Al.

Sadly a leg end is either a foot or an arse. Still CoC(k) survived for decades so it might all work out

Since as long as I can remember dagger has been 1d4+2 which has struck me as a little out of sync as a dagger is just the shortest sword there is and swords get +1 not +2. I can't say that it'd stop me playing in someone else's game if they stuck to Dagger/Dirk 1d4+2 and Shortsword 1d6+1 though.

Two variations on the same theme of exposing oneself to a horrible corrosive in a location which prevents inteference from others: Stand in a pit of quicklime and get slowly causticed away Stand in a volcano from which sulphur is mined Does it have to be slow? Self-immolation is widely regarded as horrific and must take an enormous* strength of will to see through Does it have to be a done deal? If you want dishonour (and potential redemption) are you not removing a more satisfying story possibility from the other players if your character can be rescued and then instructed by superior to do something undignified to atone (like a Samurai being instructed to shave his head and go to a monastery)? * and in my mind unnecessary but we are talking here let's pretend and fantasy not real world so my opinion probably counts for even less than usual

Thanks Chaot. Mystery solved then. As you say a strange typo. I cannot believe that I hadn't spotted it earlier in the hmmm years that I've owned and read the book!

So if Triff is webhero number one for BRP Presumably whoever uses Wayback machine and reposts the lost month's drivel er insights gets to be webhero number two Good workTriff. Presumably the holiday was as exciting and fun as you had hoped?

One of the rules which seems to split opinion in BRP is the autofire rule. Inspired by the rule I saw in a game of SLA Calculate chance to hit as usual(+5% per extra shot but no more than double skill) Then roll If roll is less than modified skill but more than skill - one shot hits If less than skill - then half burst hits (or roll as per RAW If less than special for skill (not modified skill) all shots in burst hit

Was there ever an official errata produced for Sailing on the Seas of Fate? Or does anyone have a tried and tested house rule. I ask because (prior to new MagicWorld) I was flicking through and saw that the PanTangian Galley has Hull Quality (armour basically) 120 whilst Melnib Battle Barge rolls 3d6+10. And all of the other Boats and Ships also have a random value (all of which are much lower than the baddies)

Warning: youmay wish to skip this if a series of agreements and disagreements to one tangential line of conversation is not your thing Yes! woo hoo! Someone else makes a boo boo with where to put quote and /quote! I swear I mess that up 5 posts out of every 6. True the capitalist military industrial complex does need to generate new markets for its weapons to generate sales and profits. Companies which stay in business though either have a protected state monopoly, underhand sales techniques or solutions which look sensible (or a mix of the three) Really? We may have different internalised definitions (which doesn't mean that yours is wrong of course) Which major industrialised nations? Italy is in the G8 you know. And France never went for small calibre CIWS. Preferring 100mm and now moving to fast-firing 76mm. Not to mention US hasn't fitted Phalanx (20mm) to its latest skimmers and is licensing a Bofors fast-firing 57mm for its two big new classes of surface combatants. Yes slow-firing larger calibres are pants at modern AA. Possibly me being dense again but I don't see how that means that fast-firing larger weapons will be no good. No they don't that's very true. But assuming that I don't make a larger calibre weapon with less propellant, a shorter barrel and poor aerodynamics for the bullet I'd expect to outrange a smaller calibre weapon. I'd also, as you allude, have to cope with recoil and issues caused by muzzle-velocity. We tried doing away with cannons on aircraft and it didn't work out spectacularly well. Certainly GWS have their place though. I thought I'd conceded that one. Obviously needed to be clearer than one sentence (in paranthesis at that) I wonder if we are at cross-purposes semantically here? I'm not aware that tank guns have reduced in calibre; that we've gone back to smaller, high velocity AP and big fat HE? You have a point that the move from 20 or 40mm to 75mm or 88mm happened much faster than the move from 75 or 88mm to (common use of) 120mm. The Soviets even had 122mm in The Great Patriotic War but it wasn't common. Again if we are arguing semantics or even two different arguments (one for each side) here? I will say though that smaller rounds are more affected by wind (pardon me). It may be at hyper velocity railgun speeds that this is no longer an issue. (Plus then I can have a Gauss Shotgun which does 4d6 at all ranges and doesn't get range penalties coz its hivap needles spread out and still have loads of energy) In isolation. Or even worse if I did it and dropped RoF. Of course you are right. Can't argue with that. Not sure that I was in the first place! Targets fall over fine when close enough and if enough rounds hit and range is fine when close enough. Hitting man-sized targets is fncking hard at most ranges (I'm told) hence talk of beaten zones. It is quite possible that not every soldier with a Battle Rifle is able to make use of its advantages over an Assault Rifle (or whatever they are called now). And goes through cover differently and has different ballistics and has enough energy to hurt at longer range. And has more recoil. And is harder to use in full auto. And tends to need a longer barrel which makes it less handy in FISH and CHIPS or when crammed into a helo or APC. I think though that you are taking a step into the unknown claiming that the differences don't matter. Yup and strange 4.xmm designs even more True dat. But as with every engineering decision there are sweet spots with specifications and trade off. (Hence Saab going 27mm mauser on Gripen rather than sticking with Viggen's 30mm monster of going 20mm like the US). Tricky. Very tricky. Yes aircraft are jampacked full of volatiles, explosives and essential systems but (combat aircraft in particular) are stupendously strong to withstand the flight stresses. Check the stories of F15s landing with most or part of one wingshot off. AA rounds are also prox fused rather than impactand bigger calibre = more shrapnel, increases chance of any hit and increases chance of enough hits to do damage Seems a perfectly sensible analysis to me. Being dense though I cannot see which argument you were responding to. As a general comment, I can't argue with it. I've only ever been a casual anime watcher so that might very well be an accurate summation. Perhaps I should have written 'Hell yeah, I want my PC to be able to hit the big scary robot as far away and as hard as possible'? Bingo on all. That certain size isn't static though is it? Lots of factors feed into how big you want to go, or how big outweighs the advantages. That's okay my Mecha will stand on a barge in the river and have the Kelly's directory on its head. Slightly more constructively I've heard apocryphal (sp) tales of horrible accidents befalling infantry near to tanks firing sabot rounds and being hit by discarding bit.

