Topic: How to lift stun-curse?

[DangerMan]

The curse should be lifted in the following way:

Whenever a player deciedes to rid himself of his dice due to poor results (they are obviously cursed!), do NOT chop them up in little pieces and dissolve them in acid, like you usually do. Instead, present them to the GM and insist he use these dice whenever he's rolling a crit against you. If he continues to roll high crits against you, stunning you all the time, the curse is obviously personal, and I suggest a contribution to your local cleric/monk/shaman.

And yes, you might want to consider the possibility that it's a dice curse, I've had a few sets of totally non random dice over the years. (we used hammer in the driveway as our fix for those).

Wear eye protection or you may have another story explaining why people call you "Patch".
Ricochet! 

I'd use fire to destroy dice... It's the only way to be sure.

I dont think it's the dices. Both criticals and spell failures are in play. Also, the curse is moving amongst the players!! I really dont think we have any clerics in Oslo at high enough levels to lift this thing.

We might gonna have to consider burning ALL our dices (dices? Dies? Dice? Plural for dice?). Would make a great fire..

[yammahoper]

The curse should be lifted in the following way:

Whenever a player deciedes to rid himself of his dice due to poor results (they are obviously cursed!), do NOT chop them up in little pieces and dissolve them in acid, like you usually do. Instead, present them to the GM and insist he use these dice whenever he's rolling a crit against you. If he continues to roll high crits against you, stunning you all the time, the curse is obviously personal, and I suggest a contribution to your local cleric/monk/shaman.

And yes, you might want to consider the possibility that it's a dice curse, I've had a few sets of totally non random dice over the years. (we used hammer in the driveway as our fix for those).

Wear eye protection or you may have another story explaining why people call you "Patch".
Ricochet! 

I'd use fire to destroy dice... It's the only way to be sure.

I dont think it's the dices. Both criticals and spell failures are in play. Also, the curse is moving amongst the players!! I really dont think we have any clerics in Oslo at high enough levels to lift this thing.

We might gonna have to consider burning ALL our dices (dices? Dies? Dice? Plural for dice?). Would make a great fire..

Die is singular, dice IS plural.

Roll one die...roll three dice...I own a 100 sided die...I own fifteen 20 sided dice.

[DangerMan]

Thanks Yamma! Language rank for DangerMan!

[MariusH]

I really dont think we have any clerics in Oslo at high enough levels to lift this thing.

Maybe you need to take them to Trondheim and Nidarosdomen. Or perhaps all that is required is that you vote KrF in the next election ;-)

[DangerMan]

HaHa 

I'd rather spend an eternity playing a halfling fighter with a disawoved weapons-flaw before I vote KrF.. Pilgrimage to Nidarosdomen might do the trick, though..

[yammahoper]

Now I need a language rank: KrF?  Is that a political party?  Guess it is Google time.

[Usdrothek]

Google tells me its the Norwegian Christian Democratic party.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Clerics don't get really high anymore, ever since they took the psychoactive substances out of the incense.

 

[DangerMan]

Google tells me its the Norwegian Christian Democratic party.

AKA The Priests Arnak

[providence13]

a beaver had made off with a honeysuckle bush, leaving behind a nice sharp chisel shaped 1" diameter 3" long stump. . .which had stabbed me right in the middle of the back of my left thigh.

I always wondered where the "imaginary deceased turtle tripping" came from. This should be on a fumble chart.

[Marc R]

Murphy, god, or whomever you believe in, can seem to have a rather black sense of humor.

I was once on a hunting trip with my uncles, age 7, just keeping up, slipped on some snow, fell, and got a tiny 3" tall spruce sapling up my right nostril, giving me the worst bloody nose ever, that was quite impressive in the snow. . .to quote one of my uncles:

"Talk about one in a million injuries. . .and if that thing had been an inch longer he'd have been stabbed in the brain, and we'd have had to shoot each other, rather than try and explain it to my sister how her son got stabbed in the brain with a twig."

