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KPhan2121

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Everything posted by KPhan2121

  1. 1. Are these one and done spells, or do they last the entire 16+ combat round duration of other spells? And allow you to make multiple "attacks" before the spell dissipates? 2. Can the target of the spells dodge the attack? 3. Does armor reduce damage?
  2. There's a pretty good NPC/monster conversion for the 3.5e rules, which could be helpful for you. I used it extensively for my own classic fantasy game that I converted from a long running D&D campaign.
  3. I have an unnamed Victorian fantasy setting that is trudging along in the a 50 year aftermath of a failed demon invasion which nearly destroyed the world. The players are part of a several independent groups that hunt down the surviving demons and their cultist worshipers who are bidding their time and looking for ways to weaken and subvert the forces that defeated the demons before. I have this super powered Sci-fi setting called "The Golden Path", which is a schizo-mishmash of all of the sci-fi properties you love in one place. Literally, this universe has the phenomenon of "Traveling" or "Travelers", where characters, technology and even ideas from other sci-fi universes can transport here. It's a place where you can find the 40k Boltgun right next the the Star Wars Blaster, where Picard can cross words with Yang Wen-Li as they find themselves trapped in a ship full of necromorphs. The players are Travelers from any IP that they can choose, from the Earth or from a completely made up setting with it's own rules and power systems. They must carve a path through this intricate web of factions that want to use the Travelers for their own ends.
  4. I don't have Elric of Melnibone, but are the rules in that game really that different from Advanced Sorcery? And how transferrable is it to BRP? My understanding is that Mongoose radically changed the formula of the BRP-based D100 games.
  5. Is the solution just to have a game where all of the PCs are sorcerers or at least have equal access to demon items? One of the things I've noticed was that getting a +2D10 weapon or armor only cost 20 magic points. 9 to summon a lesser demon, 10 for Demon Armor or Weapon, and 1 to bind to an item. So already, any two bit sorcerer who's had time to make their first set of weapons and armor should be a nightmare to fight against. Also what's the point of summoning elementals compared to demons? You can bind them to items, but I don't think you can give them abilities like you can with demons. I'd love to see your homebrews when you've finished it. Sorcerers forming pacts with demons to gain access to their abilities instead of binding sounds way cooler then every sorcerer carrying an armory of demon bound items.
  6. I've been thinking about using Sorcery as the main power system for an upcoming dark fantasy campaign, however I've only ever used Magic or Super Powers and the implications of their effects on the game are pretty straight forward, but Sorcery looks way more complicated and open ended. Especially with the whole summoning and binding demons/elementals to items to gain access to their skills/abilities. What are the common pitfalls and narrative implications if I include Sorcery in my game?
  7. Yeah, the issue with the Big Gold Book was that its basically a collating of all of the different rules that came out of the different Chaosium RPGs. Some of which are contradictory or don't correlate well to each other. In this case, you go with whichever rule you prefer or makes the most sense for you.
  8. Out of curiosity, what's wrong with WotC? Other then having mechanics that we believe to be inferior to the Chaosium RPGs? Thanks for the compliment about the BRP sheet, I didn't make it but I spent a ton of time fixing little mistakes and adding features to it. Magic World is a good option to go, Sorcery is a pretty simple magic system to utilize. The sorcerer just says that they cast the spell and then spends an entire combat round casting it with the effects manifesting next turn. If you're looking for expanded magic systems for MW, I'd recommend looking at the Advance Sorcery book. As for monster stats, there use to be a few unofficial D&D monster manuals laying around in the downloads section of this website, but Chaosium nixed it on account of them violating copyright. I still have the pdfs for some of them if you're interested.
