Leondgorance said:

In combat Toughness adds to Damage Reduction, Fatigue limit and the number of Criticals before you risk Death... Toughness keeps you up so you have a chance of hitting things.

Out of combat Toughness is used all the time to recover wounds, resist poisons, probably disease too. Toughness is a very good stat!

Leondgorance said:

You can backtrack all you like, I quoted what you said above. If I don't take what you say literally, you expect me to take it figuratively, perhaps? In which case, the discussion is irrelevant as you're talking about some mystical universe in which by "Plate" you meant, of course, Kevlar Mk II.

It's really a simple point: You said it's impossible to die by the core rules. Either that was an exaggeration, or, your group/GM is doing something wrong. There is no other option.

I don't particularly understand you. You clearly have little grasp of what your statements really mean when they are made. Might I suggest a more careful approach to language in the future?

Well obviously this system is only you played before as you never heared for ANY other plate than FULL plate.Too bad than,as i said before by plate i meant heavy armour,and in those rules you can have best armour after FULL plate,its scale i think,4+1 in like one session of play.So yes,most melee will have it.Period.Wont even talk about Ironbreakers,that have in start armour that is stronger than full plate:))

Its very hard to die.And i back that now and anytime.At least by those rules.

My aproach could be as much careful as possible,but it wont matter if you dont or dont want to understand what i wanted to say in global,not literally.

Cheers!

Fresnel said:

I must agree with that thou.But Strength and Agility got some other non combat uses as well. Only skill that is connected with toughness is resillence,and there are few conected with strength and agility.

Leondgorance said:

Toughness sets the corruption threshold. Resilience also helps resist corruption. Resilience is arguably the most important skill in the game.

Leondgorance said:

Yep, it's the first one of these games I've ever played, that's for sure. Though I could bring up that I've played since I first picked up the red box, I'm sure you'd just respond with "Well, I played blue box!" when neither one of us has any proof.

The simple fact is that you mentioned Plate. That means Full Plate, unless you refer to Breastplate and Chain, which is still 5g and out of reach for most characters, especially with a 12 point limit. In addition to this, both suits that can be considered plate in any way are Rare, meaning they shouldn't be found on "most melee". It also costs 5g, which means your 10g equipment total for your group is less likely unless everyone else is poorly equipped. This is a further indication that something has gone wrong in your game if the group is having to resort to drastic rule modifications to remove the "impossibility" of PC death.

Again, feel free to backtrack all you like, but your story continues to be very sketchy. If you had said something along the lines of "We like high PC death games, and want a more Chaosium CoC feel as far as survivability goes", then that's different. But when you say that it's impossible to die under core rules, despite several people telling you otherwise, it shows unfamiliarity with the system, or a series of errors on the behalf of your GM and group.

In statistics, you can have an observation that is completely out of the ordinary. That's called an outlier, and you (most of the time) discard it as it is likely attributable to an error. When you have an outlier that cannot be readily explained, it is very critical to disregard it.

In this case, your group is an "outlier". It is likely attributible to error.

Fresnel said:

Agreed. It's what makes careers with the Resilience skill so handy to have; they can generally stand up to the rigors of the Warhammer world and keep the group going when others would have long since gone completely insane.

People that plate argue is just not constructive, you misunderstood eachother, leave it at that

About dying: I think that death with 25 points is fairly hard, except when the whole party is wiped and finished on the ground.

I'm gonna mention some things from "The Gathering Storm", not much but you can get is as a SPOILER so you're warned:

My point is that the system is really great, dice system have potential for best percentage scaling I've ever seen and it's warhammer system!!

I just say that as it is it have issues some of the important aspects both warhammer and FRP system. Nice thing is thats its so modular so it can be tweaked easily . Again you can disagree with me and I will take all feedback as ussual, coolheaded and with respect of others opinion.

Sorry for the long post

Baaah,

was hoping that

Fresnel said:

Didn't have opportunity to read corruption rules, but I totally agree that Toughness is fairly important stat, on par with Willpower for any character.

Sephirotth said:

Since I am also going to run this with a group of five people (Pit Fighter with 2h in leather, Scout, Coachman, Barber-Surgeon and Gold Mage) I want to inquire about this a little further:

[MORE SPOILER]

I read TGS as being designed for a group of three players, and it says that before they get to the clearing they might get into a fight against 1 Gor plus 4 Ungor henchmen (they are described to fight until they are outnumbered, so I guess for a group of five players at more than one or two Ungor henchmen and maybe also another Gor would need to be added, but I guess a Gor and two groups of five Ungor Henchmen could also do the trick). Did you set these loose? It says to only do this if the party isn’t particulary circumspect…

The actual fight on the clearing always sounded really grim to me:

Izka Mad- tooth is engaged with the stone, and scattered around the clearing are 2 standard Gors and 3 Ungor henchmen per PC present.

