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Old 09-26-2022, 01:49 PM   #11
Kromm
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Default Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?

Puddings – any color – are scary only if you're forced to fight them in confined quarters. With DR 5, Homogeneous and Injury Tolerance 2, HP 40, and effective HT 16 to avoid dropping out of the fight . . . and total immunity to gas and poison . . . and no eyes, neck, skull, or vitals to target . . . you'll be whittling. Magic isn't great, given Magic Resistance 5 and immunity to control. You can't get behind them or blind them. You're stuck trading blows and hoping you don't eat 4d+4 crushing, because even with stupid amounts of DR, that hurts. If that's the fight, it can be rough on those who have unexceptional defenses, DR, and HP.

Otherwise, they can be kited and picked off with ranged attacks. They can be put in holes where they'll need noncombat climbing to escape. They can just be outrun, if the group is swift and cunning.

Brown ones don't bring anything extra to the table unless you're walking in the desert. Heroes walking in the desert have a bit of a problem because they're going to be attacked from beneath and engaged while they have half Move and combat penalties due to bad footing. But the desert tends to be big and open, so clever escapes abound.

The only "straight-up GM murder" pudding is the gray one, because it can just appear by fiat wherever the GM likes and hit people for 4d+4, no defense. "Six grey puddings appear from the Astral Plane. Each of you is hit for 4d+4 crushing. Okay, now the fight starts." is pretty mean. I'm not very conversant in the various attempts to calculate challenge ratings, but "always attacks first from another dimension" is a massive game-changer, not just a cute minor ability.
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Old 09-26-2022, 02:27 PM   #12
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Default Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
Puddings – any color – are scary only if you're forced to fight them in confined quarters. With DR 5, Homogeneous and Injury Tolerance 2, HP 40, and effective HT 16 to avoid dropping out of the fight . . . and total immunity to gas and poison . . . and no eyes, neck, skull, or vitals to target . . . you'll be whittling. Magic isn't great, given Magic Resistance 5 and immunity to control. You can't get behind them or blind them. You're stuck trading blows and hoping you don't eat 4d+4 crushing, because even with stupid amounts of DR, that hurts. If that's the fight, it can be rough on those who have unexceptional defenses, DR, and HP.

Otherwise, they can be kited and picked off with ranged attacks. They can be put in holes where they'll need noncombat climbing to escape. They can just be outrun, if the group is swift and cunning.

Brown ones don't bring anything extra to the table unless you're walking in the desert. Heroes walking in the desert have a bit of a problem because they're going to be attacked from beneath and engaged while they have half Move and combat penalties due to bad footing. But the desert tends to be big and open, so clever escapes abound.

The only "straight-up GM murder" pudding is the gray one, because it can just appear by fiat wherever the GM likes and hit people for 4d+4, no defense. "Six grey puddings appear from the Astral Plane. Each of you is hit for 4d+4 crushing. Okay, now the fight starts." is pretty mean. I'm not very conversant in the various attempts to calculate challenge ratings, but "always attacks first from another dimension" is a massive game-changer, not just a cute minor ability.
Isn't Move 6, plus the ability to make slams, enough to run down almost any PC with serious encumbrance? Even Light Encumbrance can knock you down from Move 7 to Move 5.
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Old 09-26-2022, 02:30 PM   #13
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Default Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?

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Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
Puddings – any color – are scary only if you're forced to fight them in confined quarters. With DR 5, Homogeneous and Injury Tolerance 2, HP 40, and effective HT 16 to avoid dropping out of the fight . . . and total immunity to gas and poison . . . and no eyes, neck, skull, or vitals to target . . . you'll be whittling. Magic isn't great, given Magic Resistance 5 and immunity to control. You can't get behind them or blind them. You're stuck trading blows and hoping you don't eat 4d+4 crushing, because even with stupid amounts of DR, that hurts. If that's the fight, it can be rough on those who have unexceptional defenses, DR, and HP.

Otherwise, they can be kited and picked off with ranged attacks. They can be put in holes where they'll need noncombat climbing to escape. They can just be outrun, if the group is swift and cunning.
How many groups are swift enough though to outrun a Move 6 monster? My impression is that many or most PCs are likely to be at least lightly encumbered with armor: the average DFRPG cleric for example has ST 12, so even with just heavy cloth armor (36 lb.), a medium shield (15 lb.), and an axe (4 lb.), he's looking at 55 lb. which is lightly encumbered, Move 4. Add 4 more lb. of gear and now he's moderately encumbered, Move 3. Even a Str 16 half-ogre cleric who bought Basic Move up to 7 would still be lightly encumbered and moving at only Move 5.

How many adventuring parties aren't going to have at least one PC slower than Move 6? Kiting just doesn't seem realistic[1], if not for the fact that wounding the pudding slows it to Move 3.

Also, wouldn't a brown pudding be able to climb out of a hole by digging through the surrounding sand at a shallow angle? They can move through sand at Move 3...

[1] BTW the difficulty of kiting is a good thing. I'm coming most recently from AD&D and D&D 5E, and 5E makes kiting almost any monster to death much too easy and simple. DFRPG's rules for encumbrance, facing, wild swings, lack of defenses against enemies behind you, etc. combine to make just buying Move +3 and kiting everything to death much less of a dominant strategy.

