Topic: High Adventure Combat

[Ecthelion]

Ah, understood.

[jdale]

I'd be curious to know what is the current breakdown with the rules as written.

[dagorhir]

I'd be curious to know what is the current breakdown with the rules as written.

I am also curious. My games have been like none of the break downs here.

[Thom @ ICE]

There is no single answer. In all 3 combat systems (Core, Hack and ML) the criticals begin at different points based upon type of attack.  Hack escalates most quickly. Core tops out at the Damage Cap which impacts the analysis.  ML is adjusted for armor in addition to damage cap which takes out some lethality.


Core
Crush table has critical at 31-40
Puncture has 1st critical at 51-60
Slash has 1st critical at 41-50

Hack (using Medium weapon)
Crush at 31-35
Puncture at 36-40
Slash at 36-40

Martial Law
Crush starts at 11-20
Puncture at 31-40
Slash at 21-30

[RandalThor]

I chose the third option (50/25/15/10), strictly because of the following statement in the OP:

The poll assumes both attacker and defender are of equivalent levels in every aspect.

And in that situation, winning a fight should boil down to a couple of primary methods: tactics - the PC (or NPC, the bad-guys can win) uses their knowledge of the Enemy, and/or their own fighting methods, to come up with a tactic to gain an advantage (in game terms: a bonus), or just hope to get a lucky roll. (I prefer it if the players go for the tactical option because it means they are "into" the game more.)

But those numbers only apply in that specific situation, when you have the PCs going against mooks (the unimportant troops) it is more like option 5 (10/30/30/30). For "High Adventure" gaming I think it would behoove you all to check out 7th Sea, as that game I think is a perfect example of how that type of game should go. The real funny thing is, I don't think of Harp as true "High Adventure", but just a more player-friendly and easier to learn/play Rolemaster, though an argument could be made that compared to RM it is high adventure.

[Ecthelion]

The real funny thing is, I don't think of Harp as true "High Adventure", but just a more player-friendly and easier to learn/play Rolemaster, though an argument could be made that compared to RM it is high adventure.

The same applies to me.

[Thom @ ICE]

I can appreciate that interpretation of the system, especially if approached from a Rolemaster background where it is emphasized.  For me HARP is still a great game and capable of providing a High Adventure experience, but there are definitely times where it trips over it's own roots.  I'm just looking to see what makes High Adventure for others.  Thanks for sharing your input.

[Falenthal]

Core
Crush table has critical at 31-40
Puncture has 1st critical at 51-60
Slash has 1st critical at 41-50

Hack (using Medium weapon)
Crush at 31-35
Puncture at 36-40
Slash at 36-40

Martial Law
Crush starts at 11-20
Puncture at 31-40
Slash at 21-30

Does this mean that Martial Law is deadlier than Hack, and Hack than Core? Or it isn't exactly that way?

[Thom @ ICE]

Due to the lack of Damage Caps Hack is by far the most deadly.
A Tiny Crush wielded with great skill can yield a death in 10 rounds during which he must remain inactive result without an open-ended roll or special talent.

For Core the best that can be done is 19 hits, 2 stun, -15 penalty.

For ML the max with a tiny crush would be 11 hits, 2 stun, -20 penalty (plus 2 rounds stationery).

Martial Law offers far more variety and complexity, Hack offers significant variability, greater lethality and a slight bit more complexity, and Core has less variety but greater simplicity. 

[Augury]

Finally, I get to reply to a topic where I can contribute a bit rather than asking millions of questions.

My group delivers a lot of puncture crits due to high bow use and also use of dual wield sai etc. 

I'm not happy with the martial law puncture crit table and indeed others there too.  Don't get me wrong they are great but they suffer two issues (which harp core crit tables will suffer from to a worse degree):
1) repetition of crits at the various 'cap' points mist notably 90 and 100
2) nonsensical crits.  Like severing femoral artery and dying in 4 rounds but only bleeding at 3 hits per round!

I have a medical background and put my money where my mouth is and re wrote the puncture crit table from martial law last weekend.  In doing so I rebalanced the following:
Reduced overall stun outcome
Changed much of the wording and increased anatomical accuracy
Increased some concussion damage on some crits
Large changes to bleeding outcomes, some reductions but increases mostly

The biggest change I made (aside from increasing anatomical accuracy and more unique descriptions - no more 'internal organ damage crits way too vague for me) was to have 3 New crit options at each weapon cap.  So if you cap at at 90 you roll 1d0 and this chooses one of the three crits at that cap point.  I did this for each location too. 

For my world and group this has led to more detailed results, an increase in crit danger but not overly so and and a massive decrease in crit repetition.  Cap points now have 15 New crits each and its good.

I prefer crits to be scary and best avoided but if they do crop up to be descriptive and less jokey.

Happy to share ny crit table for those interested but I'm nit sure if I'm actually allowed!

I'll be tackling slash this weekend and crush weekend after.

Augs

[Turbs]

i personally would like to see more disabling crits that aren't lethal..
I.E. broken limbs. severe trauma,  I always did like that better about RM over HARP.
i like to be able to take out an opponent faster with a relatively high skill roll yet not have it so lethal that the recipient can't be healed if their side wins the conflict.
makes teh fight faster yet not so deadly.. leave the small chance of insta-kill to keep everyone on their toes though.

[Zut]

Happy to share ny crit table for those interested but I'm nit sure if I'm actually allowed!

That could make a great Guild Companion paper!

For the poll, I voted for 10/45/30/15. I don't like fights to drag for long, and I don't want crits to happen too often, they should be rare.