[ORE] [Reign] Deadliness

Hi all,

 

I'm new to the system and the group, but I'm a huge fan of O.R.E. and have been listening to just about all of the podcasts I can of it (particularly over at the Drunk and the Ugly).

 

I am running a modified Reign campaign for a homebrew world, and adding in some elements from WT.

 

We just got out of boot camp, and the climax of camp was a training exercise in which 4 of the contestants were trying to kill off a Noble and the party caught wind of it.

 

2 things that cropped up that I wanted to ask questions about:

 

1. Two of my PCs, facing Three NPCs took a Dodge first, attack later approach, hoping for support from the training officers.  Due to some bad luck, one of my PCs nearly died with 8 killing to the body.  The NPCs were geared such that they could deal some damage, but weren't attempting to defend themselves at all, it's just that my PCs never attacked.  Is Dodge first ever a really effective strategy unless you know its just a couple of rounds until help arrives, or should Dodge/Parry almost exclusively be used in conjunction with an attack?

 

2.  The combat with the other trainees, who were effectively minions went really smoothly and really fast, fire an arrow, kill a minion.  But the villians became really bogged down, as no one was doing enough damage, because with the weapons listed, it seems like most things can be soaked by good armor, unless you get good width.  Even then, most of my characters would need a 5x10 or greater to kill anything with stats.  Do others bump up the weapons or just have most people run around without armor?  Obviously, I want the big boss-type fights to be strung along, but this battle was more of a numbers game, and at the end of it, they'd only killed one NPC, and that was after maybe 12 rounds of combat.  (The others surrendered, but only one of them was near death).  I don't want it to reach WT levels of killing, but I also don't want my entire session taken up by 4 minor NPCs with armor.

 

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!

 

Pax,

Dan