  9. Big Update to Waning Stars v1.0.2 Adding more races General changes to the rules to make them work more like BRP Add more melee weapons and melee weapon upgrades Changed how some of the upgrades worked Slight changes to Artifact Melee Weapons, mostly to Wire Blades Add some new slug guns Added some new energy guns Added Explosives in a new box Added Artifact Guns Moved some of the energy guns into Artifact Guns Added new ammunition to accommodate new guns Separate Primitive and Advanced Armors Added some new Advanced Armors Changed how Energy Shields worked to better reflect BRP rules Changed Burn Out rules to require less rolling Change Slip Past Shields to having Shield Fighting Martial Arts Changed some of the Psychic Powers and Church Rituals that general a shield effect to match the new changes. Add reference for Summoning Demons Changed some of the weapons for NPCs in Foes and Fiends Fixed some mistakes I also keep the Fading Suns document up to date as well. If you want to get the pdf for that you can PM me.
  10. It's not so much simplifying the PC's character sheet as it is bolting simple wargame elements on top of the existing rules. The PC will mainly be using their Command, Strategy and Combat Skills to win the day, but I want to make it open-ended enough so that a particularly creative player to do something outside the norm. Like perhaps using the climb and spot skills to reach an elevated position during the battle and single out the enemy captain, or stealth and demolitions skills to separate from an existing battle in order to rig explosives under the bridge where the enemy is fighting from.
  11. Well, my goals aren't so ambitious as to solve this problem. I'm only trying to add some elements of wargaming into BRP and its related games and even then this will be specifically for historical and fantasy settings. They are not meant to be a full wargame on its own, although I'm trying to add in optional rules that can allow for it. My design goals are: Making the transition between the wargame and RPG as seamless as possible by utilizing the stats and mechanics of the base game with only a few changes. The rules should be simple and not reliant on miniatures and other visual representations so that it can be played theatre of the mind. Keep the focus small in scope and give the PCs tangible actions that they can make in the battle and make involvement more engaging. A good visualization of what I'm trying to accomplish is something that feels like the Captain Mode in the Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord game. The main problem that I'm running into is the Scale of the battle; as the number of combatants goes up, it becomes less and less likely for the PC to contribute to the battle and keep it plausible. This is especially evident when it comes to powers, since most of them are designed for use by a small party of PCs skirmishing with a small number of NPC enemies instead of a clash between thousands of men. After all, dealing 1D6 damage with a fire spell is different when the Scale of individual units is 1 and when it is 1000. For context, the Scale refers to the minimum size a Unit of soldiers can have to be considered a viable fighting force. The Scale is set by the GM based on the number of combatants (and is completely arbitrarily) and then the armies are divided into Units of men equal to the Scale. A group of Units can come together to create a formation in order to gain a lot of benefits. These formation bonuses cap out at 10 units to prevent players from just forming one gigantic super formation. My current flawed solution is to leave it alone and justify it by applying the scale to time, by multiplying the time in a combat turn (12 seconds) by the Scale of the battle. A small skirmish where the scale is 1 (and a unit is just 1 man) has battle rounds only lasting 12 seconds. An absolutely gargantuan battle where the scale is 1000 (with the same number for its units) has battle rounds lasting 12,000 seconds or 3 hours and 20 minutes. Its not very elegant, but at least this can justify how a PC can kill hundreds of men narratively, while only making a single attack mechanically.
  12. Man, I'd love to see a module developed for BRP (and other Chaosium games) on Foundry. It's a great program that relatively new, but has a lot of potential.
  13. On the Attack and Defense Matrix I like to add an alternative to the special successes. The attacker can choose to roll damage normally and bypass armor instead of doing full damage with special effect. On NPC stats, I just have 2 skills for them. A primary skill for things they should know and be good at and a secondary skill for everything else. I don't use the Resistance Table and just have everyone make a x5 Characteristic check and treat it as an opposed roll. I generally run games with more house rules, but these are the ones I always have.
  14. I'm not on facebook, but that group does sound interesting. You could bring this to their attention once I make a first draft of the rules. However, I'm not familiar with Runequest, so I'm not sure how compatible the rules will ultimately end up being.
