[DF] Golem Boss Stats

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Stripe

Well, blow me down.

No, you need wizards with Air spells for that.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Stripe

Thanks for the input, TD.

So, it is the Knights who do the big melee damage? Don't they also normally wear the heavy armor?

What good is the Barbarian when the Knight is around?

Knights are basically ONLY good at killing things. Full stop.

Barbarians are not bad at killing things! They're very good at it! It's just knights are better because they aren't good at anything else.

Barbarians have situational advantages in some combat situations that can bring them up to approaching knights (mostly places where being SM +1 and wielding big heavy and possibly long SM +1 weapons make the difference, or places where being faster on the ground is more useful) but they're also useful in all kinds of physical noncombat situations, or wilderness encounters. Knights tend to be more hampered by jumping pits, climbing walls/trees/cliffs, any need for Stealth ever, and any check against Survival or other wilderness skills.

Knights tend to be buried in heavy armor (encumbered, Hard of Hearing if you use Low Tech and No Peripheral Vision even with Basic Set). A shield-and-one-handed-weapon knight makes a good contrast to a two-handed-weapon barbarian if you have two players interested in the two templates in the same party. A two-handed-weapon knight and a two-handed-weapon barbarian need a lot more care to distinguish.

The barbarian has 40 points invested in Outdoorsman. The GM really needs to make sure the Barbarian gets use out of it, or he's just punishing the Barbarian's player for not taking Weapon Master (Big Thumpy Things) and a bunch of Striking ST instead.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Bruno

The barbarian has 40 points invested in Outdoorsman. The GM really needs to make sure the Barbarian gets use out of it, or he's just punishing the Barbarian's player for not taking Weapon Master (Big Thumpy Things) and a bunch of Striking ST instead.

Quoting myself here because this needs emphasizing.

Every barbarian has to take 40 points in Outdoorsman. His mandatory-no-choices-ever primary skills are Camouflage, Navigation, Survival, and Tracking. He also gets to chose some weapon stuff, but this is Dungeon Fantasy so of course he does.

He also starts with a +2 to Perception, which boosts just about everything in the Outdoorsman talent and further differentiates him from the Knight in the big helmet who can't see anything.

A barbarian is Tarzan, the Beastmaster, or a Neandertal who got bored with living "at one with nature".

A "combat barbarian" is a kind of Knight - Gigantism is perfectly viable for any character to take, so if you want to you should take it (I don't really recommend it though) and use your Knight discretionary points on Strength, Hit Points, HT, Fit/Very Fit, Hard To Kill, etc.

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by Bruno

The barbarian has 40 points invested in Outdoorsman. The GM really needs to make sure the Barbarian gets use out of it, or he's just punishing the Barbarian's player for not taking Weapon Master (Big Thumpy Things) and a bunch of Striking ST instead.

I can see that happening often in this genre, too. Unfortunately, the only thing guaranteed to get spotlighted, no matter how poor the GM, is combat since all that takes is enemies.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Knights are basically ONLY good at killing things. Full stop.

Yes. I'll ask my players if I can post their PCs - but Vryce the Knight (ST 17, Weapon Master, greatsword and skill 22 or 23, and HP 20) and Borriz (ST 15, Weapon Master, mace, and Pickaxe Penchant 4 plus skill 23 or 24 and HP 18 - will be 20 soon enough) are pretty much combat-only guys. Oh sure, they're useful for other things - Borriz can force doors and has a high Prospecting skill, and a few other necessities, and Vryce is a bit more socially oriented than most, but that's about it. Their job is to kill stuff and be able to shrug off attacks with heavy armor. Considering my approach is "throw monsters at the party and see which side dies first" this is critical.

But it's all they really do well.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Barbarians are not bad at killing things! They're very good at it! It's just knights are better because they aren't good at anything else.

Yes. Barbarians are broader. They aren't, in my opinion, even second on the "who is most deadly?" list. Swashbucklers are right up there, a combat-oriented scout can pincushion foes, and a Martial Artist can use esoteric skills like Breaking Blow to make themselves situationally combat dominant.

But again, barbarians are broader. Want to trek into the Cold Mire in my campaign? Better hope Honus's player can make it, or you're all going to die. Want someone to scout ahead a bit and not die? Honus. Want someone to cover the flanks and use Slam to smash through the enemy ranks and then run clean out of their Step and Whatever range? Honus. Need a totally ridiculous amount of gear carried without lowering anyone's Move? Honus. Stuff on the top shelf? Honus!

But he's sacrificed a lot for that breadth, and the Knight doesn't. A knight is 250+50+5 = 305 points with about 295 spend on combat and 5 making it sound like the guy has an outside life.

This isn't always clear to people at first glance. I really had to repeat this over and over to Honus's player when he started. He went a heavy armor wearing barbarian who likes to use slams and a morningstar (flail - the poor man's Deceptive Attack), but at first he seemed to think he'd be a combat co-star. He's made himself into one by clever action, but he can't match the knights in pure death dealing . . . and once he realized his niche was wilderness survival and shrugging off DR-ignoring damage and making HT rolls with ease, it's been all good.

[Stripe]

Good to know.

Tell me about your Cold Mire and why he is so essential -- a list of skills/traits he uses and why, if you would be so kind.

[Anthony]

Since Tough Skin includes Flexible, this golem is perfectly possible for everyone to damage -- just do 5 points of damage with a crushing weapon or 10 with a cutting or impaling weapon. It will just take a very very long time.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Since Tough Skin includes Flexible, this golem is perfectly possible for everyone to damage -- just do 5 points of damage with a crushing weapon or 10 with a cutting or impaling weapon. It will just take a very very long time.

True, and even for doing him in more rapidly... say one of the PC Wizards gets up to Magery 6. That'll allow for up to an 18d Fireball or Explosive Fireball, albeit probably only once before having to go rest somewhere. Average 38 damage past that 25 DR, if a direct hit. Or there are any number of other spells that could take it out more efficiently, even with its various immunities.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Stripe

Good to know.

Tell me about your Cold Mire and why he is so essential -- a list of skills/traits he uses and why, if you would be so kind.

He's essential because unlike everyone else, he has:

Tracking
Camouflage
Navigation (Land)
Survival
Fishing
Weather Sense

So he's their best chance to deal with the environment. No one else has those at any skill level. And while they could get by without Fishing, there are certainly going to be rolls against the other ones that keep them safe from harm. No one is willing to risk it.

[SolemnGolem]

One fun encounter I had with a golem in compromising circumstances was to put the golem in an area with the rotting corpses of its former victims. The bodies crunch and slip underfoot, meaning the PCs have a penalty to speed (which the golem, being much larger and walking on much broader feet, does not). Also, the air is thick with bloat gases from the decomposing bodies.

The golem will come out swinging at the PCs, and if they do fight it, any natural 18 with a metal weapon means they strike a spark off the golem's stone exterior.

In an area filled with flammable gases, this causes a brief ignition (not really an explosion per se) which does some annoyance-level amount of damage to PCs nearby.