Mugen

No, it was a reference to an aborted 4th edition from the 90s. :) Its draft document was a very popular topic 20 years ago.

Yes, that's also the reaso why I started being dissatisfied by roll-under blackjack, as I had to remember one of my players (a very smart man, by the way) every time he rolled a "1" (in a homebrew system using a d20) that it was in fact not a very good result...

A way to give more importance to POW in this kind of resistance tests would be to take inspiration from Brawn skill, which is relative to Damage Bonus. For instance, change the difficulty of the roll depending on the difference between the caster and the target POWs.

It's simply because I think the various skill opposition rules that actually work in roll-under are very convoluted when compared to roll-over ones. In roll-over, you don't need anything more complex than both roll and add their skill (or roll their skill in success-based systems), the highest roll wins. No roll-under system I know is as simple and elegant as that: -Simply comparing success level gives too many ties, -Comparing success level and using skill value to break ties is a joke -Roll-under blackjack is counter-intuitive, requires to make 2 comparison steps, and needs special rules for high skills (less so with HQ-like resolution), -Roll-under with margin of success requires too many computations.

You mean RQ:Adventures in Glorathha/RQ IV ? 😁

As for myself, one thing I'll take from d20 is the d20+skill roll-over mechanism, or perhaps a d10+skill one. With time, I've became more and more unhappy with roll-under resolutions, especially when considering skill oppositions. But I know it's not up to everyone's tastes. 🙂

What do you mean by "Battle skill" ? The only Battle skill I'm aware of in BRP-related games is the Pendragon one, which does not covers this. It seems to me what you describe is handled in BRP with attack skills, and in Mythras with Combat Style skills.

@Voord 99In my games, players loved fighting Defensively. But that was when the rules allowed it to deal normal damage on a critical... Also, Uncontrolled and Defensive cancelled each other. One of my players chose to reach 20 in DEX for fun, and used Double Feint a lot.

It's also important to make decisions concerning offensive or defensive stances.

Basically, yes, but not necessarily something that needs to be done in special places to work, or necessarily a slow process. It's in fact a common trope in fiction. My inspiration comes from Magic the Gathering, where you draw Mana from lands, or the "fireball" attacks in DragonBall or StreetFighter. In RoleMaster, Channeling and Essence magic users are supposed to draw their powers from such "outer" sources, too, even though they spend "inner" Power Points to cast spells. Mentalists, on the other hand, draw their power from their inner strength.

Err... I like using hit locations for Major Wounds and armor, but don't like having localized Hit Points. It seems it looks more like answer #1, but I'm not sure.

What, you pretend a book I read when I was 13 (which means 33 years ago, 1/3rd of a century) is not new and fresh anymore ? That can't be true ! I know it's a cliché. 🙂

Oh, yes, please.

The first version I ever read of the complete Arthurian tale was The Mists of Avalon by M. Z Bradley, in which Morgan is the narrator. As a result, I prefer to see her as a pagan priestess, and a major actor in the battle between her Faith and Christian Faith. Her portrayal as an evil sorceress with nefarious projects is just slander from her enemies.

I've been toying with the idea that magic can be done either by using your own MP reserves, or by harvesting it from the surroundings. Creating a spell using the second method is a 2 steps process : -First, you need to concentrate magic into a small space. You do this by rolling under a "harvest" skill. With each roll, the spell becomes bigger, but the harvest process also becomes harder. -Second, you need to form a spell from the "mana" you've gathered, which requires a second roll under a skill. Of course, the difficulty will depend on the MPs gathered. Each skill roll is a potential "Uh-oh" moment, with different possible problems. A simple failure can just mean you lose some of the MP you gathered, or worse. And, given the number of skill rolls, you don't need an equivalent to Specials to have a decent chance of failure.

No, I meant you can use your off-hand to hold a second weapon OR a shield even if you only has base chance with it. 🙂 However, I just realised the best choice here is certainly to use a shield in your off-hand fo the extra attack, if your SR is low enough. Its higher base skill will give you a better attack chance.

A dual wielding character can use his main hand for attack and parry, and only use the off-hand weapon for its extra attack. Which means the need for a good off-hand skill is lower than if you intend to use a shield as your parrying weapon. It won't even stop you from using a Shield just for its passive defensive uses.

If you have a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other, you'll need to use 2 différent skills to use the weapon to attack and the shield to parry (or the other way around, but it's rather unusual).

But RQG made a step in the wrong direction, as you now need two skills when using a shield, whereas you only need one when using the same weapon to attack and parry. Shields are still great against missile weapons, and are easier to replace, but I'd rather try to reach 100+ with my main hand than increasing both skills. Dropping the attack and parry skills is IMHO a good thing to do, but the consequences are not that good.

Well, there is Classic Fantasy, for Mythras. It's exactly what you seek : BRP-like mechanisms for D&D like games.

You could take some inpiration from Armswrestling rules, where the character with the highest DB bonus (which is basically STR+SIZ/5) gets an edge, and his skill is increased. IIRC, skill opposition in Mythras results in a stale when both characters fail their roll. I'd let the highest roll win in such a case.

That was only a weakness for WoTC. As far as I remember, Ryan Dancey created OGL precisely to protect the game from being discarded by WotC and replaced by a game players didn't want (and I say that as one of those few who prefer 4e).

And WotC tried very hard to kill the first SRD and the games based on it when they released 4e, as publishers had to stop publishing their existing lines to write for the new game. A strategy that didn't work at all...

Note that this is juste a short explanation of a rule idea (which us not really mine, just a variant from existing rules by S Petersen, Loz and Pete Nash), and not the whole thing. 🙂 I agree that there should be a range limitation, and enchants made out of the caster's MP pool are meant to be used by him or people not far from him. If you want to create enchanted items or places, you'd have to use cristals and matrices.

I had an idea some time ago to allow one to cast Battle/Spirit/Common Magic spells in three different possible ways: -Standard : casting your spell requires 1 round and it lasts for X minutes. As in, well, Standard Battle/Spirit/Common Magic... -Enchant : your spell has indefinite duration, but your maximum MP total (or the maximum MP total of a crystal) is reduced by its MP cost as long as it remains active. Quite like in Sandy Petersen's Sorcery, but simpler... -Instant : casting your spell can be done in a reflexive way, but its effects only last for 1 action (and have a better effect/MP ration). Anyone could learn to cast spells, but in order to cast them either as Standard or Enchant would require some proper training in magic. Of course, spells with Instant duration would require some changes to fit in this 3 modes model.