Deathblow and multiple attacks

[HereBeDragons]

Hi guys! My friend and I played our first ever game of Warhammer Quest yesterday. Had a great time, even though it took us three attempts to get through our first dungeon (and even then it was crazily close!). However, we had a question of how to interpret the deathblow rule, in particular when combined with the barbarians berserk rule.

If you kill an enemy in a single hit you get a deathblow which allows you to sweep round to hit an enemy next to the one you just killed. Firstly I assume that the monster must be on full wounds for you to try and get a deathblow?

If you have more than one attack on your profile (which in the core game, not role-play, is just the barbarian when he goes berserk) how do you apply the deathblow rule? We rolled both attacks at once, and sometimes only one would hit, or both would hit and either each die was high enough to kill outright, only one die was, or only the combined total from both dies would result in a kill. In each of these circumstances, do you get a deathblow, and if so how many attacks/attempts to hit do you get on the next monster? If both attacks hit and kill, can you attempt to hit and kill the next monster with both attacks?

Thanks for your help!

[Daemonslave]

I agree that the wording is not very good. Here's the way I've always played it.

Regardless of how many wounds the enemy model has, if you kill it outright with your first attack of that round, then you get a deathblow which can continue to kill lots of monsters as the weapon is making one almighty swing. After the initial wild swing, its more jousting and parrying so further attacks cannot be deathblows.

That's just my take on it - we may be playing it completely wrong

[Necanthrope]

The way I play it is this. If you kill a monster with your first attack against it, you get a deathblow and can continue this attack into another monster if it is also stood next to you, and the monster you just killed.

[Nachie]

Deathblows only happen when you take a monster from full wounds to zero in a single attack, although the vast majority of people seem to play that you get a deathblow on any monster you kill, even if they were already wounded before you attacked. The rules for the Elf Wardancer go into much greater detail on the DB than the core rules ever did, though mostly it is just reiterating that DB's only happen when a monster is killed "in a single blow". In my mind, this limitation to DB's also helps to account for different fighting styles - for instance, a downward swing with an axe would never produce a deathblow, whereas a horizontal swing could very conceivably chop through more than one Goblin.

But warriors with multiple attacks can direct those attacks at multiple targets, so let's say I had 2 attacks and two gobbos facing me. I attack the gobbo on the left, hit, and roll a 1 for wounds thus leaving him on 1 wound. With my next attack, it makes more strategic sense to try and hit the gobbo on the right, because if I can hit and kill him with that attack I will get a DB against the original gobbo, whereas if I swung a second time at the wounded gobbo I would not get a deathblow against his uninjured buddy, regardless of how much damage I dealt on the second swing.

It's up to personal preference how you want to play - the important thing is that you have fun!

As a Gamemaster, I make my players roll each attack separately exactly so we can resolve what happens from the first attack before dealing with the next one. The only exception is if the warrior is facing a really tough opponent or if there is really only one possible target for their attacks, in which case I encourage them to roll all their attacks at once as one big handful of dice.

[Necanthrope]

I've always played it that you get the deathblow even against wounded monsters, and I honestly thought that's how it should be played until very recently.
It seems that the "official" rules for deathblows make them a nice bonus for early warriors, but they become less and less achievable when you start training.

[Inchpractice]

I have always played it that if you kill a monster in one blow regardless of how many wounds they are on then you get a deathblow. Some battles would be much harder with the in one rule, the game seems hard enough as it is

It is hard to say what the most realistic interpretation , if the ability to deathblow is based on strength or momentum of swing then who is to say that an attack which killed a goblin in one is going to be more capable of a death blow which took 14 wounds from a lightly wounded minotaur to kill it.

If you have a goblin on full wounds (2) and a Dark Elf with 1 wound taken off on (5) being attacked by 2 separate warriors and both hit. The one attacking the goblin rolls a 1 to wound but still kills it, the one attacking the Dark Elf rolls a 5 and also kills it. The rules say only the goblin attacker gets a death blow when the Dark Elf hit sounds more ferocious and better deserving of one. That can be countered with where the blow was struck however.

Maybe a rule where you get a death blow if you kill a monster in one and also if you take off the equivalent of a wounded monsters starting wounds in one then you also get a death blow. You could also have a chart to roll on if you have a certain percentage of wounds remaining to dish out from your blow after you have taken the remaining to also see if you get a death blow.

This game can be so ambiguous sometimes.

[Nachie]

Here's a passage from the Elf Wardancer, regarding his skill, "Wardance":

In combat, if the Wardancer kills an uninjured monster with one blow, then apart from making a death-blow as usual...