This is what it says in the description.

For your group this would have been Izka and 10 standard Gors plus 15 Ungor henchmen – that means you have used five Gor less and you have made two more Gors much weaker by transforming them to henchmen. That would explain why your characters were able to successfully get through this setting which I would expect to wipe out my group – and since my group is not exactly combat focused I might have to reduce the difficulty even more than you did to get them through the event alive… I am 99.9% sure that they wouldn’t stand a chance against 10 standard Gors plus Izka – even without the henchmen.

[/MORE SPOILER]

...Izka, 2 Gors, 3 henchmen Gors and 15 ungor henchmens...

5 PCs (two of which are heavily combat focused) vs 3 monsters and two henchmen groups? Of course it was easy! Try making those 3 henchmen Gors non-henchmen, for a total of 5 Gors, and see how the battle plays out. It should be at least a little more difficult, although with 5 PCs they should still win. Henchmen are pretty much meant to be mowed down, and just hope to inflict some damage. They do NOT have any durability. IMO, Henchmen should be avoided unless using a large quantity of weak enemies. In fact, I don't think I've ever used henchmen other than for testing.

As ozean pointed out, the encounter wasn't adjusted correctly for the number of PCs, which made it easier than designed. 10 Gors and 15 Ungor henchmen, plus the Izka, would have definitely posed a serious problem for the group.

...He was at right place, only 2 of them could attack him at that time but he died at FIRST round, didnt even have chance to play. Reckless cleave + Thunderous blow disintegrated him.

You have two heavily combat-oriented PCs with powerful attacks. Did you use the Skeleton's A/C/E pool to add misfortune dice to the PCs' attacks? Did you have the Skeleton Dodge one attack and Parry the other attack? It is quite possible for enemies to survive for at least a round if they devote themselves to it. Yes, combat is deadly for both sides.

Like this it doesn't have that same warhamer feeling of fearing for your life in every encounter you enter, combat should be very lethal to maintain atmosphere of dark, bloody and gritty world where one wrong step can bring you to brink of destruction or something worse...

As the adventure/campaign progresses, the PCs should accumulate critical wounds. These aren't, generally, easy to get rid of. Once they get a couple, every combat become very dangerous. Remember that Critical Wound also count as Wounds, ie reduce the Wound Threshold.

Are you aware that by RAW archer with the rapid fire card, corrected one in errata, can do 39 damage(with reduction of 3x tong.+armor) which sums to 30+ damage to unarmored target!!

Well, if we assume a 5 Ag with a DR 5 Bow, that's a standard 10 damage. Assuming 3 successes on the first roll, it's bumped up by 2 for a total of 12. Assuming the archer uses the Reckless side, which is rare, if he manages to hit two more times (with a cumulative <P> added to the roll), and assuming even with all the extra <P> he gets 3 successes, he's still only doing 36 damage. If we assume a fairly average target with 3 To and 1 Soak, that reduces 12 and leaves us with 24 damage overall. Deadly? Sure. I don't have the link to the probability calculator, but I find it difficult to believe that the third shot, using <PPP> has a 74% chance to succeed, and don't forget they need 3 successes to get the +2 damage. Don't get me wrong, it is a dangerous card certainly. I just find it odd that you say PCs can't die in the first part, and then go on to argue that this or that card can do massive amounts of damage. Don't forget, as a GM you can have NPCs use additional cards too. If your PCs are having an easy time, have a few NPC archer have access to Rapid Fire. Have a boss NPC use Trollfeller Strike or Reckless Cleave, etc.

anyway, it honestly sounds like the GM isn't properly balancing the combats to the players.

Sephirotth said:

In this aspect, I have seen reports similar to that of Sephirotth several times – the skeleton falls to quickly for a real climactic feel. Although the writers tried to ensure a longer lasting skeleton by positioning it in/behind the door, so that only two PCs can engage it at one time, it seems that it does not last long enough in many situations. I am not yet sure how to deal with this, but maybe I will change the physical layout of the entrance/door so that it is at the end of a several foot deep recess. That would ensure that two people (with short or pierce weapons) could tackle him simultaneously with some misfortune dice and with a very high risk for trying to shoot past them with anything but magical attacks…

Most of what I was going to mention regarding the Henchmen has been mentioned above.

