Topic: Large or Tough Monsters

[Zedul]

Yup to all of the above.  Got my finger snagged in a part and clipped by a 1 inch end-mill at 2500 RPM - it was reduced to a pile of bloody meat and required a few surgeries.

Just a finger... no big deal right?  What is that, an "A" Shrapnel or an "A" Disruption? 

There probably isn't a stun index in Rolemaster for a hurt finger but let me tell you, I was definitely stunned for a good 5 minutes and if you would have given me a sword and shield you could have put me down for -70 on all actions for the next hour or so. =P

RM is very generous, but does try to approximate the deadliness of combat.

Where it does fail is concussion hits.... monsters 300 feet long should get a lot more than twice or three times the concussion hits of a human and I have adjusted accordingly.  Especially when it comes to "constructs" - and iron golem getting beat down on hit points by a +10 short sword is a ridiculous concept unless you have 3 hours. 

   

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

Where it does fail is concussion hits.... monsters 300 feet long should get a lot more than twice or three times the concussion hits of a human and I have adjusted accordingly.  Especially when it comes to "constructs" - and iron golem getting beat down on hit points by a +10 short sword is a ridiculous concept unless you have 3 hours. 

No more ridiculous than the concept of human beings using human-sized weapon being able to defeat a dragon, a creature as tall as a several floors building. Sometimes, you just have to accept that, in fantasy, human beings using human-sized weapon are able to defeat just about everything, without taking hours.

[Marc R]

Where it does fail is concussion hits.... monsters 300 feet long should get a lot more than twice or three times the concussion hits of a human and I have adjusted accordingly.  Especially when it comes to "constructs" - and iron golem getting beat down on hit points by a +10 short sword is a ridiculous concept unless you have 3 hours. 

No more ridiculous than the concept of human beings using human-sized weapon being able to defeat a dragon, a creature as tall as a several floors building. Sometimes, you just have to accept that, in fantasy, human beings using human-sized weapon are able to defeat just about everything, without taking hours.

You might want to consider how right after humans gained control over fire and started making tools, almost all the land based megafauna went extinct. . . .most think it's not a coincidence.

That's cavemen with spears or perhaps simple self bows vs animals up to 20 tonnes.

If you somehow introduced T-rex to the medieval era, I suspect they'd be a terror, but be rapidly exterminated.

Big isn't really enough to make you immune to humans with sharp sticks, guns might make it casual, but even just at medieval tech level, human scale attackers would be potentially lethal to anything smaller than Godzilla.

[providence13]

Yeah, ask a cave bear/saber tooth tiger/auroch what a man with a sharp stick can do.

But I agree that constructs might be a bit different. (Solid metal beasts might be immune to most attacks.) IMHO, hits aren't the same for every critter. There's hits, then crit reduction, immunity, resistances, increased breakage #'s...
A critter with 10 hits isn't the same as a critter with 10 hits, decrease crits by three steps and ignores stuns and bleeders. It's similar, but not the same IMHO.
But 10 hits damage would drop them both.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

You might want to consider how right after humans gained control over fire and started making tools, almost all the land based megafauna went extinct. . . .most think it's not a coincidence.

That's cavemen with spears or perhaps simple self bows vs animals up to 20 tonnes.

Except you had scores of cavemen and that usually took hours, not a couple of them in a dozen rounds. By the same logic, scores of cavemen with cudgels hitting for hours on the construct would put it in pieces. So, yeah, I stand in my point: it's no more ridiculous to consider a couple of adventurers to be able to defeat a construct in a few rounds as it is to consider they'd be able to do the same to a dragon.

[Ynglaur]

A couple thoughts:
1. It only takes a 4" knife to kill someone: every vital organ sits within 4" of the skin.
2. Concussion hits weren't originally intended to reflect structural capacity for damage, but tolerance for pain.  This is analogous to ST, which is meant to represent one's ability to leverage strength, rather than raw power (the encumbrance rules are the best place to see this).  Constructs definitely present some difficulty, as do the undead.  Even there, I think the concept is that PCs aren't going for paint-scratching, but are trying to disable the thing.  A "destroyed" construct might be very much aware, but effectively unable to do anything.
3.  Someone told me years ago that one of the current theories on early Man taking on large bears and other animals was that they used poison.  Does anyone know if this has any validity?  The other thing is that early Man often ran its prey into the ground: no creature on Earth has the long-term physical endurance of Man (horses can, but only with Man's guidance: left to their own devices, they'll run themselves into exhaustion).