But there is a need. Otherwise Otomelara (a very successful big gun manufacturer) would not be working on it. The problem (or a problem at least) is that fast moving incomings are difficult to hit so throwing lots of projectiles at them very quicklyis necessary to hit (high rate of fire) but large incomings are difficult to destroy or knock off course with small calibre weapons (hence OM 67mm and USN going 57mm for their last ditch defence). Plus bigger shells with proximity fuses put more stuff in the target volume than smaller shells. Larger weapons also have longer range which is important when trying to destroy incoming threats a) coz further away they explode or ditch the better and it gives a larger window in which to hit the darned thing (I can start firing further away so it flies through a longer path of debris before getting to me) To an extent (Big Bertha seems a thing of the past for sure) but Tank guns have increased relentlessly since WWII. And the US research into Railguns suggests that big kinetic weapons may be making a comeback. Can't argue with that. Although the metric may be 'how many rounds fired very rapidly are required for one successful engagement?' rather than 'how many engagements will this many rounds let me fight? They do. Again so that a burst has a chance of hitting a fast-moving erratic target. Or even hitting a fairly slow target whilst the aircraft is moving fast and erratically to avoid getting hit. (USAF A16s in the 'first' (or second) Gulf War used their 30mm cannon pods like shotguns to spray a general area to hit ground targets in part coz the mounting just couldn't withstand forces imparted and stay zeroed and accurate. Spot on again. Sledgehammer to smash duck eggs. But we all decided that full cartridge 7.62 (never mind anything bigger) was overkill and retooled to 5.56 (sometimes via intermediate 7.62) and then found out that the damned targets just would not fall over (or they were too far away and the lighter round couldn't reach out). The USMC (and possibly other branches) wanted 27mm mauser instead of 20mm and settled on 25mm for its better energy. Hell yeah. Hit the other scary robot as far away and as hard as possible. OtoM' have been even cleverer they've been using shrapnel in the fast forty for decades so they get range and swamp the target volume with stuff and increase the chance of a hit. For the record: I've always favoured softkill against AShMs anyway as I'm less likely to run out of volts than I am shells and a missile which ditches is less dangerous than one in bits tumbling towards me with lots of remaining energy.

Its not just decadent, imperialist pig dogs though is it? Chairman Mao was responsible for the Wuxia cinema movement was he not? My favourite d100 Martial Arts rules are the ones from Elric! No seperate MA skill but when Brawl exceeds 100% then add nother 1d3 damage. Very simple to expand this to weapons, when weapon skill exceeds 100% add one more damage die (Staff becomes 2d8+db for example). For Grappling: allow (Grapple/5) or (Wrestle/5) to be substituted for Str in resistance rolls. I guess one could limit this to characters whose Wrestle or Grapple skill exceeds 100%

Whoops. No they don't do they? So playing that Epics roll 1d6+12 and Superhumans get 18 has not exactly been RAW. Taking a look again at the rules it appears that allowing players to choose Siz freely doesn't come from the rulebook either. Edu roll seems to be 3d6+3 not 3d6 so for point buy why not start at Edu at 13 rather than 10? And leave allocated points as is?

