Al.

I'm kinda including velocity by having a subtly different calculation for pistol, carbine and rifle. To take into account length of barrel and quantity of propellant and thus velocity. Ultimately it is a very rough and ready calculation (well six of them) which give same numbers which make ENOUGH sense to me for a GAME. I am sure that there are better ones out there. I am equally sure that the whole muzzle energy vs. energy imparted at target debate has been aired by people infinitely more qualified and erudite than me. Al

I agree with the desire to avoid skill list bloat. Anyone who has compared combat tactics in RQIV:Adventures in litigation and the same in Pendragon can see how having a skill for every eventuality can turn a fun tactical decision into a chore. (Example Pendragon if I want to get past your armour I declare double feint and roll under the lowest of my weapon skill and my Dex score; RQIV I have to develop a separate skill called double feint so after having invested in that why would I use any other tactic?) However SW uses skills for the offensive for Taunt and Intimidate and BRP could do too. In fact the BRP skill specialisations rules potentially make this easier. Al

You know I wish you hadn't posted the picture from JAGs. Not because of the little spat we've just seen. (You're both grown ups and have gotten over it accordingly) but because I think the JAGS version looks better! Is it too late to get Chaosium to halt printing and change the cover to a bloke with six arms instead of 4? Al

I've only actually played Savage Worlds once so the following observation may not be too robust. But it seemed that SW mechanics are much more characteristic based than BRP. So shouldn't Tricks, Taunts, Intimidates be skill-based for the Active party? And maybe Passive highest of (Characteristic x5 or Skill)? So Lucky Callow Youth (Pow 16 and Intimidate 20%) only uses his 20% as Active when intimidating but 80% when resisting Intimidation. Whilst Big Bastard Sergeant (Pow 12 and Intimidate 100%) uses 100% as Active and (because he understands Threats) 100% as Passive to defend against Intimidation. However my favourite mechanism for such grooviness comes from PenDragon pass and its rule for 'Feats' (my D&Dphobia being what it is I rename them 'Stunts' but use the rules unchanged) Al

One of those 'its such an ingrained house rule that I forgot it was a houserule' houserules for me is/was Resistance Table for Characteristics Chance = 50 + (Active-Passive) x5 Resistance Table for Skills Chance = 50 + (Active-Passive) Now I've never had really big characteristic vs. characteristic contests so cannot vouch for brokeness of the chart for big numbers, but I suppose that they could use the 'for Skills' formula above. Another 'I suppose'. I cannot abide a default low chance of success in percentile games. I do not understand why 'all else being equal' the chance to succeed isn't 50:50 and I am struck by the irony of a crap listener making you more likely to move quietly so I suppose I could use the 'for skills' formula to add a blanket +50 to skills for an uncontested test i.e. Amnesiac Escapee has picked up a Rake (10% base) and is attempting to bury it in the back of the head of the Idiot Lunatic with a Chainsaw. This being an uncontested test he adds +50 to get 60% Al

Armour-piercing. The round ignores that many points of the targets armour. No matter how high the AP value Armour cannot be reduced below zero. i.e. Lt Bill Shut fires his M16 at a an eldritch horror with 6 armour points. The 5 points of armour-piercing reduce this to 1 point. If the horror had only 3 armour points then this would be reduced to zero the 2 extra points are lost The maximum damage a pistol inflicts is a die with as many sides as the pistol round's calibre rounded up to the nearest die size. i.e. a 9mm pistol round does 1d10 damage. a 5.56mm pistol round does 1d6 damage. Al

double post

By Jove you're right I made the second table by splitting the blocks in the first (official) in half (so eight point granularity halved to 4) but you are certainly correct that it steepens for big numbers. 'My' table what I uses has +d2 for +5 Str+Siz or +d6 for +15 (as previously) posted and works well for me, the most recent was more of an off the cuff response to our chum reminding us of what the official chart is. I am sure that someone who cared could massage the numbers. Al

Hmmmm Good question, pass, the drawback of composing a long-winded reply on the fly I suppose. Al

So if you were in search of granularity but wanted to keep the 4 point step progression that could become: STR+SIZ 01-04 -d8 -4 05-08 -d6 -3 09-12 -d4 -2 13-16 -d2 -1 17-24 ±0 25-28 +d2 +1 29-32 +d4 +2 33-36 +d6 +3 37-40 +d8 +4 41-44 +d10 +5 45-48 +2d6 +6 49-52 +d8+d6* +7 53-56 +2d8 +8 57-60 +3d6 +9 (each +4, another +d2 or +1) (each +12, another +d6 or +3) *I'd ignore this step personally so just posted for sake of completeness Al

