Mugen

No, the only thing you need to successfully parry an attack is to roll under your parry chances of success, and that's the most important difference between parry and dodge. What happens if you have different success levels depends on the options you use. In StormBringer, a critical success versus a normal success means the other weapon has 50% chance of breaking. In RQ3, non-critical parries just reduce the attack damage by the weapon's AP, and critical ones will parry all damage from an attack. As critical attacks automatically deal maximum damage, they have a good chance to bypass parry. In Mythras, you get one combat special effect per level difference, which can be used to get various effects, such as reduce parry's efficiency.

A way to avoid Attack versus Parry matrix is to think in terms of difference in success levels. That is, a crit versus a special would be the same a s a special versus a success, a success versus a failure or a failure versus a critical failure.

Well, Sweden is not Europe. In France, D&D is still the most popular game. Even though Call of Cthulhu is popular enough that it became a meme as the go-to generic game ("Tu prends Cthulhu et tu adaptes"). Concerning the use of a d20 in a BRP game, a possible problem I see is with critical successes. Pendragon and (Hero)Quest(World) consider a uniform 5% crit chance when your skill is under 20. It means the lower your skill, the more likely you are that a success is a crit. That is, with a skill of 10, 1 success out of 10 will be a crit, whereas with a skill of 1 every success will be a crit.

IMHO, Magic Corruption is not something that should only be accumulated when one casts a spell, but also when he learns magic, and when he has long or semi-permanent ongoing magic cast on him. I mean, before you cast a spell in-play, you had to learn and experience it, and I don't think it should be possible to have a skill of 90% without having more corruption than one with a skill of 20%. Of course, you can have academic knowledge of "dark arts", but IMHO it should not be enough to cast such spells.

That's exactly why I didn't buy it. Plus, I wasn't really a fan of the technical choices made for Elric! in the first place. However, after reading comments by Ben Monroe on rpg.net, it appears it was not exactly SB6, as the game introduced skill modifiers, and a method to assign skill values inpired by the FATE "pyramid", with IIRC 1 skill at +60, 2 at +50, etc. Not sure it would jhave been sufficient to make me like the game, though.

If the fight is entertaining, it can last for hours if needed. If it's just rolling dice and marking HitPoints off, even 5 minutes will be too much. It's IMHO more a matter of how quick a turn is resolved. If there is a constant need to look at the rules because they're too complex or players don't know their abilities well enough, or they spend too much time planing or thinking, that's when I will think the fight is too long.

My solution would be to learn how to use Excel scripts, but it may not be ok if you have no programmation skills.

@NickMiddletonAnother apparent paradox is that generic fantasy games sell less than those created to play in a rich and detailed world, but the undisputed champion in terms of sales is D&D, which is a generic fantasy game (except for its very specific zero-to-superhero experience system).

Despite bearing the same name, both "Magic World" were in fact completely different games. The first one was one of 3 sample settings in the Worlds of Wonder boxed set, with specific rules for typical medieval fantasy settings. The second, as @Jeffsaid, was basically a new edition of the Elric!/SB5 rules with another name and another settings. The most notable difference is in the way magic is implemented. In short, the first game used the "Magic" system from the Big Gold Book while the second used the "Sorcery" system.

I think you can count the DreamLands in the list of the "more fantasy than horrific" settings for CoC, even though no 7e version has yet been released. But you really only need to multiply by 5 all stats to use it as-is...

When comparing Glorantha statistics with the real world, I think it's worth remembering how smaller Glorantha is. If you want to rebuild Glorantha to make it completely consistant with real world examples, I think you'd end up with a very different world, with less different cultures.

I'm not sure you'll find many RoleMaster experts on this forum. While there are lots of D100 lovers here, they prefer rolling low to rolling high. As for your question, my RM books are far away from me, and I didn't read them in a long time... Isn't there a skill (whose rank you could extrapolate based on creature level) and a stat (or combination of stats, depending on edition) tied to perception ? My guess is the answer is not even the same for every edition of RoleMaster. I'm quite confident that's how it would work for HARP, though, if you consider it a RoleMaster edition...

My solution is to have a dozen broad skills (1 per skill category, plus a few others, not only for combat and weapons) and an undefined number of specialties. For instance, you might have Melee 45%, and specialties Sword +25% and Axe +15%. While wielding a Sword, you'd have an effective skill of 70%, with an Axe 60%, and with any other Melee weapon 45%. Similarly, you could have Agility 55%, and specialties Climb +25% and Jump +10% In my opinion, halving your highest skill only works when figuring value for skills you didn't invest in. That is, if you start with Sword 70% and Axe 55% and later improve your sword to 90%, you'd have 45% when using a dagger, but still 55% with an Axe. I don't like the idea your experience only had an impact on weapons you don't know anything about.

