Helghast Invulnerability?

[palarran]

Ok, enough is enough. It’s been bothering me for almost 30 years now, without a doubt the biggest issue I have with the world of Lone Wolf:

Has there ever been any canonical explanation how the Helghasts’ invulnerability to non-magical weapons is supposed to work? They are definitely corporeal beings, otherwise Silent Wolf would not have been able to pin a Helghast’s hand to a wall with a crossbow bolt. But if the bolt can pin its hand to the wall, something like a throwing axe should be able to take it clean off. And if its hand can be cut off, then so does, say, its head… and so on.

See where this leads? My suspension of disbelief simply cannot cope with a being that has a proper physical body but cannot be harmed. What if the non-Magical “weapon” was a two-ton boulder dropped on its head? A Borese bomb lobbed at its chest? A stream of Greek fire engulfing it?

Does anyone know if this issue has ever been touched by Joe Dever, e.g. in one of the old newsletters?

[rhygar]

I think Joe Dever regretted not giving them a weakness of some kind other than being susceptible to magic and magic weapons?
(Did he mention this when playing the Lone Wolf RPG or something? I don't know how serious he was being.)

[palarran]

Ok, I learned two things: First, I’m old. I realized its rather almost 40 years I fail to come to terms with this issue. And second, I’ll probably have to wait for another 40 years or so, and then ask Joe Dever personally if I happen to meet him on the Plane of Light.

Oh well.

Kai, grant me the courage to change things I can change, the serenity to accept things I cannot change, and the wisdom to tell the one from the other...

[Zipp]

Feb 27, 2023 19:58:20 GMT palarran said:

Ok, enough is enough. It’s been bothering me for almost 30 years now, without a doubt the biggest issue I have with the world of Lone Wolf:

Has there ever been any canonical explanation how the Helghasts’ invulnerability to non-magical weapons is supposed to work? They are definitely corporeal beings, otherwise Silent Wolf would not have been able to pin a Helghast’s hand to a wall with a crossbow bolt. But if the bolt can pin its hand to the wall, something like a throwing axe should be able to take it clean off. And if its hand can be cut off, then so does, say, its head… and so on.

See where this leads? My suspension of disbelief simply cannot cope with a being that has a proper physical body but cannot be harmed. What if the non-Magical “weapon” was a two-ton boulder dropped on its head? A Borese bomb lobbed at its chest? A stream of Greek fire engulfing it?

Does anyone know if this issue has ever been touched by Joe Dever, e.g. in one of the old newsletters?

This has actually been explained by Joe! The Helghasts operate off an insanely fast healing factor that has a priority focus in keeping the body together. Thus, it is nearly impossible to cut off its head because it is literally healing the damage even before your sword is done cutting. An "RPG" way to describe it is with Damage Reduction: the healing factor is so fast that any damage under a certain amount essentially gets ignored. But the body can still be physically manipulated (say by a crossbow bolt). The boulder crushing scenario we address in the Official Lone Wolf Podcast, where August explains that a Helghast would still be alive under the boulder, just unable to get out from underneath it. To actually kill a Helghast by non-magical means would require an incredible amount of damage being applied consistently and quickly enough that it overwhelmed the healing factor.

[Lucy Van Pelt]

Mar 7, 2023 16:14:52 GMT Zipp said:

Feb 27, 2023 19:58:20 GMT palarran said:

Ok, enough is enough. It’s been bothering me for almost 30 years now, without a doubt the biggest issue I have with the world of Lone Wolf:

Has there ever been any canonical explanation how the Helghasts’ invulnerability to non-magical weapons is supposed to work? They are definitely corporeal beings, otherwise Silent Wolf would not have been able to pin a Helghast’s hand to a wall with a crossbow bolt. But if the bolt can pin its hand to the wall, something like a throwing axe should be able to take it clean off. And if its hand can be cut off, then so does, say, its head… and so on.

See where this leads? My suspension of disbelief simply cannot cope with a being that has a proper physical body but cannot be harmed. What if the non-Magical “weapon” was a two-ton boulder dropped on its head? A Borese bomb lobbed at its chest? A stream of Greek fire engulfing it?

Does anyone know if this issue has ever been touched by Joe Dever, e.g. in one of the old newsletters?

