Skeleton Warriors Stats?

[Gargoyle]

My first thoughts on this were that skeletons would simply ignore "precision" attacks such as missile weapons and fire combat that depend on blowing through large amounts of flesh and that zombies could test against wounds (at -1 per wound that would be suffered) to shrug them off as being "non-vital". Whether that works for your purposes remains to be seen.

Defining "precision attacks" is the tricky part. Players will point out, not incorrectly, that bullets break bones just fine. My opinion and ruling though will be that such damage is incidental and the main source of trauma is bleeding and organ piercing. It will have to be a GM's call really as damage types aren't really defined in Torg with any granularity, and I'm ok with that.

Regardless, I don't want extra rolls to slow things down. I like that Torg tends to keep it down to one roll per action.

[Greymarch2000]

Also to further muddy the waters I think that skeletons in different cosms should probably have different stats. A skeleton in Aysle is almost a hum drum affair of daily adventuring life, so many necromancers working for Uthorian running around. Skeletons in the Living Land are an abomination against everything that Lanala stands for while a skeleton in Orrorsh would be a horrible, unsettling thing.

[Gargoyle]

Also to further muddy the waters I think that skeletons in different cosms should probably have different stats. A skeleton in Aysle is almost a hum drum affair of daily adventuring life, so many necromancers working for Uthorian running around. Skeletons in the Living Land are an abomination against everything that Lanala stands for while a skeleton in Orrorsh would be a horrible, unsettling thing.

Agree, especially given that U.S. has stated they want to make werewolves specific to Orrorsh only, and not have Aysle or Core Earth versions, and I agree with that stance. I think the same philosophy applies here to the point that I will probably not do animated human skeletons in the LL IMC or Orrorsh, only Aysle. Dino skellies in LL though, yeah, I think that's iconic enough for the Thrakmoss followers. The genres mash up enough, I don't want them muddied.

[Atama]

Also to further muddy the waters I think that skeletons in different cosms should probably have different stats. A skeleton in Aysle is almost a hum drum affair of daily adventuring life, so many necromancers working for Uthorian running around. Skeletons in the Living Land are an abomination against everything that Lanala stands for while a skeleton in Orrorsh would be a horrible, unsettling thing.

Agree, especially given that U.S. has stated they want to make werewolves specific to Orrorsh only, and not have Aysle or Core Earth versions, and I agree with that stance. I think the same philosophy applies here to the point that I will probably not do animated human skeletons in the LL IMC or Orrorsh, only Aysle. Dino skellies in LL though, yeah, I think that's iconic enough for the Thrakmoss followers. The genres mash up enough, I don't want them muddied.

I agree with you in principle but from a practical standpoint there are probably a lot more human skeletons around for a Gotak to animate.

[Gargoyle]

Also to further muddy the waters I think that skeletons in different cosms should probably have different stats. A skeleton in Aysle is almost a hum drum affair of daily adventuring life, so many necromancers working for Uthorian running around. Skeletons in the Living Land are an abomination against everything that Lanala stands for while a skeleton in Orrorsh would be a horrible, unsettling thing.

Agree, especially given that U.S. has stated they want to make werewolves specific to Orrorsh only, and not have Aysle or Core Earth versions, and I agree with that stance. I think the same philosophy applies here to the point that I will probably not do animated human skeletons in the LL IMC or Orrorsh, only Aysle. Dino skellies in LL though, yeah, I think that's iconic enough for the Thrakmoss followers. The genres mash up enough, I don't want them muddied.

I agree with you in principle but from a practical standpoint there are probably a lot more human skeletons around for a Gotak to animate.

That's a realistic way to look at it, but I don't do things like that. I just think about what I want to present to the players and change the setting and game rules to get there. So only dino skeletons IMC in the LL. No humans, and no edeinos skellies, I'm saving that type of skellie for Aylse. This approach can be more work for me and house rules etc, but I don't mind, especially if it's not changes to anything in the core book.

[FrankG]

[ I have successfully made my Willpower Test and have stopped myself from making a resurrection of the thread joke. ]

Even though I've read it many times, it just hit me that in the Aysle Sourcebook Skeletons have the following Special Ability:

Immunity: Skeletons take no damage from missile weapons and firearms, unless they have an area of effect.

I'm not jiving with this one so much. I feel that it matches the feel for Aysle... you have to send in Jason and his Argonaughts to take out the Skeletal Warriors by sword, but I don't feel that it matches the cross-genre feel of Torg. It's robbing us of someone setting up an Impala Chaingun and mowing down a mob of skeletons leaving nothing but a cloud calcium.

