I have no issue with crossbows being deadly. They were just maybe a little over represented in the bridges mission in the BI - 18 (or was it 24?) minions with crossbows doing upper teens or lower 20s on an average hit is kinda ridiculous (it was the only mission where I went down due to stamina loss (71 stamina, ar 7) though I was down to 3 stamina in another and 8 against the giants).

Hello,

I see that the BI caused a bit of a stir.

I have read the posts and would like to point out a few things:

Battle Interactives, by definition, are designed to be combat intensive. While I uderstand the desire to play "face" or "diplomatic" characters (and no one is prohibiting you from doing so) they are not going to have an easy time of it, just as a Yhing hir warrior would have a difficult time negotiating the intricaies of the Coryani Imperial Court.

I also see some comments on the many waves of opponents. This would be my doing.

While Eric and Matt wrote the specific missions and stat blocks, I wrote the story and narrative dictating what you face. I write the story of these (and the other adventures) with an eye towards logic and realism (or as much realism as can be found in a fantasy game, I suppose) and I would expect that invading someone's city/capital would elicit a fierce response by the defenders. Said defenders would be made up, primarily, of minion and common level opponents and there would be gobs of them - lot and lots oif gobs.

Frankly, due to time considerations, Eric was forced to cut out one of the missions where you would be faced with another wave of attackers and be assisted by the resistance. He did this with box text, but had we more time it would have been a more organic way of introducing the NPC s that you met towards the end. (I'm being vague as I don't want to spoil any part of the Hard Point leading up to this BI).

Inany case, I'm sure if we didn't have the number of foes that you faced, we'd get complaints that it was unrealistic, so damned if you - damned if you don't.

As for the Massive Damage rules - we'd also received a lot of complaints that there was little to no fear of dying in the game. This rule addresses that and even then, we only had one character death (due to his own choice of not using a Fate Point).

We played a mod last night using the new rules. There were only 2 wounds inflicted or earned through the mod. In both cases the damage rolls open ended. All weapons on both sides were smaller and faster (gladius was the biggest weapon used).

Even still I don't think this will be a problem. BIs are their own beast.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

I for one like the massive damage rule. I think it will not only make wounds relevant again, but it might also cause people to play a little more carefully in the future (myself included).

As for the BI, there were a number of things I quite liked, such as climbing the wall. It was nice to have the non-combat skills showcased a little. The only real problem I saw was the time it took to go through a large number of minion's actions. I'm not sure what the solution would be...perhaps having them share rolls? All in all, I thought it was a good BI.

The only other option I can think of is to have a co-GM for helping run the minions (and some of the adversaries in fights like the final mission in the BI) but that means doubling the number of GMs needed for the BI.

In the original campaign at one point they had a sheet of d20 rolls for easy quick reference. You could do the same thing with the die types (d8 vs. d10 vs. d12) and simply mark them off in a row.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

I think shared rolls would create the issue of scoring 6 wounds at a time to players.

Hi all,

Having finally gotten home (not by accident, by design; I had two extra weeks of leave planned), I wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped run the events at Origins (you know who you are), the folks who helped run HQ (Ken, Heather and Clint for the most part) and everyone who came, played and had a good time.

As previously noted, there are lessons learned, and they will be.

Cheers,
James Zwiers

Thanks for your organization, planning and leadership at HQ, James! Its often a thankless job but you do it well.

+1