Defending against the Orc's Bane

[knightkrawler]

It is. Just shows the lack of play testing for the game. That said, I wonder if people pushed the limits of interpretations when it was published as much as now?

Of course they did. Main reason being that the game was aimed at 10-year-old boys and also was bought and played by them.
Remember, there was no such thing as nerdity in these times, and if there was, they played Amiga and full-fledged RPGs.
The members here in the forum almost exclusively have been those 10-year-olds (though TMU was merely a glint in my eye back then) and can actually remember there being debates about rules and card texts. I, for one, can.

My revisiting the rules targets this by rewording texts and restructuring the relationships between rulebook, questbook, and cards, so that the simplemost cross-referencing answers players' questions as fast as possible. One very important thing my rulebook will have: a Glossary. With a capital G.

[JasonMCM]

We didn't argue much, but some of our ruelings don't make much sense now that I am looking at them with 30somthing year old eyes.

[Redav]

but some of our ruelings don't make much sense now that I am looking at them with 30somthing year old eyes.

Agreed. As a kid I played combat rolls as both attack and defence and combat was to the death. Probably because I was used to that from reading Lone Wolf.

Remember, there was no such thing as nerdity in these times, and if there was, they played Amiga and full-fledged RPGs.

Well, I was writing basic 1.0 on my Amstrad CPC 464 with 64k RAM, green screen and tape deck

But you're right, it would have been play tested for the target audience and this is the context that I've mentioned in the past but a glossary would certainly been a good thing to have had. The ambiguity that's present takes away from the great game it is but I think a lot of that ambiguity only surfaces when older heads play it. I'm sure kids would play things at face value and not have as many issues as we harp on about these days.

[Sjeng]

You never could split the party like we are doing and live in a NA quest.

Of course you can. I'm playing NA rules as well, and it has happened seveal times. It's not smart, but it can be done, depending on the quest difficulty and luck.
And the quest you're playing has some tough men at arms. It's the toughest quest I know in the official releases. Even by EU standards. So you've been lucky.

[Daedalus]

What Deadalus and I were talking about only applies if you are using the multiple attack rules presented in the Barbarian Quest Pack.

In all honesty the more I use that rule the less I like it, and I think I, personaly, am going to move back to the 1 defense roll per 1 attack roll original rules side of the "how do you handle multiple attacks?" question.

I haven't even played with the rule, so I think it is interesting you are willing to drop it. It should clear up some of the difficulty problem with the BQP, at least. Quest 10 has 2 Polar Bears for the Wandering Monster--come on! That's 8 Attack dice twice before the unlucky treasure-searcher's companions even get a chance to attack. . If the searching Hero was last in the turn order, before the Heroes can even react, he's gonna face 16 Attack dice twice! At least the Heroes have a chance to recover the gear and abandon future treasure searches.

An Orc rolling 2 black shields doesn't happen often, so I'm not much concerned about how the BQP rule affects the use of Orc's Bane. My house rule for Heroes using two weapons is a different matter, as later on for the Heroes 3 Attack dice with 2 Attack dice is possible. I'm now wondering if it would also be better to drop the BQP rule to nerf my Hero two-weapon combo.

"...3 Attack dice with 2 Attack dice..." What the hell was I thinking? I think I meant 3 Attack Dice with 2 attacks. Since then my houserule has changed, but there you go.-edit

[GimmeYerGold]

I thought I'd boost this topic to seek help on a weapon I'm working on similar to Orc's Bane. It also has 2 combat dice and two attacks, but against any monster type. It's a nunchaku weapon for my Monk, and I'm wondering: how it would compare in power to a Broadsword?

In my rules, I'd allow the monster to defend against each attack, and to allow the Hero to attack a different monster for the second attack if he so wished. So, what's more powerful? I've looked at some charts and got the probabilities, but I'm having trouble translating the odds into real roll results. Based on AerynB and CP's dice roll probability charts, and comparing the monsters from the first 14 Quests, I came up with these results when considering an average defense for a monster to be about 2.5 combat dice:

Nunchaku
Attack 1 of 2) 2 combat dice = about a 56% chance of dealing 1-2 Body Points of damage.
Attack 2 of 2) 2 combat dice = about a 56% chance of dealing 1-2 Body Points of damage again, or against a different adjacent Monster.

VS.

Broadsword
Attack 1 of 1) 3 combat dice = about a 73% chance of dealing 1-3 Body Points of damage.

