It reads "if the attack test rolls double on uncancelled positive dice".

Does that mean prior to canceling?

Does that mean regardless of the characteristic value?

Thus, an extreme example would be: Joe has 1 dexterity, fire a pistol, in the night, with the shakes, having lost his glasses (2 positives, 3 negative) = + 6 6 - 4 6 6. Does that mean Joe has the luck of his life and destroy the brain while taking 1 stress? It certainly reads so but is that the intent?

Edit: ok "regardless", I apologize english is my 2nd language.

Regardless. There's no such word as irregardless.

Well if you rolled +6,6 and -4,6,6 the 6's would cancel each other out and you would be left with the 1 negative. They would fail to hit and take one stress for it.

I took this as if the positive dice that are left over have doubles AND they succeed at the task then it's a head shot. Tonight was my first game and I had a player use an axe on a dog he rolled +5,5,5 and -3,2 so none of the dice cancelled and 5 was equal to or less then his dex so he hit the dog for a head shot and buried the axe deep in it's skull.

I could be wrong and it's just if they roll doubles and aren't cancelled that they lucked out and got the head shot even if they didn't succeed but thats not the way I will play it.

Llothos, I agree it would make sense to cancel dice first, but the text clearly says "uncancelled" which is why I am curious how people interpret it. As far as the characteristic value, while it isn't mentionned in the text, we could assume since it's a test that it has at least to be lower or equal to your characteristic.

When it is referencing uncancelled dice it is referring to the the dice still remaining after normal cancelling. And you have to have successfully attacked as well. So it is not any doubles, just successful doubles still remaining.

I have a question that is related to the "Destroy the Brain" attribute of the ghouls in the Night of the Meteor scenario. Therefore, I post my question in this thread, because I don't want to start a new thread.

On page 56 it is clearly written "The only way to kill a ghoul, as survivors quickly discover, is to destroy its brain or sever it from the body. Anything else can, at best, only slow down or hamper a ghoul. As long as the brain stem and spine are somewhat intact, what’s left of the ghoul will continue in its mission to feed on flesh."

However, imagine a group of players that decide to explicitly attack the body and not the head of a ghoul for many times. According to the rules the ghoul would die once it has collected at least 9 physical stress which is contrary to the description in the scenario. According to the scenario the ghoul may be tremendously damaged and missing some limbs but it should still be alive.

Given the same example, it seems to be weird that the ghoul dies if a critical strike arrives. In such a case someone would have accidently hit the head.

It also seems to be weird the other way round. If players decide to explicitly attack the head of a ghoul they would magically miss the head that is protected by a magical shield like X times and hit some other part of the body instead.

The first time I red the scenario I though that it is part of the story to figure out how one can kill a ghoul. I can imagine some really freaky situations where a ghoul still tries to get to the players lacking all limbs but one arm for example. But this way, the whole process of gathering the information is irrelevant because the information that is needed is applied like automatically in combat.

Writing these lines, I came up with an idea that can reflect the "destroy the brain thing" in a more realistic manner:

If someone explicitly attacks another part of a ghoul and the stress track of the ghoul gets filled in this process, then the ghoul automatically clings to life like a player loosing one or more of his limbs or taking some other meaningful severity 3 trauma! The same thing would happen if the attacker rolls a critical strike during this process not filling the stress track. (could be called the "destroy the brain mod" )

The other thing I do not get is why the zombies in the "No Room in Hell" scenario don't have the "Destroy the Brain" attribute. The descriptions of killing zombies are basically the same in both scenarios (page 75): "It probably won’t take long for the PCs to figure out how to permanently kill the living dead: destroy their brains [...] Anything less only slows them down."

Any comments?

Regards,

BigChiller

Ghoul "dying" due to body damage:

I imagine the ghoul is still "undead" but has taken so much damage it's basically just a mutilated pile of broken limbs and mutilated flesh that it can't even drag itself towards it's its prey. efictivly it's taken out of action. Or the GM could say "Destroy the brain" overides the 9 crit stress part,

Also bear in mind it sais: "as long as the brain and spinal cord are still somewhat intact" (Okay "somewhat" is pretty vague) I guess a crit would have broken/ severed the neck and/or spinal column.

Missing the head:

Hitting the zombie might not be that easy, okay they are slow but they sorta sway and lunge and grasp for you, so hitting the head in melee is not as easy as one might think. Me and a friend also have a debate going about how much damage a zombie brain would be able to take: like blunt weapons that don't actuyaly cave in the skull will barely damage the zombies brain.

Combat: The way our GM does it is: you can hack at a ghoul all you want, leg wounds will reduce it's speed, hack of the arms and it can't grab and only tries to lunge and bite, cut of the jaw and it can't even bite anymore, but it's still active. Going for the brain is just quicker. If you roll a crit you've hit the head/spinal colum/weakspot by luck or accident.

We usualy tack on the "destroy the brain" rule to those "No room in hell" zombies.

An intresting thing with PC trying to figure out what kills the zombie: Since your PC's are the players, and your players will probably know about zombies/headshots/the walking dead, the first thing a PC will do is atempt a headshot/ beheading strike.

Greetz!

Missing the head:

Hitting the zombie might not be that easy, okay they are slow but they sorta sway and lunge and grasp for you, so hitting the head in melee is not as easy as one might think.

When you try to hit the head standing in front of the zombie it might be more difficult. However, in this case it is equally difficult when you try to hit it standing behind the zombie while it is distracted by someone else.

Combat: The way our GM does it is: you can hack at a ghoul all you want, leg wounds will reduce it's speed, hack of the arms and it can't grab and only tries to lunge and bite, cut of the jaw and it can't even bite anymore, but it's still active. Going for the brain is just quicker. If you roll a crit you've hit the head/spinal colum/weakspot by luck or accident.

How do you handle the effects? When someone of your group attacks the legs do you instantly reduce the speed of the zombie on a success despite the stress being dealt? How is attacking the head quicker? Does the GM give you some extra positive dice on such attacks?

We usualy tack on the "destroy the brain" rule to those "No room in hell" zombies.

Seems to be a good idea.

An intresting thing with PC trying to figure out what kills the zombie: Since your PC's are the players, and your players will probably know about zombies/headshots/the walking dead, the first thing a PC will do is atempt a headshot/ beheading strike.

If anyone of our group does so it would be just fine for me.

Thanks for reply!

Ooh good point about attacking the zombie from behind, Maybe the GM could add some positive dice when you "outflank" the zombie. (LOL reminds me of playing D&D 4th rogues )

Yep, zombies might already be a shambling, rotting mess of diseasedmuscles and rotting tendons, but they can't hop very well.

so if you swing into their legs and take out their kneejoint they will drop. Problem is it's still crawling towards you.

So when you got a bunch of ghouls on you, by the time you have dispatched the other 3, mr. No Legs has bitten your ancle.

While getting a success on a headshot will kill the zombie. Thats what i meant with quicker: less attacks needed to kill a zombie.

So i'd sugest adding some negative dice to a (lets call it) "called shot to head" but a single success will kill the zombie.