While I'm really enjoying the system, I have a few concerns about our Ironbreaker - she basically yawned her way through our second combat because nothing could touch her (toughness 4, gromril plate + shield = 10 soak). Granted, she was fighting cultists and soldiers and not trolls - BUT - I'd like to be able for enemies of her approximate "level" to have a greater chance at inflicting minor damage than zero, even if they are relatively weak.

Does anyone have any house rules they use to represent "ping" damage or some such thing, preventing an Ironbreaker from wading through a hypothetically infinite sea of ST 3(3) cultists? I was toying with the idea that if the damage was over 1/2 the soak value (calculated after penetration) the victim still takes 1 wound.

If I remember original rules right (I changed them so much, that I don't know anymore if something is official or not) there is a rule that says "you always inflict minimum 1 wound, even if the counting points to 0".

You can also make critical hits unsoakable (I think Gallows proposed something like that).

Above that, Ironbraker is supposed to be hard to harm (send bigger enemies on her ).

-Minimal damage from attack is 1, even if enemy soaks it all

-If all damage is soaked, every critical is added to minimal damage as 1 normal damage

-Your NPC may use action cards from the choice the players have, if I remember correctly every expertise die from A/C/E is one extra action card for the NPC

To sum it up: give the party more henchmen to fight in every encounter and swarm the Ironbreaker. Or use critical heavy cards. Or give your NPC cards like ***** in the Armour. Or attack when they are sleeping - even a dwarf has to sleep, if he doesn't take armor, give him permament fatigue that cannot be restored until he sleeps without the armor. Or attack the Ironbreaker using attacks that are stress/fatigue heavy (e.g. cultist attacks, especially Cultist Leader spell). There are quite a few options if you see that besides hp, there is also fatigue and stress .

D.

why exhaust yourself trying to figure out a way to attack a player's strength? it can end up combative. they built their whole character on being a tank. let them be a tank. instead attack the player's weakness. if you are using cultists and chaos stuff do everything you can to make the ironbreaker go insane. all dwarves are already half-crazy anyway. (and i can't wait for the corruption rules to come out.) if you still just want to give that ironbreaker a good ole' fashioned dirty south-style ass whoopin' throw some rat ogre's at her. they auto crit, soak does not apply and crit reduction only works once a session. a small handfull of them with a couple of skaven henchmen running around will probably net a quick TPK. happy ironbreaker hunting!

Minimum damage 1 wound is absolutely right.

AND, you can use the "extra successes cause extra damage" from the GMTkit, might help.

But your weaklings will have to gang up on the Ironbreaker to eventually take him down. I use 1 Fortune per times outnumbering. That apart from any assist bonuses.

Just make the Ironbreaker stress out...

With a completely physical based stats, make her run fear roll and give her stress. Assume she didn't increase her willpower, just 6 stress will make her pass out.

Even if she is not passed out, she may have to use "Assess Situation" a lot to make her in active during combat.

Sounds like the rules cover this, must've glossed over the "minimum damage" thing!

I've got no issue with using stress / fatigue / armor piercing to present a challenge, my concern was more that she had *nothing* to fear enemies that could present a challenge to anyone else in the group. Now she just has "very little" to fear from them, which is worlds better.

You can also give opponents different action cards.

Shield bash and knock the IB down. Give them access to Trollfeller Strike / DoubleStrike/ Reckless Cleave, etc. All sorts of other cards that cause affects (like fatigue, stress, etc), rather than damage, become important against her. Have them grapple and immobilize her. Etc.

Optionally, have extra henchmen be allowed to, instead of adding dice to the dice pool, add to damage (should the attack hit). For example:

Henchmen group of 10 goblins attacks. The GM decides to have 4 add to the attack (+4 [W]), and 5 add to damage (+5)... instead of normally adding +9[W].

Another option, would be to allow henchmen to use individual boon lines multiple times (since there are multiples of them attacking). This would allow, for example, a boon +damage line to be activated a couple times, depending on the roll. (Hmm, I actually like this one a lot)

You can do zero or less damage (after mitigation) and still do more than one wound. Here is a synopsis of a discussion we had a while back on these forums. In it you will see that, in addition to the minimum 1 wound, crits also convert to normal (additional) wounds. A good hit even against a heavily armored and extremely tough opponent can still hurt.

Damage, Null damage, and critical clarification:

• If you fail to achieve at least one ‘success’ during an action card resolution roll, negative or beneficial boon and bane side effects on the card, or from other sources, may still be activated.
• ‘Effects’ are defined as lines that are not ‘Success Lines’, or simply Boon, Bane, Comet, or Chaos Star effects as well as standard effects like fatigue and stress reclamation, or boon and bane effects from talents, conditions, and other sources.
• Damage is defined as any amount of damage (damage potential minus mitigation), positive, negative, or zero in value. Failure to do damage, due to a failed action card roll for example, would be considered NULL damage, or no damage.
• If the damage of a successful attack is zero or less than zero, the attack still generates a minimum of 1 wound.
• If the damage is not NULL, but is equal to zero or less, and critical effects are generated, those crits are converted to standard wounds and added to the minimum 1 wound for a total damage done to the target. Note: This is post damage mitigation calculation so toughness and soak have already been considered.
• If you fail to generate a success during an action card resolution roll, and so have NULL or no damage, any crits generated have no effect and are ignored.
• Boon effects do not apply if they are in directly reliant on a successful hit and a success is not generated. If you miss, you have no potential damage and thus cannot change wounds into criticals. If the action gave you a free maneuver, for example, you could still get that boon effect.