This has actually been explained by Joe! The Helghasts operate off an insanely fast healing factor that has a priority focus in keeping the body together. Thus, it is nearly impossible to cut off its head because it is literally healing the damage even before your sword is done cutting. An "RPG" way to describe it is with Damage Reduction: the healing factor is so fast that any damage under a certain amount essentially gets ignored. But the body can still be physically manipulated (say by a crossbow bolt). The boulder crushing scenario we address in the Official Lone Wolf Podcast, where August explains that a Helghast would still be alive under the boulder, just unable to get out from underneath it. To actually kill a Helghast by non-magical means would require an incredible amount of damage being applied consistently and quickly enough that it overwhelmed the healing factor.

It is impossible to cut off its head because it is impossible to cut off its head lah.

Nevermind... 😳😳

[palarran]

Rapid magical regeneration is in fact the, let’s say, “least unsatisfactory” explanation I managed to come up with myself, but I have a couple of issues with that as well.

First of all, there’s no description of this in the books. In “The Caverns of Kalte” for example, the text simply states “You … strike a blow at its head that would maim any mortal warrior. To your horror, the Helghast advances towards you unscathed.” Nothing about the weapon passing through or anything like that, just “you strike it and nothing happens”. I feel if it had been meant to work like that, it should have been properly described. Could have been a great death scene: “To your horror, the Helghast advances towards you, it’s undead flesh healing like boiling wax…”

What’s more, the way its healing power is described above might work against a rapier or maybe a sword, but a broad-bladed weapon like an axe could cut a limb clean off so the Helghast would at least have to pick up its hand and re-attach it for the regeneration to work. Do that with its head, and it would really be in trouble.

Besides, if the secret lay in the healing factor, then blunt weapons could still be quite effective against it – just use a Really Big Mace to clubber it to the ground. A Helghast would be hard pressed when faced with a group of mortal fighters aware of what they are up against – still a formidable enemy, no doubt about it, but far from being virtually unstoppable.

Kai has not granted me serenity yet…



Oh, and for the record, as it might seem otherwise: I’m not trying to nitpick or point out mistakes here, I’m just looking for an explanation that works for me.

[Zipp]

Apr 2, 2023 12:30:07 GMT palarran said:

Rapid magical regeneration is in fact the, let’s say, “least unsatisfactory” explanation I managed to come up with myself, but I have a couple of issues with that as well.

First of all, there’s no description of this in the books. In “The Caverns of Kalte” for example, the text simply states “You … strike a blow at its head that would maim any mortal warrior. To your horror, the Helghast advances towards you unscathed.” Nothing about the weapon passing through or anything like that, just “you strike it and nothing happens”. I feel if it had been meant to work like that, it should have been properly described. Could have been a great death scene: “To your horror, the Helghast advances towards you, it’s undead flesh healing like boiling wax…”

What’s more, the way its healing power is described above might work against a rapier or maybe a sword, but a broad-bladed weapon like an axe could cut a limb clean off so the Helghast would at least have to pick up its hand and re-attach it for the regeneration to work. Do that with its head, and it would really be in trouble.

Besides, if the secret lay in the healing factor, then blunt weapons could still be quite effective against it – just use a Really Big Mace to clubber it to the ground. A Helghast would be hard pressed when faced with a group of mortal fighters aware of what they are up against – still a formidable enemy, no doubt about it, but far from being virtually unstoppable.

Kai has not granted me serenity yet…



Oh, and for the record, as it might seem otherwise: I’m not trying to nitpick or point out mistakes here, I’m just looking for an explanation that works for me.

It's beyond rapid. The Helghasts are essentially made of magic and the will of Naar. Think about what happens if you cut water with a bladed weapon. Your sword/axe/dagger passes through it but it more or less INSTANTLY closes up behind it. The Helghasts are like that. They have form, so they aren't "made of liquid," but that form is constantly regenerating cells and magic. That's how they are able to change their appearance, too, without breaking every bone in their body. They rearrange themselves at a structural level and the damage done by this transformation is being healed as they are doing it.

So no, you couldn't slice a limb off. It heals too fast. And a dozen men with maces couldn't crush it to death. It heals too fast. You need something that literally applies CONSTANT INCREDIBLE damage, like a pool of lava, or something magical (which disrupts its own magic) to kill it.