Rolling 'for' the poison is perfectly sensible and logical but always letting a player make rolls which affect their character is more fun. (Which makes me wonder why I still roll for foe's attacks, parries and blocks, ease and quickness I suppose)

My favourite fix to the 'why pay points for two weapon skills?' question is to assume that Sword training includes Sword and Shield. (I forget who first suggested this on this board on my search skills have proved insufficient to find and acknowledge)

Actually BRP BGB RAW has this covered. Admittedly I think that it was clearer in the playtest draft than the published rules. Lookup skill specialities (don't have book to hand) and the line reads something similar to: Character with Missile (Archery) 200% can use a Crossbow at 100% since this is half of a related skill speciality.

Erm yes should've mentioned that when I first dropped its name into conversation. The final bit of the translation hasn't been translated. I suppose that I just found the bits which had been translated so useful that I forgot that.

Even more amusing than that old chap since Siz describes mass, it would mean fat sorcerers being faster than thin ones. So it's be a good algorithm for the discworld at least.

Its explicitly stated like that in (Chaosium) RQII, I'm not sure whether or not it made its way into RQIII. Having said that I think that Frogspawner's algorithm looks neater and if I hadn't internalised the RQII one I'd use that.

Indeed. Used to be it killed more peeps per year than all of the other big game* combined. Not no more. The message has finally sunk in amongst tourists and they (we) have learned not to get between daddy hippo and his calves. Its a bit sad though that Rhinos got the blame for a long time (even down to the RQII rulebook). Much good sense has been typed already about big predators being cautious, something (like cavalry charges) which BRP-style rules haven't yet captured. Although I'm sure that it will be argued that that is the GM and players' job. * but not insects, obviously

I'm not sure how directly useful this is but inspired by Jason (and Sam's) original idea of having one power system to rule them all I've used the Elric! spells and Demon Powers as either spells (cost 1 creation point to 'buy' but X MP to cast) or talents (cost X creation points to buy buy 0 to use) and its worked (balanced?) fine

In Elric! I think the recommendation was Scribe (or maybe half Scribe skill)

FWIW RetroQuest is by far my favourite third party d100 game name (sorry Newt!) The website is always worth a look, in fact my only whinge is that you overhaul it so frequently that some things are gone before I have a chance to properly nick them. Any chance of an archive? Or even at a minimum put your groovy weapons and armour page up again for a week? If you are going to slim down the weapons skills (a move which I fully support) could I suggest a bit of flavour to the names. Inspired by aconvention game of PenDragon I played in where the GM CNBA with PD's huge list of combat skills and didn't want to write a new character sheet so Sword covered all individual weapons, Spear all weapons used in formation and so on. Add another vote to folding Dodge into Parry (so weapon skill) in melee and as a DEXx5/Dexterity/Agility roll for throwing onself out of the way

But but but Polar Bears can punch though ice to get to the yummy aquatic mammals beneath (can't remember if the ballpark figure is 7x or 10x a human's strength but its lots). I agree with all the other points though.

LOathe to speak on someone else's behalf but I SUSPECT that what ATXTG (sp?) is saying is that If chance of special= 1/5 chance of success Then roll dice and if its a success multiply RESULT by 5 If new value is still a success then the roll is a special success (or Critical in Elric!) I'm sure that I could write that in terms of p(x) and p(y) being 1/5p(x) but I'm equally sure that I'd make an error in nomenclature Its a perfectly valid mathematical process argument (IMMOO). And multiplication IS conceptually simpler than division (it is only a series of additions ultimately). But it doesn't change my view - if this is fun for you then great but if not what's the corrollary?

In the (rather underated) PS2 game Kengo Master of Bushido 'Block' blocks foe's blade (although sadly the graphics don't show the duellists catching the attack on the nice soft tough spine of katana to avoid chipping the cutting edge). I favour giving a chap with a shield a 'free' Block rather a skill bonus. 'Parry' is harder to pull off (as in timing when to hit the button) but leads to you sliding past foe in an AiKiDo-styley. Parrying as a word really ought to include Dodging and/or Defense (sic) in d100 rules. Which leads neatly to the (almost) universal RQIII houserule of downgrading an Attack according to the level of Parry. I'd keep it purely as a matter of skill but I suspect that one could modify Parry skill according to weapon used by and used against. Agree fully with the proposition that movie swordfights do consist of attacking the blade rather than foe. But a realistic representation wouldn't leave time for witty repartee now would it?

Okay but where to draw the line? Who does one ban from the table (or leaving the house unsupervised ) Someone who can't (or won't do mathematics)? Someone who is rubbish or dull at narration? Someone who struggles to come up with new or imaginative character concepts? .... or ideas? .... or solutions to problems? Mathematically (or procedurally mathematically) I've no doubt that 1/5 or 1/20 of a skill ain't that hard. But is it fun? If it is for a person or people then great. If not are we really saying that they are a poor excuse for a human being or that they should not play BRP? Really? Albert Einstein - If you want your children to be bright, read them Fairy Tales. If you want them to be brilliant, read them even more Fairy Tales. <admittedly there are several similar if different in detail versions and that may not be your particular favourite and I didn't hearit from him first hand but you get the point I am sure>