Was wondering, does Scourge have to roll for each lash, and does a missed lash count as one for the purposes of the infraction? Or do you just roll the damage dice for the # of lashes?
Was wondering, does Scourge have to roll for each lash, and does a missed lash count as one for the purposes of the infraction? Or do you just roll the damage dice for the # of lashes?
I'm sure you could do it either way. Given that the victim is without protection and tied to the mast, he'll hit on anything but a 1. I believe there was a comment mentioned somewhere that if he does roll a 1 it could be a rather humourous miss (at least to the onlookers) but still count as one of the lashes.
I was going to roll his attack versus the flat-footed, unarmored PC. If he misses his attack roll - it's still 'hit' (in a story-sense) but didn't do damage in a mechanic sense. An attack roll less than an opponents AC doesn't neccessarilly mean that the attack sailed past the target, but it just means that it wasn't a significant enough blow to cause damage (think about fighting a creature with lots of natural armor and no dex - a miss means you probably glanced off of their scales - no different in this case just with softer scales :p). The terms 'hit' and 'miss' are taken too literally by most I think. Hit is really 'made good contact' and miss is really 'failed to make good contact'.
Are they considered flat-footed when lashed to the mast? If so, Scourge has sneak attack dmg to add. Is that overkill for low level pcs?
Are they considered flat-footed when lashed to the mast? If so, Scourge has sneak attack dmg to add. Is that overkill for low level pcs?
I'd say yes. They are spreadeagled to the mast (counts as firmly "held" under the helpless conditions ), and yes, sneak damage would be overkill, unless you intentionally want to punish someone into unconsciousness, repeatedly. In a friends' campaign one of the players is already up to 25 lashes by day twelve.
At 1D3+Str, do the math.
Now add D6 sneak to it...
In the Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG they only assign damage for every 20 lashes which is a bit more realistic as getting 30 lashes shouldn't kill you but there is no to hit roll it just happens. Given that hit points in d20 games don't always represnt getting hit, but also dodging and avoiding blows i would abstract the whippings in a similar way.
Anything more than 36 lashes was considered close to deadly in the Royal Navy and incapacipating, essentially that after the first few strikes, the lashing would rip through muscle and tissue, causing both infections and irreparable damage, nevermind blood loss.
Anything more than 60 was in fact deadly, even if literally "dead men" were flogged around the fleet for triple-digit lashings to serve the needs of a court martial.
All of it with a ropen cat of nine-tails, which actually was less painful than a leather whip.
I would be very careful using any RPGs as reliable sources, too.
For the effects of whipping...
'nuff said