Interested to know if someone's figured out this kind of math, as it's not my strongest subject! I think a weapon like this could be a cool higher-tier item if it turns out to be rather powerful. I know with my house rules, Orc's Bane usually cleans up the dungeon, so it'd be cool to see what a Monk could do with something similar for every kind of monster. Thanks for any help

[GimmeYerGold]

I think I figured it out?

IF a monster can defend against two different attacks from the same weapon, it essentially doubles that monster's defense against double the weapon's base hit die.

So, 2 attacks from a 2 combat weapon is 4 combat dice total, and if a monster has 2 combat dice in defense, it has 4 total to defend with--it's basically a battle axe vs a chaos warrior.

Once I tested it against a monster with 3 combat dice in defense, I saw that a weapon with 2 combat dice and 2 attacks, was practically the same as a broadsword.

However, as I added more defend dice to the monster's roll, I saw that the broadsword was getting an overall advantage. It's rather slight, but with tougher enemies, a broadsword is better than a weapon with 2 attack dice, twice.

[Decipher]

Well, that was a fantastic read. Think it was a little overly complicated for no reason. But good stuff.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

"... Now, official rules state..."
After checking out p. 5 of the Barbarian Quest Pack, 5. Rule Clarifications from the homepage buttons of this site (thanks, drathe), I see some backpedaling is in order. It states:

.Multiple Attacks: A Hero rolls Defend Dice once for each
. attacking monster. For example, a Hero attacked by a monster with
. multiple attacks (such as the Polar Warbear), however, gets only 1
. defend roll against that monster per turn, no matter how many of
. the monster's attacks are directed at the Hero.

Technically, the above clarification doesn't apply to a monster rolling defend dice against a Hero, as it isn't stated within. The Instruction Booklet breaks up How A Hero Defends from How A Monster Defends into different sections, so the superseding rule would only apply to Hero defends... technically.

I feel like this debate has been much confused by the rule modification introduced in or for the Barbarian Quest Pack / Frozen Horror so I think it is worth taking a look at this first before considering the rest of the "attack twice" debate.

1) The rule is badly written, it states that you can only defend once against multiple attacks from the same monster but doesn't indicate whether that means you defend only against the first attack, or only against the second, or whether you can choose between the two and if so what prevents the monster directing its second attack at a different target after you have opted to not defend against the first attack
2) It also doesn't state whether this is supposed to apply to monsters attacking heroes only or defending against multiple attacks from the same attacks in general - the existing rules in this area are consistent with each other so it would be a step in the wrong direction to make then inconsistent.
3) Whilst it seems clear that this modification has been included in light of the new Polar Warbear, it isn't made clear whether it is supposed to be applied for that monster only, this quest pack only, or retrospectively for all similar situations
4) The rule doesn't make sense logically, if you choose to defend against the second attack only, do you have to take off your armour between rolls, or just close your eyes and stand very still. It is also isn't logically consistent with other multiple attack scenarios, 3 goblins attacking the same hero in the same turn, or a hero using Orc's Bane to attack the same Orc twice (as there is no suggestion up to this point that the defending Orc wouldn't get to defend twice)

So clearly a rule with issues.

Lets turn our minds to why this rule was introduced, and why introduced at this point. The answer is clearly something to do with the massive 8 attack dice of the new Polar War Bear. Personally I suspect that the designer of this quest had concerns that the massive attack of his new monster would be diluted by heroes using mercenaries (also available in this same Quest pack) as "cannon fodder" that is using them as a cheap screen to absorb the massive attacks, wasting those in an overkill, then counter-attacking with the heroes.

And whilst that is a valid concern, it is also a valid tactic and one that the Evil Wizard player has been using to sustain himself for the previous 50+ quests, so why now that it can finally be used to the Heroes advantage should it suddenly get scrapped!

That aside if they did want to introduce a new rule to prevent this tactic being used against the Polar Warbear then a far simpler option would have been to just give it a straight forward 8 Attack dice and a special "Split Attacks" ability, something like below

Split Attacks: A character with this ability may make a single attack against a single opponent as usual OR may choose to split their combat dice evenly between two opponents and attack them both in the same action using half of their stated combat dice each.

For me if you don't have and are not planning to play BQP then purge your mind of this abomination of a rule modification. If you are planning on playing BQP then either ignore this special rule modification as it isn't needed OR replace it with a simpler variant along the lines that I have suggested above.