This interpretation where a DB is possible even on an injured monster, just so long as it was the warrior's first attack that killed it, is new to me and interesting. I think that'd be a fair buff to give your players if they really needed it, but I certainly wouldn't since if I allowed that, they'd be expecting DB's to work like that for the rest of the campaign!

[Daemonslave]

Here's a passage from the Elf Wardancer, regarding his skill, "Wardance":



This interpretation where a DB is possible even on an injured monster, just so long as it was the warrior's first attack that killed it, is new to me and interesting. I think that'd be a fair buff to give your players if they really needed it, but I certainly wouldn't since if I allowed that, they'd be expecting DB's to work like that for the rest of the campaign!

However by that logic the warrior could lose his deathblow because the monsters are already wounded

For example, if there are 3 Hobgoblins attacking, one has all 4 wounds, the others have 2 wounds (lost 2 each). The full wounded one is killed and the deathblow kills the next but then the deathblow cannot continue on to the third because the second had already been wounded [?]

[BigRob]

The way I have always played it is as follows.

Barbarian has 2 attacks and is surrounded by goblins, it doesn't look good for our hero.

On his first attack he hits and kills a goblin spearman. This triggers a deathblow onto the next monster in base contact and in contact with the original goblin. He hits and kills this goblin outright, there is another goblin in base contact with this goblin and the barbarian, the deathblow continues. However this time he fails to hit.

On the second attack he goes for the goblin again, hits and slays it in one blow. There is another goblin in base contact with him and this goblin, Deathblow! And so on and so forth.

Picture it, the barbarian sweeps his mighty sword and takes the heads off a string of goblins in one fell swoop.

This is excellent againts weak hordes as a heroic warrior should be and utterly useless after about level 5 when everything has wounds in the 40s-50s as most of your warriors super weapons will be one use only and they will be using them for the big fights against single huge monsters not that annoying gang of 12 Goblin Bigbosses and 6 Orc Warbosses and Orc Shaman Lord who were having tea in the well of doom room.

Wardancer is a good one to mention since of course if the monsters are not next to each other you cannot deathblow. The wardancer has equipment that specifically allows him to ignore this rule which combined with his high move and dance of death makes him king of the horde killing deathblows. The Brettonian Knight is another special case but for a sad reason, his broadsword loses strength in a deathblow situation.

[Hellebore]

We've been playing deathblow that basically an injured creature can't be DBed, they have to be killed in a single blow from full to zero health. I've mentioned this incongruity before but everyone seems fine with it.

Of course we play with 5 people and keep forgetting to add extra creatures to the table so I suppose it's not so bad.

Also two players are mages and they have been using a rather sick spell combo. There's a healing spell that converts all the damage done by another player into health. The other wizard has the freeze spell that does d6 damage to that many creatures. One casts on the other and often clears a room of monsters and generates 20+ health to give back to the party.

Hellebore

[HereBeDragons]

Thanks for all the replies guys! You've been very helpful! I hadn't thought of rolling the attacks separately, and I didn't realise you could target different models with your attacks. That makes it a lot clearer. I'll roll one attack at a time, so that if it gets a deathblow it can continue until he fails to kill outright, in which case you try again with the next attack. Cheers all!

[azhagmorglum]

Thanks for all the replies guys! You've been very helpful! I hadn't thought of rolling the attacks separately, and I didn't realise you could target different models with your attacks. That makes it a lot clearer. I'll roll one attack at a time, so that if it gets a deathblow it can continue until he fails to kill outright, in which case you try again with the next attack. Cheers all!

One attack at a time is the way we played in our first 2 games yesterday. There is also an example in the rulebook page 28 second column.

As for the death-blow triggering conditions, I'd say that you just have to kill a monster in a single attack, regardless if it's already injured or not. I'd play like this because of those extracts from the rulebook (page 25) :

1) under the "wounded monsters" paragraph : "if you inflict 1 or more wounds on a monster but don't kill it outright, then you must record how many wounds it has left. [...] If the monster is hit again [...] it will now require fewer wounds to kill it outright."

2) in the "death-blow" paragraph : killing a monster with a single blow
"Sometimes a warrior will hit a monster so hard that he kills it with a single blow. If this happens...[...]"

No "not injured monster" condition here.

[EldritchGamer]

By the letter of the rules just quoted, and the 'gut feeling' of nearly every 'Quest player I've had the fortune to adventure with, I usually interpret this rule as "if any Attack slays a Monster, and it is the first time the Monster has been Attacked this turn by the Warrior, then the Attack triggers a Death Blow"
Even with this level of generosity in interpreting the rules, Death Blows occur much less frequently as the Warriors progress, and at higher levels, the game is once more insanely difficult for the Warriors, so they need all the help they can get...

[Nkari]

As long as you "one hit" a model, you get an extra attack.. simple..

is the way we have played it and it works quite ok for us..