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Old 09-26-2022, 02:53 PM   #14
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Default Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post

Isn't Move 6, plus the ability to make slams, enough to run down almost any PC with serious encumbrance?
It'll depend on the group, of course, but the same players who try to get max legal ST, damage, Dodge, DR, etc. will rack up Move. Also note that the Haste spell flat-out adds to Move (after encumbrance), not Basic Move (before encumbrance); it's trivial to learn, cheap to maintain, and very effective. My experience actually running the game is that players tend to favor mobility over mass.

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Also, wouldn't a brown pudding be able to climb out of a hole by digging through the surrounding sand at a shallow angle? They can move through sand at Move 3...
If the hole is surrounding by sand, sure. I'm not too sure many holes in dungeons are like that. Stone is just about standard for the sides of a dungeon pit, and a brown pudding can't do anything with stone.



Fundamentally, it's a "know your group" thing. My past player groups have just about always consisted of a swarm of fast-moving half-naked barbarians with Lifting ST, and lightly equipped martial artists, scouts, swashbucklers, and thieves, with a couple of slow casters who just tossed Haste on in the morning, if they didn't simply use Flight. Avoiding even Light encumbrance was an A-list goal. So kiting was generally a viable tactic for them.

Anecdote to the curious: That's why flying skulls and toxifiers with Move 12 flight, and spheres of madness with Move 14 flight; things like mindwarpers with long-range gaze attacks; and stupidity like watchers at the edge of time exist. I got tired of the kiting, so I just created monsters that could go anywhere or shoot anywhere. ;)
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Old 09-26-2022, 03:22 PM   #15
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Default Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?

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It'll depend on the group, of course, but the same players who try to get max legal ST, damage, Dodge, DR, etc. will rack up Move. Also note that the Haste spell flat-out adds to Move (after encumbrance), not Basic Move (before encumbrance); it's trivial to learn, cheap to maintain, and very effective. My experience actually running the game is that players tend to favor mobility over mass.
Ohhhhh. I have been doing it wrong then--I was adding Haste to basic move and then applying encumbrance to the total.

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If the hole is surrounding by sand, sure. I'm not too sure many holes in dungeons are like that. Stone is just about standard for the sides of a dungeon pit, and a brown pudding can't do anything with stone.
Noted. I had decided that if there are brown puddings in the dungeon, then of course the dungeon should be primarily made out of sand to justify their presence, but perhaps sand-crawling/camouflage isn't meant to be their primary shtick, more of a fringe benefit.

Quote:
Fundamentally, it's a "know your group" thing. My past player groups have just about always consisted of a swarm of fast-moving half-naked barbarians with Lifting ST, and lightly equipped martial artists, scouts, swashbucklers, and thieves, with a couple of slow casters who just tossed Haste on in the morning, if they didn't simply use Flight. Avoiding even Light encumbrance was an A-list goal. So kiting was generally a viable tactic for them.

Anecdote to the curious: That's why flying skulls and toxifiers with Move 12 flight, and spheres of madness with Move 14 flight; things like mindwarpers with long-range gaze attacks; and stupidity like watchers at the edge of time exist. I got tired of the kiting, so I just created monsters that could go anywhere or shoot anywhere. ;)
Interesting context, thanks. I somehow had the impression previously that DFRPG "expected" delvers to make use of heavy armor, etc.[1] Good to know that a high-Move Swashbuckler tossing out multiple wooden stakes per turn (while the other delvers hide offscreen) instead of slugging it out in melee isn't unanticipated.

You'd have to be pretty experienced to be able to afford all-day Flight but all-day Haste (Haste-20) is pretty cheap, and if Haste is boosts actual Move and not just Basic Move, that means Haste-20 and 5 points for Move 7 is enough to boost even a moderately-encumbered PC back to Move 6... I already liked Haste but I foresee it becoming a staple of play[2]. The best way not to get hit is not to be in range...

[1] Of the 13 Delvers To Go, seven of them have move 3-4 after encumbrance, four have move 5-6, and only two have move 7-8.

[2] Also, if you've already given up on armor and shields in favor of mobility, then Ethereal Body gets a lot more attractive too despite its 6 lb. limit.

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Old 09-27-2022, 05:24 PM   #16
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Default Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
Isn't Move 6, plus the ability to make slams, enough to run down almost any PC with serious encumbrance? Even Light Encumbrance can knock you down from Move 7 to Move 5.
Delvers with less than Move 7 deserve to die. /jk



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Noted. I had decided that if there are brown puddings in the dungeon, then of course the dungeon should be primarily made out of sand to justify their presence, but perhaps sand-crawling/camouflage isn't meant to be their primary shtick, more of a fringe benefit.
Just make the pits have a sand bottom. Thus the puddings can burrow down and them back in through a collapsed wall, ceiling, or patch of damaged/missing floor somewhere else and resume the hunt...
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Old 09-30-2022, 08:03 AM   #17
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Default Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?

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Delvers with less than Move 7 deserve to die. /jk
My DF PbP character has move 3... but he's built on 125 points, which is a different sort of game.
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Old 09-30-2022, 10:06 PM   #18
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My DF PbP character has move 3... but he's built on 125 points, which is a different sort of game.
That is a truism, just as my post was a joke. ;)

Of the 6 PCs in my game, one has a Move of 11, one an 8, the rest between 3 and 5, and that's with them at "combat Encumbrance", which means they've ditched backpacks.


Though the 8 is on a Barbarian that is at Light with full equipment, so they're still moving pretty fast.
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