Need advice for CoC

[mr.fizzypop]

So currently, I am in a Call of Cthulhu(d20) group with 3 other guys. My character is a soldier, and does most of the fighting for the group. But recently my character has broken both of his hands. They won't heal for a while, and I can't grip a weapon of any kind, so I've been trying to get by with grappling and tripping enemies. Does anyone have any ideas of how I can make my character useful again?

[V'icternus]

Get your hands fixed? I mean, a soldeir without a weapon is pretty much a meat shield. So, either get the biggest, best, most magical armour you can and stand in front of everyone else and take all the damage, or wait till your hands heal before you keep going. Asside from that, can't help you. There's only so much you can do unarmed...

[Comet]

Why, good sir, you drink a healing potion.

In all seriousness, you could try not fighting. Because fighting is apparently what got your hands shattered in the first place.
Serves you right.

You can also try martial arts training. Because nothing says "stay out of my dimension, fiend!" than a roundhouse kick to the face.

Edit: Does anyone else think that being a meat shield in Call of Cthulhu seems like an excellent way to commit brutal, unglorious suicide? You'd have to be a major nutter to stand willingly in front of all the tentacles and teeth and claws.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Kick people in the nuts? It'd be a memorable encounter with an Elder God, to say the least

In all seriousness, you shouldn't be doing any fighting if your hands are that badly broken. If you're completely nuts, strap a melee weapon on your main hand and have a Blade Below the Shoulder - I mean, it worked for Ash, right?

[dspeyer]

You'd have to be a major nutter to stand willingly in front of all the tentacles and teeth and claws.

Isn't major nutterdom the general fate of CoC characters? :-)

[chiasaur11]

Kick people in the nuts? It'd be a memorable encounter with an Elder God, to say the least

In all seriousness, you shouldn't be doing any fighting if your hands are that badly broken. If you're completely nuts, strap a melee weapon on your main hand and have a Blade Below the Shoulder - I mean, it worked for Ash, right?

Ash is an investigator whose player got blackmail material on the keeper.

Really, really, really good blackmail material.

[Curmudgeon]

On a more practical note, there are remote-controlled guns. You can get them attached them to your truck or whatever, and operate the controls with very small movements of your finger tips. You'll be restricted in where you can fight but still be capable of helping out.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Switch Keepers. You shouldn't be fighting so much in CoC that this becomes a concern. Indeed, if your concern over your broken hands is your inability to fight (rather than your inability to grasp and lift things, open doors and windows, climb, drive, and do other everyday things), your game is really borked, and your character is really wrong for CoC.

[Calinero]

The best answer in this situation would be "don't fight." If this CoC game is true to the genre, you're going to want to avoid as much combat as possible. Alternatively, you could wait for your hands to heal.

[Tsotha-lanti]

The best answer in this situation would be "don't fight." If this CoC game is true to the genre, you're going to want to avoid as much combat as possible. Alternatively, you could wait for your hands to heal.

More precisely, if your CoC game has any relationship what so ever with the source material (excluding Howard, whose stuff is obviously covered by a different kind of game...), or with good horror in general, combat isn't actually an intended feature of the games, and is definitely futile.

[chiasaur11]

More precisely, if your CoC game has any relationship what so ever with the source material (excluding Howard, whose stuff is obviously covered by a different kind of game...), or with good horror in general, combat isn't actually an intended feature of the games, and is definitely futile.

Actually, Lovecraft occasionally had two fisted determination win the day (for now).

I mean, the Dunwich horror got wasted. Not alone on that count, either.

[BlueWizard]

Hire a new gunman.

[Tsotha-lanti]

I mean, the Dunwich horror got wasted. Not alone on that count, either.

The Dunwich Horror is defeated with spells. That's the idea in CoC, generally: you use the appropriate Dismiss spell to get rid of the monster. Two-fisted? More like book-learned.

[Comet]

In all fairness, there's no need to go around shouting ur doing it wrong just because there's combat in someone's CoC game.
There's a fair amount of pulp material in the Cthulhu mythos, written by the aforementioned Howard and even Lovecraft himself. It is, for all intents and purposes, a very important part of what makes the mythos what it is.

Combat can be a cool, dramatic part of a story (or even a climax). It's not fun to avoid fighting like the plague. What is fun, however, is charging straight into the fray knowing that things will get very bad, very quick.
Fighting should not be avoided but you should always remember that a fight will never end well.

Incidentally, this is why I enjoy Trail of Cthulhu very much. It makes a good point in differentiating between pulp- and purist Cthulhu stories and how to run a game in whichever style you choose.

Edit (again): When it comes to dramatic finales, I would personally prefer a gritty fistfight than another "let's chant mangled latin to banish this tentaclous monster of the week!"

[Winterwind]

While I agree with Conjob - fights can be a good and enhancing dramatic tool - I still have to note that as long as your brain has not been blown out (presumably by yourself ), a Call of Cthulhu character can always meaningfully contribute. It's insights, personal interaction and the psyche's reaction to extraterrestrial terror that are the main contribution of a character to the session, and broken hands do not hinder you in the least in this regard. In fact, they can be quite enhancing, as I imagine the horror might well be magnified now for your character (and potentially for the others as well; a wounded team member is always demoralising).

[Lycan 01]

You'd be SOL if you were in my group.


In all seriousness, you've just got to deal with it. CoC is about realism, and realisticly, if you break both hands you can't really go much combat-wise. BUT you can still come in "handy" for you group.

Ideas:

-Be the guns and ammo guy. You may not be able to hold them in your hands, but you can still carry them on you for the rest of the group to use.
-See those skills labelled "Spot Hidden" and "Listen"? Yeah, if you have anything decent in those, you're automatically usefull.
-Spells? Seriously, if anybody in your group has a tome, grab it and devote as much time as you can to it. Time spent learning spells assumes you only spend an hour or two a day reading the tomes. If you tell your Keeper you spend every waking moment reading the tome(s) while you wait for your hands to heal, he can dramatically shorten the time it takes for you to learn the spell. And badda-bing, badda-boom, you go from being useless to being one of the team's most important members.
-Voice of reason? Seriously, be the talker and the thinker. That is supposed to be one of the main tactics in CoC, not running and gunning. Put that Fast Talk skill to use...

[Tsotha-lanti]

Incidentally, this is why I enjoy Trail of Cthulhu very much. It makes a good point in differentiating between pulp- and purist Cthulhu stories and how to run a game in whichever style you choose.

ToC is like CoC without all the tedious, extraneous, and often badly written rules (replaced by smooth, genre-appropriate, and light rules), and without that whole "oh you failed a skill roll so now I either negate the skill system entirely by giving you a clue anyway or let the game grind to a halt" bit. (Not that I've ever used skill roll results in CoC, really. The numbers just exist there to fool players who are used to having "attributes" and the like on a sheet, and so you can go "What's your Listen skill?" and roll the dice ominously, then say nothing more about it.)

Also, the alternative conceptions of titans alone make the book awesome. Azathoth as a malevolent black hole as the center of the universe? Yes please.

Lycan: "Grab it" ? Come on, that's adding insult to injury...