Mugen

In his defence, it was difficult to not be frustrated as a French Glorantha fan, as most of the available material was translations of RQ3 publications. Even if it included excellent stuff such as Sun County, most of the time it felt like authors only scratched the surface. We had to wait for Elder Sign to hear of Cristals !

Mythic Britain for Mythras would do the job with no retooling, IMHO

That's the problem when the damage you parry is primarily a function of your weapon's solidity.

I've only skimmed through the 5th edition core rulebook, and didn't pay much attention to 5.1 or 5.2 after that. My impression was that the focus on the Uther period was the most notable difference between this and 3rd edition.

Yes. In my mind, damage was modified by the attacker's weapon "offensive factor" and the defender's weapon "defensive factor".

I won't be using the SL mechanism from WFRP 4th edition, as I think it requires too much math. However, I'd definitely use the idea that when two protagonists fail their roll in an opposed roll, the best roll wins. As I use "blackjack" method, the best roll will be the highest roll (or perhaps just the tens of the dice), but it could be determined by comparing margin of success too. That will definitely cut the number of cases where nothing happens in combat. I might also base damage on the difference between the 10s of the rolls, but I'm not really happy with the idea that two failed rolls might lead to bigger damage when two opponents with low skills fail (that is, if two protagonists with skill 30 are opposed, the biggest difference when both succeed is 3, whereas when both fail it's 7). I would also not consider Hit Points as wounds, but a combination of one's will to fight and stamina, and easily recovered between fights. Only hits that deal a substantial amount of damage would be counted as wounds, and reduce the maximum HP value. As a result, I would be able to reduce the AP of armors, resulting in more frequent HP losses.

As a matter of fact, the only time I used the "Merlin card" was after my PCs killed King Pellinore before he meets Arthur...

Minor nitpick : The game you're referring to is HarnMaster. Harn is the fantasy world where the game takes place, and started publication before the game.

This has already been said concerning RuneQuest, and I must say I'm not fan of the idea that a shield should just be a passive part of your armor. Note that the more I think about it, and the more the changes made by RQG concerning weapon skills are excellent for Samurai-type settings, where the closest equivalent to a shield are the "sode" pieces of armor worn over the shoulders. I checked in Mythras, and the shield fully protects the locations, and not with reduced efficiency. Also, in Mythras fighters trained with a shield always have the same parry chance with their shield and their main weapon.

Note that all it takes to ensure you hit the same location twice is a combat Special Effect.

That gives an enormous advantage to the character with the highest skill. I don't have time to do proper maths, but I think that even with a 1% difference, the highest skill has more that 75% chances of success. I'd rather use the 10s of the die to break ties. As the 10s will be between 0 and the character's skill tens, the character with the best skill still has an edge, but not to such an extant.

1. Sounds logical to me. 2. How would you treat a spell that doesn't use one of the attack tables, but inflicts damage as lost Hit Points ? Obviously, the intent with this kind of spell was to make these non-lethal, as you rarely die from lost HP in HARP. 3. Usually, BRP uses POW as a measure of one's Will (for instance, the Willpower roll is based on POWx5). Even though I understand why it can be frustrating to have 2 saves based on the same characteristics. 4. PP cost is a rather difficult subject to handle, as in BRP MP maximum tends to not vary much during a PC's life (unless you're playing RuneQuest or a game with equivalent POW economy), whereas in HARP it's basically a skill, and tools can boost your maximum too. I don't remember the details of PP cost in HARP : is there a maximum to the number of points you can spend when casting a spell, and is it based on your spell's skill ? I also remember some minor details from HARP that I didn't like, like the fact bolts and balls spells were different spells and not variants of the same spell, or that minor spells/cantrips were based on a separate skill. But that's the old MERP/RM speaking here, who loves HARP character development simplicity, but prefers to use MERP combat tables and RM spell lists. 🙂

HARP has much more spells than BRP Magic, though, and as such can be an inspiration to create new ones.

