The Last Conformist

That's not quite true. Counterexamples include scallops and feather stars.

*applies belladonna for puppy-eyes effect Is anyone collating Jason's clarification into an FAQ?

Just got a mail from Amazon UK saying the book's been delayed.

Which is why the Swedish RQ off-shoot Drakar och Demoner switched to using a d20 after a couple editions.

Sorry for late reply. This seems to be our fundamental disagreement. I do not want or like difference for difference's sake - do things meaningfully different, or don't bother in the first place. A cosmetic difference in damage codes isn't worthwhile. Losing the adds would make things simpler, introducing a big difference would add interest, the present system achieves neither. He said players should be given choices; I quite agree, but only to the extent they're interesting choices. 1d10 vs 1d8+1 for damage isn't interesting. Other way round. Hard armour (eg. plate) is relatively more protection against a sword (it stops you from getting cut in two!) than against a mace (which wasn't going to cut you in the first place). You still suffer the impact from either (but spread over a larger area - less risk of broken bones etc), but the mace presumably has more of it (it must have to deal the same damage as the sword to an unarmoured target). What gives you the idea you can't have a grazing hit with a bullet? It's very possible for a periferal hit to just punch through skin, fat and muscle without actually damaging anything important. As per above, the SB way is the wrong way round compared to reality. Reversing the damage codes would be marginally more realistic than having the same for both weapons, but I'd happily pay that small price in realism for getting rid of the complication of the flat adds.

I'm afraid the logic of this convention escapes me completely. (Also, it plain doesn't apply to SB5, where a 1H mace does 1d6+2 damage. I thought the new BRP book took its close combat weapon stats from SB5?) I don't see the point in difference for difference's sake. If a mace, say, did less damage than a broadsword but ignored or reduced armour, there would be a mechanically interesting choice between them, but the difference between 1d6+2 and 1d8+1 is pretty much cosmetic (in fact, the sword is slightly better at punching through armour). Also, as was already mentioned, flat adds leads to the anomaly where you can't get grazing hits. This is particularly noticeable in CoC with rifle damages like 2d6+4.

I always thought the 1d8+1 damage for your basic sword odd. Why not simply 1d10? Anyone know?

Absent demon weapons or superhuman strength (either of which should disqualify an adversary from characterization as "lesser"), weapon breaking is only likely if they're rolling critical attacks, which was as said is the one thing highly skilled fighters should fear. Having your sword broken by a succession of critical parries is possible, but unlikely, because your opponent is going to roll about as many critical attacks as critical parries, and the former will, unless you incapacitate him first, most likely have put you and/or your sword out of commission before the later becomes an issue. And that's assuming you're not using a shield. Not really, in my experience. The rules, specifically how multiple parries work, are very lenient on characters with multiple opponents. Well, sure, a high weapon skill doesn't help against getting shot. It doesn't help against rocks falling from the sky, or anything else that can't be parried, either. My comment was about close combat.

Thank you. That's essentially the same as the rule in CoC or SB5, as might be expected. I do wonder what the "(-___)" bit is then for.

The "DEAD (-___)" part above the hitpoints seems to suggest dying at a certain number of negative HP, like in D&D or GURPS. Is that the case?

Parrying is indeed easy. Highly skilled fighters (such as most PCs) pretty much only need worry about critical attacks. I imagine it's a design choice to allow heroic types to fend off hordes of lesser adversaries (as Elric did on a regular basis).

Unhelpfully so, I would argue, because the action is largely surface-bound (I suppose we might call it "epiplanetary" if we're hellbent for big word classicism). But my point is that the literal meaning of "interplanetary" is misleading. Someone reading, say, the title of this thread may quite naturally assume the name refers directly to the subject matter rather than to a genre label. I can't help but think this faciliated previous posters jumping to the conclusion the genre is space opera.

I do think it's a bit odd to call a planetary romance game Interplanetary - the name suggests a focus on being between planets, ie. in space.

That's the rule for multiple parries. For multiple attacks, you need a skill of 101%+, which you then split between the attacks, minimum of 50% each. Your example character of skill 130% could indeed make two attacks, but the better one would be at 80% at best.

Elric!/SB5 already has at least four different opposed mechanics (resistance table, attack/parry matrix, attack/dodge matrix, spot/hide matrix). If opposed mechanics "clunk up" the system, is alread highly clunked up.