02-21-2018, 08:05 AM | #1 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Difficult monsters
Quote:
Some monsters are obviously bad news and call for good straight-up combat tactics:
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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02-21-2018, 10:34 AM | #2 |
Join Date: May 2008
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Re: Difficult monsters
I've been working on a blog post that's related to this. I'll try to get part 1 out today.
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Running 3 GURPS games: DFRPG, Supers and a weird Evil Hogwart's (ish) game. Check out my blog: Dungeons on Automatic |
02-21-2018, 03:32 PM | #3 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
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Re: Difficult monsters
Quote:
* Dragons: You can shoot a magic-using one in the eye with a meteoric iron arrow. Then it breathes fire on the scout, who falls over and focuses on not burning to death while the Knight chops the dragon to pieces. Our delvers had to run from one with room to fly; 90% of our restock money was spent on focusing on ways to deal with this particular threat. * spheres of madness (Kromm missed these): Armor, flight, high strength, multiple attacks, grappling, magic resistance, no vital bits. These things are bad news, nearly as nasty as an electric jelly. Unlike an electric jelly, they are not clearly lone boss monsters, so delvers might face 2 or more at time. Four of them nearly ended a band of experienced delvers in my F2F game. * doomchild: I once sent a small horde of doomchildren to surrounded a delving band in a cramped tunnel. The swashbuckler confidently cut two of them up with his sabers, and the resulting fragmentation chain reaction knocked him unconscious and nearly killed the thief. If your entire band has DR 5+, they're not too bad, but anyone with DR3 or lower armor is in for a bad time. * eye of death: I've seen archers outshoot these guys multiple times, but it's always very tense. From the GM's perspective, starting a fight by inflicting multiple nigh-irresistable, armor ignoring attacks puts the terror into the players. * peshkali: I've seen two fights against these. First one got surrounded and dismembered. Second one managed to get behind one of Bruno's wizards, and stabbed her about 7 times. The wizard did not survive. * crushroom: 3 of these feature very prominently in the 3rd or 4th session of my first online DF game. The PCs won, but two of them dropped unconscious in the process and the crushrooms were nicknamed tofu-thulus. As more experienced players in a F2F game, 4 of us cut down 2 of them without difficulty. * horrid skull: hit and run tactics, or absurdly high HP, are good ways to fight them. The two times I've run into them I've found them manageable, even with all the zombies in the way. They do require very good tactics, though. * undead slime: these are great area denial monsters. Even if the delvers don't have to fight them in an enclosed space, the sight of one often means the delvers will reroute (because what if there's a pit trap and you suddenly have to fight it in an enclosed space?)
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Read my GURPS blog: http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com |
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02-21-2018, 03:46 PM | #4 |
Join Date: May 2008
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Re: Difficult monsters
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Running 3 GURPS games: DFRPG, Supers and a weird Evil Hogwart's (ish) game. Check out my blog: Dungeons on Automatic |
02-21-2018, 04:01 PM | #5 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Northeast Kansas
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Re: Difficult monsters
Quote:
Quote:
Hit and run only works on a horrid skull if the area they're in is open for running. I locked my players in a room with one. If I'd put zombies in the way, or put the skull in a harder to reach area, the party would have been in real danger. |
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02-21-2018, 10:20 PM | #6 | |
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Central Texas, north of Austin
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Re: Difficult monsters
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The delvers could all explore the dungeon tethered to each other by lengths of rope. Then when the unsuspecting party member gets ambushed and engulfed by a jelly, the allies could leverage their strength via Pulling Your Weight (Exploits, pg. 21) to overcome the ST 25 needed to break the victim free. (Note that trying to grab the victim directly (no rope) exposes each assistant to the jelly's virulent paralysis.) But some parties may have trouble garnering enough strength even with the cooperation. And of course, there's still the absurdity and hazard of exploring a dungeon all tethered together. FYI, here is a reference to the topic of my original dilemma. |
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02-22-2018, 12:44 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Northeast Kansas
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Re: Difficult monsters
Are Jellies vulnerable to knockback? If so, what effect does that have on their engulfed victims?
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02-22-2018, 05:47 AM | #8 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Difficult monsters
Quote:
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Per-based Stealth isn’t remotely as awkward as DX-based Observation. |
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02-22-2018, 07:10 AM | #9 | |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Difficult monsters
Quote:
There's also the problem that while the jelly subtracts DR 2 and then divides all penetrating damage by 4, victims get only the DR 2. So whacking a ST 15 jelly for the 13 points of crushing damage needed to cause knockback means it'll lose (13 - 2)/4 = 3 HP, while there's a 9 or less chance of the victim taking 13 - 2 = 11 damage, which is worse for those with less than DR 8 than it is for the monster. Those engulfed are effectively carried along with the jelly, as they're actually inside it. So the knockback won't knock the jelly off its victim.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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02-22-2018, 08:03 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Difficult monsters
Quote:
Delvers are effectively spelunkers or cavers who also expect to fight monsters.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
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