Paul_Va

I'll explain it with an example: Say the attacker has an 80% Attack skill. If he fires into a melee and rolls a 01-60% (the Attack skill -20%) he has struck his intended target. If he rolls a 61-80% result (skill before modification), he has hit someone. Roll randomly, equal chance of each. Finally, if he rolls 81%+, he misses as normal.

Rod

Excellent. That clears it up perfectly, Rod. Thank you.

Can someone provide an example for the "Firing into Combat" rule on p. 224 of the Basic Roleplaying core rulebook? It says that firing into combat incurs a 20% penalty, but in the next paragraph, it says "The chance of hitting a particular target is divided equally by the total number of beings in the melee. If the attacker rolls a number between his or her skill rating and the chance modified (as above) for shooting into melee, the GM should randomly determine which of the targets was struck, by rolling randomly with an equivalent die roll, or by asking all potential targets to make a Luck roll and choosing the biggest failure.

Why does the player divide the chance of hitting if the GM will determine afterwards who was hit with a die roll, and vice versa? Am I mis-reading something? I'm not seeing this rule for some reason.

Ahh, that's a great idea, 1d8+DB. So, the player would not necessarily need to "defeat" the cultists, only escape from them. And there may very well be townsfolke who are not cultists, or even other guests of the lodge in which he's staying.

Removed to prevent players from seeing.

Ah, I hadn't thought of using psychology. Thanks, Nick. It's not specific to a particular domain. It's one of the bad guys pretending to be on his side.

I'm running a CoC campaign, and one of the NPC's is being dishonest with my player, so I was wondering if my player rolls a psychology check, if it should be opposed by a skill. But what skill? Persuade is the only skill that seems like it could be interpreted as such. Is lying something intended to be handled with RP only in the system?

From what I've seen I'm pretty much gonna ignore this edition altogether. I just don't like the general direction of the changes... which seem to be towards a Savage Worlds type implementation. If I wanted to play that game (there's already a Cthulhu supplement for it) I would.

It just seems like, 'Hey, let's all dress like the popular kid!' to me.

No thanks.

That's precisely how I feel about it, Simlasa. I actually came to BRP from Savage Worlds because I preferred the grittier more narative focused style of BRP, and now I feel like they are emulating Savage Worlds. Having played Savage Worlds I can really say I don't like that system at all. It's far too "gamey" for my taste.

On that note, I also wonder if this new 7th edition will still have the BRP logo on the back of the book, because the Quick-Start PDF does not, and the rules, particularly characteristic generation and bonus/penalty dies, seem to have wandered quite far from BRP.

Now that I've looked at this edition a bit more, I'm pretty certain, I won't be switching to 7th ed. I don't like the bonus/penalty die (this feels more like Savage Worlds than CoC), and I don't like the pushing dice option. Lastly, I don't like the array builds. I want my players rolling their attributes.

I just looked through my Malleus Monstrorum and there's about a full page of information about the K'n-yan including origins, history and info on their telepathic, dematerialization abilities and disintegration weapons.

I recommend the Monstrorum just on a general basis because of all the monster and god options it gives you.

Excellent, that's just what i needed to know. Does it also have information on Ithaqua by any chance?

I'm running a Call of Cthulhu campaign using the Secrets of San Francisco source book. I want to incorporate the K'n-yan sorcerers from that book, and I'm wondering if some of the other Cthulhu supplements have more information that fleshes these monsters out more. Eventually, I intend to get both the Keeper's Companion and the Malleus Monstrorum (which I assume to be a bestiary), but I'm wondering which one is more important, so I'm hoping someone can give me some advice on which should be my higher priority.

For some time now as a GM, I've been conflicted when it comes to the matter of how to handle players who go above and beyond in an effort to RP when the focus of their attention is a red herring or a dead end in the story. Should I recognize their effort by extemporaneously introducing some clue or hint that didn't exist or doesn't belong (particularly when running written scenarios), or should I maintain the integrity of the original story. For example, if a player goes into great detail explaining how he examines the painting, which is actually a red herring, in the room that his character finds interesting, and even goes so far as to take the painting and have it carefully examined by an expert after making numerous rolls to find such an expert and spending 10 to 20 minutes of game time on the matter, etc.

I have two concerns on the matter. The first is that if players do this too often and come up short, they will begin to feel it's a waste of time or energy to examine clues with great detail. On the other hand, I don't want my players to think that just investing a lot of time and rolls on a mundane object will automatically get them a story clue.

