4 Kobolds can’t kill adventurers, but 5 or more can.
Also, adventurers can capture horses (but not owlbears, true).
And soldiers can kill horses (though I don’t think they’d ever be in “conflict” with a horse).
The weirdest thing, is probably that guards can’t capture adventurers, but they might be Might 3 (they’re not in the people gallery), and they might get Might 3 if there are 5 or more.
There are no “guards” in the setting! There is no professional police group. None.
ahem
Oh, great! I haven’t seen that rule. Where is it?
Why can adventurers capture horses but not owlbears? Horses and owlbears are both Might 4. And are you saying 5+ soldiers can kill 4 or fewer horses?
Well, the bishop’s guards, or the king’s guards or whatever. When somebody screams “Seize this insolent murder hobo!” the guards have to say to the murder hobo, “Surrender or we’ll kill you,” rather than just running up and beating the poor hobo senseless. It’s fine, just wondering what other people thought about it, or how they were going to play it.
When you describe a hulking, dim-witted troll heaving itself out from under the bridge and the party says “let’s kill it,” will you say, “You can’t - it’s too mighty. Choose another goal?” Or will you say, “Fine, you attack, intending to kill it, but you will swiftly discover your weapons and spells aren’t potent enough. I’m going to treat this as a “drive off” conflict?”
Ah, I see what you’re on about with the horses, Ludanto. It’s probably a typo. Horses are Might 4 on page 75, but Might 3 on page 150.
And the 5+ rule is just for kobolds. Got it.
Both good examples of how Might plays into the world of the game, I think. If guards are at Might 2 while adventurers are at Might 3, the notion that guards are generally capable of running up and beating an adventurer senseless is itself absurd. The Might score reflects their standing in the world, which is why I’m more inclined to stat the town watch or other thugs closer to Might 3. Also, I am amusingly reminded of the fact that a bunch of townspeople could most definitely set up Adventurer Traps with the appropriate Might factor in the Ob.
As to the troll–well, I’m guessing that you pick whatever makes the most sense. If they can see it, and they have time to prep, I’d say “You can tell it’s too mighty for you to straight off kill it.” If they’re ambushed by a high-Might creature, I’d say “your weapons are not effective enough to do solid damage to this creature because ___________; you won’t be able to Kill it or Capture it”.
Which is fine–as the game indicates, Kill conflicts shouldn’t be your first weapon of choice. You don’t get XP by killing.
Horses should be Might 3. I’ll see if I can sneak that fix in. It’s true you can’t outright capture an owlbear without a bit of magic, but you could trick it into a trap (cage, pit, etc.). Kobolds can kill adventurers en masse, but in small groups they can’t. Though again, they could trick them into a situation that allows them to capture the adventurers. You don’t need a conflict to kill a captured and bound adventurer…
Towns don’t have a standing army of guards. What they have are guilds, each of which take turns on night watch, fire patrol and manning the walls. The “guards” you run into will be apothecaries or butchers or chandlers or fishmongers or goldsmiths, etc. We have a table on page 98 on which you can roll to determine which. And yes, by default they can’t capture you (though they can kill you or drive you off). But they could certainly trick you (get you drunk or drugged), get some magical backup, hire some adventurers, mount up on horses, etc.
I like this!
Also, kobolds have traditionally loved traps, and from what I can see, you can make a trap to do stuff to a critter of any Might; the Ob just increases accordingly. I totally need to figure out how to run Tucker’s Kobolds in Torchbearer. I bet it wouldn’t be too hard; the system even supports it!
Especially Fishmongers. Poor Fishmongers, always getting guard duty. Do you suppose they know that the table is rigged?
Shhh! They might hear. Anyway, what you really don’t want to deal with are the Magicians and Alchemists.
It’s unfortunate that the bit about Bill Collectors says that they’ll send thugs to try to capture you, since by default they can’t.
Convince conflict to make them go away:
“You, sir, are a fishmonger!”
?
I just explained how they can.
Basically, like Thor pointed out–capturing them doesn’t always mean a flat-out Capture conflict (although riding them down with horses would certainly work).
Yeah, it’s just messy. It says “use the Thug stats”, not “use the Thug stats on horses” or “use the Thug stats on Giant’s Blood” or “will try to trick you into being captured”. If you didn’t have this thread to explain, there’d be some head scratching. I don’t know if it can or should be “fixed”. It’s just unfortunate.
Man, I sound whiny. I’m just saying that it confused me and it made me wonder if I was missing something.
Maybe I’m reading this too late at night, but I’m still scratching my head on this. There’s a lot of stuff that seems to require reading between the lines in this game, and a lot of it has to do with Might.
Might defines the setting. It determines how the world works. We list how each level of Might interacts with each other. It’s up to you to do the rest.
Apologies about the horse error, btw. I know that’s only added to the confusion. We fixed it in the final (final) draft.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s essentially outside the rules to say that they higher particularly mighty thugs after adventurers. After all, capturing an adventurer sounds like quite the adventure! Hey Bob, did you just feel our might increase? Sure did Louie, that’s cause we’s adventurers now!
But regardless of that nonsense, since it’s from the player perspective the players can decide whether they want to flee from the thugs, kill the thugs, or drive off the thugs (or one of the others). It isn’t up to the thugs, so it doesn’t matter that they “can’t” capture an adventurer. If the thugs win the conflict, whatever it may be, they get what they wanted… or rather, you lose what you didn’t want them to have (namely the freedom to skip out on your bills unmolested). Maybe they’ll steal some cash, or force you to work off your debt leaving you exhausted. The might of thugs isn’t a restriction on the players or the negative outcomes that can result as a consequence of player failure.
QFT!
Aha! Ok. That all makes the sense now.
How does “Killing is my business” apply when adventurers fight and lose against Might 1 creatures. Since they might 1 creatures can’t kill adventurers, I assume that Killing is my Business doesn’t apply, so do the creatures just drive off the adventurers or something?
Also, can you apply Killing is my Business in conflicts where the party is much lower Might than the monster? For example, say the party is trying to drive off a dragon, and they fail. Or can you only apply Killing is my Business when the party is actively trying to kill something (meaning that a dragon could never directly kill the party, as the party can’t enter a kill conflict with the dragon). Or am I missing something else (I feel like I probably am)?