Trifletraxor

The old rules said unconscious at 2 hit points and dead at 0.

What kind of houserules have people employed here?

I experimented with immeadiate death upon severed head, chest or abdomen (with impaling & crushing damage maiming at double hit location HP damage, but severing at tripple HP damage), and at -CON HP.

Below zero the character was unconscious, but had a

(CON - negativ hit points) x5% chance of surviving the round.

They usually did not survive any longer, but at least they had a chance.

Also, with Resurrection, I've always played 3rd edition RuneQuest, but I like the mechanics of the 2nd edition RuneQuest Resurrect spell better (it fits better in Glorantha, but I'm not sure how good it would be for other settings). What are your opinions on this?

SGL.

Are you implying that I exibit anything less than perfect behaviour when I frequent forums? That's outrageous! :eek:

<club-club!>

Sverre.

Oh, now I got it. You were refering to my avatar, not me being banned from the MRQ forum 3 times. Stupid me...

Well I was just being "in character", you see, my trollkin PC has a INT of 9. Can't help it.

SGL.

Yeah, yeah!!

Details Jason, details!

Sverre.

I found one too. Trifletraxtor. But dont tell him please. (/staring fearfully at T`s 2H mace).

Are you implying that I exibit anything less than perfect behaviour when I frequent forums? That's outrageous! :eek:

<club-club!>

Sverre.

I have to agree that there's a certain amount of mountain constructed from molehill here. First, most of these chances can be listed with the weapons involved; those get modifications to their to-hit, of course, but that doesn't happen all the time, or even the majority of the time. Second, even if you don't, you only need to check this in a subset of cases. With a 5% chance of a crit, you know you aren't critting on anything over a 5 (unless you have over 100% skill), so you don't need to wonder about it most of the time; same with specials on rolls over 20%.

Well, if 6000 gamers roll for 30 minutes...

20% and 5% is fine. I would prefer 10% and 1%, but I'm pretty used to 20 & 5.

Cheers,

Sverre.

What's the big discussion about really? Hero points will not be part of the default system, which should satisfy the grognards like me, but it's included as an optional system, as a lot of people like to use them. Hero points have been included in many peoples houserules for BRP allready, so I don't see any problem with that. It all depends on what type of game you like to play.

No need to call names.

Now, time to break up the thread! :cool:

SGL.

"Why is BRP not that popular?" is the biggest thread here on the forum, but most of the topics in the thread is not directly related to the original topic.

Time to open some new threads?

(Looks like we're only bitching about d&d being bigger than brp. )

SGL.

.45 1D10+2(2D3 or 1D8)

With hit locations gone, won't that make the damage a bit too low? It would on average take 3 normal hits to kill someone with a .45 with those revised damages. Some armor in addition would make it really hard.

(must say, I have not that much experience with firearms and RPG so I do not really know how it works during play)

Sverre.

I may put a system like that together as a web freebie to coincide with the core book. I'll send an email to Dustin and see if he's game and if they'll host it.

If not, there's always the hungry wiki!

SGL.

I agree. Drop the current rather weird cover, and opt for a simple one. Chaosium logo plus some selected words would do fine. MUCH better than the current cover.

It would look more inviting too I think.

SGL.

Interesting, but I7d say use POW or CHA to continue acting rather than CON. It really isn't so much a question of your health, but of you determination.

...

BTW, while we are discussing injury. How about we swipe the HEaling Rate rules from Pendragon, where character heal (STR+CON)/10 HP per week? That way healthy character would heal faster than small sickly ones? It always bugged me that the guy with an 18 CON took just as long to heal from a 3 point injury as the guy with a 6 CON.

I like both those suggestions!

SGL.

D100 skill resolution. :cool:

SGL.

Truth is most people want the illusion of danger to their characters, not the reality.

An illusion of danger could be fudged by the GM, if skillfully done. But a player with a high level AD&D character would have to be delusional if he thought his player was in any sort of danger (unless the DM had deceided to kill him that is).

Badcat had some of the right of it; most people, either because of what they play for or just because they have time and effort invested in a character, don't really want there to be all that much chance of losing it.

That's where being carefull comes into play. I seldom ever lose characters when I play. Well, some of them have died several times, but DI or resurrection have brought them back. One member of our group burns through characters though, they are usually frontline warriors that don't back down. He's an AD&D player we converted to BRP some time ago. Still, with all the dead characters, he've said he wastly prefer BRP and the danger you find there.

You're probably right it's not for all people, but it have been one of the main characteristics of BRP. A deadly, gritty game. Having hero points as an optional rule is okay for me, but if it had been made a default rule, I think it would ruin some of the game's original spirit.

Sverre.

