Nightshade

We've always rolled against the unmodified skill in such cases.

Also, one has to note that by the book there's only a single weapon skill, not separate attack and parries, so if you have a weapon skill at decent and plan to parry with it, you don't need to increase a separate skill. (This doesn't help shields of course,. which is one reason I think they do need a houserule).

Mostly that it means anyone with an Advantage must have a Disadvantage and vice versa, unless the pool is a non-zero at the start. The virtue of my approach is you can, for example, have a single character in a group who has an Advantage, even if no one else does, and not have any Disadvantages per se (though obviously lower attributes are a disadvantage of sorts inherently).

All right. Basically, the problem you're going to have importing an advantage/disadvantage system to BRP is that BRP is not built to a common metric. What I mean by that is that a game that is built to be a complete build point approach from the ground up usually has an equivalent cost function for all character components out the get-go (there are exceptions; the game JAGS has a separate pool of points for paranormal abilities (Archetype Points) that don't really map to the points used for mundane character abilities and Fuzion tried to semi-isolate its pools of points to mixed success). My own feeling is that the pool that can be most profitably used as the basis of Advantage/Disadvantage modifications in BRP is attributes; there are some problems with treating all attributes as worth the same (particularly Appearance, and in some settings Power or Strength) but at least you're on a common ground of things that are fundamentally high value and do not improve quickly. Now how exactly you'd map the Eclipse Phase style costs and values to that pool I'm not sure. (I'd more or less decided that if I ever did an Adv/Disad system for BRP I'd keep it simple; the loss/gain from the attribute build pool would be as follows (this is based extremely roughly on the core logic used in the Disadvantage system in Hero); Each disadvantage or advantage would yield or be priced based on frequency of problem/utility, cross indexed with degree of problem and utility. There'd be three cases in each axis: Uncommon, Common and Very Common, and Mild, Moderate and Strong as to potency. An Uncommon, Mild Disadvantage or Advantage would yield/cost one attribute point; upping each side would increase this each one per step, so that a Very Common, Strong Disadvantage/Advantage would yield/cost five attribute points. One can do a lot by managing how much total yield/cost you can do here to avoid problems too; most of the real problems with Disadvantage systems come from encouraging too many of them.) You might want to take a page from Superworld (the full version, not the WoW version); it had disadvantages but they only yielded points in its Powers build. That could potentially include attribute or skill boosters, of course (it did in Superworld) but they're a separate beast at least. Unfortunately, anything as extensive as EP is going to require a significant amount of upfront work.

Anything but a random assignment system is going to have aspects of trade-offs, which is all a disad/advantage system does in the end. But I know in general trying to convince BRP people that their biases here is counterproductive is generally a waste of time, so I'll just leave this to someone else.

Yeah, the original version of the spell in MagicWorld was like that, as were, in different ways, the RQ2 divine spells that did this. Of course those elementals weren't invulnerable, even to non-magic, as I recall; the bigger ones just had a lot of hit points.

One of the things I intermittantly work on is an updated version of FutureWorld as a campaign; I've got some work on it (basic setting background (which I posted on here a while back), aliens, updated weapons, some character generation versions) but it gets done when I'm of a mood. I could see it having some virtues as a general setting for SF, in part for the reason it was originally set up as it was; you can do a lot of things with it without having to get into the side issue of ship construction and combat (I know some people just love that stuff, but for a lot of potential campaign focus its just a distraction). I kind of doubt I'd ever get enough done on it to make a book by myself, though, since I'm mostly just interested in it for an exploration oriented campaign.

I think part of it simply is that on the whole SF games, especially ones more on the hard-SF side than science fantasy haven't been exactly the biggest dogs in the RPG marketplace in the first place. Outside of Traveller, there's been rather mixed success in general. When you consider that most of the formal BRP based games have been licensed products, there's another layer there. There are also some mechanical issues; BRP can sometimes be a somewhat unforgiving system, so its probably a coincidence that the most modern adaptation that really flew was CoC, which is generally oriented away from combat pretty heavily.

Combat balancing tools are potentially useful in any game with significant amounts of combat; you just have to remember its very hard for them to tell the whole story because there are almost always special cases you're not accounting for (for example, missile weapons in BRP style systems tend to have greater efficiency than they appear on the surface to for various reasons), and these sometimes come up more than people give them credit for (its one of the limitations on Mutants and Mastermind's PL system, for example).

As long as you're using an offhand weapon, I think you're quite correct. If you want shields to be attractive outside of shield walls or the small benefit against missiles, I recommend doing what we did; give a modifier to parry based on shield size (not a change in base; that washes out in advancement).

Just a side comment: even in RQ2 and 3, at least divine mages tended to kick the ass of someone who hadn't invested in them after a while anyway. Sorcery was a more complicated case (but Duration tended to be the gift that kept on giving) and since the advanced version of spirit magic was vested in shamans (who were to one degree or another broken in every version I saw) you didn't see them much. But if the complaint is that those with powerful magic beat those without, that was always true, and training time and such never made up the difference much because that got into diminishing returns after a while anyway, where piling more power sacrifices on divine magic kept on going more or less in a linear fashion. The only question I'd look at is the speed of the slope.