[GrumpyOldFart]

1. It only takes a 4" knife to kill someone: every vital organ sits within 4" of the skin.

... and while this may not be true of many animals (boars and grizzlies come to mind), nonetheless I doubt there is an animal so large that you can't find a vital organ or large artery with a 3' sword or an 8' spear.

[Marc R]

It might take 4 hours to find yourself a mastadon, but likely one shot was the fatal one. . .in all likelihood a stab to a major artery in the leg or neck. I dunno if you've ever been hunting, but generally you don't turn the target into hamburger until after you clean and butcher it, you don't want to nibble the target to death, you want to put it down with one shot and damage/ruin as little of the meat as possible.

Native Americans would kill Buffalo with a single arrow behind the foreleg, getting a lung or heart shot. . . .similar tactics have been used with spears on rhino and elephants. . . .

In terms of Bear, usually you had to kill it in one shot, or it killed you, that being a problem with rolling up on megafauna with a sharp stick, if you're close enough to kill it, it's close enough to kill you.

There is zero record of how actual stone age era hunting practices were conducted on now extinct megafauna like Mammoths and Giant Sloths and such, other than comparative study of stone age cultures that existed up into the near modern era. . .but killing Brown/Polar bears with bows and spears, killing half ton boars with bows and spears, killing rhino and elephants with spears or lances, and killing tonne weight walruses and seals and up to mid sized whales with harpoons. . . .all generally accomplished to hunting standards. . .i.e. one shot one kill, or at worst, one shot one down then cut it's throat.

Having to hack something up with an army is what you do when Hannibal charges war elephants into your legion, but destroying the prey meat aside, any hunt that assumed some of the hunters would die wouldn't be a hunting tactic that hunter-gatherers would pursue. . .we naked apes are indeed killing machines, and no animal that ever lived could survive a clean hit from a lance charge on horseback. . .the forces involved are immense, and sufficient to penetrate the hull of a lightly armored vehicle, so perhaps even a dragon would be wary, and potentially open to a one shot kill. Even a monster the size of a building can be one shot killed if it's spine, organs or a major blood vessel run within weapon length of their surface. . .a sword can punch in a couple feet, a spear can be thrust in yards. . .ignoring the fact that likely makes a torso single kill shot possible if hard to do, how thick is the neck, or the limbs of that dragon?

[Zedul]

I hardly worry about the hit points of animals which is why I bring this up to begin with.

I don't buy an Iron Golem having the same hits as a grizzly bear or a dragon having the same hits as an elephant, but I tell you one thing I certainly would not want to face an elephant alone armed with only a sword or a spear, no matter how good I was with it.

Pretty sure prehistoric hunters used traps and pits and herded their prey into death zones, which is pretty much what the cave paintings suggest.  No single caveman was running around with a spear and jabbing a wooly mammoth to death, they were overwhelming by numbers.

All of that is moot though when we start discussing golems, dragons, and demons and extra dimensional beings.

There are dragons and then there are dragons...

There is a difference between a 30' sand dragon and oh say, Ancalagon  and his 6 mile wingspan or whatever the hell it is that causes him to pound down mountains when he lands...

My sand dragons have about 250 hit points, my big Nether wyrms have about 2,000 hit points... otherwise something your local essence using martial artist and his x5 dmg spells and a decent weapon are going to put down anything under 1,000 hits in pretty short order.  x5 on a good TH or BA hit and you are pushing 200 hit points per swing.

I don't buy a Balrog having 600 hits when it's fall can bring down the side of a mountain... meaning it's hitting harder than a cruise missile with a full conventional payload.
 
Just saying.



   

 

[MariusH]

You must be using spells differently than us, because we don't have any x5 damage spells - or x2 for that part. But that's probably something for another thread.

You can't give creatures that are practically immune to crits (like undead, super-large or golems/constructs) super-many hits as well. They allready have lots. So far, we have only taken out super-large creatures on hits, never crits - and the few times we have done that (we tend to play low-level campaigns), it's taken forever. Sure, we had a frenzy player once, but HE was NOT immune to crits, and so went down after a couple of swings, so that didn't really help a lot.