I think HARP Stun rules can be directly used in BRP with no modification. Bleeding and damage in general is problematic in two ways. First because it's not on the same scale as BRP. Second because it does not exactly represent the same thing. BRP HP represent wounds, while HARP Hits are more akin to "Stun points". It's important with spells that only deal hits and no criticals, for instance. Power Points are also on an other scale. Also, there already are systems similar to HARP magic for BRP : RQ Sorcery, BRB Magic, for instance.

I agree with what @lawrence.whitaker said above. Basically, I you look at what results will give you a crit or special with the proposed method, it's basically : -Crits: results where the units die is 0, plus "01". -Special: results where the units die is either 1 or 2, plus "03". For instance, if your skill is 32, you'll get a crit if your original d100 roll is either 01, 20 or 30. No other possible result will be both under your skill, and be under 10 if reverted. You'll also get a Special on 02, 03, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21 or 22. I'm personally not a very big fan of the idea to use the units die of the d10 (or reverting dice, which is almost the same), because it's distribution is not really the flat 1-10 distribution one may think it is. If your tens of your roll are equal to the tens of your skill, your unit die will be between 0 and the units of your skill. For instance, if your skill is, again, 32, you'll have 4 possible success cases which ends with either a 1 or a 2 (01, 11, 21, 31 and 02, 12, 22 and 32 respectively), while you'll only have 3 for other possible results ( 03, 13 and 23, 04, 14 and 24, and so on...). As a result, the chance to get a crit or a special will depend a lot on the units of your skill, and will be lowest if your skill is a multiple of 10.

And the d20 logo was successful because it meant "D&D" for the customer, and "money" for the editor...

I know two kanji which can refer to "sword"-like weapons, 刀 (which can be read katana, tô or chi) and 剣 (tsurugi, or ken). Although both can be used as a generic word for "swords", the first one is strongly attached to curved, one-edged weapons, whereas the second one commonly describes straight, double-edged, swords. It also seems to me that 剣 is more generic, as it's used in kenjutsu (剣術) or kendô(剣道). But even a hatchet is literally called a mountain katana (yamagatana/山刀), so...

Note that most BRP games from the 80s and 90s had APP instead of CHA. Your definition also excludes the second french edition of Nephilim, which had Wound Levels instead of HP. Why would the presence of HP be so important when MP presence is not ? Same for Aquelarre, because it has a different set of stats.

That would be my advice, too. Most of the skills in the huge FASA ST list above would just be Traits in RD100.

Why not give a connection between the new Investigator and Jackson Elias and/or an other NPC they met during previous chapters ? Something like "here's somebody you can trust, who is currently living in Peru for professional reasons, he was a good friend of Jackson, and will certainly help you if he can". As for the reason why the Investigator is in Peru, it will entirely depend on its profession. It may be because he has business there, or he's tracking someone.

My guess is that it was just simpler than RQ, just like most of StormBringer rules. The drawback being that a fight could become extremely boring between 2 seasoned characters, as you'd had to wait for a crit versus normal success for a weapon to break. As a matter of fact, I remember that in a 1987 FAQ for the french edition of SB2, the answer to the question : "why use a shield when you can parry with a 2 handed weapon ?" was exactly that : "because if your weapon breaks after a crit, you're doomed".

Also, parry chances above 100% reduce your attacker's attack chances in first place, and a failed attack is the best outcome possible for a defender. Plus, it counters Bladesharp' ability to increase attack chances over 100%.

The "+X to absorption" and "+X to Knockback" parts sound a lot like "reduce damage by X after a succesful parry" to me. I'm against adding damage to the parrying weapon, it's just out of context for a defensive counterpart to Bladesharp.

But with such a rule, the counter-attack would not be available to "fencing" combat styles, which usually don't use shields, and parry with daggers or rapiers.

Japanese game Tenra Bansho Zero has a rule that exactly matches this. It you parry and get a better success than your opponent, he's hit. There's also a defensive option, but I don't remember its benefits. It's not very different from Pendragon, though...