemort wrestling with the Elder Wand. Want a magical implement to resist being used? Take the Normal Body dice from the spell roll as an additional amount of Manna Burn. (E.g. Voldemort rolls 1,2,2,5,6,6,4 and that's an extra 8 mana to soak). Want enemy mages to try and "burn out" a PC? They start making manna rolls to add to the PC's manna pool. Bonus side-effect: the PC is now desperately trying to cast spells to burn off the additional manna before it harms them permanently. That would be an interesting scenario - to burn out your enemy you have to supercharge them making them more powerful than they can handle, but all the time they're trying to turn that power back on you. Sort of a "You want my power? You can't handle my power!" game effect. In fact, I like that last one so much I'm inclined to yoink it for my own magic system. Thoughts? Like it?

I want wizards in my game to have types of equipment similar to how fighters get weapons and armour, etc. Wizards deserve shiny as well and also I think it might balance the oddity of some classes being able to buy "powers" with gold whilst others have to pay for them with character points. I've created three classes of magical implement (based on D&D 4e) which are wands, staves and orbs. Staves give a boost to a spells effect (e.g. increasing DC by one), Orbs help sustain magic and provide a resevoir of energy (reduce the spell point / manna cost). Wands enable a wizard to cast their spells more quickly. I think I can create the first two okay (though suggestions always welcome) but I'm not quite certain how to create something that allows a wizard to cast spells "more quickly". What I'm thinking currently is something like this: Wand. Boost (Dexterity) 1d6 Reduced Endurance: 0 cost (+½); ends if not holding wand. Only Aid Self (-½) Gestures (-¼) Limited: Applies only to spell casting (-1) Total cost: 3CP Does that seem reasonable? A dagger is a HKA doing 1d6 and costs 10CP. This would typically give +2 Dex but only for purposes of determining which segment a wizard could cast their spell in and only a spell. It seems okay-ish to me but I'm wary because I haven't created any equipment before and because I haven't seen anything else in the system that messes with the intiative order this way. My alternative was to allow wands to affect whether something is a full or half-action but that was way too significant a game element. Thoughts?

I'm about ready to give up on this whole thing and just make up some stats and completely handwave a cost for this thing. Knockback just doesn't work for what I need. Bite - damage only. Claws - person goes prone. That is all I want. And I specifically don't want anything more than that included. So I'm just making something up for this. I'll just add 2CP to the cost or something and say the target is prone. I don't think it will work very well, but I've spent hours and hours reading, re-reading rules trying to create this one power and failing. Aside from the knocking people prone, Multiform confuses the living Hell out of me. The costing makes no sense to me at all. The original character is built on 100CP. I could create a multiform of a mouse, a sloth, or a giant grizzly all at wildly differing stats - anywhere from 1CP to 99CP, and the cost of the power would still be 20CP. It makes no sense to me that it is always the same. I still don't get increasing stats through experience either. The more and more powerful the character's original form gets, the less and less useful this bear form power gets, and yet its cost increases every time they improve the non-bear form. I found the following in the book on the subject: I've read that four times, I still am no closer to understanding it. I'm also lost when it comes to putting limits on how many times a day the character can turn into the bear. I want it to be twice a day given that it is FAR more deadly than their normal form in combat. I've added the twice a day charges value of -1½ so the real point cost is now 8CP. I think that may be the only part of this that I have understood and got right!

Well it's meant to be a very low-level power used against low-level opponents. A goblin might do 1d6-1 Body damage with its knife so it may not be that immediate. Also, the PC can continue to cast it adding more and more entangle each phase. So they could conceivably keep a victim entangled for a very long time. EDIT: Also, I'm trying to keep the cost of the power down. When you have a Fighter next to you who can do 2d6 Lethal every Phase standing next to you with the battle axe that they just bought and it requires only 2 Endurance per swing with it (easily recovered), and this doesn't cost them more than around 3CP to meet the Str Minimum with the weapon, I don't want the druid player to feel too ripped off. In fact, this is becoming a general problem in that fighters are simply buying their equipment which gives them offensive power (weapons) and defences (armour) whereas the non-fighters are paying a LOT of points for things that are no more powerful. My current vine power version following suggestions here is already costing 10CP which is a lot. The fighter can get 15 Strength and 15 Constituion for that! Ramping up the amount of Entangle takes it a lot of 10CP as well. Clutching Vines (11 CP) Entangle 1d6 (10CP; real cost: 5CP) Increased Endurance x3 (-1) Blast 2d6 (10CP; real cost 6CP); Increased Endurance x2 (-½) No Range (-½) Linked -½ Constant +½ Limited (Mostly wont trigger) -½

Are Shakespeare's plays poetry or prose? It can be two things.

So it would be something like this...? Vine Whip (11 CP) Entangle 1d6 (5CP Real Cost) Increased Endurance x3 (-1) Blast 2d6 (6CP Real Cost) Linked -½ Constant +½ Increased Endurance x3 (-1) How would that work in practice? It seems like you'd have to roll attack twice - once for each power? Honestly, I'm not sure about the above. So the character would roll an initial attack and then spend 1 Endurance every turn to do 2d6 (N) against the entangled person each turn? It would have to end when the target escaped the entangle. Is that worth a limitation on the Blast as the PC can't maintain it as normal?

