RuneQuest Combat is Not Balanced

RuneQuest combat is extremely dangerous and yet RuneQuest adventurers often find themselves in situations where combat is going to be necessary to go deeper into a situation. Given that RuneQuest is deliberately “not balanced” adventurers will often find their path blocked by a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

For example, the adventurers might be investigating a plague of diseases destroying a village, only to realize that a band of broo are behind the plague. There are maybe four or five adventurers and they discover to their horror at least dozen broo. This is suicidal, even for a group of Rune Lords. As a GM what do I do?

1. Let the adventurers retreat! The players made a bad miscalculation and found themselves in over their head. Let them run away and regroup.
2. Try to make sure there is a backdoor around the obstacle. The players attacked the front door and got repulsed. Always let there be another way in – a backdoor, a sally port, a sewer, whatever. Don’t make a big fight where they are outnumbered the only way to get past the obstacle! And of course, then give them hints.
3. Let the adventurers gather allies. These are broo, right? Then have the players go to the local Storm Bull temple and get a half dozen or so Storm Bull cultists as allies. Of course the adventurers have to lead them to the fight. Depending on their relationship with the temple, this may generate plenty of additional roleplaying opportunities and story lines.

Now depending on the GM, this could be a grand skirmish, or you can just assume the allies remove many of the foes, leading the adventurers to fight whoever seems most appropriate. My personal preference is always the latter (I hate rolling dice against myself), but that’s just me.

Now obviously, the players now need to deal with their allies, who might want much or even all of the treasure, or might have other demands. But that generates new stories and adventure seeds.

I find combat slow and not scary, because every attack is between 2-4 rolls (attack, defense, damage, area; without calculating damage to weapons and shields and so on), but I did not feel there was a real sense of threat. How can I hasten combat and have it like you do? Has anyone had a critical or a fumble yet? That tends to get folk really worried really fast. My round goes around the table by Strike Rank, and the dice rolling is pretty easy – do you hit, do you parry, what’s the damage, what is the result. Repeat. Given that most combats last only a few rounds before something terrible happens, this goes pretty quick.

If the adventurers are tough characters like Rune Lords, a few options:

1. Hit them with as many missile weapons as possible. You can’t parry an arrow. Most hits do nothing, but there’s always that chance of a critical.
2. Have their own Rune Lord enter the fray. The advantage of 120% skill is nullified when fighting someone with 120% skill.
3. Give the opponents a chance to prepare for the fight. What do you mean the troll has Bludgeon 6 on their maul?

And it goes without saying that RuneQuest lends itself to clever tactics from the players.