From: Loren J. Miller (MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu)
Date: Sun 06 Jun 1993 - 05:42:55 EEST
hannu (a GM in a Gloranthan campaign starting 1981 and still
continuing) writes:
| cults. In my campaign there is for certain players an irresistable urge
| to powergame and therefore to protect their characters as much as
| possible. So if they play say an Orlanthi, he would sacrifice all or
What's wrong with playing the character as protective of his life?
The rules reflect gloranthan reality. I think this is a good thing, not
a problem. The problem you have with game balance is really a campaign
issue. It can be taken care of in a number of ways.
1. A character like this is going to get a reputation. People will know
what he can do. Enemies will prepare specifically for him. When in war
an army faces a superior opponent they use hit and run tactics.
Opponents should have a large number of (low skill) folks chucking
javelins at the character. Some will get criticals and his armor won't
protect against those attacks. After they chuck their javelins they will
run away and let him chase them. Some will circle around and retrieve
javelins, while others lead him into ambushes. He'll start racking up
fatigue. After 20 minutes or so his shield 6 will run out and he'll be
without it, bringing his protection down to mortal levels. Some of the
javelins will get through and he's going to bite the big one. Other
tactics could include a net trap that pulls him way up into the air,
either disarming him or forcing him to cut a hole in the trap and fall 8
meters or so. Pit traps will also work wonders, and in one with a
covered top he'll get thirsty and hungry after a while, which will
weaken him. And he has to sleep sometime. This all assumes he can be
separated from the rest of the party, which isn't usually all that hard.
It also assumes you want to kill or capture the character, which is up
for question. The sable tribes are especially masterful at such tactics.
2. He's great at warfare, so what? The occupying lunar army will use
tactics like those above against would-be Orlanthi heroes. Is he any
good at more courtly skills? Involve the characters in some non-combat
things. Get them lost in the desert. Give him a grant of land, and force
him to negotiate with his neighbors, who are all beastmen or some of the
orlanthi hill tribesmen who give the group a bad name (think
"Deliverance"). Have a beautiful woman fall in love with him. Run him
through the Garhound contest and see if he wins.
3. If he isn't a wind lord then he won't be able to cast personal magic
in that iron armor. If he is then any earth priestess who invokes the
lightbringer's oath can get him to go on a quest for her. This can be a
suicide mission or not. Assuming they aren't also lightbringer rune
levels, the other characters don't have to come along, especially if it
is thought to be too dangerous for them to have a chance to survive. If
he refuses to give serious aid (at minimum he could cast all his rune
magic into a truestone), he'll get retributive spirits such as impests.
4. He's so powerful he's well on his way to hero status. Let him try to
make it all the way. This will be dangerous enough to challenge him, and
might call for the skills of everyone else too. Just remember that hero
quests require more than a combat monster to succeed, and mastery with
sword and shield won't be enough even to win all the combats.
| I think also that the current classification of physical shields to
| bucklers to hoplite shields is pretty good, but I disagree that the size
| of the shield should protect you against damage so severely as the
| current rules indicate. <del> I would rather say that the protection is
| much less say, on the level with weapons 10 or less points and maybe
| without the benefit of iron and say that the advantage of bigger shiled
| lies in the amount of locations it protects or a higher beginning
| percentage (much higher?) . What do you say.
The way I understand it, a buckler is much easier to use than a larger
Also there is a game balance consideration: Unless you give buckler a
What do all the other playtesters think of this idea?
whoah,
shield is, because you simply punch the incoming attacks with the
buckler, while you need to slide a larger shield sideways to intercept
attacks. You can't simply punch them because of air resistance and the
weight of the shield, never mind the strap that connects some shields to
the forearm. That's why I'd prefer to change the defaults so that
buckler has a high default, say 25%, and the others have a lower
default, like 10%, but can passively protect some number of hit
locations. I agree with you that the larger shields shouldn't have all
that many more AP than smaller shields. They have more surface area, not
more cross-section. You could say that large shields passively protect 8
location values, medium 4, and bucklers 0. Combined with rules like my
house rules that allow people to direct blows at subsets of the full hit
locations this would add some color (and maybe too much complexity) to
combats.
high default skill there's no reason for a character to take it. Who
would choose a shield that offers less protection AND is harder to use?
+++++++++++++++++++++++23
Loren Miller internet: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu
S sign lists littles what wetland received in phire bonuse --1M Monkeys
0,,
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Sat 05 Jul 2003 - 20:27:25 EEST