  15. On step 7 of character creation (pg 21 and 24). You choose the campaign's power level which is decided by the type of game you want to run and will determine how powerful and skilled the PCs will start the game as. Its's divided into 4 categories, Normal, Heroic, Epic and Superhuman. In the powers chapter, the players can pick different options for how many powers they want to start with based on the power level of the campaign. In the case that you mentioned, you would have determined that the game will have a Superhuman power level and decide that all power types (Magic, Mutations, Psychic Abilities, Sorcery and Super Powers) are available to the players. They can either pick to have one power at a superhuman level, or four power types at the normal level. Each of these power types will give you access to more abilities based on the power level that you have in them. In magic (pg 92), the power level dictates your number of initial spells. For normal, you get four spells to start with. For superhuman, you have ten spells.
  16. I’ve been looking around for a mass combat system that’s more involved, but a lot of these rules I’ve found resolve the battle in only a few rolls with little input from the PCs. The ones that do have player input don’t have enough. I’d prefer if the mass combat rules were smaller in scope and focused on smaller aspects of the battle in order to allow the players a space to dramatically influence the result. I got this idea when I saw a streamed Warhammer Fantasy RPG session where the players are given command of troops and told to assault a nearby town. The game suddenly switched from the RPG to the wargame and the players are captains of their own unit of troops. Since the RPG has similar stats to the tabletop wargame, they were able to adapt their character’s own stats into the wargame with little difficulty. I think we might be able to do a similar, but different way for BRP with little changes to the game’s rules while still using the game’s stats as is. The basic idea is to be able to seamlessly transition between the game's normal rules and this new mass combat system. Each combat turn is not 12 seconds of actions, but several minutes. Enough for something interesting to happen every turn. The PCs are captains of a unit of soldiers who will behave as if they are an extension of them. They use their Lead and Strategy Skills to have their unit take part of mass actions. There would be a variety of orders that they could give which would have pros and cons and be dependent of their Lead skill. Each unit is made up of a number of models where each model can represent anywhere from a few men to several hundred depending on the scale of that battle. The only thing that matters is that number of men represented is consistent for that battle. Each unit will have HP equal to all of their model’s HP added together. They will take damage as if they are a single entity, but will lose models if the damage received is enough to kill an individual model. Each model that is killed represents that number of men being killed. Treat the entire unit as a single entity when making attacks or defending against attacks. But they get a +5% for every model in the unit. For attacks, every 10% of the die roll below the modified skill is a hit. For defense, every 20% of the die roll below the modified skill is a block. The PCs would also be able to take part in the fighting instead of giving orders if they are a more combat focused character and would just use the normal attack/parry rules from the BGB. Roll damage of the weapon subtracted by the enemy’s armor and multiplied by the number of unblocked attacks. At the end of a round of fighting, the winner is determined by which unit killed more models in the fighting and the loser will have a Lead roll to prevent a rout. If they hold then the fighting continues for another combat round. Here’s an example of what I think play would look like. A unit of 5 mounted knights (with each model representing 10 men) plus a knight captain (who is a PC) see a unit of 10 orcs (with each model representing 10 orcs) in the right flank. The knight captain wants to charge the orcs and relieve the right flank for another unit controlled by another player. He rolls a Lead check and succeeds; failure would’ve given his unit a disadvantage since they aren’t acting in unison. Next he rolls an opposed Strategy Skill between him and Orc unit’s captain. They both roll successes and negate each other so no one has a particular advantage for the clash. The knights are armed with lances while the orcs with scimitars so the knights will get the first attack since they have the longer weapon. The Knight unit gets a +25% to its lance attack roll (with a modified skill of 100%) since there are 5 models and rolls a 67%, a middling roll that garners 4 hits. The Orcs have 10 models and so have a +50% to their defense roll (with a modified shield skill of 85%). They roll a 57, only blocking 1 hit. Since 3 hits made it through the orc’s defenses, the knights now roll their Lance damage (1D8+1+2D6) and got a 17. The rolled damage is reduced by the orc’s armor (which is 6, but I recommend using random armor so its 1D6+1) which rolled a 4 and that modified the damage down to 13. Multiply that by 3 to get a final damage of 39 which is dealt to the orc’s overall HP (which is 100). Since each orc individually have 10 HP, 3 orc models are taken off of the unit and representing ~30 orcs being slain by the knights. Now it’s the orc’s turn to fight back. They only have 7 models so their bonus is only +35% and a modified scimitar skill of 70%. They rolled a 72 and completely missed. Now that the combat is finished as both sides have fought, we determine the winner of the fight by how many models were killed. Since the knights won, the Orc captain will need to roll a Lead check. If he fails, then the orcs rout. If he succeeds, then the orcs remain steadfast in the face of trampling knights. These are just some preliminary thoughts I’m currently having; I think it’s a happy medium between resolving entire battles in only a handful of rolls to making individual rolls for hundreds of soldiers on both sides of a battle. Obviously, they need some finetuning to make it work and be reasonably balanced as well as actions for the PCs to influence the result. What do you guys think? Is this something that’s worth developing further?
