Forum > RMC/RM2
Managing a hydra
OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol:
"Hail, Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off a limb and two more…"
Oh, wait, wrong hydra.
So, this thread is about managing a RM2 hydra, of course. So, the question is: did any of you GMs ever have to use a hydra? If you did, how did you manage the headache that are its heads? We all know what a hydra (the magical beast, not the actual animal…) is: several heads, if one severed, two new heads spring from the stump, etc.
Okay.
The issue is that, RM2 not having a targeting system, how do you target the body, the main head or any other head? As a matter of fact, how do you even determine, without anyone purposely trying to target anything, whether the body, the main head or any other head is struck?
Of course, you may tell me that "in RM2, the critical table actually serves the purpose of a location system, specifying which body area is struck".
Fair enough. So, in order to determine which location of the hydra is struck, I merely need to roll on the critical table. Meaning, I merely need to determine which critical table to use.
Fair enough. So, let's see which critical table to use when dealing with a hydra. The hydra RM2 statistics state that the "primary head and body defend on (the) super large crit(ical) table, other heads use (the) large crit(ical) table".
Fair enough. So, since the critical table used depends on the location being struck, in order to determine which critical table to use, I merely need to determine which location is struck.
…waitaminute.
Houston, we have a problem…
EltonJ:
"Will you stop with the head slicing thing already!"
I never had to use a Hydra in my games, but it would be interesting to use. I would think called shots is something I would use on a hydra.
OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol:
Thing is: RMU has called shots, RM2 has not.
rdanhenry:
I think with something as large as a hydra, it may have been assumed that you could "attack the body" or "attack that head" without needed a "called shot", especially since the heads "operate independently", so are essentially many creatures on one body.
Jengada:
That may be one of the most broken creatures in the book! It doesn't appear to have been improved in RMSS, either, the text is much the same.
My first inclination is to split out the HP for body and heads, and treat as separate creatures. That allows adding heads easily, too. My first, totally unscientific (because, you know, there is a science to this), split would take the 380 HP and the most common 9 heads and say:
Each Head=30 HP
Body=110 HP
Those seem ridiculously low, but remember they all show up at once, and then they bring their friends.
You could get more specific and give more points to the primary head. Or you could look at the probabilities of the different #s of heads and figure, the expectation value of heads is 8, not 9. (I told you there's a science.)
I notice that C&T says the heads only need to be killed, not severed, which makes it easier to run but also more deadly.
The last part I would ponder is, how long does it take to cauterize a hydra neck? I'd probably let any fire-spell do it in 1 round, but torches and the like might do a maneuver roll (Hard, as long as the melee is going?) and the % result is how much you cauterized.
Side note, "Hard" really is hard. If used for an all-or-nothing maneuver with no bonus, there's only a 28% chance of success. Medium is 37%. I'd probably just go with Medium, on second thought.
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