As for char-gen--well, it was adding two digit numbers. I really can only work up so much sympathy for people who can't handle adding together some two digit numbers during character generation.

I care to disagree. To find your starting % in a particular skill (and there where many skills), first you had to look up the base chance, then you had to calculate a skill modifier to add or subtract (and also look up how it was calculated), and then in the end you had to add a number multiplied with your years of experience.

Figuring out the starting skills for a character took way too much time. :cool: IMO.

Sverre.

Having pared BRP down to this essential list I am amused when people make a distinction between an alternative rule and any rule that is not actually essentiallike those above. Like not being branded 'alternate rule' would keep any of us from modifying or excising it on the spot if we didn't like it.

Joseph Paul

That's true, but the big difference btw the "default" and the "optional" rules are that the default rules are those who will be supported in future supplements.

(By the way, Gianni's basicrps site have a transcript of the original "core" rules, stripped down to the absolutely minimum needed for play).

Sverre.

What where the changes from BRP? Was there some improvements that could be houseruled into BRP?

SGL.

And how much fiction do you know that focuses on such people? Its fine to acknowledge that can happen, but there's nothing to require people to want to _play_ the guy who gets cut in half in the first scene to emphasize how dangerous the situation is.

Though I do not like hero/fate points (what was the new BRP name for it by the way), you do have a point there. I just feel some of the feeling of danger disappears if you f.ex. knows you have 4 HP left.

The only places I can think of where this should have been an issue in play (rather than during character gen and advancement) was with the fatigue and encumberance systems.

Char-gen was horrible, at least the old RQ3 one. Took ages calculating stuff. And I had to do it all, cause the others hadn't learned the rules by heart!

Special, criticals & fumbles. Easy math you would say, yes I agree, but it's still math, and many people are not good with instant math.

Sverre.

It's not that bad, Sverre. Have you not played Elric!/Stormbringer 5? That said, I prefer the 10% critical only myself. It makes life so much simpler, even though you sacrifice a certain amount of the combat 'flavor'.

Haven't played that one before no. I've been one of those traditional RuneQuest in Glorantha nuts. (with a tiny dish of Cthulhu now and then)

When I worked on houseruling MRQ, I operated with 10% critical hits and 1% perfect hits. Very easy to calculate, and the combat flavour remained. I also made fumbles easier to know by heart.

I have no problems calculating criticals and specials, but with some do, and it bogs down the game a bit. Not much, but I find it kindoff unnecessary. I prefer not having to calculate at all.

Sverre.

It may be time to refine and define the question(s) better. It may also be time to move this to its own thread.

1) A review. In discussing possible design sequences for BRP it was put forward by me that firearms have anomolies compared to other games that rely on RW data and not on the needs of the designers. Specifically that pistols are overpowered compared to rifles and that damage done by other long arms seems to follow no rhyme or reason.

2) Point made that it is within current pistols' game capabilities to supply a major wound that will stop a human target.

2a) Point made that in BRP it is hard to kill humans with pistols in the game at least in one shot.

3) First thing to decide- Is the goal to kill (bring to 0 HP) or stop (render incapacitated) a human target? RW data looks at stopping a target. Shot at, stopped, and still living is the norm in armed conflicts. This is because there are many ways targets are stopped. Physical force, pain, psychological stresses, and disorientation are some of them.

I would opt for stopping a human target to be the reality check here.

It has been pointed out that as in real estate the primary concern in wound ballistics is location, location, location. However even this is not as straight forward as we would like (is anything as complex as this ever straight forward?).

The concensus in the wound ballistics community appears to be that stopping a human can happen several ways.

Disorientation by the firing of the gun. Bright flash and loud noise actually stunning a person and rendering them incapable of action for a time.

Pain from an otherwise non-life threatening wound causing the target to be incapable of continuing. No structural damage (ie to organs, arteries or bones), just pain.

Damage to the body resulting in bleeding or loss of pumping efficiency. Deprived of freshly oxygenated blood the target will faint soon and then bleed out.

Damage to the central nervous system that results in unconciousness, paralysis, or death. Bullets stretch and pull on surrounding tissue creating temporary cavitation. A bullet does not have to hit the spine for instance to jar it hard enough to affect the spinal cord.

Bullet/body interaction are complex but I think that what needs to be modeled are targets' reactions to having small bits of metal forced through their body at high speed.

We see examples where round after round is fired into a target to no avail.

Apparently the rounds are not hitting organs,arteries, bones, or the CNS. In game terms the targets HP need to be ablated.

We see examples where an underpowered round drops a target. Apparently it did affect organs, arteries, bones, or the CNS. Currently we can not get this result in BRP/CoC.