  17. I've never played the WFRP games, but I like the idea of damage being tied to success levels. BRP has something kinda like it with doing max damage for special and critical successes. If I were to "take inspiration" from them, you could probably very easily implement it by taking the average damage rolls of the weapons and damage bonus. Use it as the starting damage and add SL after the roll. It sounds like it would work out alright. Maybe you'd have to do away or change the Special/Critical Successes. Same, I also think your weapon choice should influence the game mechanics in some way. There's no way a dagger would deal as much damage than a greatsword.
  18. Building on a previous post I made about using Opposed Roll for combat, I want to use it use it to address an annoyance I sometimes see during combat when rolling for damage. Have you guys had fights where a few or even all of the combatants rolled really poorly on their damage for several turns and basically did nothing at all? It's fine when it happens in games like D&D where all damage accrued is cumulative since armor doesn't reduce damage. But for games where this is the case, it can really extend a fight that should only last 3 or 4 combat rounds into a slog lasting almost 3 times as long! I think the 40k RPGs, especially Dark Heresy may have a ready solution that can be used with little change to the current combat rules. In the combat section of the Dark Heresy 2e rulebook there is a passage that states: "For all attack rolls, count the degrees of success. The attacker can replace the result on a single damage die with the number of degrees of success from his attack roll." In the 40k RPGs, Degree of Success (DoS) is counted as the number of 10s digit that is below the skill rating. So if I have a 65% skill rating and rolled a 24, it succeeds with 4 DoS. If you made multiple hits (like with an automatic weapon), only one of the hits has it's damage die replaced. If the weapon uses multiple dice when rolling for damage, only replace one of them. This would make highly skilled combatants be more able to deal consistently high damage and reduce a lot of that annoyance when you made a really good attack roll and just flub the damage. Obviously there needs to be some changes since Dark Heresy is vastly different from BRP. First off, the max a skill rating that a character can reach is around 50-60% and the max that bonuses can give to a roll is caped out at +60. Second, Dark Heresy only uses D10s for its damage rolls. Third, the armor values of Dark Heresy is roughly 1/2 of the equivalents of BRP, an example is Power Armor in Dark Heresy blocks 7-8 points of damage while BRP's blocks 14-16. I think the best solution would be using Opposed Skill Subtraction from pg 174 of the BGB, but only count the 10's digit. Have it only apply to one hit if there are multiple hits (like from automatic fire). Instead of only replacing one damage die if the weapon uses multiple, have it replace the entire roll up to the maximum that the dice can roll and then add the damage bonus. So if a character with a skill rating of 100% rolls a 37, he counts as having 7 DoS. If the weapon's damage roll is less than 7, he can replace the roll with his DoS and add his damage bonus to it. btw here's my previous post
  19. The main problem with that way that it only lasts for 5.6 minutes, it's still way too short for something a sci fi warrior is going to rely upon for defense over more traditional armor. It seems more like some experimental tech with loads of problems instead of something you'd see in Halo, Mass Effect or Dune. I think energy armor in those sci fi settings where the shields are always on has a workaround where if the energy armor isn't actively absorbing damage it's in some low power mode until it takes an attack. Still, I think there should still be different rates of energy consumption when you have a shield with 20 AP compared to one with only 5 AP. So my idea was to have an hourly (or another time increment that isn't just a combat round) charge consumption rate based on the AP of the energy armor while its on and not taking damage.
