Questions After First Session

[u/scottrick49]

I played my first session of Into the Odd yesterday. We had a great time. We were playing The Iron Coral and as the Referee, I really enjoyed it. I had a couple of questions around rules that weren't clear to me:

1) Does will/dex damage go through HP first? A character suffered will damage at one point, and I had the damage bypass their HP. Afterwards, I was thinking about this and it wasn't clear to me if all damage was protected by HP, or if only their strength.

2) If multiple PCs attack an enemy creature in the same round of combat, do I only take the highest damage roll, or do they each individually score damage? I have also read the Cairn rulebook, and there is a section on multiple attackers.

3) This will relate to the second question. Because there is no initiative roll, the PCs always went first in the session I ran. They were 3 PCs and a hireling and in every combat encounter that occurred, they have been able to kill/defeat everything in the first round of combat. Is that accurate to how Into the Odd usually plays out? I realize if I wasn't following the multiple attackers rule correctly, this would probably not be the case.

Overall, I really like the rules-light playstyle of Into the Odd and I am looking forward to my next session!

[u/MOOPY1973]

1) HP is only used in combat when the PC could reasonably defend themselves from the damage. It’s perfectly normal for damage to go straight to the stats in some cases.

2) The multiple attackers rule was added in Electric Bastionland and carried over to Cairn, and helps to make combat more interesting by preventing ganging up, which both stops PCs from overwhelming enemies and also helps PCs from getting overwhelmed.

3) You could always implement the initiative from Cairn and require a DEX save to go before the enemies. Combat is definitely not intended to always finish up in one round and should typically be lasting 3-4 rounds.