I would note that the 1 die standard for all melee attacks is not anything more than the suggested basic melee attack modifier. When fighting bosses or other difficult creatures, I would suggest increasing it to 2d or more to represent the skill of the opponent in combat. This -greatly- increases the difficulty of the fight.

Darrett said:

Yes it does, but why not do so more creatively then just say this guys tough 2d. Give the boss extra cards, use his A/C/E, have him use his environment, don't have him stand there like a dumby. Soften up the players first with his minions etc...etc...etc... I mean he's the Boss. He's tough but he also likely became the boss because he was ruthless and smart as well.

Totally what Kryyst said. Rather than just saying "boss gets a 2d difficulty to attack him", I'd give him Improved Parry, Imp. Dodge, and/or Imp.Block, for example.

And if you want to be really mean - there's a powerful necromantic spell going around, and the skeleton is close to the spells centre. So... if the players knock him down, have him reform next turn (that plate mail will keep the bones together), maybe minus a few hit points but ready to fight. It will dawn on the players to stop the skeleton they have to stop Mourn... which means getting through the skeleton... gives the encounter a problem solving aspect, and makes it a little more tricky.

I will admit to having difficulties trying to judge the spend of the A/C/E budgets. So far in TGS I have had characters take out some of the big bads (like Mourn and the Skeleton) much quicker than I would like (but then had them struggle against larger numbers of henchmen). I was generally thinking that if a big bad has say, 8, aggression then i would plan on spending 2 a round for 4 rounds, only to have the fight finish in 2. I guess I need to switch to spending the budget in the first 1 or 2 rounds and if the fight goes on beyond that just see what happens.

Against henchmen it is simply the case that some socially focused characters have very little defense. I have several characters in my group with a Toughness of 2 and no armor so not only do they take a lot of damage if hit they can also pass out with 5 fatigue which is pretty easy to rack up if you are fighting undead or something that causes terror. Then again it should teach them to stay out of the way I suppose (which is what most of them try and do).

I always budget at least about half my NPCs A & C budgets on Defense. Keeping NPCs alive, at least for a turn or two, is important.

What I mentioned about increasing it to 2d is assuming that A/C/E are being used correctly, and tactics are used as well.

One of the major weaknesses I think a lot of people have is not increasing the dice difficutly in combats. My interpretation of the rules is that a normal melee attack is generally 1d, but increase based on environmental factors or the difficulty of the battle. When attacking a skilled opponent, it should certainly be increased. Though adding cards and such is another way to go about it, I don't think there's anything not creative about adding more difficulty through basic game mechanics to represent the difficulty in landing a blow on a skilled combatant.

I should also mention though that adding defense cards is also a great way to go, depending on how you want the difficulty to change. I'm not saying that defense cards aren't a good addition if you want to ramp up survivability, especially if you're looking for a spike in survivability rather than passive.

dvang said:

How can you spend C(unning) on defence? Unless you are talking about 'social' defence?

Darrett said:

But if the opponent is skilled, you don't change the difficulty. You just add expertise dice. Isn't that what the expertise dice are for?

And if you want to add enviromental factors, then you add misfortune. Not difficulty. For instance, darkness equals 2 or more misfortune dice.

I am really trying to find some examples on when to use increased difficulty on attacking. I think it's rather extreme cases, such as fighting on a collapsing building, or while hanging from a rope. Something that would drastically change your fighting style. Not hamper it such as rain, darkness, fog, or drunkenness.

Am I correct on this?

Yes, I was speaking as a generic defense situation, not specifically using Cunning in melee combat.

The difficulty of a task is how inherently difficult the task is regardless of outside influence. For example, shooting into melee I *sometimes* assign an additional <P> (unless they have a specific card for it) depending on how hard I think the task itself is. Splitting an arrow or trick shots would add <P>, as would trying to hit a fly with your sword, etc. Enemy skill, wind, rain, mud, etc, is typically covered under misfortune dice.

Btw, what do people think of the GM Kit rule regarding more lethal combat: "For each success over the highest success line, the action inflicts +1 damage per success, up to a maximum amount equal to the level of training in the relevant skill. "

While I don't have much against it, it seems to favour "Reckless" greatly. I know those who risk in combat also has a greater chance of hurting others, very simple, but without "Lethal" combat rule, both seems equally good, as reckless might increase chance of hitting, but the excess succes' are not used for anything.

Spivo said:

It doesn't, since rank 1 characters are able to use only one excess success, 2 rank - 2 and 3 rank - 3. I think that chance of rolling one/two/three additional success for a rank 1/2/3 Character is the same on both stances.

We're using this Optional Rule and it's working nice, so far.

Cheers