As for the description in Cavern of Kalte, it's not the only example of fighting Helghasts. Joe describes how normal weapons affect them (or rather, don't) in other places:

www.projectaon.org/en/xhtml/lw/02fotw/sect277.htm - the swords slice clean through their bodies, as I described
www.projectaon.org/en/xhtml/lw/08tjoh/sect39.htm
www.projectaon.org/en/xhtml/lw/08tjoh/sect211.htm

[palarran]

Thanks for the explanation. I still have some issues with that, but it answers my original question about how the Helghast’s invulnerability was supposed to work. If I crank my suspension of disbelieve up to eleven, I think I can work with that.

Just one more note, the mortal fighters wielding Really Big Maces I mentioned were not meant to kill the Helghast, but to subdue it. You don’t necessarily need to kill something to neutralize the threat it poses.

[True Ben]

Hello,

I'm quite late to this discussion, but I'm glad someone addressed this issue. I read in the comments that an incredible amount of consistent damage, such as a pool of lava, would be required to destroy helghasts, but it can be argued even that would not work because their healing factor is too powerful; they can only be entombed, in the pool of lava, with its healing factor constantly at work. What I found implausible was a helghast being impossible to stop, which was the impression I got, especially after listening to episode 2 of "Journeys through Magnamund."I also considered the possibility that they could phase or pass through objects, which, to me, would be what it would take for them to be genuinely invulnerable. Thankfully for the heroes and good citizens of Magnamund, helghasts are not unstoppable in any case, especially since apparently most people do not readily have access to magic spells and magically enchanted weapons.

[askhati]

May 1, 2023 16:32:03 GMT palarran said:

Thanks for the explanation. I still have some issues with that, but it answers my original question about how the Helghast’s invulnerability was supposed to work. If I crank my suspension of disbelieve up to eleven, I think I can work with that.

You know, this actually makes me wonder: how do you feel about Superman being invincible?

[fdrwanderer]

I think the problem is that most of our visualization of "rabid healing" is predicated on healing happening both quickly but visibly. We get a part of that from recent superhero movies like the X-men movies (Wolverine). RPGs also do that and there are, of course, examples of Lone Wolf using Kai/Magnakai/Grandmaster healing Disciplines to demonstrate rapid healing (the example in Book 2, where Lone Wolf gashes his hand and then heals it, is one very clear example of this visualization. That visualization, however, may be self-limiting, in that there always seems to be a discernible period of time, however short, of the injury before that injury is healed. Consequently, that visualization has to assume that, before healing can be completed the injury matters.

The way Helghasts get represented in the gamebooks does not conform to that visualized concept of "rapid healing". What we see instead is something more akin to "instant restoration", essentially a disappearance of the effect as soon as the cause of the effect is removed from its "intrusion" into the surface of the Helghast (and that, incidentally, makes a bit more sense with a Helghast's undead nature). Similarly, there is no sense of related consequences, such as pain, either from the wounding or subsequent removal of the weapon. The weapon use examples Zipp offers from Books 2, 3, and 8 all suggest that the attacking weapon, whether blade or arrow, have the effect one would expect: the arrow and dagger jab into the Helghast, the sword slashes cut through the body on impact, etc. But that effect has no actual effect on the Helghast and literally disappears the moment the weapon "breaking the surface" is removed. Such would be the same with any blunt instrument (or, for that matter, the crushing boulder).

With this idea in mind, even amputations and decapitation would not work since "instant" means exactly that: even during the very swift period of time in which a blade passes literally completely through a limb or neck, the limb or neck is restored behind the passage of that blade.

So, to return to the example palarran offers initially, the crossbow trick worked not because the Helghast's hand was impaled, but because the crossbow bolt sank into the wall after passing through the Helghast's hand and couldn't immediately be removed from the wall. It would have been the exact same effect had Silent Wolf, say, pinned the Helghast's sleeve to the wall with a crossbow bolt (assuming the sleeve was an item of clothing the Helghast was wearing and not a shapeshifted feature of the Helghast). Similarly, the boulder trapping the Helghast would pin it as a matter of weight, not as a matter of crushing damage (which the Helghast doesn't feel).

[GhostofLandar]

wasn't that crossbow bolt and Helghast hand from the Re-worked Flight from the Dark?

There's a solution to that---ignore it, it wasn't in the original story and honestly, is too much for the ending, I think. Introducing a Helghast at that point takes away the sense of relief that you've finally made it to the King and puts you in a position where you are still underpowered against such an enemy.