09-26-2022, 01:49 PM | #11 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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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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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
09-26-2022, 02:27 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?
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09-26-2022, 02:30 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jan 2008
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Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?
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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. Last edited by sjmdw45; 09-26-2022 at 02:52 PM. |
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09-26-2022, 02:53 PM | #14 | ||
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?
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— 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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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
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09-26-2022, 03:22 PM | #15 | |||
Join Date: Jan 2008
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Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?
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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. Last edited by sjmdw45; 09-26-2022 at 05:08 PM. |
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09-27-2022, 05:24 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jun 2022
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Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?
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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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09-30-2022, 08:03 AM | #17 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?
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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09-30-2022, 10:06 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Jun 2022
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Re: Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?
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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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