Sure. My reference was that it was only less likely to come up simply as a consequence of the normal strike rank as compared to normal Dex range. It requires a pretty high or low Dex and/or Size to land outside the 7 expected (or a long weapon) but there's a fair range of meaningful Dex ranks, so it won't come up all the time there (and when it does, it'll probably be among people in the middle of the pile of Dex). I just think its generally kind of a stupid rule, since as I noted it means that the fairly routine case of a single sword fencer is prohibitively painful unless you assume all fencers use dodge rather than parry. I still think, however, it produces a situation where certainly historically present but not dominant tactics become overwhelmingly attractive, though. There's certainly some advantages to rapier and main-gauche or sword and cloak techniques, or even the two-swords fencing methods, but with this rule in place they become virtually the only viable ones, espeically if using strike ranks.

Well, my grognardism and expectations notwithstanding, that's really my issue here; this seems to produce some very odd artifacts as the armor levels are low. Ignoring a point or two of armor doesn't seem close to as beneficial as impaling does for anything but the most trivial of weapons, and its questionable whether the bash isn't a better choice too. (The bleeding critical is a joke pretty much, so its a non-factor). I mean the bottom line is, the moment your base weapon damage averages more than the armor of the target, the critical is actually less beneficial than the special with impales. That seems--perverse. Edit: I just had pointed out to me that there's apparently a line that a critical also does maximum damage, which helps this considerably; while not quite as good as an impale, it closes the gap enough that the difference for a point or two of armor is probably trivial in all be a few rare cases.

I'm not going to say the rules were as clear about this as they could be, but certainly nothing in the rules suggested you didn't apply impale effects in addition to bypassing armor, and that was certainly the way it was treated in the very first RQ game I ever played in, run by Steve Perrin. Edit: Oh, and as to your question regarding the crit--the double damage was a relatively late-in-the-day issue, and honestly, I don't recall almost ever fighting targets with absolutely no armor. I realize it can certainly come up with modern games, and if it did, yes, that's what I'd do. Its probably moot with impaling weapons though; the result of a serious impaling weapon getting a crit is so severe anything else is guilding the lilly to a large extent, though this might be less true with the current BRP which is, on the whole, kinder than most incarnations of RQ were (where a critical impale was pretty much given to be an automatic trip to either the morgue or, if you got it in a limb, disable-land). Rules being unclear? Perish the thought! So what's it like in your parallel universe?

And note that some elements of the problems you are discussing is only true of the current incarnation; in the RQ versions, most of the time you couldn't strike twice no matter what your strike rank, and with the RQ 3 version, if you could your strike rank didn't have much impact on that.

Unless, of course, the lower Dex opponent sees him do this and also delays. In the end, while only the higher Dex opponent can take advantage of the rule, he can, in the end, only do so if the lower Dex one lets him; otherwise he just waits himself to swing, and can parry fine. Or alternatively swings at the same time and accepts that neither gets to parry. In a multiple on one fight he could wait until the lower Dex strikes and do so, but then, being two-on-oned has sucked in most versions of BRP. But Rosen's comment notwithstanding, my point was that the higher Dex attacker himself rarely has to worry about this, which he would in a strike rank system because the strike ranks pile up far more. The Dex, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily do so even if point spend is in use, and certainly doesn't if its rolled. But in the strike rank system, the rather large categories that produce the 7 strike rank attack will mean a lot of people get caught by that one.

That's only true if all those result occur equally often, which I never said nor implied.

If so, this is a change from any prior version of BRP that I'm aware of; its certainly a change from the RQ roots where both were always combined (and in particular will mean you'll frequently want to use an impale or bash when fighting lightly armored opponents, since they'll produce superior results to ignoring a point or two of armor almost every time (the bleeding special won't, but then I've argued that one is underpowered compared to the other two specials before).

But they kind of do, in terms of giving such weapons low base damage but robust specials. The point is the capacity for damage and the easy of avoidance don't really relate directly. A maul or a greataxe are going to make a horrible mess of you if they hit, but they're, if anything, easier to dodge than a dagger. I

This ignores a number of two handed weapons such as many asian flexible weapons or the quarterstaff. Against a subset of attacks, perhaps, but I'm unconvinced when you're defending against heavier striking weapons such as maces or axes.

Not really, depending on the character involved; a character with a 15 Dex would rarely have it come up. I still think that's not a feature, but a bug, and even moreso with light one handed weapons. While rapier and dagger techniques are functional, this would make them overwhelmingly attractive in comparison to rapier alone, and historical information doesn't suggest this was the case (sword and cloak is a weird case, but in some ways a cloak as a parrying object is more like a shield, given the lightness of the attacking weapons, than another weapon).

No, you were more or less correct the first time; that line is only there to indicate what range is a special but NOT a critical. Criticals always include a special with them unless whatever roll is being made has no defined special result for some reason.

Kind of think in a system that has armor absorb damage, it is. There are all kinds of effective attacks (in that they have a fair chance to disable someone under the right circumstances) that are generally crappy at penetrating armor; a fencing sword is not particularly easy to dodge, but its hardly high damage, for example.

Probably wouldn't mean as much; weapon attacks in the strike rank system tend to pile up on a few strike ranks (since most characters, PC or not, will land in the 11-16 range of both size and dexterity, and medium weapons are the same), so this is likely to come up quite a bit there. Of course the real issue is that this doesn't favor a shield per se; it just favors having something to parry with offhand, but if anything the current rules tend to favor that being another weapon, not a shield.

The problem with your argument, Frogspawner, is that BRP pretty much does connect damage with force (albiet not 100%); its not a system that assumes damage is primarily about effectiveness, or there'd both be more connection between skill and damage than there is, and armor would probably work differently than it does (coverage would be as or more important than things like material and thickness).