  20. In page 259 of the Big Gold Book under Advanced Armor is Energy Armor. From reading the description it looks like its BRP's version of Dune shields. It says that you can set the armor value between 1 and 20, but every combat round (12 seconds) it expends a number of charges equal to it's armor value plus 1 charge for every point of damage that is absorbed. Aside from the tedium of changing the charge number every turn, this looks pretty cool until you realize that a standard power source only provides 200 charges. So the energy armor set at AP 20 will only last for 10 combat rounds or 2 minutes, assuming that the wearer is not taking any damage. Am I reading this right? If I am, I wanna make some homebrew to make the shield not expend so much charge when the energy armor isn't taking damage. Maybe instead of expending those charges every combat round, it only does so when it takes damage. So whenever the energy armor absorbs damage it expends a number of charges equal to it's armor value plus 1 charge for every point of damage that is absorbed. Or just extend the cycle that it loses charge to a larger time, like maybe 10 minutes or even an hour.
  21. Well its not that unreasonable, a shield by itself is not a complete weapon set. It absolutely needs to be paired with another weapon in order to maintain its usefulness as a defensive tool. If anything, your main hand weapon plays just as important a part of the equation. At the very least, it threatens your opponent and closes off many directions of attacks that would render your shield useless. Someone fighting like Captain America with just a shield and open hand simply has no way to resist if his opponent simply closes the distance and slip his weapon around your shield while you're busy hiding behind it. What if he just grabs the rim of the shield and yank it aside? This is also applicable when you're using a weapon that you're unfamiliar since you don't know how to use your shield in combination with the other weapon. Shield fighting is all about minimizing your exposure to ripostes while keeping the shield out of the way of your main hand weapon while you perform techniques with it. You definitely need to know how your weapon moves in order to do this. If you are using a unfamiliar weapon, you might opt to keep your shield close to the chest and making it so that your sword arm is completely exposed or worse throwing the shield behind you like a Hollywood action movie! By the way, here's a good video demonstrating low skill fighting with a sword and shield.
  22. I don't want to change too much about how BRP works but I think a combo of the way Mythras does it and my original post might be the way I would go. So instead of having combat styles, maybe any melee weapon skill that has access to 1 handed weapons could be paired with a shield and you would just use your main weapon skill to parry. The shield would allow you to parry twice before getting the -30% defense penalty. Minimal changes to BRP's core rules while making shields more useful for a more defensively minded character. On a related tangent, I'm considering using the cover spot rule over the normal one when handling shields and missile fire. It looks like a simpler way to do it, plus I never liked the idea of "parrying" an arrow with your shield. The trade off is that you can't run out of parry skill, but any hits you do take has a 50% chance of hitting you instead of your shield.
  23. In the vanilla BRP rules, there isn't a reason to use a shield at least for melee combat since it deprives you from using a more powerful 2H melee weapon. So I've been thinking about extra bonuses that shields could give to its wielder in melee combat. My first idea is to give shield users an extra parry roll before suffering the -30% Defense Penalty from subsequent parries. My second idea is to give a bonus to parry based on the shield skill rating, the actual shield skill isn't used to parry, but rather it augments the parry roll of the user's main hand weapon. Something like either a 1/10 or 1/5 of the shield skill rating is added on top of the parry roll of main hand weapon. Discuss.
  24. I'm not familiar with Jujutsu Kaisen, but you could emulate a lot of shonen battle anime with Superpowers from the BRP's Big Gold Book. After all, most of those shonen battle animes are just "superpowers in a different context". Looking at this character "Yuji Itadori", he's got enhanced strength, speed, durability, etc. Which can be easily replicated by superpowers. Wish I could help you with specifics, but I haven't watched the anime.
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