Re: situational question, Oscar (again) and a wargamer's pitch on HW combat

From: Steven White <fringe_worthy_at_...>
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 03:25:48 -0800


"steve lieb" <styop-_at_...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/hw-rules/?start=441
> As was just posted in the Digest, Gonn Orta has "Large 5w5".
>
> Could this be used as a defense in the sense of "ignore puny
attacker"?
>
> As a Narrator, could you then give an attacker a major edge - on the
> order of a bump-up - because said Giant is practically impossible to
> miss?
 

I would suspect this might be best done as: 5w5 Large
17 combat (Small Tree ^10) (this may be wrong symbol for weapon edge) thick skin ^8 (This may be the wrong symbol for armour edge)

When a fight starts, the giant uses Large to get his APs (125). But for skill
rolls, he'll use his club combat.

As can be seen, this giant lasts a long time (5w5 large), is reasonably skilled (17 combat), but when he hits, he hits hard (10-hero's armour is added
to his bid), and is very hard to hurt (thick skin ^8 gets subtracted from
hero's weapon edge when he wins a bid. I have no idea if armour can make a
weapon edge go negative)

I suspect when playing out this fight, you'll see the hero slowly whittling the
giant down (take 5 AP), while each round the giant tentpegs (6' under) one of
the hero's followers (lose 15AP!).

If our hero wants to win, he'd best:

That or be Oscar Wild.  



On a barely related topic:

I'd be careful about having fights where you have people with 2-3 masteries
more then their opponents. The dice tables start misbehaving in such a way
where the lesser fellow might be happier to reduce his skill from 2w to 20.
He'll still lose (unless he spends lots and lots of heropoints) but lowering
his skill might result in him getting more minor failures instead of major
failures. :)

Example: Poor skill vs very high skill

                      Victory              tie /            Defeat
   Skill Resist comp/major minor/marg narr decides minor/marg Complete/Major
======== ====== ========== ========== ============ ==========
    20    10w3      0.00%      0.00%       5.00%      90.00%       5.00%
    2w    10w3      0.00%      0.50%       4.75%       9.00%      85.75%

understanding the odds:
10w3 skill vs 2w: crit on 1..19, success on 20 (2 bumps) 10w3 skill vs 20: crit on 1..20, (3 bumps) (Nearly the same)
20 skill: crit on 1, success 1..19, fail 20 2w skill: crit on 1, success 2, fail 1..19, critfail 20  

((The reason the entries are combined together is because I was orginally
calculating the chance a feat might increase your skill. This isn't important
for the current discussion.))

Now I have to admit, the 2w skill has a 0.5% chance of winning one round of an
AP contest, but.... as you can see, in general your 2w fellow will be defeated
far faster then the 20 fellow when fighting against a 10w3 opponent.

So I'd suggest keeping skills in the same range plus minus one/two masteries.

For really powerful opponents, I'd suggest having a very high skill that only
applies to starting APs (5w5 Large Size), or give them a big edges (^10 Big
honking tree used as club) to successfull bids.

I also might have also misread the rules somewhere too. :)

---

Introduction: 
    I'm one of Jeff's victims^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Blind Taste Testers, so
I get 
my rules from the www.issarries.com in the public section. 

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