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Author Topic: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes  (Read 2086 times)

Offline Inkpaduta

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Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« on: July 05, 2019, 09:16:39 PM »
I am starting a new project on Greek myth using Songs of Blades and Heroes.

Doing the stats for the Heroes and Greeks, Skeletons, Wraiths and shades ect. has been fairly straight forward.

Having more issues with the Monsters. Not sure what to give them for Quality and Combat. But even more so for the special skills.
They need to be challenging enough for a single monster to take on several Greeks at a time.

So, asking for some input on stats and specials for

Medusa
Hydra
Minotaur
Griffin
Talos
Chimera

Thanks!

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #1 on: July 05, 2019, 11:28:40 PM »
Hydra:

Q3, C4, Amphibious, Big, Tough, Combat Master, Poison, Tailslap

Medusa's in the book - but if you're going for a classical gorgon (wings, brass claws, etc.), I'd go with this:

Q3, C4, Assassin, Flying, Long Move, Shooter (Long), Terror

Chimera

Q4, C5, Big, Tough, Combat Master, Group Fighter, Shooter (Short), Savage

Minotaur,

Q4, C4, Big, Dashing, Savage

Griffin
Q4, C4, Big, Dashing, Free Disengage, Flying


Talos (perhaps more Harryhausen than Appolonius of Rhodes)
Q4, C5, Huge, Tough, Heavy Armour, Terror, Group Fighter

The relatively low quality of some of these won't matter much when they're the only character on their side.

Offline Inkpaduta

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #2 on: July 06, 2019, 01:26:01 AM »
Takes Hobgoblin. That gives me some good starting points.

Medusa is in the book, but there is nothing for her legendary skill of turning people to stone.
That is done by simply looking at her. How do I handle that?

Or, what about the Chimera that has two heads. Should it get two attacks with one action?
How about Cerberus with three heads. Three attacks per action? Or what about the Hydra with
eight??? That is were I get stumped on what I should do. The fact they have multiple heads is
what makes them so dangerous.

Offline DivisMal

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #3 on: July 06, 2019, 06:39:20 AM »
Good idea. SoBH is very well suited for this. I would keep it simple. Try to resist making all monsters unique with special abilities. In SoBH there is a great differnce between C2, C3, C4 and C5!

The charme of the systems lies imo in its simple elegance. So rather than trying to give the monsters more attacks, I would play around with the dozens of special abilities in SoBH and its sister rule sets.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #4 on: July 06, 2019, 11:07:35 AM »
Takes Hobgoblin. That gives me some good starting points.

Medusa is in the book, but there is nothing for her legendary skill of turning people to stone.
That is done by simply looking at her. How do I handle that?

That's done through the combination of the Assassin, Terror and Shooter (Long) traits. Effectively, those give her a very deadly ranged attack and make it difficult for foes to approach her. In the rulebook, if I remember, she's Q2. You could try that, which would make her even deadlier (because she can easily get "aimed shots").

Or, what about the Chimera that has two heads. Should it get two attacks with one action?
How about Cerberus with three heads. Three attacks per action? Or what about the Hydra with
eight??? That is were I get stumped on what I should do. The fact they have multiple heads is
what makes them so dangerous.

That's why I gave the Hydra and the Chimera the Combat Master trait (and Group Fighter for the Chimera - you could use that for the Hydra if you wanted, but I decided against it because Iolaus is a real help to Hercules in the original story). Combat Master allows them to make one attack per action while most characters are limited to one attack per round. So it makes a big difference. You don't need to worry about the exact number of attacks; as DivisMal said, this is a simple and elegant game.

For example, my stats for the Hydra mean that it's highly likely to get at least two attacks per turn. When you combine those with C4 and Big (so effectively C5 in combat against human opponents), you've got something pretty deadly. And then there's poison ...

I gave the Chimera Group Fighter to make it a lot harder to overwhelm. Most big monsters in SobH can be brought down fairly easily if you can surround them. But that doesn't apply with Group Fighter. You can also add Terror to any of these profiles, which makes it harder for enemies to approach.

If you really wanted to get fiddly with the Chimera, you could borrow from Ganesha's Mighty Monsters and make each part of the creature a separate character. But you'd have to decide which governed movement. So, you could give head 1 control over fiery breath (i.e. Shooter) and head 2 control over the legs and head 3 either another breath attack (Shooter) or something like the Magic User rule (spitting paralysing poison or whatever). I wouldn't bother, though - as DivisMal says, the best way to do this is to abstract a lot of the details and use appropriate special abilities.