With that particular can of worms resealed, then we can turn to the main thrust of this topic, freed from one level of additional complexity.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Back to the main thrust of the topic, how is the "attack twice" mechanism, actually supposed to work?

Heroic Brew
A leather bag hanging on the wall holds a potion. It is a Heroic Brew. The potion may be taken just before you are about to attack. Any player who drinks the potion will be able to make two attacks instead of one, for one turn only. The card is then discarded.

Taking the simplest first "Heroic Brew" what are the questions?

A) Do both attacks have to be against the same target?

B) Can you split the attacks between movement i.e. attack, move, attack?

C) Can you attack once, with a particular weapon then switch and attack again

I don't see anything in the text that suggests that both attacks have to be against the same target or different targets, nothing that indicates that you can or can't put movement between the two attacks or switch weapons between attacks. So I can see two possible interpretations here, and no evidence to suggest which is correct, although at this point I favour (1) but only because this potion feels like it increases your speed of attack, so this seems to be contradicted by letting a hero attack rapidly, move at standard speed, then switch to a crossbow and attack rapidly again.

1) Single Attack Action containing two attacks - this would mean you couldn't move between attacks and couldn't switch weapons between attacks
2) Two Distinct Attack Actions - this would mean that you could move between attacks and switch weapons

Orcs Bane
The sword, Orcs Bane allows you to roll two combat dice in attack. You may attack TWICE if you are fighting Orcs.
WEAPON

Orcs' Bane presumably uses the same mechanism (for consistency and simplicity) but adds the restriction that the attacks must be against Orcs

Again same two interpretations available (1) and (2) above, but in this instance I think there is a problem if we assume option (2). Picture the scene, you are armed with Orcs' Bane and have two Orcs adjacent to you, you attack the first once, killing it, you then move to your second attack action (permitted as you have Orcs Ban and you are attacking Orcs), as part of your second attack action you decide to switch to your Battle axe. We now have something of a logical loop, you are now no longer wielding Orcs Bane so you don't get your second attack action. Which means we need to roll this back and reverse the action in which you decided to switch weapons, so you are now back to wielding Orcs Bane, so you now CAN take a second attack action. You decide to switch to your Battle axe... have fun coding this one into a computer game!

Therefore for the sake of simplicity I will assume that interpretation (1) is the intended one

Lets see if this checks out for our third contender, the Orc Shaman's Orc Berserker spell.

Orc Shaman Spells: Orc Berserker
The Sorcerer may choose one Orc within his line of sight to be filled with immense strength and vigour. That Orc may then move twice and attack twice during that turn only. Discard after use.

Applying our interpretation (1) logic here would mean the monster under the influence could attack twice in one action and then move (twice), OR move (twice) and then attack twice in one action

This seems to work fine and would be exactly the same effect as our Orc quaffing Heroic Brew and Potion of Speed at the start of his turn, he could move twice (double amount) and attack (twice) OR attack twice and move twice, so I think all is well in the world, so far.

How do they stack

As both allow you to attack twice, I'm not sure that they do stack. You attack against an Orc, then you attack another Orc. This has satisfied Heroic Brew (as you attacked twice) and satisfies Orcs' Bane (you attacked twice against Orcs), no further action required?

Some items allow a character to attack twice instead of the usual once. In this instance both attacks are considered part of one single attack action, so you cannot split the action by moving in between, neither can you switch weapons between attacks, it is a single action comprising of one attack followed rapidly by another using the same weapon. You may direct your attacks against different targets provided that they are both valid targets. Defence is handled as standard. Using more than one item that gives you an "attack twice" bonus does not stack, for example attacking Orcs with Orcs' Bane whilst under the influence of Heroic Brew means that you will get two attacks only as this satisfies the criteria for both effects

For those who think that Orcs Bane is too "weak" (I'm not sure that there is any minimum strength for a magical weapon) it is the same strength as Heroic Brew so is that also too "weak" or is the perceived issue that Orcs bane is too restrictive in its application "Orcs only". if that is the issue then I would agree expanding out the targets to all Greenskins, Orcs, Goblins, Orc Warlord and so on would make perfect sense. Another option would be to allow your Wizard to use short swords (sacrilege!) and then this becomes a useful hand-me-down sidearm for him in later quests...or both.