Short Answer:
Question: Can you trigger boon and bane effects on an action card, even if you fail to succeed during the action card roll?
Answer: Yes. This would also apply to other effects listed on the action card such as a Comet or a Chaos Star.

Short Answer:
Question: If you fail to hit, can you still spend boons on crits and do damage anyway.
Answer: Technically, you can buy them, but they have no effect. You can only ‘convert crits to damage’ on a successful hit in which the total damage is zero or less.

Don't try to screw a player for making a legal character. If you allow high Toughness and heavy armour, expect almost invulnerable characters. Personally, I'd ban Ironbreakers (not just because they are too tough, also because they're elite warriors, and therefore fluffwise not a basic career).

Also don't increase the strength of the enemies in trying to hurt the ironbreaker. Doing so will kill the lesser characters, and you'll find yourself doing increasingly weird things to prevent the entire party (apart from the ironbreaker) being wiped out. Instead, let him shine in combat. But give other players their own chance to shine. Make social situations matter. And if you really want to take the ironbreaker out, Stress might be much more effective than damage.

In short: you don't fix a broken game by highlighting the broken parts. You fix it by highlighting the parts that work, and if necessary, banning the parts that break it.

mcv said:

That's what I was saying in my post above, there ARE no invulnerable characters (or monsters for that matter).

A goblin with a spear (DR5;CR2), with a half decent roll, could do 2 wounds to that Ironbreaker. All he has to do is hit and get 2 boons. Being this is a 'hit heavy' game, and taking into consideration A/C/E, a few goblins with spears could be a real danger to an Ironbreaker.

The way some are talking, a group of 5 Goblins is no match for an Ironbreaker. He could wade through them without a scratch on his pretty Gromril armor.

We have 5 Goblins armed with spears. Let's assume

• The Ironbreaker kills one every round.
• That none of the Goblins penetrate his armor.
• That the Goblins are using only standard melee attacks and no special attacks.
• That I'm not using A/C/E (to keep things consistent).
• That we're not dodging or otherwise complicating things.

Here's Sunatet's dice roller: http://www.gmtools.excelocms.com/dice_roller.html

Here's my opening pool: <P><BB>(G)[bB]

Round 1:

Time: 2010-5-11 10:7:34 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{S}<BB>*S**S*(G)*B*[bB]
Time: 2010-5-11 10:7:34 - Failed -
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{C}<BB>*S*(G)[bB]{C}
Time: 2010-5-11 10:7:34 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{B}<BB>*B**S*(G)*S*[bB]{C}
Time: 2010-5-11 10:7:34 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{BB}<BB>*S**S*(G)*SD}[bB]{C}{B}
Time: 2010-5-11 10:7:34 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{S}<BB>*S**S*(G)*S*[bB]{C}

Result: Ironbreaker takes 4 (minimum 1 wounds), 1 Goblin dies

Round 2:

Time: 2010-5-11 10:10:3 - Failed -
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{B}<BB>*S**B*(G)[bB]{C}
Time: 2010-5-11 10:10:3 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{C}<BB>*S*(G)*SB*[bB]
Time: 2010-5-11 10:10:3 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P><BB>*S**B*(G)*S*[bB]{C}
Time: 2010-5-11 10:10:3 - Failed -
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{BB}<BB>*S*(G)*SB*[bB]{C}{C}

Result: Ironbreaker takes 2 (minimum 1 wounds), 1 Goblin dies

Round 3:

Time: 2010-5-11 10:13:59 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{BB}<BB>*S**S*(G)*SD}[bB]{C}
Time: 2010-5-11 10:13:59 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{B}<BB>*S**S*(G)*B*[bB]{C}
Time: 2010-5-11 10:13:58 - Failed -
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{C}<BB>*S*(G)[bB]{B}

Result: Ironbreaker takes 2 (minimum 1 wounds), 1 Goblin dies

Round 4:

Time: 2010-5-11 10:14:47 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P><BB>*B**B*(G)*SD}[bB]{B}
Time: 2010-5-11 10:14:46 - Failed -
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{CC}<BB>(G)*B*[bB]{C}

Result: Ironbreaker takes 1 (minimum 1 wounds), 1 Goblin dies

Round 5:

Time: 2010-5-11 10:15:39 - Passed +
Roll: <P><BB>(G)[bB]
Result: <P>{B}<BB>*S**B*(G)*B*[bB]{B}{B}

Result: Ironbreaker takes 1 (minimum 1 wounds), last Goblin dies

Net result: Ironbreaker takes 10 wounds and not once did I roll 2 boons for an extra wound - nor did I use A/C/E

Characters like Ironbreakers are meant to stand up front a take a beating, but they are far from invulnerable.

Edit: Looking back, those are some half decent rolls, but as a GM if my goblins did half that damage I would consider it a successful attack

mcv said:

This has been talked over and over again in at least two threads. I agree that you need to look upon hands of player taking Ironbreaker or Trollslayer career, but fluffwise you can't just add Ironbreaker later on without bending the rules ("I'm not an Solider/Thug/Mercenary, really, I'm Ironbreaker in the making, really").

Also I agree with NezziR: high soak PCs are easily overcome with hordes of enemies focus firing: you need just two goblin henchmen group to decently injure Ironbreaker during fights. I would even expect of Ironbreaker to try and take all of goblins him/herself, because of obvious "I'm the hardest 'un" reasons.

D.

Dheran said:

You got me on poor wording of what I wanted to say.

The point still stays: some think this, some think that, and it's been discussed.

Focus on overcoming high soak mate

D.