[Usdrothek]

To paraphrase Seinfeld, "Million to one shot Doc, million to one."

[Zedul]

Murphy, god, or whomever you believe in, can seem to have a rather black sense of humor.

I was once on a hunting trip with my uncles, age 7, just keeping up, slipped on some snow, fell, and got a tiny 3" tall spruce sapling up my right nostril, giving me the worst bloody nose ever, that was quite impressive in the snow. . .to quote one of my uncles:

"Talk about one in a million injuries. . .and if that thing had been an inch longer he'd have been stabbed in the brain, and we'd have had to shoot each other, rather than try and explain it to my sister how her son got stabbed in the brain with a twig."

That's absolutely hysterical and a little scary.

Oh and by the way, of all things to happen this weekend at our game (which is now over).  We had a hilarious stun moment.

The party made a terrible miscalculation and had a brutal run in with an ancient dragon.  The mage got massacred ...multiple crits, broken arm, teeth blown into the back of his head, paralyzed from the neck down permanently,  AND -100 on all other actions, yet he had only 4 rounds of stun!

The following round, while the party is stating their actions he announces to the party :  "Wait, I need to make my stunned maneuver!"  We all look at him like he's an idiot but he rolls double open ended and makes the sucker!

I tell him "Ok yea you are unstunned but what are you going to do, you are paralyzed from the neck down, your arm is shattered, and you have no teeth!"

He slams his fist into the table and replies.  "The only thing I can do, I howl in protest!"

[Ynglaur]

He should have tried to cast a spell...

[pastaav]

I think the interesting question is how to draw the line. If you allow stun removal skill and similar then stuns at high level turn into a minor issue. To make things even more boring it is not that simple to take out a character who has half of his OB available and can only do parries. Also the presence of plenty of stun reliefs mean attackers can not exploit a stun, but must keep the parry high just in case the stumbling enemy will be able to act.

All in all I find the rules when character can end with like ten rounds of stun rather dull and uninspiring. They might be realistic, but I fail to see the fun in the gaming situation. When a player suffer from a temporary stun-curse their gaming enjoyment is pretty much over.

[Marc R]

On the flip side, it's better than Down and dying, or just dead.

Being "GMed" is a term we stole from HERO, referring to the point you go into long stun, as in:

Player "When do I recover from that stun?"
Chorus "When the GM says you do."

It may seem unfun but it's better than rolling up a new character, and in a system like RM, the contrast between being GMed isn't vs "You're fine" it's contrasted to "You're dead" or "You're on the ground at -120, bleeding 10/round and dying." or "You're in a coma for 1d4 weeks".

I totally get where people are coming from when they say that's just not a lot of fun, but it does make the line between fine and dead a bit more fuzzy. . .

And I'm not really sure how much more fun being -75 on the ground with a broken hip is than being -50 and stunned. . I guess it lies in the line of not being allowed to act as you want, even with a penalty. . .even broke hip can swing his sword at -75 and try, while the stunned cannot.

I've played without the restrictions on action from stun, and the result seems to actually be that high level characters and foes ignore up to a certain amount of penalty, while low levels cannot.

a -75 stun no parry, or broken leg, means the 1st level character is effectively out of the fight, barring major open ended rolling. . .the 10th level character is still quite dangerous.

Which is what it comes down to, in my opinion. . .if "Stunned" is just a -50 penalty, then it becomes casual for 20th level characters, just like a complex lock that's -50 to lockpick attempts is  not going to stop a 20th level thief. . .

The fact that more often combats are between a group of 3-7 PCs vs 1 monster-of-higher-level, than vice versa, means that the PCs soon discover that they can much more afford to have a party member or two fall out of combat stunned than the solo beast can, and the scenario where in the past the beast was stunned, then the next round the beast was killed, no longer happens. . .and in fighting an un-stunnable beast to the death, usually one or more of the PCs get to join them, and go re-roll a new character.

That's not so much fun either.

