what if, let's say, fighter has a very powerful magic weapon, and wizard wants to cancel it with magic (disarm?)
can this simple contest has this outcome for the wizard in case he succeeds, and maybe another simple contest where he wants to murder the fighter, who now can't use the weapon?
I like this approach of a fight with more than one simple contest where different things are happening, as suggested in this link
http://www.rpg.net/oracle/essays/itoolkit4.html
I quote:
> Cards are played. You get a Success. You stab him. Blood his drawn. But
he's still up. Why? Your action is to kill him so you need a Full Success to
kill him. If you wanted to disarm him the cards you had played might have
been enough, because that's easier to do than to kill someone. So, you could
try to disarm him, and then kill him, breaking the combat down into easier
bits. This also breaks a fight down into specific, cinematic-style actions,
making it more interesting than "I swing, you swing."
it's written for falkenstein, but I can see it adapting pretty well to HQ2
emi
On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Ashley Munday <aescleal_at_...>wrote:
>
>
> A couple of additional points to the ones that others have made:
>
> If Abner fails to nail Bert and gets a negative result he might not take
> any
> physical injury but he should take some consequence of failure. Work with
> the
> player to find out what that consequence is. Some examples:
>
> - It really is physical. While chasing Bert , down he mistimed a jump
> between
> buildings and ended up spreadeagled face down in the alley below.
> - It's social. Other assassins are sniggering at Abner for not being able
> to
> finish off a second rate thief like Bert
> - It's mental, Abner now has an Inspector Dreyfus like twitch when someone
> mentions Bert. Every contest involving Bert is affected by the result.
>
> There are loads of others you could pull out as well. In addition Bert gets
> a
> lingering benefit. This could anything related to the result of the
> contest.
> Some examples would be:
>
> - I can see an assassin coming a mile off
> - I can second guess Abner
> - I can jump long distances when someone's after me
>
> For Messrs. Wizard and Warrior I'd have said the goals are the same "defeat
> the
> other." Goals of a conflict shouldn't have the type of ability you intend
> to use
> in the conflict encoded into them, they're not part of the goal. I'd also
> be
> tempted to tart the goals up a bit to make them a bit more evocative. So
> the
> warrior's could be "I want to see him destroyed and hear his woman sobbing
> in
> the night" and the wizards could be "I want to feed his black heart to my
> familiar."
>
> It's still a single pair of die rolls and the abilities would be whatever
> the
> players can find a way of narrating into the contest. The warrior could use
> a
> "warrior" keyword (bit boring), "Bladger, my axe", (bit better says
> something
> about his character) or "Sorcerers killed my family and I want revenge"
> (gives
> him a chance to play out some issues). Basically anything that makes sense
> and
> the player thinks they can use when they come to narrate the outcome. With
> the
> goal I outlined above the pair of characters might end up using "Desire to
> humiliate <insert name of woman mentioned in warrior's goal>" against "Love
>
> <insert name of woman mentioned in warrior's goal>." Admittedly if both
> characters have abilities like the last two we're talking about things the
> players both care about a lot so it might be worth making the contest an
> extended one, it sounds pretty climactic to me.
>
> Final point: All this lot only matters when you're dealing with player
> characters against player characters. For most contests again the GM you
> won't
> bother specifying the GM character's ability, they'll just be an arbitrary
> resistance based on something like the pass/fail cycle or perhaps how
> interesting you think failure for the character would be - if failure's not
>
> interesting, don't bother rolling.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ash
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "sarah.newton5_at_... <sarah.newton5%40btinternet.com>" <
> sarah.newton_at_... <sarah.newton%40multex.com>>
> To: HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com <HeroQuest-rules%40yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thursday, 25 November, 2010 17:23:15
> Subject: Question about Simple Contests
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Just today I've got hold of the HQ2 rules and am reading through. I
> previously
> played Hero Wars and HQ1, but it's been a few years since I've run a game.
> I'm
> trying to understand the way Simple Contests are intended to work in HQ2.
>
> Let's take a physical conflict. Abner the Assassin is trying to assassinate
>
> Bert the Burglar. Assuming this is a Simple Contest, how many "exchanges"
> do I
> run? Is it simply one roll for Abner (conflict goal: assassinate Bert)? If
> so,
> do I also define a goal for Bert (conflict goal: run away!) and derive a
> defense
> ability from that? So, we have Abner rolling to assassinate, and Bert
> rolling
> to run away. Is that it?
>
> If so, what does it mean if Abner suffers a Major or Complete Defeat? I
> take it
> he's not injured, as Bert isn't fighting back - he's just running away.
>
> OK; next example. A conflict between a warrior and a wizard. Simple
> contest.
> The goals are "Defeat the wizard with my weapons" and "Defeat the warrior
> with
> my magic".
>
> Is this still a single exchange? Is there any sense of an "active ability"
> and
> a "resistance" here, or are we simply rolling a Weapons ability and a Magic
>
> ability, and assuming that the warrior is simultaneously attacking and
> defending
> against magic with his Weapons ability, and the wizard likewise with Magic?
> Or
> do we have *two* exchanges, one where the wizard has to use an
> *appropriate*
> ability to defend against Weapons (like Dodge), and the warrior likewise
> against
> Magic (like Magic Resistance).
>
> I'm guessing in all cases a Simple Contest is just a single die roll;
> however,
> if two PCs were squaring up, like the Warrior and Wizard above, I'm
> interested
> what abilities they would use in that single die roll.
>
> Hope that makes sense!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Sarah
>
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