Evening all This topic has sort of spread from the original question so I'll chuck in my ideas for the questions raised 1. Firearms Damage esp. 2d6+4 for Lee Enfields Like I sort of posted on the thread about Firearm damages I prefer a small tweak to the CoC system. This reduces the die code escalation which can happen in BRP. Retains the possibility of grazing hits and also allows me to quickly make up stats for any firearm on the fly. Pistol Damage = 1d (metric calibre rounded up) AP=0 Carbine Damage =2d (metric calibre rounded down) AP = (metric calibre rounded down) Rifle Damage = 2d (metric calibre rounded up) AP=(metric calibre rounded up) Cannon AP Damage and AP as Rifle HE Damage = 1d (metric calibre rounded up) but adds + (metric calibre rounded up) to chance to hit Examples .22 Pistol 1d6 damage no AP .38 Pistol 1d10 damage no AP .22 Carbine 1d10 damage 5 AP .38 Rifle 2d10 damage 10 AP .5 Rifle 2d12 damage 12 AP (admittedly this one sort of breaks my rule-of-thumb as there is no d13) 30mm Cannon AP 2d30 damage 30AP 30mm Cannon HE 1d30 +30% Chance to hit 2. Limit of Damage Bonus For magical augmentation I've ruled for years that you cannot boost weapon damage above twice base unaided (so Stormbringer does 2d8+2d8 not the current 2d8+every dice you have in your group's collection of dice) Maybe you could do that for beasties with ridiculously small weapons (matron) 4. Granular Damage Bonus Definitely a big fan of the Elric roll table style of more granular damage bonus where =5 points Str+Siz adds =+d2 or to prevent unwieldiness for big beasties 15 points Str+Siz =+d6 To those who see an inherent contradiction. Yes there is one. But I am most interested in the differences at human scale. 5. Rubbish damage rolls with a good hit This is flaw (some say feature but I say flaw) of BRP. In Pendragon (not strictly BRP but bear with me) I changed damage to 'result of hit roll' + flat bonus. So rather than my Knight having 6d6 damage hitting with a roll of '18' and then rolling '6' on the damage dice he would do 18 (for the to hit roll) and 6 (for his damage stat). I also halved Armour Points for Armour (but not Shields) This makes it much deadlier between normal sized folk (as in Pendragon you hit if you roll under your skill AND your roll is higher than your foe's) so high numbers are more likely to be used for damage. But also paradoxically makes really BIG beasties less dangerous (as my Giant Fomori with 12d6 damage would previously do an average of 42 points and now does 12 + 'to hit' roll and maximum rollable drops right down from 72 to 32 points) In BRP this is trickier but (untested) possibilities include: Criticals add the result of the d100 'to hit' roll to damage done Specials add the tens of the result of the d100 to hit roll Multiply weapon maximum rollable damage by 'to hit' roll rather than roll damage Not bother coz it doesn't come up that often anyway 6. Differentiating Weapons Elric does indeed have a rule of thumb of Spear +1 Sword +1 Axe, Mace +2 One could (and I have but not completely Satisfactorily) extend this to Spear/Arrow/Quarrel bigger die +0 Sword bigger die +1 Axe smaller die +2 Heavy Blunt things smaller die +3 So Shortspear 1d10 Bastard Sword 1d10+1 Battle Axe 1d8+2 Heavy Mace 1d8+3 I prefer to differentiate them by how they behave on a Special or Critical Blunt double rolled damage bonus (or halve if its negative) Cut Double rolled weapon damage Impale Triple rolled weapon damage And how they treat Armour Axe halve AP of Shields Flail halve AP of Chain (or of all Flexible Armours) Mace halve AP of Chain (or of all Flexible Armours) Pick halve AP of Plate You could certainly do two or more of these Al

Likewise merely the lining up a few buzzwords from rpg net do not a constructive review make............... Apologies if that sounds a bit combative but slating someone's magnum opus without reading the bloody thing strikes me as being a bit of a poor show Those on the gripping hand are interesting questions. Al the hypocrite

If I might butt in. I have become increasingly lazy in houserule design and so would recommend slotting in rules inspired by Savage Worlds. Firstly AP (Armour Piercing) values which would work exactly as others have already suggested. Armour in BRP is about 3x as big as in Savage Worlds (SW Leather 1, Chain 2, Plate 3; BRP Leather 1-3, Chain 7, Plate 8) so I'd simply multiply SW AP values by 3. Secondly 'Acing'. As with many Roll High systems SW says that when you roll the maximum value on a die you keep the roll and roll the die again and add it. If you applied that to Firearms only then you could avoid die code escalation, keep gun damage codes down at a reasonable level, have lots of faffy fleshwounds and have the chance to do lots of damage on a very (un)lucky hit. [i do have a much more involved firearms ruleset but why bore you with that when the official one has not even been PUBLISHED yet?!] Al

Good evening I have been popping by and lurking here for a while. But finally have something (sort of) relevent to post. So to begin hello my name is Al I have been a member of a number of BRP flavoured mailing lists and the MRQ playtest (first tranche anyway) and BRP playtest. Al