How to escape a rock slide generated by 6 doom

Conan: Adventures In an Age Undreamed Of
1

They say with 6 doom one could generate a trap that does 6 dice of damage, such as a rock slide, triggered by some enemy in ambush.
But what should be the acrobatic difficulty to avoid that?

2

The way I interpret the rules is that hazards cannot be avoided and the PC/NPC suffer the effects/damage once the GM pays the Doom cost. This is due to the fact that you pay doom and cannot be avoided - p.273

As GM, nothing prevents you to allow a roll, picking the appropriate skill and TN. But there are no rules for this in the book. Only for the Falling damage (p.111-112

1 Like
3

Thanks, great answer! :slight_smile:
Me think I might add allow a save test (DL 3?) where each number of success can reduce damage by 1 perhaps? (or maybe like falling, 1 or 2 but that’s it)

4

If you want to allow a saving throw to negate some or all of the damage, I recommend to give them cover dice instead of flat reduction.

5

mm… I guess this is something like diving for cover (accrobatic?), with some cover value I will decide… but what do you mean exactly by “cover dice”?!

6

In the rules, there are two ways to reduce d

  • Flat reduction - this is how Armor works. 1 point of Armor reduced the damage with 1 point.
  • Cover - this is how shields and cover mechanics work for example.

The flat reduction is great, as you always know the amount of damage reduced. The cover mechanic is random, as you roll combat dice, which results reduce the damage. I think for those hazards you should use the cover mechanics. Otherwise it is too easy to negate everything when they start using Fortune, momentum and talents. Doom is not inifinite resource and when you spent for Hazard, it must be felt by the players.

Also, note that the damage from hazards is based on combat dice - there is no guarantee you will damage them, so adding possibility to avoid it will significantly reduce how threatening a hazard is compared to its cost.

7

The charts on page 274 show the doom reduction for different difficulties to escape the hazard.

So for 6 Doom you do 6 damage. No save. It sucks but it’s also 6 doom, which is not an infinite resource. A 6 doom spend is a bad day for the PCs.

If you want them to have a chance to avoid it then give them a Challenging (D2) test to avoid and only pay 4 doom.