Topic: Resistance Rolls

[darksilver]

I am interested to know how people deal with the following circumstances. When someone uses a base attack spell the attack roll provides an adjustment to the target's RR. However, what about poison, disease, or other attacks which do not have a skill associated with them. Should you just assume a RR mod of 0 and roll directly on the RR table. This seems logical but certain attacks would then seem to be more feeble than intended. Take for example the poison attack of a Shard. The Lesser Shard is a 15th level creature but its poison is only level 3, providing little danger to a party suited to a 15th level challenge.

[ToM]

As discussed in another thread, just assume all RR vs Poison, Disease, Heat & Cold, and other Constitution based rolls are made as if the target is always 1st level. The level of the attack itself makes for a good negative modifier to represent the difficulty of the RR, instead of penalties.

[Ecthelion]

I am interested to know how people deal with the following circumstances. When someone uses a base attack spell the attack roll provides an adjustment to the target's RR. However, what about poison, disease, or other attacks which do not have a skill associated with them. Should you just assume a RR mod of 0 and roll directly on the RR table. This seems logical but certain attacks would then seem to be more feeble than intended.

This is AFAIK the way the rules intend poison/disease RR's to be handled.

Take for example the poison attack of a Shard. The Lesser Shard is a 15th level creature but its poison is only level 3, providing little danger to a party suited to a 15th level challenge.

Yes, indeed the shard's poison attack is relatively weak. But this might be intended.

[ToM]

This is AFAIK the way the rules intend poison/disease RR's to be handled.

U'r sure?
Never intended them this way myself. Neither can I found anything on this on core rules both RM2/RMC or RMFRP/RMSS.
Anyway, this way rules work more better for me

[Marc R]

There's three variant poison rules in the original, level based, luck based, and Con based, depending on if you wanted 50th level creatures able to drink vats of cyanide, or you wanted dwarves drinking cyanide, or you wanted anyone drinking cyanide to be at risk of dying.

Level based had the issue of high levels resisting too easy.

Con based had the issue of high cons resisting too easy.

Luck based put everyone on a level playing field with more or less equal chances.

The downside, as you go more realistically toward "Posion at X dose kills you, period" keep in mind that means it will become far more common as a way to deal with high level foes. . .like when your 20th level PC gets taken out by a poison dart, or the PCs kill your 50th level dragon with a poison arrow.

It's not necessarily a problem as long as you want that feel, but keep in mind that being engulfed in a ball of super hot fire or taking a clean shot with a weapon should also realistically just kill you too every time, and few people advocate things like "Nobody can purchase more than 4 ranks of body development" or "Everyone resists all spells at 1st level". . . .either of which fit into the same logic of "realistically you can't make yourself more fire resistant/stab resistant/etc resistant" either.

[yammahoper]

I have advocated resisting spells at 1st level.

I have also advocated inherient spell resistance being set at the appropriate stats mod (i.e. +6 Co rr versus poison at level 6, Em mod of +4 rr at level 4, max rr level is 15).

I also frequently enjoy being devils advocate, lol.

hugs.

[Marc R]

Same here. . .I could see enjoying a very harsh game of RM using the "All RRs at 1st level" rule, or a very heroic version of "RR at own level with piles of bonuses". . .

It's just one of those things where the GM should know what to expect, based on the rule ala "Don't be shocked when X takes down 50th level Y almost casually".

As long as the GM knows what they are doing with their choice of rules, and the players know what to expect, the only issue that remains is "Are we having fun yet?"

[Ecthelion]

U'r sure?

Yes. In the RMSS rules on pg. 81 an example about how poison RRs are being handled. This example explicitly states that the Poison's Lvl is used as attack level, the character's level as target level and the character's Co bonus x3 as modifier.

There's three variant poison rules in the original, level based, luck based, and Con based, depending on if you wanted 50th level creatures able to drink vats of cyanide, or you wanted dwarves drinking cyanide, or you wanted anyone drinking cyanide to be at risk of dying.

Are the other two variants in GM law? I was not aware that the official rules had other variants of handling Poison RR.

[Marc R]

I was replying to ToM's reply re: RM2/RMC, the old old original poison rules in Creatures & Treasures presented three options for poison and disease, with cascading RR failure tables, vs Level, Con, or Luck based mechanisms.

Insofar as I'm aware, RMSS/FRP sticks to the standard Level RR vs Con bonus x3.

[Ecthelion]

OK, now I understand. I was a bit confused since this is a RMSS/RMFRP thread and for these rules I only now the one ruling I mentioned above.

[Marc R]

Yep, as far as I know that's the only way it works in RMSS, I only chimed in in response to the:

Neither can I found anything on this on core rules both RM2/RMC or RMFRP/RMSS.

I try to avoid cross version thread pollution unless someone explicitly asks and/or the thread is veering way off into theoretical rules logic rather than RAW for the version in question.

[ToM]

Thank you both Ech and LM for the clarifications