Fate of the Norns

Hey, just wondering if there are any suggested methods for handling initiating and breaking grapples in combat. I’ve been running it as essentially if you’re same size as your opponent or larger, play a physical rune to grapple, and the target has the option of paying a physical rune to counter.

It worked pretty well at first. Until my blacksmith player figured out how powerful fall damage is. Through a series of events largely of my own making, his nanus drake has size/move of 10/12, so it’s pretty easy for him to pick people up and fly them a couple hundred feet in the air and drop ‘em. 100’ drop for instance is 1024 feet. Needless to say it can seriously short circuit an encounter.

I think you have it figured out, if the grappler plays any rune, the counetr is any rune, but if it's a specific Trait for the action, then the specific Trait needs to be matched. I think that scenario is a great laugh, and I'm sure everyone has smiles around the table - which is the goal of your game night. But before it gets old, here are some options:

- The grappled person can still fight back and attack, and the grappling drake may have to forego parry.
- The grappled foe can also play a rune to grab onto the drake, before the talons let go.
- The grappled enemy can perform some out-of-box cinematic actions like tying a rope around the dragon, tethering themselves.
- Give your denizens powers like Aura or the ability to drop 4 intensities of impeded on the drake
- Be truly diabolical and make use of powers like Dark Juxtaposition

All in all, it's great that your players are being creative. Don't stifle it, make sure to reward it.

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How in the world did he get a size 10 nanus drake? That's like five instances of giant size. And how much realm ore does it take to feed the thing?

Well he grabbed giant size as soon as it was available to him, and then planned out his passive powers specifically to get as many instances of Keen Aptitude (Giant Size) as possible as quickly as possible. That got him to size 5, meaning he ate mead iron another 5 times, each of those times paying an ultimate sacrifice equal to the number of times he had eaten it.

Going forward, for each feeding over 5 it will require twice as much mead iron and ultimate sacrifice equal to 3+number of times eaten, increasing again to triple and 4+ after the 10th feeding, and so on.