Topic: Stun awareness and initiative.

[Deeman]

Do you guys with active games play so that you know if and how much a monster is stunned or not?  Seems perfect for a -50 combat awareness roll.    Found an old topic on this but it didn't get off the ground. 

Also, do any of you roll initiative once and keep that order till combat ends (ala D&D) or do the mechanics of HARP need a new initiative every round?

Thanks to this great community in advance!

[Dr_Sage]

I missed the first question, are you asking for penalties on pearception?

Regarding the second question: I use by the book:

1) Declare
2) Roll
3) Execute acions in order

Makes way more sense to interact with the Core rules.

Ive heard that many ppl here skipp declaring actions, but at least keep rolling for initiative every round.

Make DnD like screwes up with some Core rules. I do not advise doing that way.

Best regards.

[bunny]

Our group rarely reveals if the opponent has been stunned or not (and never for how long). Sometimes I might reveal it for pacing purposes - if the monster is almost dead and the characters are being tediously over defensive and parrying to ridiculous amounts prolonging the inevitable I may let it slip that he's in a bad way and obviously struggling, but not usually.

We also roll initiative each round - stops someone getting lucky and then proceeding through combat knowing they're going to act first.

[Dr_Sage]

We also roll initiative each round - stops someone getting lucky and then proceeding through combat knowing they're going to act first.

You got the heart of the issue. Knowing the order is way too much metagaming knowloge.

[jurasketu]

Well. How badly an opponent is hurt and/or stunned is often quite obvious to an experienced fighter. Experienced fighters KNOW how much something hurt by their opponent's body language. So if they ask, I'll vaguely indicate how badly injured they are and certainly how many rounds of stun they currently have active. I tend to do large numbers of combatants - I've actually run a 60+ character battle, so I need the players to help keep track of such things anyway (stun pebbles next to combatants work great - remove one at the end of each round).

But if you like keeping that information from the players (or pretend that they don't know for role-playing purposes), I would work it like this - if the character did the stun, then they shouldn't even have to roll - they should have an excellent feeling for what they've done. If the stun source was from elsewhere, then judge whether or not they saw the blow, magic or whatever caused the injury and decide how much knowledge they have of such things (usually adventurers know all too well what it feels and looks like) and give a perception roll ranging from medium (saw it, know it) to very hard (didn't see it, its a dragon - how many stunned dragons does one get to see?)

[Dr_Sage]

I see your points (in fact i loved the stun pebbles for big engagements). 

But we must consider that "stun" in HARP game terms is not much more than "stagger" for a coulple of seconds as the character can do many things while stuned.

[Right Wing Wacko]

Somebody already mentioned that "stun" in HARP is more like a being staggered... ie. you are still able to function albeit at a penalty.

[ReaperWolf]

Somebody already mentioned that "stun" in HARP is more like a being staggered... ie. you are still able to function albeit at a penalty.

That's how I've always played it, staggered and/or reeling. To accentuate the impact of Stun (pun intended) I also did away with roll to resist Stun. In my games you devote a lot of OB to DB whenever possible particularly when dealing with opponents armed with bludgeoning weapons. Herbs and spells mitigating some or all of Stun are very popular 'round my table.

>>ReaperWolf

[Hawkwind]

One of the main uses of Combat Perception is to allow players (and NPCs) to determine whether or not their opponent is stunned. One of the difficult things is the players using metagaming information (even if unconcsiously). To keep combat going at a reasonable pace all my players have copies of the relevant crit charts, so they tell me what damage they do, so they have some idea of what stun effects apply. Although they don't know whether or not their opponent has made an RR against stun, so they need to be somewhat cautious.

As to initiative, we roll each round, but I'm not too strict on making the players declare their actions prior to rolling.

Hawk