It definitely affects my fighting opinions when operating solo in RM, because my tactical brain is not saying "can these guys kill me?" it's saying "All I need is for one of these punks to stun me and the rest of them will kill me while I'm stunned." . . .

When running a solo PC game, without a supporting cast of PCs or NPCs to back up the only character, I will tend to either relax the stun rules, or offer a work around so that they can survive being stunned alone. . .but with parties I tend to stick with stun, and tend not to be open to relaxing the rules or allowing casual skill based stun removal.

[Zedul]

I think the interesting question is how to draw the line. If you allow stun removal skill and similar then stuns at high level turn into a minor issue. To make things even more boring it is not that simple to take out a character who has half of his OB available and can only do parries. Also the presence of plenty of stun reliefs mean attackers can not exploit a stun, but must keep the parry high just in case the stumbling enemy will be able to act.

All in all I find the rules when character can end with like ten rounds of stun rather dull and uninspiring. They might be realistic, but I fail to see the fun in the gaming situation. When a player suffer from a temporary stun-curse their gaming enjoyment is pretty much over.

You always have to adjust.  We've never run into the problem of the game becoming unfun because of stun, it's only a minor factor in our sessions.  As the characters get higher level stun becomes less of a concern and capped concussion hits become the major problem -  especially when you have x10 fireballs and x10 netherbolts flying around!  (but that's a whole other discussion... )

[providence13]

You guys have been playing for ever...
Has anyone ever had stun be a -50% instead of just the -50 to actions.
Halving all of your numbers would be more severe than just a penalty. Is -50 that much of a penalty at these freakishly high levels?

Also, if you did allow 50% of OB instead of the normal -50, you might as well allow an attack.
Just a thought.

[yammahoper]

Stun is not a problem for high level characters if stun removal skills are used.

In RM2, a -50 or -75 isn't much of a penalty either for high level play as skill bonuses will easily exceed  300.

In RMFRP the skill system is much more balanced, even at high level play, were skills max at 145-180. 

The -50 and -75 have strong impact in RMFRP games.  I have used them instead of no attack as I have stated before.  It works.

[Marc R]

Providence, the -X% or +X% was how RM1 worked, it's essentially the major variation between RM1 and RM2, the problem got into the evils of both "This is too much math" and combining rules lawyering on order of application. . .i.e. +10, -20, -15, +10 = -15 no matter what order you apply them, but if you apply some modifiers as percentages and some as addition/subtraction it makes a big difference what order you take them in, and can create large variations in results.

The gist of Yamma's point is what I was saying above. . .at +150 skill bonus, you can eat a -50 and still act at +100. . .if your total bonus is +25 or +50, you're screwed. . .the "no attack" penalty is a flat penalty that hurts a 20th level fighter as much as a 1st level fighter, while just using it as a penalty makes it a serious problem at low levels and at worst a major annoyance at high levels. I've played with it, and it works, but it's one of many factors in play that prevent 20th level characters from being casual about fighting with 1st level characters in RM.

I find your math a bit suspect there yamma. . .5/3/1.5/.5 vs 5/2/1/.5 does not a mountain of variation make. . .60 ranks (a rather large number of ranks) is +95 in RM2, and +110 in RMSS, even assuming a Fighter's open ended professional +3/lv on a 29th level character having those 60 ranks is +87 is +182, assuming +30 perfect stats gets you to +212. . .so perhaps if a 29th level fighter with perfect stats who has a +88 magical weapon is casual then +300 is "easy". <shrug> I'm sure if we assume the RMSS GM is also sleeping at the wheel one could come up with an absurd combination, but lets not base a theory of balance on "If you take an RM2 example that assumes the GM is in a coma, vs an RMSS example where the GM is paying attention, the variation is obvious." I suspect a vice versa example would produce proof of exactly the opposite of what you're saying, while a more balanced example would not show an extreme bias to either system. . .it's likely best to either compare two sane examples to each other, or two over the top examples to each other.