Manta wrote:

> The central question here is why doesn´t the Gorgon pick up his sword and
> attacks Anuire by himself? (Something just plain silly if you ask me)
> The main argument for why he should do so is his invulnerability to weapons
> with less than a +2 magical enhancement and there are so few of this
> weapons that he could crush every foe with minimal effort.

I don't think that was the central question. Nobody said anything about the
Gorgon running amok like the Tarrasque on Cerilia, though that comparison is
actually apt. He does, after all, go through periods of "dormancy" and then
lash out across the continent "harvesting" bloodlines that have sprouted up in
his absence. Every once in a while a blooded character will attack him, like
Michael Roele, which the Gorgon must really look at as the bloodtheft
equivalent of pizza delivery....

The question was what would happen if you put a creature (or unit of creatures,
like elementals) that were invulnerable to nonmagical weapons on a
battlefield. A few folks have suggested special weapons capable of hitting
these creatures, which I suppose is doable. I would avoid it personally
because I feel like such special weapons should be special enough that you
couldn't really outfit a unit with them or that there would be so few of them
that their presence on a battlefield would be negligible.

Because of that, I think what you end up with when you put a monster like the
Gorgon or other "invulnerable" creatures on the battlefield is a situation
where things revert to single combat and traditional AD&D melee. These guys
are, after all, going to be able to go through typical human units without too
much trouble, so it is the leaders who have to do the dirty work. Hopefully,
those leaders will be PCs and the DM can have a traditional slugfest to cap his
adventure.

> In his favor he has:
> Thac0 -8, AC -10, 170 Hit Points, a huge army backing him
> And for some of you, the abbilities of a 16th lever wizard. This is only
> mentioned in the Class/Level section of Cardsheet 9 from the original Boxed
> set. The following text (including the Combat section) and Ruins of Empire
> do not describe the Gorgon as the possessor of any wizard skills. The book
> Blood Enemies which was released later says rigorously nothing about him
> having any magical skills (he is refered as having the Saving Throws of a
> F25) and so I don´t consider he has any. In adition to this I just don´t

> imagine the mighty Gorgon sitting around in his library quietly studying
> his magic missile. He´s just not that kind of villain.
> I think that a spelcasting Gorgon is just an excuse to make him more
> powerfull (sort of a Forgotten Realms thing...)

I'd agree with your assessment of the Gorgon's wizardly abilities. It is
clear, however, that the original intention was that he be both a fighter and a
mage. He has LOTS of source holdings in RoE book, which I just can't see him
building up if he couldn't use them. I think they later changed that when they
came up with other awnsheghlien; the Raven and the Magican, for instance. In
the write up of the Raven he describes the three of them being a sort of
triumvirate of evil, which makes sense from a thematic point of view. I
suspect that is where they wanted to go with the Gorgon, and that's why they
nixed his wizard abilities. That and having so many dual classes awnsheghlien;
Raven, Serpent, Chimaera--not really dual but very formidable physically, same
with the Magian, Hag & Harpy and that was kind of making them all too similar.

> Against him he has:
> Anuire (and Brechtur if he turns his back on it - Kiergard would be a nice
> adition to Massenmarch) and the fact that he is a living being (subject to
> Fatigue - see Combat and Tactics - he has a total of 41 fatigue points - it
> would take 60 rounds for him to be exausted - assuming he kills a foe with
> each blow he lands he would kill 150 enemies in those 60 rounds. By now he
> would be fighting as if he was encumbered two categories more than he
> really would be due to exaustion. This would not be a problem to him (-1
> hit? +2AC? it would not make him any less dangerous). I would give him a
> maximum of 60 more rounds till he would colapse out of exaustion - this
> would mean 150 more casualties - a total of 300 which are less than 2
> Birthright infantary units. After that you could bound him with steel
> chains and keep him as your pet. And that´s why he doesn´t conquer Anuire
> by himself.
> (And all this without the need of any magic - with a wizard´s help it would
> only be easier!)

That's assuming you use C&T. I don't for just the reasons you noted above.
The Gorgon collapses from exhaustion after fighting for an hour?!? That's even
harder to accept than him spending ten minutes to memorize Magic Missile! The
Gorgon should be able to wake up, have a little breakfast (maybe a hobbit or
two) fight all day, break for lunch (a "light" supper of elves) and smash a few
dozen units of knights before going to dinner (dwarves have a lot of protein)
and then take a little nap before getting up to do it all again.

For the same reason I don't use C&T for PCs or NPCs either. Exhaustion is
pretty well represented by hit points to me, so using fatigue points seems like
double jeopardy.

Gary
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