This idea come to my mind the other day preparing an encounter where a dragon should appear (details of the encounter are irrelevant here).

The comment is just for the fun and it is irrelevant at the game scale involving the players. The thing is that a dragon has 40 wounds. That means that, sticking to the game rules where you have the "Minimun Wound damage rule", to defeat a powerfull dragon thats is terrifying a town you only need something like 60 to 80 archers to take it down in ONE assault! May be also a captain to rally those who fail the terror test

The worst of it is that you don't even need crossbows ore powerfull missile weapons, slings are also ok!

I have to say that I love the "Minimum Wound damage rule" but maybe, when involving some very powerfull monsters like dragons or greater deamons, there should be a rule that says for example that you need a minimum weapon damage or so to inflict a wound. Otherwise, if I would be a PC, I would tell the mayor of the town trying to hire me to end up the dragon menace "Buy slings and arm all the townfolks of the city, the next time you see the dragon coming to flame down a house, orther the townfolk to shoot at him!, it is 10 gc for the idea, thanks"

Interesting observation. I'm a noob to the rule system, but noted three things to consider.

First, the town militia each have to roll a success to get the minimum of 1 Wound. There isn't a minimum of 1 Wound per attack, but 1 Wound per successful attack. Considering town militia vs. dragon defense would greatly reduce the number of Wounds caused per round of attacks.

The second thing would be to consider Henchmen. The town's militia of 60 archers would probably not be rolling 60 attacks, but organized into Henchmen groups with one attack per group (others assist). This would greatly reduce the actual number of attacks.

Finally, as a GM I wouldn't allow all 60 militia to shoot every round at the dragon. If the dragon is sitting in the open in the middle of the town square surrounded by the archers, sure. But the dragon is probably swooping down and flying around the town with only a portion of the archers getting a shot at the dragon each round.

Hopes this helps if you ever unleash a dragon upon some poor townsfolk.

Sturn pretty much has it. Sure, you could do that, but the dragon isn't likely to just sit there waiting to be pin-cushioned.

On a side note, in my home games, we have added a house rule to some monsters and armor called "impenetrable X." It was added to give more variety to magic items and allow some powerful daemons (and possibly other creatures) to carry over their "invulnerable" saves. The rule is just that when you take damage that ignores armor soak, X points cannot be ignored. Simple and gets the idea across, but it should be used sparingly. Also, it does not really address your issue, but I thought I'd share.

Sturn makes lots of good points, but there's something else to consider: the rules are designed to reflect a world that the heroes interact with.

They are NOT designed to simulate interactions between NPCs and other NPCs. In the same way that while every single PC has several action cards and fate points, no matter how weak, while many quite powerful NPCs (soldiers, orcs, etc.) have very few actions and no fate points; just because PCs inflict a minimum of one damage on a successful attack, it doesn't follow that the same applies to NPCs.

So, in your example, the NPC villagers could get together and fire slings all day long, but as the GM I'm certainly not going to be bothering to roll all of the dice, no matter how much you split them all up into groups of henchmen. If the story requires that one or two of the townsfolk get lucky and scratch the dragon; great. But if not... I wouldn't like to be around when they come back to you to let you know how your plan worked out...

Angelic Despot said:

Being new to the rules, I think my appreciation of them finally came when I came to the understanding the system is NOT a simulationist one, but a narrativist one (see the old "GNS" model of role-playing here if you don't know what I'm talking about). I was a completely simulationist role-player in my earlier years who has gradualy shifted to systems more and more narrativist. If you love one end of the scale, you probably despise the other end.

If you want to simulate reality with this system, it fails. Try a more crunchy system if you want to attempt to recreate what combat between 60 archers vs. a dragon would actually be like. But if you are into narrative role-playing, this system shines.

Wou!

These are more than serious answers to my subject, which was actually quite silly

So thank you alot for your feedbacks. But indeed, as I said, I am not concerned to much about the subject. At the scale we play PC party versus monsters it is totally irrelevant. In case of larger scale battles a combat tracker can do the job within the system rules. But anyway, I will take some of your ideas in case I have to defend in front of one of my players, sometimes they are quite good at finding the bug of the game.

In response to Sturn, I have to declare that I am pretty much a looking for realistic rules kind of GM. Although with the pas of the years I am relaxing a bit on this. If you would see my house rules many are directed in this direction (i.e. encunbrance, armour, wound treatment...), trying always not to compromise the speed of the game.

Cya

Sturn said:

(pedantic hair splitting follows. my apologies)

I think you are misinterpreting GNS a little here. Although there are a few (and I mean very few) Narrativist elements, WFRP 3ed is not remotely a Narrativist game. The key thing it is missing for that is empowering players with Narrative Control. This game is definitely Simulationist with heavy Gamist influences (i.e. the Creative Agenda falls under "The Right to Dream", with some "Step on Up").

Where you are right, though, is that what it is simulating is not reality.

Yepesnopes said:

I'm not saying this because I think you're BAD for being this way, but just to make a hopefully interesting point: in my experience 'simulationalist' rules that are highly detailed and accurately reflect what would happen in real life are a pain in the a** to use, slow, complicated and in the end, get in the way of telling the story. And is it really better to know how much money you have, down to the last brass penny in your boot if it takes you ten minutes to pay for a mug of beer that in 'real life' would take you a matter of seconds? There's a danger that you end up with 'realistic' rules creating unrealistic delays in working out things that should be quick (and fun).

(I don't think that you're actually saying that you want to accurately measure everything in your game world...)