Gritty rules (massive damage) in effect

It is my opinion that average dice rolls aren’t useful (and aren’t really average) and particularly when using massive damage rules are not realistic to use.

why go to the trouble of implementing a such a rule and then go out of your way to use averages to avoid having the rule come into effect?

I have said elsewhere that this rule is not balanced out currently, at most in tier 2 there are very few methods to remove wounds (psionic heroes, ansharans and yarricites).

this game just got more randomly deadly rather than intentionally deadly.

I would still like to see Joe or Tony make that rule public

Our table used average damage (for the bad guys) in the BI and it definitely sped up combat.

When they announced the Massive Damage rule at the BI they did not mention anything about the stun portion (just the wound portion). I think, if anything, it slowed down the combats because more players had more wounds (and thus more penalties).

As to combining the two, we had low enough Fort defenses and enough variability that upper teens was often enough to deal a wound to some (even our highest tier player with 27 avoidance only had low 20s fortitude). The only ones that were auto-wound for everyone were giant king mighty swing (which usually got combined with sweeping strike for 2-3 wounds dealt) and shared suffering spell.

The big thing I see Massive Damage doing is making Fate far more valuable as it will be needed to ignore wound penalties and to reduce stamina (or raise defenses) to avoid taking a wound.

Combats are likely to be sped up. At the BI I took out 3 or 4 targets with lucky rolls doing wound damage. I agree that the healing of wounds short of time measured in days isn’t available until T3 except in specific cases such as Psionics (self only)

Fate will be used more to boost defenses. Foes at the BI seemed to be higher damage than what I recall seeing at least commonly in mods. Or at least, more of the opponents had that bigger damage threat.

A fate point will allow you to auto-stabilize iirc even when vanquished by wounds. There’s also the option in the back of the Codex of Heroes to allow a character to avoid death by taking on an appropriate flaw – missing limb, one eye, lame, phobia, etc.

I think the later should be included if it’s not already as going into effect with the massive damage rules.

I know part of the reason for the massive damage rules was an encouragement and rationale for why people would use slower but higher damage weapons.

I’m fine with either approach.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

shield of enduring will became much more useful also

the massive damage rule was partially referenced in the announcement, the full text of it can be found in the Codex of Heroes

also those crossbowmen were probably some of the deadliest mobs out there damage/wound wise

I am also not a fan of widespread application of the Gritty Damage rules.

I let my table spend a fate point to avoid taking the wound when they got hit for Massive Damage. I was worried it would be too generous till we got into it and I started doing “wounds” with the Voie. Pretty much the only thing my BI table did with fate was resisting wounds and they ran out by the Giant Fight which felt to me about right.

Two or three of my 7 party members would have been taken out half way through the BI if I had been Lawful Neutral as a judge. Better they keep standing till near the end.

Eric

is #4 the official wording? I dont think that is how that works….

You use Fate to counter the negative effects of the wound. It doesn’t prevent the wound.

As far as speeding up combat, speeds up killing NPCs with 1 or 2 wounds. For the other side, PCs that would have survived combat because they were “vanquished” may now be permanently dead, especially the 2 wound PCs, because Fort Defense is “around” a third of your stamina.

Now, is this massive damage rule in full use, permitted as an option, or was it BI only?