Camillus

Quick question. Does the coupon apply to PDF purchases through DriveThru or only for those from Chaosium? Cheers

Why the limitation on lasers? They are a fairly mature technology now and the US has already successfully tested a turret based laser system on an aircraft. Power is not likely to be a problem on a ship with a nuclear power plant (fission or fusion). Cooling might be an issue but the same is true of rail guns. Nuclear warheads are, perhaps, wasted on spaceship to spaceship missiles. Since there is no atmosphere the blast is limited to contact and you can achieve a similar effect with a big lump of metal travelling at high speed (a so called kinetic kill munition - KKM) unless the target is really big. If you're expecting a high rate of interception for missiles then why stick a complex warhead on them? By the way if missiles can be intercepted then there's a good chance that coil gun rounds can be as well. How does the weapon create an ionised trail in vacuum?

I'm guessing that it's actually "Shan" which would make it (possibly) about the insects from Shaggai.

It's a question of semantics. In this case "affect" is used to mean "acts directly upon without an intermediary effect" rather than simply "has an effect upon". Blast therefore does not require a resistance roll because its effect is a result of an intermediary - a ruinous beam of magic. The spell Change, however, does require a roll because it acts directly upon the victim without any intermediary.

Yes and no. You can grapple a missed attack as your own attack and attempt the disarm on a subsequent round. You cannot declare a parry and turn that into an attack (Grapple). It's compared against current hit points. Generally unless total hit points are specifically mentioned then current HP are meant. There are no specific rules for being knocked down so it becomes Keeper's call. Generally I'd penalise attack and defence. Any successful counter grapple or other attack on the target. If the grappler hasn't immobilised his target the target is free to attack back. No problem.

You need the Legend book.

I can allay your fears about Pulp Cthulhu - it definitely won't be D20. Unfortunately at this point in time, as far as I know, the book is vapour ware and unlikely to appear in the near future.

Zit, mine opens without a problem.

That's certainly true (although in fairness Star Wars armour doesn't appear to offer any protection against anything at all - rock wielding Ewok, I'm looking at you), and modern armour suffers that penalty by the RAW, but in a sci fi game it's likely that characters will have access to advanced armour which doesn't have that problem - unless you want to use the optional rule about energy weapons and armour.

It's worth bearing in mind that there's actually very little difference in the damage that a firearm does versus an energy weapon by the rules as written. Both a medium pistol (9 mm auto) and a laser pistol do 1d8 damage, for instance. The primary difference is in the rate of fire, range and ammo capacity.

The way I do it for skills over 100% is to allow both characters to add whatever their skill over 100 is to their roll (obviously only natural 00 counts as a fumble). So the character with a skill of 150% would add 50 to their roll in any opposed test. It has the advantage that critical and special ranges stay the same and there's no subtraction steps involved for anyone.

Special results only come into play if you get a Critical against an unarmoured opponent. The BGB says this on the matter (pg 192):

I'd use the Resistance Table - give each side a Phalanax (PHA?) rating and test them against each other. If the defenders are defeated (their PHA falls to the point where they automatically lose) then their formation is broken or they start taking casualties (or both). I'd get PHA by doing something like total SIZ as a baseline with a modifier for the quality or skill level of the troops e.g: *0.5 for raw recruits (skill level 25% or less) or pressed levy; *0.75 for inexperienced troops (skill level 26-50%), motivated untrained volunteers or demotivated professionals; *1.0 for professionals (skill level 51-75%) or demoralised elite; *1.25 for elite (skill level 76%+) I'd add other modifiers, for instance for a last stand (could be good or bad), and the quality of leadership. Leadership could either be a round to round modifier or once at the beginning or at key points in the exchange.

Basically yes. You can also make tasks easy (twice the normal chance of success) or hard (half the normal chance). If I'm understanding you correctly then no. If both parties succeed in a combat roll then the victory goes to the person with the best level of success: special beats normal, critical beats special. If both levels of success are the same (normal v normal etc.) then the defender wins.