I am currently working out a system where the target takes the HP damage but rolls d20 vs CON or HP in a location to avoid being dropped by damage to the CNS, which is after all a distributed system. I chose CON as a representation of the toughness of the tissues and to link it to the target. Same idea can be applied to determining damage to organs, bones, and arteries by rolling d20 vs POW which would determine bleeding. I am working out simple modifiers for hit location (currently limb, torso, and head) as well as the amount of damage to those locations modifying the roll (limb- none, torso- damage).

A point of damage from a .22 to a limb is very survivable. Roll vs CON to continue to act.

A 5 point shot to the torso. Roll d20 vs CON-5 to avoid incapacitation

A point of damage from a .22 to the head. Roll vs the HP in the head (CON/3 if you don't want to use hit location HP). If you make it no incapacitation. If you fail you drop and go unconcious.

If that is to complex then you could abstract the ability of firearms to incapacitate by rolling d100 vs 5x(POW-damage).

Success- take HP damage.

Fail- take damage and incapacitated.

Fumble- Take damage, incapacitated, and bleeding.

Use POW because hitting the CNS is more luck than anything else at this level of resolution.

Oh yeah do this for each round that hits. Multiple shots gve multiple chances for incapacitation.

I need to run some numbers on this stuff to see how it performs. It should allow pistols to be effective at stopping a human target with out requiring them to be overpowered in relation to other weapons.

Joseph Paul

Some alternate rules for the wiki on the way?

The combat table has different effects depending on the success levels of the participants. For eg, Crit vs Fail = full damage, plus rolled damage, plus ignore armour, or parrying weapon/shield takes 4 pts of damage. There are 17 cross referenced entries and, whilst most are common sense, there are some entries where there's a lot to take in. I simply won't be able to remember the various outcomes off the top of my head! When I ran a BRP playtest combat, during the playtest session, I found that combat was slowed considerably whilst I figured the results through using the matrix.

Of course, I'm old now, and the mind isn't what it used to be. Wibble.

Hmm. RQ combat took pretty long time before, I do hope it's not getting any slower...

Sverre.

I've only used luck rolls for non-combat related stuff, fumbling the climb roll with a certain death drop, etc.

How have you guys used it? :confused:

Sverre.

Simple Quest is at http://www.d101games.co.uk/simplequest.html and should be coming out fairly soon. It looks to be a cross between RQM and BRP.

I've sent him an e-mail to tell me when it's out so we can add it. Looks like there will be a setting and some scenarios too! :-)

Sverre.

How about a more 'organic' approach, letting the story tell itself? After all, no matter how much potential someone has there is always the chance that said potential will be cut short by a stray arrow or bullet or even by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No rhyme or reason in real life. And in my experience at least, the best rpg experiences are the ones where the players have no idea whether or not it is going to be the last for a particular character (mirroring real life or a good story, the best of which mirror real life IMO). Why not let the story tell itself, whatever the consequences? It would seem to be just a matter of taste, of what sort of story one wants to tell. In which case both the use of fate points or not are valid approaches. Also, I have noticed that some people tend to invest more in their characters than others; I myself have always looked at my own PCs as playing pieces or pawns, and their passing may be a little disappointing (best DEX I ever rolled!) but then I just shrug and get on with the game. Use of fate points of any sort change the whole experience and not in a good way, to me. I much prefer to let the story develop as it will (I figure that is what the randomness of the dice rolling does) and don't have a desire to dabble in what occurs as a result of that primary means of determining those occurrances in-game.

I feel GM fudging is appropriate in certain situations, where the PC otherwise would get killed instantly with no say on the outcome. I then make care taht the player do not know I'm fudging.

In my games it's often starting characters who die first. Not because their worse, but because the player hasn't got attached to it yet and so is not as carefull as he/she could be.

Hero Points as an optional system is no problem for me. It seems like many people use them allready. I am however strongly against having them as part of the default, as BRP have allways been a "deadly" and realistic game compared to the rest.

(trying to break up the old thread into new ones )

Sverre.

Our group eventually just dropped percentile and used a d20 for rolls with RQ3. All skills and modifiers were rounded to 5 or 0 and then we used a d20.

That's the Pendragon method, isn't it? Calculating 20% and 5% does bog down play a little. Not that much, but I would have liked to see a 10% special instead. It seems it will stay at 20% for the new system though.

Cheers,

Sverrre.

The new Roleplaying Gallery is up!

The images uploaded now are made by Remi Thosen, aka Nalfein, from my rpg group. Please leave comments for the pictures and upload your own fan art too!

Currently only one category, but we'll expand with setting-specific categories if there's a need for that later.

Go have a look!

SGL.