A lot of groups will make committee decisions and actions. For example, they might all decide to chip in to pay for the young girl's enrolment; or a more generous PC might prematurely offer to take it on saving the Greed character from having to actually make a choice. These are the things that can make a GM's grand plans come falling down. PCs will also try very hard to find a way around it by, for example, figuring at least one villager might believe she isn't possessed if they offer enough incentive. (PCs tend to be a lot richer than villagers and a lot of people will overlook a girl being a little odd for their year's wages in gold or because a half-orc has just threatened to bash their brains in if the girl isn't safe and sound when they return next month). So I would consider upping the stakes and making the girl's life in danger from villagers who hate her. Hell, maybe she is possessed and the school becomes a church that can exorcise her. Now you've taken a lot of work-arounds off the table that the PCs might have come up with. Also, consider tying helping the girl not to giving up existing wealth, but passing up an opportunity for more. Maybe a bandit party is offering a share in some lucrative raid that happens tonight, but the PC can't trust the villagers to not harm the girl. This puts the emphasis more directly on the Greed player who is a bandit to help prevent another PC stepping in to handle the girl situation. Now Lust. Lust is going to be a tricky one to pull off in-game.

I would plant VERY subtle hints as the game went on that the items were going to be used for some bad purpose. If at the end, the players choose to hand over the items to the diabolist, they are returned to Hell. If they destroy the items even knowing they fail the quest, then they are granted redemption. Pull out all the stops at presenting this as something you hadn't thought of, didn't intend, so that the players actually think they are making a sacrifice. As I said earlier, it's not the Devil who chooses who is turned away from Heaven. I'm pretty sure your players have forgotten that and opportunities where you can pull a turnabout where the players will react with "I should have known..." rather than "the DM is cheating!" come about too rarely to give up.

Wonderful idea. I really like it. The tricky part is dealing with genre-savvy players. After all, the players themselves are not on trial and with moral quests, there's the problem of the player just saying: "I resist the temptation" because the player themself is not the one actually being confronted with wealth, adulation, sexual satisfaction, whatever. The two ways of getting round this are (a) a dice roll based on Willpower or whatever or ( hiding the true nature of the test. The latter is increasingly difficult because audiences are so bloody genre-aware these days. But it's by far the more satisfying. The trick is to make the players really believe something. For example, the professor is actually evil. Perhaps what will get the players out from Hell is NOT bringing him the items but doing the right thing even though they KNOW it will condemn them to Hell. Have you ever seen the old movie Constantine with Keanu Reeves? It has a gorgeous fake-out along these lines. A twist like this would be a wonderful finalé to the story - after all, it's not the Devil who gets to decide who is imprisoned in Hell, it's God. This is a fact that they should all know, probably do, but you can never mention at any point letting them merrily believe that their only hope to escape is to please the demon / professor / Devil without actually misleading them unfairly. On specific quests, again the trick is to set things up so that it can't be a simple "I do what I know is right" task. So for example, the soldier tasked with Pride finds the bow they are questing for, the opponent is dangerous and they may or may not be able to beat the opponent (they're not sure). But the opponent regards the bow as worthless and will cheerfully give it to the PC if that PC acknowledges to others that they don't think they can beat the opponent in a fight. And this is a real decision because the player knows they have a shot at winning, maybe even that they probably can. But the trick is that there's a way to get the bow without having to, with nobody dying or losing anything. The ONLY reason for them to fight is pride. If they do, they probably win the fight but the bow gets destroyed during the battle. Perhaps the opponent is a fire mage or dragon or something and sets the place on fire during the fight. It should never be spelled out until afterwards that the only reason they fought was pride. Don't oversell it by making the opponent they have to concede defeat to be a kobold or something. Make it plausible so that the player knows they have a good shot of taking the bow by force and the only reason for them to beg for it really is because they're not certain they can win. The player wont know that the bow gets destroyed in the fight. Similarly you can set up other situations for other weapons. Say there is some special bonus they get along with the weapon that makes them more powerful. You could set it up so that they actually fail their quest but someone else passes it for them. The quest will succeed but someone else is going to get "their" bonus because the other player was the one that saved the day and retrieved the object. If they allow the other player to succeed, they have passed. If they risk everything so that they are the one that gets the prize, jeapodizing the group's success for their own profit, they have failed the Greed quest. All of this is difficult to pull off because you have to be very subtle about it and good at misdirection. However, it could be a lot of fun.

I want to make a power for a character that allows them to conjure vines that wrap around people and bind them up. The basic power seemed simple enough (though correct me if I've made a mistake) Clutching Vines (real cost: 5CP) Entangle 1d6 (10CP) Increased Endurance x3 (-1) I want to do something a little fancy, though. Firstly, I would like to make the vines do progressive damage for as long as someone is entangled. Say 2d6(N) per turn. Entangle doesn't do damage by itself and Damage Over Time modifier seems both geared towards powers that do and also is built around a set time limit whereas with this it's unknown how long it will be before the victim escapes (and indeed will vary depending on how powerful the victim is). Suggestions? Should I make it a Multi-power based around HTH and add Entangle? All replies appreciated!

Unless of course, you're Sir Ian McKellan.

This assumes that you manage to efficiently collect the blood. If we're talking battlefield enemies, you'll need many times that. So instead, I'm picturing vast arrays of sacrificial victims strung up with their throats slit to drain into long stone troughs. Imagine the PCs arriving into that chamber just as the Blood Sword has been forged.

Okay, back to Serious Business again... It matters to me. I'm trying to create classes with interesting tactical decisions here. I want a bear that has a choice of a bite attack or big swiping claws. The latter of which has a good chance of knocking people prone. I still have unanswered questions on that, though. Firstly, that's way more damage than I would like it to do and secondly, it depends on actually being able to damage the opponent. In the scenario I gave earlier of Bear vs. Knight, there's a strong chance the bear wont be able to do Body damage to the plate-armoured knight, but it should still be able to knock the knight flat on his back. So that's why the below isn't working for me: My reading of the Knockback / Knockdown rules indicate that the attack has to actually successfully do damage and it also depends on the Impairing Wounds optional rules which I don't really want to use as I don't want critical hits.

Bears don't need judo! (Except when they do...)