Rules governing knock downs

[Theopolis]

Long story short I'm building an encounter where the heroes face a giant Roc/Griffon (haven't decided on which yet). I'd really like to have the Roc use it's wings to knock the heroes back, forcing them off the elevated platform that holds it's aerie, or knock them down, so they must use half their action to get back up. Originally I was thinking about skull=knock back some amount of squares, WS= knock down in place and BS= knocked down and moved. This doesn't take in to account that a massive heavily armored barbarian is harder to toss around than a frail wizard. Any thoughts on this? Currently we use BP as a measure of strength so maybe roll a number of combat dice equal to BP and a certain number of skulls is required to keep a hero standing?

[TMU]

Yeah, BP or DD sounds good. I like the idea, as heroes think they will get to kill the beast, it raises it wings and blows them back down

[Theopolis]

It will be their second encounter with the beast. I'm using it to harass them as they jump and climb some chunks of a floating mountain. They will have very little chance to inflict damage to the roc as they climb so when they encounter it at the end of the ascent it should still be pretty powerful. My gaming group holds a pretty good grudge against monsters sometimes and the ability to push them around or knock them down without touching them should make this guy memorable.

[Sjeng]

THAT is AWESOME! How does jumping work? And what if they fail?

[Teldurn]

I'm a huge fan of physical props as game implements so seeing these floating chunks of rock makes me very happy. But like Sjeng asked, how does jumping work? Also what constitutes a square, is each platform one square?

[Theopolis]

Thanks! Building terrain and objects are my favorite part of this hobby. In fact most of my minis are unpainted because I'd rather build a floating island than paint a mini.

Anyway each small island is a single square. The large island is divided up to look like flagstones so each paver is a square of movement.

Here are my current rules for jumping and climbing.

21) Extended range jumping
Jumps of more than two spaces or jumps of an indeterminate distance (ie; jumping from one canyon wall to another) shall be governed by a more indepth dice rolling.
a) Upon jumping the hero shall roll a combat die. On a white shield they make the jump completely landing safely on the other side (or clinging safely to the top most point they can reach being able to pull themselves up as a free action). On a skull they miss the top of the structure and are clinging below on the next hold point (see ‘climbing’ below). On a black shield they fall further clinging to the next hold point, if there isn’t another hold point the hero falls the full distance to the ground or next structure.

Jumping large gaps over water: If a hero attempts to jump a gap longer than two spaces or of indeterminate distance over water the following rules shall apply.
b) Upon jumping the hero shall roll a combat die. On a white shield the jump is made completely and the hero lands safely on the other side. On a skull the hero is clinging to the edge and hanging into the water. They must spend a turn pulling themselves out of the water pulling themselves to safety (see ‘climbing’ below). On a black shield they land in the water too far away from the edge to hang on and are considered to be swimming (see ‘swimming’ below).

22) Climbing: If a hero is hanging from a hold point on a cliff face (or similar structure; tall buildings, trees, etc) they must climb to the top before they can move freely.
a) Moving from one hold point to another or from a hold point to a point of safety require an entire turn. For each turn spent climbing the hero rolls a combat die. On a skull they successfully climb and, if at a safe point, may make an action as if they started their turn on that square. On a white shield they only have enough strength to hang on and cannot move. On a black shield the hero loses their grip and slips to the next hold point on the structure. If there are no more hold points the hero falls the full distance to the ground or next structure.

b) Attacking and Defending while climbing: A hero cannot attack and defends at only 1 DD. Their attention is focused on holding on to the structure and can only defend as if they were stunned.


This is copied out of our house rule book. We come from D&D but like the simplicity of HQ. For this encounter of the slip from the last hand hold (each island has two per face: the edge and one below it) they are swooped up by te Roc/Griffon and dropped into its nest. If they roll a BS on a single combat die on the fall they break a bone and loose one AD and one DD and -3mv. Then the other heroes must finish the jumps/climb and go rescue the captured ones.

Let me know what you think, we've only used the mechanic or jumping long distances once on an 'Indiana Jones/romancing the stone' cliff wall jump. It worked out pretty well so I figured I'd recycle it.

[Daedalus]

Long story short I'm building an encounter where the heroes face a giant Roc/Griffon (haven't decided on which yet). I'd really like to have the Roc use it's wings to knock the heroes back, forcing them off the elevated platform that holds it's aerie, or knock them down, so they must use half their action to get back up. Originally I was thinking about skull=knock back some amount of squares, WS= knock down in place and BS= knocked down and moved. This doesn't take in to account that a massive heavily armored barbarian is harder to toss around than a frail wizard. Any thoughts on this? Currently we use BP as a measure of strength so maybe roll a number of combat dice equal to BP and a certain number of skulls is required to keep a hero standing?

How about treating the wing buffet as an attack, so that the Hero defends with white shields instead? I like to consider a Hero's strength in such matters as half of the starting Body Points, rounded down. The Barbarian gets 4 defend dice, and the Wizard gets just 2. The wing buffet could be made with the attack dice of the Griffon, but with knockback/knockdown effect instead of damage.

As for the results, a Hero is knocked back a number of squares equal to the number of undefended skulls from a wing buffet. If he fails to roll any white shields, he can be knocked down. Basically, its a kind of opposed strength contest.
Or have any undefended skulls cause a knockdown. That way, a Hero could only get back up and move after a wing buffet attack, making it a good defense for the Griffon.

[Gold Bearer]

THAT is AWESOME!

My thoughts exactly.

[Theopolis]

I like the idea of using it as an attack a lot! I could use the starting defense die and have the griffon roll attack die. One space for every undefended hit and a knockdown for zero white shields. It keeps it much more in the HQ realm than some convoluted derived stat. Nice!

[Daedalus]

Glad there was something helpful. I also would like to praise you for your cool terrain idea--it looks like it's loads of fun to play on. I'll risk another opinion, though unsolicited. Consider adding cotton or poly-fiber to the bases for a cloud effect. I'd mount the cotton on white, cloud-shaped boards first, which can be placed over your foam bases. If they look stupid, you can just remove them.