For those of you familiar with D&D (3rd edition and afterwards), this is exactly the reason why the confirmation roll has been invented. In D&D, the confirmation roll is just another attack roll after the 20 has been scored to see if the roll is a critical hit or a simple auto-success. This actually makes sense, since your goblins may get a lucky shot against an evasive character, but a lucky shot which is also a critical hit, regardless of how difficult it was to hit the hero? It’s an all-or-nothing that doesn’t work, and the 3rd edition D&D developers that were trying to upgrade the 2nd edition, or AD&D (where there still wasn't such roll) knew that.
To avoid this, I've adopted this house rule:
And of course, this is valid also for Eye results from adversaries' attack rolls.Piercing blows and auto-success: when making attack rolls, if you get a Gandalf icon on your Feat die you have automatically succeeded, just like any other roll. To see if it’s also a Piercing Blow, though, compare the attack roll with the TN to hit the opponent, treating the Gandalf result on the Feat die as a 10. If the attack roll was enough to beat the TN, the attack is also a Piercing blow. If not, the attack roll is not considered a Piercing blow.
Second Fact: the defensive ability of player characters doesn't scale up with Experience as much as the offensive capability of the monsters.
The most dangerous monsters tend to have an enormously high damage output, coupled with a high chance to hit. Rolling 3D+8, a Hill Troll Chieftain hits an average TN of 23.5, more than enough to hit practically every character. Just to say, a Woodman with Wits 7(10) fighting in a forest with a great shield in Defensive stance has a TN of 25, and that's the highest attainable TN ever.
This means essentially that big, solitary monsters will pretty much hit every time, dealing potentially devastating amounts of Damage (a Hill Troll Chieftain can dish out, in a single blow, up to 32 Damage!). There simply aren't characters who can withstand such power, neither by raising their Parry nor by raising their Endurance. Against highly dangerous monsters, it's just a matter of hitting them hard and fast, since nobody can actually "tank" them for long.
So what if those monsters can, or even must, split their Damage among players in close combat with them?
In this way, battles against single, powerful creatures will last longer and will not render unconscious or cripple a single character while leaving others undamaged. Also, the Rally comrades combat task would be more effective against single creatures, since it affects all characters equally while by the RAW the damage against a single, big monster tends to concentrate on one or a few characters instead of being equally spread.Damage spreading: monsters with the special ability Great Size that score a great success on an attack roll against a character must apply the additional Damage (i.e. their Attribute Level) to another character engaged in close combat with them, without any additional attack roll required, at the condition that the attack roll is high enough to beat the Parry TN of the second character. If the attack roll was an extraordinary success, the additional Damage must be applied on two other characters engaged in melee, with the same conditions as above. Monsters that also have the Horrible Strength special ability must apply the additional Damage from the ability to the original target of their attack. Similarly, Piercing blows are applied only to the original target of the attack.
If there are only two characters in melee, the targeted character suffers the base Damage of the attack on a normal or great success, and the base Damage plus the Attribute Level of the creature on an extraordinary success. The second character loses the Attribute Level of the creature in Endurance points only on a great or extraordinary success.
If there is only one character in melee, he suffers all the Damage by the creature.
Example: a Hill Troll Chieftain is engaged by four heroes, three in melee stances and one in Rearward stance. The Troll attacks one of the heroes in melee stance and rolls an extraordinary success! The roll is also high enough to beat the Parry TN of all the engaged characters. The targeted character loses 8 points of Endurance (the base Damage of the Troll's weapon), and the two others in close combat suffer 8 points of Endurance loss each (i.e. the Attribute Level of the creature). If the Troll also spends Hate to fuel his Horrible Strength, he can deal an additional 8 points of Damage to the original target character.
If one (or more) of the characters had a higher Parry TN than the attack roll, the Damage would be applied only to those characters who had a lower Parry TN than the attack roll.
Comments and suggestions would be very much appreciated!
