Hi all,
Are there any rules for weapons and armour tailor made for differently sized people? e.g.
a long-sword for a giant of size +6
full-plate armour for a size -3 man
And does anyone know if there are any stats for full roman legionary lorica?
Merry Christmas everyone.
In general, the stats of weapons apply the same across size categories. Common sense needs to be applied if you're, say, fighting a warrior god who is taller than a mountain and wielding an appropriately-sized axe, but as a rule, directly scaling up size doesn't make them more able to hit you (the wider attack area is generally offset by each attack taking longer to perform) and the damage increase is covered by the correlation between increasing size and increasing strength.
In our most recent game we had a low tunnel tunnel whith a magus traveling from one end on his hands and knees, and on the other end some gigantic zombie roman legionary rats, in armour and formation. They attacked him as a trained group and ended up stabbing him through the palm. Their stats are Size-5, Str -9, Dex +3, Qik +5.
With a long spear it has attack 12, init 5, def 12 and dam -2
A trained group of these guys is pretty hard to deal with - we just wondered if the numbers were a bit high.
Leon.
Seems entirely appropriate to me. It's fairly rare for a magus to have good physical combat abilities, and given the hands and knees thing, heavily armed and trained rats should have little trouble injuring and then killing a magus unless and until the magus chooses to end the rats' assault with magic.
Leon, I will point out, as I told Pete after, I actively fudged those numbers.
After all, acting as a trained group, they should have done 10 injuries all at 21 Damage after soak.
Which would have still been instantly lethal 10 times over, had it not been for pete's ruling on the location.
Trained groups against individuals should be lethal, it's a feature not a bug. Even magi should have problems with them, unless they can escape somehow.
As to the idea that larger creatures get weapons scaled (damage wise) to their size, this makes some sense, but I think you need to scale the initiative penalties. If you are not within range of their weapon, it should be relatively easy for someone to evade conflict, unless the circumstances require a stand and fight rather than a turn and flee response. And if one must stand and fight against, then one hopes one is prepared. The idea of running away and fighting another day is endorsed in Ars Magica, but tends to be ignored in other games. See the example of the maga making an AC to face a dragon in the core 5th edition rule book.
You just gave me and Idea so basically I should just flee in order not to get conflict and have the other way around.
The size adjustment of the wielder mostly caters for this anyway. The huge strength penalty you get for being tiny offsets the damage quite well.
The problem is a trained group of soldier-rats with pointy sticks knows exactly where to put them for maximum lethality, and are trained to ensure someone in their group gets to put it there. That's what training does.
So if the trained group can generate a high enough attack total to not only offset their damage penalty but also inflict a significant wound, then it's going to hurt a LOT.