Yep, alleged BRP lethality is mainly due to the fact most BRP games only allow PCs with rather low skills. Things would also be different if characters had characteristics outside the 3-18 boundaries, especially CON and SIZ.

On which basis did you do your conversion, and which STR value did you give your giants (if I understand correctly, the problem was with their strength, ) ? The BRP Big Gold Book lists a STR 132 value for a 16 meter Giant. It's way past the points where even a human has even 1% chance of success arm-wrestling a Giant. Was it an AD&D module ? If so, the 3-25 scale does not really scale well with BRP. I checked D&D 5e SRD, and STR values for Giants are between 21 and 29. Considering a PC can have up to 20 Str, no matter what his species is, those are very low values... 3.5 giants have better stats, between 25 and 35.

My problem with your proposal is how different this is from everything else in the system, which uses percentages to determine chances of success.

In my youth, I played a lot with my grandparents and parents. Does it count ?

Suppressive fire is one of those things I have absolutely no idea how to handle well, sincerely. Something I strongly dislike but can't ignore. To me, it sounds like a modern-day Fireball, an area of effect attack that deals lots of damage to anyone that doesn't make its saving throw Dodge roll for cover.

I was answering to the idea level was a good indicator of one's power level, which is not true in any edition of D&D. Concerning classes and roles, Fighters, in editions previous to 4th, are only needed at low levels, when Magic-Users and Clerics don't have many spells to use. They also didn't have much mechanical tools to fulfil their role. And while 5e high level casters can cast far less spells per day, Fighters are outshined by Paladins as defenders.

Well, in theory, it should be the case, but.... First, it was never the case before 4th edition, except for a short range of levels (5 to 7) where casters power roughly matches fighters ability to sustain blows in terms of utility. And while 5th edition surely does a better job at this than any prior edition except 4th, you still have fighters which are just good at dealing damage on one hand, and wizards that can fly, become invisible, read minds, and are not bad at dealing damage too on the other hand. And the new magic system gave them more versatility, as they can now prepare utility and combat spells and chose which one they'll use when they need it. The same happens in BRP when non-magicians are mixed with magicians. Melniboneans in older versions of StormBringer were a nightmare, not counting the fact their INT ensured they get higher values in combat skills. In Mythras, non-magicians do not compare well to full priests and sorcerers. It's also true for games like ShadowRun : while it should in theory possible to use the system in medieval fantasy settings, the lack of any cybeware would make non-magicians problematic. Unless magic items are so easily available it replaces cyberware... RuneQuest is an exception because everybody has access to magic.

@Lloyd Dupont Sorry, I was not clear : my intention was to express my view on Sorcery, not to tell you how you should do. As for the "extended casting" thing, it is intended to be used outside combat, to create elaborate spells. Most combat magic would be very simple effects, requiring only 1 action to create and cast. Basically, concentrated balls of "mana", with effects depending on "color".

MP cost is a really complicated question, I realise. At first, I was going to point out that Disruption deals 1d3 for 1 MP, so @Lloyd Dupont's proposal to do 1d6 for that same cost was imbalanced. But then I remembered that Wrack can do it every turn as long as the spell is active, in an BRP variant where damege outputs are usually lower than in Chaosium's iterations. And you can have it for 1 MP if you don't want to go beyond basic duration or range, or don't fear someone will dispel it... In my idea of Sorcery, you'd be essentially limited by your skill, and you could reduce MP cost by reducing your chances of success, with 1 minimum of 1. That is, if you want to cast an Intensity 5 spell, you could either do it by spending 5 MPs, or reduce your chances of success by 10% per 1 MP reduction. The reasoning behind this is that you're drawing energy either from yourself, or from the surroundings. I would also let one create a spell as an extended action, where each roll adds effect levels to the spell, each being more difficult as Intensity grows. Failures would reduce the spell's total level, as the sorcerer fails to keep all the energy concentrated. Fumbles meaning the spell either dissipates, or explodes...

@Lloyd DupontSandy Petersen rules for sorcery for RQ3 have rules for D&D-like elemental attack spellsspells with the "Evoke" family of spells. If I remember correctly, Evoke(Fire) deals 1dX damage, where X is the spell's Intensity, ignoring armour. All have different effects, and some don't deal damage. You can even prepare them in advance with the Hold art.

Well, there will be no Air/Fluid resistance and no gravity, but Mass Inertia is still a thing in space, and depends on mass and geometry.

Classic fantasy brings D&D tropes into D100 roll-under. I think I'd be more interested in the reverse : a d20 roll-over game without classes and levels but with magic, health and combat inspired by RuneQuest. Talislanta and Atlantis the Second Age are somewhat close to this.