Combat, killing and injuries

Torchbearer An Adventurer's Essentials
1

Hey guys,

I’ve been reading and tried a little bit of Torchbearer and have some easy questions concerning combat, killing and injuries. I understand the approach of conflicts. if you wanna fight to death you engage in a killing conflict where the loser die and you deal on compromises to determine how and who, if i’m right. But how do you deal with combat or killing and martialy induced injuries outside conflict.

For example I see a giant spider in a cavern we look at each other. The spider is not agressive it jsut staring, can I shoot an arrow to kill it without going into a whole fight conflict? Can I kill foes outside a conflcit or we have to fully engage?

And if I understand right you dont get into a killing conflict if you dont agree on possibly dying otherwise you approach things differently, correct?
Sometimes by reading the book i feel like the only way to be martialy injured is either to die completely or on a compromise of some sort, otherwise the injuries come from the Grind…correct?

Thanks for helping!

2

I suppose one way of looking at it is that a single shot with a bow isn’t deadly enough to kill (or drive off) significant monsters in one shot, so when you start using your weapons on things, you’re picking a fight.

According to the rules (p. 67), whenever players engage with a monster in an important way, it’s a conflict. As GM, you need to ask the players what they’re trying to do. Are they trying to kill it? Drive it off? Just see how tough it is?

As GM, it’s your call when the condition, “in an important way” has been satisfied. These all strike me as legit:

Scenario 1

GM: A giant spider hangs in its web, slung across the corridor.
PC: I shoot it with my bow!
GM: What are you trying to do?
PC: Well, kill it.
GM: Buckle up - you’re now in a Kill Conflict.

Scenario 2

GM: A giant spider hangs in its web, slung across the corridor.
PC: I shoot it with my bow!
GM: Your arrow lodges in its carapace, and the thing lets out a wet hiss. It drops to the floor and begins scuttling away from you. What do you do?
PC: We chase it!
GM: Okay, it’s a Flee Conflict.

Scenario 3

GM: A giant spider hangs in its web, slung across the corridor.
PC: I shoot it with my bow!
GM: Your arrow lodges in its carapace, and the thing lets out a wet hiss. It drops to the floor and begins scuttling toward you. What do you do?
PC: Oh crap, quick, Cedric, hit it with your magic!
GM: What are you trying to do?
PC: Stop it from getting to us.
GM: Okay, it’s a Drive Off Conflict.

Scenario 4

GM: A giant spider hangs in its web, slung across the corridor.
PC: I shoot it with my bow!
GM: Your arrow lodges in its carapace, and the thing lets out a wet hiss. It drops to the floor and begins scuttling away from you. What do you do?
PC: We chase it. Don’t let it get away!
GM: You’re faster than it; you move past its web and you’re upon it, it turns and raises its forelegs at you menacingly. Venom drips from its fangs as they spread wide.
PC: Kill it!
GM: Okay, it’s a Kill Conflict.

But saying, “I want to kill it without starting a conflict,” isn’t allowed, it’s a bit like saying you want to get hurt without losing any hit points. Killing something is a fictional event, and Conflict is how you find out if you get to do it.

As GM, you’re free to declare that this particular giant spider is such a pushover that it’s easy to take it out with a single arrow or sling stone. But if it’s a statted-up monster and the party doesn’t have some special immunity to retaliation (e.g. they’re behind teflon fortifications the spider couldn’t conceivably climb) then Conflict is how you find out what happens.

3

From one of our sessions:

“A couple of kobolds guard the room”
“We don’t care, we run them through”
“Ok, test Fighter, Ob… 2”
“Success!”
“Ok, you bull-rush one, jump and slice the other one in two. The thief finish them off with the dagger behind you.”

Like Fuseboy says, if it’s not important, you don’t need to have a conflict. The same way you don’t necessarily go for a Flee each time you want to sneak past a monster or a Convince with the troll to let you through the bridge. It’s up to the GM.

If you enter a Kill conflict you know you can die in this conflict. Injured is just another condition that the GM can give to players in any failed test. Being injured means the GM can give you the Dead condition after a failed test. Kill conflicts are special in that you don’t necessarily have to be Injured to end up dead (if I read correctly).

Stay cool :cool:

4

Ah right, yeah - I realize I might have been answering the wrong question. If you want to have a fight but you don’t feel like using the Conflict mechanics, then… what DagaZ said.

Aramis had a lovely little tweak to Duel of Wits, way back, which might be useful, which lets you do things with one roll but still with interesting compromises:

Instead of using Conflict (or Duel of Wits), both sides roll their skill with help. Whoever rolls higher has won; treat their total number of successes as their initial disposition, and their margin of success as their remaining disposition.

So if the party attacks some Kobolds, and they test Fighter + Help and come up with 6 successes, and the Kobolds only get 4, then the players have won, but with only 2 points of disposition remaining, which is a third of their original. They win, but give up a nasty compromise.

5

That sounds like it would work with most conflicts, but it sounds terribly nasty for a kill conflict, since you have no way at all of offsetting the enemy’s roll with defense or maneuvering… I was going to suggest rolling an attack and a defense test, but the results get so complicated it may as well be a conflict :stuck_out_tongue:

6

It’s a good way of killing off PCs based on a single roll of the dice, as I realized in our very first session. (“It’s just a single giant rat, let’s do a quick test instead of a full conflict …”) I’ll just note that armour is also problematic for simple tests. Not one of my proudest memories as a GM.

7

Remember that you can only kill a PC who’s already Injured, and you have to telegraph that intent ahead of time.

If you find yourself hesitating at the thought of hinging an outcome on a single roll…it’s probably a Conflict.

8

Well, except for a kill conflict, then you can kill anyone as long as there’s at least a compromise, whether they are injured or not. Also, as far as I remember, Torchbearer makes no such mention of telegraphing the intent. I think it’s just burning wheel that requires that you tell the players in advance that they could die. My understanding is that in torchbearer you should always assume you could die, though there is the matter of GM etiquette and good sense, killing someone for failing to make a campfire is probably rude.

9

pg. 77 “At his discretion, the GM may apply the dead condition to any injured character as the result of a failed test involving the risk of physical harm. The GM is obligated to inform the player that death is on the line before the player rolls the dice.”

10

Ah, my bad. It’s been a while since I’ve actually played :frowning: I read the boards vicariously.