Offline Inkpaduta

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #5 on: July 06, 2019, 02:30:04 PM »
Well thought out ideas Hobgoblin. Thanks, that really helped.
Also, there is true in keeping things simple and
letting the existing rules work as is.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #6 on: July 06, 2019, 03:06:28 PM »
I've just had a look at Of Gods and Mortals, which is by the same author and uses some of the same mechanics. Both the Chimera and the Hydra get Combat Master there.

One other thing that might be worth considering is to give some of these monsters some allies. You can sometimes find these in the original sources: for example, the Hydra is helped by a giant crab, if I remember my myths correctly, and Medusa has her two sisters. That might give you a bit of variety in the encounters, so that they're not all just several heroes against one Big Bad.

If you were staging a game involving the Hydra, you could have the giant crab - or crabs - hidden using the ambush scenario in the back (i.e. several marker on the table, only one of which is the real creature).

You could also stretch things a bit and give the gorgons some animated statue henchmen or giant snakes or something.

One thing we always do in Song of Blades is to have a wandering-monster table. We stat up six monsters (or groups of them) and line them up, then roll a d6 at the end of the turn. If it's a 6, a random monster comes on from a random table edge to attack the nearest foe. It works really well.

Offline Inkpaduta

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #7 on: July 06, 2019, 05:35:39 PM »
That was what I was thinking about. Giving a monster some allies.
The one problem I have found with SoBH is when one powerful
figure takes on several lesser figures. The powerful figure might roll well and kill
one figure, but then the numbers tell. One figure rolls well enough to knock down
the powerful figure and thus makes it vulnerable, then another, if they
get an action, can more easily kill it. To me, you never then have the
fear and power of a monster because they are fairly easy to kill if alone
against a group.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #8 on: July 06, 2019, 05:40:08 PM »
That's true. The Terror, Tough and Savage traits are good ways to mitigate this, though. Terror makes it hard for foes to approach; Tough makes the monster much harder to kill; and Savage means that its kills will be more devastating by causing more routs.

Offline Harry Faversham

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #9 on: July 07, 2019, 10:41:38 AM »
>:D Bloody wargaming!  >:D

Reading this topic has reminded me how long it's been since we had a game of SoBH and how much I miss it.
I've been toying for a while now about gleaning 40mm Greeks and Skellys to create our own epic song...
this is just the kick up the Aristotle I need!

:)
« Last Edit: July 07, 2019, 10:44:35 AM by Harry Faversham »
"Wot did you do in the war Grandad?"

"I was with Harry... At The Bridge!"

Offline Inkpaduta

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #10 on: July 07, 2019, 06:22:22 PM »
It is a great system. I use the various variants of "Song of" for much of my wargaming now.
Specially as I do so much more skirmish type games. Having the group over tonight and will be
doing Russian Civil War using 1861-1865.

Offline DivisMal

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #11 on: July 07, 2019, 08:13:40 PM »
>:D Bloody wargaming!  >:D

Reading this topic has reminded me how long it's been since we had a game of SoBH and how much I miss it.
I've been toying for a while now about gleaning 40mm Greeks and Skellys to create our own epic song...
this is just the kick up the Aristotle I need!

:)

I can only second this! The Song of .... series made me enjoy wargaming again, after having been totally fed up by high end products that a) required tons of models and b) weren’t supported after a couple of years (Warhammer, Confrontation, Chronopia etc.).

It’s a damn good system. Simple and fun!

Offline nervisfr

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #12 on: July 08, 2019, 09:29:27 AM »
May be drop this topic on the Ganesha games yahoo Group !

The author is still aware on the group  ;)

 ;)
Frenchy Eric, aka Ch'ti Eric or Re-Animator
"J'ai bon caractere mais j'ai le glaive vengeur et le bras seculier"

http://chti-reanimator59.blogspot.fr[

Offline Inkpaduta

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Re: Greek Myth using Song of Blades and Heroes
« Reply #13 on: July 08, 2019, 05:07:21 PM »
I did contact Ganesha and was told that OGAM was what became of their plan to do Greek Myth.
Not sure I know enough about that game and rules to invest in buying them for what I want to do.
Perhaps.