That's the extreme of course, but I like the idea of considering every type of attack, on the fly and in-game. Or something "weird" like: must do 2 Wounds on a single attack from gunfire for it to take a Wound.

Any other thoughts more creative than mine?

[pkitty]

[ I have successfully made my Willpower Test and have stopped myself from making a resurrection of the thread joke. ]

Even though I've read it many times, it just hit me that in the Aysle Sourcebook Skeletons have the following Special Ability:

Immunity: Skeletons take no damage from missile weapons and firearms, unless they have an area of effect.

I'm not jiving with this one so much. I feel that it matches the feel for Aysle... you have to send in Jason and his Argonaughts to take out the Skeletal Warriors by sword, but I don't feel that it matches the cross-genre feel of Torg. It's robbing us of someone setting up an Impala Chaingun and mowing down a mob of skeletons leaving nothing but a cloud calcium.

That's the extreme of course, but I like the idea of considering every type of attack, on the fly and in-game. Or something "weird" like: must do 2 Wounds on a single attack from gunfire for it to take a Wound.

Any other thoughts more creative than mine?

Change it to "...unless they have an area of effect or are firing a burst." That keeps skeletons immune to bows and single-shot rifles, but lets you mow them down with chainguns. It makes sense even, if you think of a burst as a different kind of "area effect" of a sort -- it does fill an area with bullets.

[utsukushi]

Ooh, the site seems to be working right now! Let's see if I can get this through.

So, as kind of an aside, I do agree with Atama that Bursts should kind of count as Area Effects. Long Burst, at least. But I'm not sure "I wish a Chaingun worked on Skeletons" specifically is really all you were getting at.

So I really have to start by saying I don't actually mind certain enemies being immune to certain types of attacks, even really broad ones like that. It does lock out certain options for dealing with them, but that's not really a bad thing. That Chaingun is going to solve plenty of problems; it can sit one out. It's good that my Elven Archer is going to have to spend an occasional combat focused on Maneuvering or Tricks or whatever, whether that means letting someone else step up and deal with the problem or just remembering that an Outstanding Result can still take out a Skeleton. It's actually pretty hard in Eternity to set up a character/encounter combination that will leave any character completely useless. (Totally possible, but it's not easy.)

This specifically, though, I agree, I don't like it. Mostly because it feels too D&D, but I never liked it there either. My understanding is that it's supposed to be because projectiles "go through the open bits", and sure, I get that, but I always think... what, like all of them?? Every single time?? If my Elven Archer can pretty reliably shoot a fly out of the air, I think she can target the skull/spine/kneecaps of a skeleton. We even have a whole rule for that and everything.

It makes more sense to maybe count them as Small (because there is indeed less surface area to aim at), or just to say hitting them with ranged attacks requires a Called Shot. I'd buy that. But it makes no sense to me that you can absolutely target the eye slits in someone's armor, but will miss a whole skeleton always.

[GeniusCodeMonkey]

Ooh, the site seems to be working right now! Let's see if I can get this through.

So, as kind of an aside, I do agree with Atama that Bursts should kind of count as Area Effects. Long Burst, at least. But I'm not sure "I wish a Chaingun worked on Skeletons" specifically is really all you were getting at.

So I really have to start by saying I don't actually mind certain enemies being immune to certain types of attacks, even really broad ones like that. It does lock out certain options for dealing with them, but that's not really a bad thing. That Chaingun is going to solve plenty of problems; it can sit one out. It's good that my Elven Archer is going to have to spend an occasional combat focused on Maneuvering or Tricks or whatever, whether that means letting someone else step up and deal with the problem or just remembering that an Outstanding Result can still take out a Skeleton. It's actually pretty hard in Eternity to set up a character/encounter combination that will leave any character completely useless. (Totally possible, but it's not easy.)

This specifically, though, I agree, I don't like it. Mostly because it feels too D&D, but I never liked it there either. My understanding is that it's supposed to be because projectiles "go through the open bits", and sure, I get that, but I always think... what, like all of them?? Every single time?? If my Elven Archer can pretty reliably shoot a fly out of the air, I think she can target the skull/spine/kneecaps of a skeleton. We even have a whole rule for that and everything.

It makes more sense to maybe count them as Small (because there is indeed less surface area to aim at), or just to say hitting them with ranged attacks requires a Called Shot. I'd buy that. But it makes no sense to me that you can absolutely target the eye slits in someone's armor, but will miss a whole skeleton always.

I guess that's the idea of giving skeletons a bonus to defence for piercing attacks so it hard to hit the small target that is bone.