New question. How does the PTGS work if, for instance, someone with B damage is attacking someone with Grey wound thresholds? Will all the lower wounds eventually accumulate, rolling over when they do three of a given type, or does having Grey wound levels effectively make one immune to Black damage?
If all of the wound thresholds are grey, then only grey damage can hurt them. G1 is the same as B16, so any damage lower than that falls to the left of Superficial.
That’s the way I was reading it, but I wanted to be sure.
Even G10 Health has B5 Superficial. That’s not impossible to reach, and you can slowly start building up light wounds from that. If the superficial threshold is gray then yes, you’re going to need to hit like a literal truck with a weapon on the end to even cause irritation.
Sorry, not grokking the relevance. I was asking about Grey Tolerances, not Health.
I think that “G10 Mortal Wound” was meant.
Yeah, that’s really G10 Mortal Wound advice. Also, G1 is B17, not B16 (it goes B1->16, G1->16, W1->16).
As for PTGS handling, stat out their wound thresholds as you would normally, taking into account the cutover points. Anything less than their Superficial wound tolerance does nothing (just like with anyone else, so a creature with a Superficial tolerance that lands in Grey will be neigh-impossible to slow down with mundane weapons wielded by humans*). All other rules apply, so if you can beat their Superficial but not their Light you can still convert three Superficials into a Light.
*I’m pretty sure the only “normal” hand-held weapons that can do Grey shade damage is a superb hit from a two-handed axe being wielded by a character with maxed out power (or a great strike from someone with power 8 and a sword or power 7 and a two handed axe). Basically you need a total Power of 12 to do G damage (G2 baby!) or a total power of 11 and be great striking). Interestingly, it’s impossible to do a G1 Superb hit without the great strike.
Generally it will be hard for black-shade damage to do more than a light wound to someone with a gray-shade MW attribute. They can be incapacitated via wound penalties, but not outright killed.
I made this little calculator a long time ago to help me understand PTGS: http://stormsweeper.net/bw/ptgs-calc.html
So for a character (CharA) with G5 in Power and Forte, and thus a G11 MW the PTGS will look like:
Superficial: B5, Light: B10, Midi: G7, Severe: G9, Traumatic: G10, Mortal: G11
A hypothetical character (CharB) with a B5 Power and a +3 Power weapon would thus have an IMS of:
Incidental: B4, Mark: B8, Superb: B12
So CharB would need a mark hit to do a superficial wound to CharA and a superb to do a light wound. CharB could pile on those light wounds to incapacitate CharA, but never enough damage to seriously hurt him.
So, really, your best bet is to Lock them into unconsciousness, yes?
I’ve found that “When in doubt, Lock” is a good rule of thumb.
This was a real problem when our Burning THAC0 heroes went up against the dragon. At the time, we had no way of delivering a killing blow! So the dwarf and cleric wrestled it into submission. While they kept it incapacitated, the rest of the party dug through its treasure hoard looking for a grey weapon! Hooray for Loot-wise!
That’s…awesome. In all aspects.
Okay, I think I’m missing something here. How does a G11 MW result in a B5 Superficial? Superficial feeds of Forte AIR, so if Forte is Grey (as it would have to be to get a Grey MW) shouldn’t the Superficial be Grey?
You’re missing out on some of the intricacies of shaded math that are in the Monster Burner. From Gray Mortal Wound on page 369 of the Monster Burner:
“For gray Mortal Wounds, Superficial tolerance is equal to the Forte exponent in the black shade. Add the Forte exponent on top of that to get the Light wound tolerance. Then factor the Mortal Wound–average of Power and Forte plus six, placed in the gray–Traumatic goes one step down to the left, then Severe, skip a pip and then place the Midi. This should result in a huge gap between Light and Midi. This is a good thing. It reflects that the creature is woundable, but very hard for us mortals to kill.”
As an example, the Rakshasa from the MonBu has a G4 Power and G4 Forte. Its PTGS is: Superficial B4, Light B8, Midi G6, Severe G8, Traumatic G9, Mortal Wound G10.
The rules for Grey Mortal Wounds can be found on page546 of BWG.
You’re unlikely to have a normal character with a gray mortal wound anyways unless you are making an elf with a lot of lifepaths. I personally would not allow someone to start play with a G2 in power and forte, before anyone says that.