King Broyan and the Crimson Bat

[Lawrence]

I wasn’t referring to bleeding the bat. I was just responding to the previous posters last points. In fact, the whole Bleed mechanic should be available only on crits IMO. By it’s very definition it represents the severing of a major artery. And that is by its very definition, a critical hit.

As Hannu’s pointed out, before a Bleed takes effect there’s still an Opposed Endurance/Combat Style roll to take into account before Bleed is considered effective. This is why it isn’t a Crit Only effect. I’ve lost count of the combats I’ve run and the Bleed attempts I’ve seen; I certainly haven’t seen it become the deal/game breaker you’re claiming it is, so perhaps you can give me a couple of play-based examples where it has been too powerful to support the argument.

I’d also offer this in defence of the way we structured Bleed (and to counter your wonderful Pugsly example). I take a razor blade and slice open a vein (I don’t have to open an artery or cause Dexter-style spray everywhere). The razor doesn’t cut very deep, and perhaps does only 1 point of damage in game terms, but if I now lie down and don’t fight the inevitable, I’ll soon die as I bleed out. An innocuous cut or nick can have the same effect. A stab to the gut in the right place won’t cause massive, critical amounts of trauma, but quite rapidly the blood loss and shock will build and yes, I’ll be on my last legs soon enough.

In my experience, most combats are over within 2 or 3 rounds – more than enough to then get help, magical or otherwise, for Bleeding characters. Also, if a character is Bleeding, they should get the hell out of the fight, if they can. The RQ6 combat rules are designed to make characters and players think about the consequences of getting into a fight in the first place. Nasty things happen. If they happen to you, do something about it.

Oh, and don’t forget Luck Points either (they’re in the game for a reason). A Luck Point can be used to downgrade a wound, change a dice roll, or, as I would also allow, negate a Special Effect.

So I would change RQ6 to make Bleed only available on critical hits. That would change a lot of weapons, but it is necessary IMO.

If you’ve genuinely found Bleed to be such a game changer in play, then do exactly that. It’s your game. Make the rules work for the way you want to play. I don’t think making Bleed a crit-only Effect will change anything aside from the frequency with which Bleed can be used (it won’t make any different to weapon stats), so it seems like an easy thing to do to negate the problems you seem to have encountered.

[Pentallion]

A bit of an over reaction on this bleed issue IMO. Here is what kicked it off:

It shouldn’t be simply the realization that one has 20+ Runespells of the right variety, full iron gear, and 200+ points of stored pow,
Did you not read my post? It was so simple even a Balazaring could do it. Figuring out HOW was the great genius of King Broyan. No 20+ runespells or 200 points stored power required.
…
No, all the players have to do now is just take Bleed.

IMO, Dissolv, who evidently didn’t bother to read my original post about how simple RQ3 could have simulated King Broyan defeating the Crimson Bat, decided to make hyperbolic claims of 20+ Runespells and 200 points stored power.

so I responded with now all he has to do is take bleed.

This isn’t a thread about complaining about the bleed mechanic or if I agree or not with Loz that it is OP. It’s about how RQ3 worked just fine at the high end and in fact, one didn’t even need to be a high end adventurer to do some of the epic things described in Gloranthan Lore.

That RQ6 does not allow such things is a step in the wrong direction. I would hope that Glorantha Runequest would put that back on track. I suspect it will. We were promised the Hero Wars, not the Nerfed Heroes Wars.

[Hannu Kokko]

Returning to original problem of Broyan vs the Bat.

What if:
If Bat fumbles and Broyan criticals – Broyan uses Force Failure and Stun Location on the wing. Bat dives down without control and takes 18d6 (due to size) and 52d6 damage to four random due to its size and locations due to height of 260 meters?

[Pentallion]

Returning to original problem of Broyan vs the Bat.

What if:
If Bat fumbles and Broyan criticals – Broyan uses Force Failure and Stun Location on the wing. Bat dives down without control and takes 18d6 (due to size) and 52d6 damage to four random due to its size and locations due to height of 260 meters?
…
Broyan did not attack the Bat hoping for a crit while the Bat fumbled. That’s not a plan. Broyan had a plan. He knew what he was going to do. That doesn’t preclude a Bat fumble following a Broyan crit, it just means the plan didn’t require it.

[Hannu Kokko]

Broyan might have had a plan that he thought would work but really had no future but he happened to get heroically lucky… The first casualty of the war is the plan. Afterwards he embellished the story a bit diminishing the luck element. End result anyway was that he got the bat down and was a hero. We do not hear stories of those who did not try or did not succeed…

[Pentallion]

I must update my opinion on Bleed. Turns out we had misinterpreted the rules on parrying. When they spoke of varying weapon sizes parrying all, half or none of the damage, my play group thought they were referring to how many of the weapons armor points were to be applied, all half or none.
…
Now we realize that parrying in RQ 6 is more like the old Stormbringer parry, but improved as you can’t parry a dragon with your dagger. You parry a broadsword with your target, you block everything. We were still using the weapons armor points and letting damage beyond that go through to armor/hit points.
…
This makes a little difference to Bleed. Our way, even if you parried, you could be made a bleeder. Now, if you parry a crit, you can’t get Bled because no damage gets through. They have to choose bypass parry to get damage in.
…
Not sure how I feel about the new parry rules. I really enjoyed chipping away at the PCs shield, making them feel like they’d better dispatch this foe quickly before their parry is worthless. And I wonder how the players will react should they do a lot of damage to someone and none of it gets through, then the guy with the greatsword rolls crap for damage and still gets past the parry. Seems like everyone will want greatswords.

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