I'm curious what some other GM's think of this dilemma.

I've been running Call of Cthulhu for several months now, but I'm still a little unsure about the grapple rule. From the way I read it, the attacker roles his Grapple check, and if he succeeds he has grappled his target. However, when the attacker rolls his Grapple check, the target also gets to roll a counter-Grapple check, and if he succeeds, the Grapple is foiled. The next round is where I get confused though. The rules on p. 68 of the sixth ed. seem to state that in the same round the grappler can roll a STR vs. STR roll to immobilize the target, knock the target down, knock out the target. However, if the grappler wants to physically injure the target in that round he needs an additional grapple roll? This seems like a lot of grapple rolls in a single round. Also, if I'm reading this correctly, the grappler needs to succeed on a new grapple roll for each consecutive round, unless he succeeded on a STR roll in the first round to indefinitely immobilize the target.

Is this correct, or does the first successful grapple roll extend into subsequent rounds?

The last session started at 6:00 p.m. Again, starting time can be changed though depending on when people are available. It's possible we'll play during the day on some weekends.

Sessions run between 3-4 hours typically. The day of the week is variable depending on players' schedules, but right now we're leaning towards weekends, since one of the players can't play during the week due to his work schedule. There is a YouTube video of our first session on the Campaign page adventure journal as well, so prospective players can get a feel for the pace and style of the game.

OK, I've officially started this campaign, but I'd like to recruit one or two more players, so if anyone here is interested in playing, I'd love to hear from them. Those interested can take a look at the campaign page here.

I've been playing a lot of Ultima Online lately, and it occurred to me that the UO system is very similar to BRP. The overall system is percentage based, with the possibility of percentages that rise above 100%, and it's a skill-based system.

I'm thinking of running a one-shot game from Secrets of San Francisco in a Google Hangout this Tuesday, 11/5/2013 from around 18:00-22:00 PST (UTC 2:00-6:00). Is anyone interested?

Uhm, did you refer to the "Land of Ninja" old supplement for this? It has a nice treatment of Shinto, although from the usual RQ3 point of view of "everyone has magic, priests just have more of it" that might not be the same approach you are adopting in your game.

In particular, a Shinto Priest would be created using the Priest section of previous experience, thus providing him with 1 point of Spirit Magic for each year of experience (2d6 in the standard game), but I suspect there are special rules I cannot recall at present that may increase this nummber. In short, the answer is quite likely "between half INT and full INT in points".

Finally, remember that Spirit Magic is not just "for Shamans" in Magic Book. Divine Magicians use Spirit Magic a lot. Japanese religion has nothing shamanistic, it is animistic but its priests are, well.. priests, not shamans. Land of Ninja has good rules for Spirit Interaction that work much better than those in the Magic Book for Japan. In any case, I suggest you focus on the Divine Magic chapter of the Magic Book rather than the Spirit Magic chapter when modeling Shinto in your game.

Hmm, you might have a point. I'll give the Divine magic a closer look.

I have a question regarding the number of starting spells for new shamans. I want to implement Spirit Magic in my Heian Japan campaign for Shinto priests. I don't plan on using the fetch rules, as I want the rules to be light and intuitive, and the fetch aspect seems overly complicated. So, I'm wondering how many spells a new character would have in a campaign at the regular power level. Any suggestions?

I've had mine for about 4-6 months, and it hasn't fallen apart yet with moderate use. Although the pages feel to me like they could fall out with heavy use, so I always try to handle it carefully. It could just be me though.

The jury's still out for me on 7th edition as well. I don't know if I'll switch to it, since 6th edition does everything I need. The artwork in the new Quick-Start PDF looks nice though.

This seems like a good place for someone "official" to chime in and point to the "official" banner (if there is one) and/or to remark on any "official" stance by Chaosium on this (or similar) issues ... <hint,hint>

So far as I can tell -- but IANAL -- this would seem to fall within "fair use" doctrine in most jurisdictions.

I actually emailed them a couple of weeks ago, and they gave me permission to use the one from this thread. They said they should make one, but right now, from what I could tell, a banner does not exist on an official site.

I actually really like the magic system in CoC in that it treats magic as I've always felt it should be treated: as something that is very difficult to do, and should only be used in extreme situations. With that being said, is there an exorcism spell in any of the Cthulhu books? Does the spell in the main CoC book, "Cast out Devils" an exorcism spell?

Is magic in Call of Cthulhu based on the Sorcery mechanic from BRP?