Messy combat.

From: Michael Cule <mikec_at_...>
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 23:08:47 +0100


Somebody said to me some way back in the discussion (can't find the exact quote now) that the results of combat that HW allows are fairly much what happens (someone gets defeated and maybe badly hurt and maybe dead), so what (he wanted to know) was there to complain about. And then this evening I run a RQ session that I *know* would be hell on earth to try with straight HW.

The party are at Adari guarding a caravan and one player (an idiot) had decided that he was going to try to kill the Telmori who was working for
(and a close friend of) the Issaries trader he was also working for. He
did this at the bidding of a bigoted Orlanth priest who had told him, no he was quite correct, all Telmori *are* chaos tainted scum!

We start with the idiot creeping up behind the Telmori while the priest rants at his friends (and the Telmori) about how any chaos is all chaos and they shout back about how he was wrong and this Telmori was checked out by the Storm Bulls and if you can't trust them.

He thrusts at the Telmori from behind aimed blow for the chest... And misses. The Telmori turns and shapeshifts into a wolf. (He has the spells but he's not one of the Chaos tainted ones...) The Priest casts Shield 2 on the idiot and gets clobbered by another player for his trouble.

A fight ensues with the Telmori on one side, effectively invulnerable behind his spells and the idiot on the other equally invulnerable behind his Shield and armour until the Telmori howls and calls his brother (who *is* one of the Chaos tainted ones, much bigger than the first wolf and had been hiding from the party but following their trail) to join in the fight. One of the party has decided that he doesn't care about the laws against kin-slaying: he wants the idiot dead and joins in the fight to no effect.

At this point the idiot gets a rush of brains to the head and runs for the nearest stand of trees. He gets there despite being knocked down twice, climbs the tree and stays there till morning at which point he is fired by his employer.

(I omit the fact that the town was under attack by a gang of nomads and
the employer was off in Troll Town with half the party.)

Now by my calculations the focus of the scene shifted from straight forward combat (and sometimes there *are* times when you can't do a damn thing to one another) to the first Telmori's relationship with the second, to the idiot trying (and failing) to get a magical edge on his sword, to the idiot running away, to the idiot climbing a tree. Now given that it wasn't the skill we started with that decided the result and the nature of the contest being mostly away from the initial skill how the galloping Norah would I run something like that with a HW extended combat?

In RQ your intent lasts a turn. In HW it seems to be thought that it will last the entire contest.

-- 
Michael Cule

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