[Marc R]

I concur on the hits angle, which can become problematic with the L and SL table inflicting so many hits. . . A crew of archers can KO a behemoth without actually inflicting any lasting damage (get a pile of c- criticals which it ignores, but tally up the hits which it doesn't)

As to an animate steel statue. . .if it were solid, it should actually be harder to kill than a tank, much less possible to KO by having a mob of people pelt it with rocks.

Of course, your squad of archers or mob would need to pass a morale check, they'd likely be fleeing in terror.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Pretty sure prehistoric hunters used traps and pits and herded their prey into death zones, which is pretty much what the cave paintings suggest.  No single caveman was running around with a spear and jabbing a wooly mammoth to death, they were overwhelming by numbers.

I don't know about your game, but in mine nobody was foolish enough to go up against a dragon or archdemon singlehanded either. We did exactly what you're describing here, swamp it with sheer numbers like a dog pack going after a bear.

[markc]

  Since LG and SLG creatures are at times immune to crits I have made weapons that deal more damage against them; such as the x3-x5 damage listed above. And it has worked well in my game without being too over powerful and too useful.
MDC

[Marc R]

The four methods of killing big game are generally:

1) Catch it, then kill it.

2) Get it running, then while it's not killing you, run or ride alongside, take your time and one shot it.

3) Sneak up on it, while it's not aware of you, take your time and one shot it.

4) Get someone else to distract it, then one shot it from the flank or rear.

All versions of what we do in RM to giant monsters. . .Likely direct 1:1 confrontation is not the best idea. . .then again, unless the fight happens by surprise, I try to pull one of the above when fighting a human in RM, it's just too risky to go at things like a serial duelist.

[Arioch]

and iron golem getting beat down on hit points by a +10 short sword is a ridiculous concept unless you have 3 hours. 

I agree... that's why I just cast Disjunction at them 

More seriously, in RMFRP core book there's a small paragraph about weapon breakage when stricking hard objects, you could use that for fights against golems and similar monsters, a sword have something like 40% chance of breaking every blow. Just do not tell your players I told you about this rule! 

[Zedul]

You must be using spells differently than us, because we don't have any x5 damage spells - or x2 for that part. But that's probably something for another thread.

You don't have Spell Law?  Even most Open or Closed Lists have a x2 in there somewhere as a Strength Spell, but Chec _ out the Mon_ base lists. 

[Zedul]

What I meant to say was "Check out the Monk Base Lists" but my old keyboard had no K

[rdanhenry]

Constructs are not solid and have breakable "machinery". Golems don't need to be taken apart to go down; just hammer their motivating glyph into illegibility. If you really want to toughen up the huge so they aren't completely done in by countless scratches, reduce hits done as well:

I - subtract 1 from concussion hit damage
II - subtract 2 from concussion hit damage
LA - subtract 3 from concussion hit damage
SL - subtract 5 from concussion hit damage

This will make crit-resistant creatures harder to simply pound unconscious with a quarterstaff as well.

[MariusH]

You must be using spells differently than us, because we don't have any x5 damage spells - or x2 for that part. But that's probably something for another thread.

You don't have Spell Law?  Even most Open or Closed Lists have a x2 in there somewhere as a Strength Spell, but Chec _ out the Mon_ base lists. 

Ah, you meant spells that cause MELEE fighters to give more damage. I thought you meant SPELLS that delivered more damage. Sure, a monk could be nice. We've never used martial artists, though. Well, I think we did once, but with severe penaties when fighting non-humanoids. I guess with lots of adrenal defence, plenty of ranks in martial arts and some spells to add, they can be rather tough.

[Zedul]

Ah, you meant spells that cause MELEE fighters to give more damage. I thought you meant SPELLS that delivered more damage. Sure, a monk could be nice. We've never used martial artists, though. Well, I think we did once, but with severe penaties when fighting non-humanoids. I guess with lots of adrenal defence, plenty of ranks in martial arts and some spells to add, they can be rather tough.

Monks are one of those classes that start off weak and become really badass.  Especially at super high levels.

A High End Monk can be permanently hasted, x10 melee dmg, and completely heal at the end of every melee round even from death... really nasty.