Re: Zombies and Skeletons in extended contest

From: JEFFREY KYER <jeff.kyer_at_...>
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 16:27:13 -0000

>
> Yeah, had this come up at the HW demo at Dragonmeet on Saturday. It
was
> first outing with the rules, although I had read them, and the main
villain
> was a vampire. This was probably rather unfortunate, as almost the
first
> use of the rules is this special case. It felt a bit tricky,
becuase it was
> difficult to describe success against someone on negative AP's - you
know
> with positive AP's the exchange resolved what you might think of as
> "situational dominance", but once the victim is on 0 AP's or less,

I use "Your weapon tears chunks from the shambling thing but it keeps coming!" myself. Or words to the effect that it seems to be drawing strength from your struggles against it.

But Vampires (and to a lesser extent zombies and skeletons) are just walking piles of exceptions to the rules. They may not serve as a good example of how combat should proceed.

The advantave of letting zombies and the like function below zero is that they flop around and have the 'chopped into bits' penalties thrown in for free -- which is very much in keeping with the genre.

> rolling transferred chunks of AP's to the vampire, meaning that he
was
> brought back to undeath (?) by further attacks. While the rationale
works

They drew strenth from your attacks.... One touched you when you attacked it and you feel cold. Remember, a transfer means that the player *lost* somehow and getting too close to a vampire that was playing 'dead' is as good excuse as any -- and certainly correct from a narrative perspective -- or an Armies of Darkness one. =)

> OK for mortal critters (the coming back from negative AP's bit by an
AP
> transfer), it seems both more likely to occur with undead (because
you have
> to keep going to a really substantial negative number) and less
rational, in

Makes undead very hard to destroy but not as threatening as something with a huge armor edge would be, at least in my experience. However, for a starting demo game I try to err on the side of a more social situation -- that helps the game master illustrate just what makes the world of Glorantha such a fascinating place. Retrieving sacred objects, feuds and the like. Even a good holmgang can be educational.  

> On the other hand, I am inclined to think that bidding more AP's
than you
> have should be an option made available to all characters, not just
the
> PC's. I have not run any NPC's in combat yet, but I feel that the
> conservatism this provokes might be detrimental to the game.

It is availble to heroic NPCs, btw. And the bersker and to the dead... but that's my world. I like my undead scary and relentless but not indestructible.

Jeff

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