Steve Jackson Games Forums - Striking with the flat of the blade

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donny Brook (Post 1947655)

It's an unfortunate artifact in the template. They should have advantages that reduce wounding instead.

The effect is the same, just the absolute hitpoints they can suffer change.

Basically:
option 1: Injury tolerance(damage reduction) (not vs crushing) (2)
option 2: vulnerability crushing x2

Both options have the same effect except the skeleton in option 1 has double the effective hitpoints. So doubling the hit points for option 2 skeleton would achieve the same effect.

Also note that the standard skeleton template does have Injury Tolerance (unliving) and no vulnerable locations making things like impaling weapons a lot less useful.

That leads to:
Thus the design for the standard skeleton in clearly meant to be really low effective hitpoints against crushing(1-2 hits to first death roll), low effective hit points against cutting(2-3 hits to first death roll) and such and fairly effective hit points against impaling(4-6 to first death roll) and piercing(depends on type).

Examples:
A fantasy warrior in low power campaign(ST 13) where the basic skeleton in fairly suitable enemy uses a club or thrusting broadsword against it(both are 3lb weapons using broadsword skill):
Broadsword thrusting: 1d+2 imp. -2 DR=3.5 average damage Unliving=3.5 injury or 3 hits to go <0, 6 hits to force first death roll, 8 hits to force second death roll
Broadsword swing: 2d cut -2 DR=5 average damage=7.5 injury or 2 hits to go <0, 3 hits to force first death roll, 4 hits to force second death roll
Club swing: 2d crush -2 DR=5 average damage=10 injury or 1 hit to go to 0, 2 hits to force first death roll, 3 hits to force second death roll

Compare that to hitting a living creature with DR 2 and the same 9HP:
Broadsword thrusting: 1d+2 imp. -2 DR=3.5 average damage=7 injury or 2 hits to go <0, 3 hits to force first death roll, 4 hits to force second death roll
Broadsword swing: 2d cut -2 DR=5 average damage=7.5 injury or 2 hits to go to 0, 3 hits to force first death roll, 4 hits to force second death roll
Club swing: 2d crush -2 DR=5 average damage=5 injury or 2 hits to go <0, 4 hits to force first death roll, 6 hits to force second death roll

Note: the reason why I say a ST 13 character finds skeletons suitable is in the number of hits above needed. A ST 16 character would quite likely cause immediate death roll on with one hit of the club and as the skeleton has on average ht 10 it would be destroyed half the time.. making it a true mook.

Thus for the ST 16 character you would likely want to double(Or triple) the hitpoints either directly or with Injury tolerance(damage reduction) or by adjusting the armor value.