Mugen

Fact is, D&D5 doesn't have this kind of mechanism. If DC is superior by more than 20 points to your skill bonus, you can't succeed, and if it is inferior or equal to your bonus +1, you can't fail. Problem is you need to be a rogue or a bard if you want your skills to be high enough that you won't bother rolling for an "average" task. You're a wizard whose magic comes from reading old tomes full of arcane theories ? Too bad your Dex is not good enough to multi-class rogue, you will never be good enough in your field to be sure to answer questions your farmer neighbour has a chance to know. And it's even worse for clerics and religious knowledge, as it's not likely their Int will ever reach 20.

I agree. The flexibility and richness of RuneQuest 2 character customization options with just skills and battle magic when compared to any D&D version shows how better is the skill-based model in this regard.

Let me clarify : I was not against some limitation in numbers inflation. My problem here is that the maximum bonus (for non-rogues and non-bards) for characters that are very high level and with the maximum possible ability value is just 11 points above a commoner's bonus, and only 0.5 points above a d20 average result. As a consequence, characters that are not top level and don't have the maximum possible ability value have a bonus that is under that threshold. As a result, the random part of the skill check is, for most characters, more important than their skill. Another consequence of the system is that Mages have to multi-class into Rogue to get Expertise to reach the highest possible level in Arcana skill (Unless you're using some playtest material which includes feats that grant Expertise in one skill).

I'm speaking of skills checks here, not combat.

To me, it just means 5e pleases more people than 4e. But does it make it "right" ? I think 4e sales figures, as bad as they were for WotC, are far better than RQG ones. Does it mean that 4e were "right" when compared to RQG ?

What I'm saying here is that if you have a character with attribute 8 and not proficient and another with attribute 20, proficient and level 20, one has 20% chance to succeed at a DC 15 task and the second has 85% chance to succeed at the same task. That does not make a big difference considering one is Mr Nobody, and the other is at the pinnacle of human capabilities in a fantasy world.

I think 4e was a clever re-work of D&D principles, which managed to get rid of many problems that were detrimental to the game. More specifically, the fact classes shone at different levels (fighters at 1st level, casters at high levels), and others were just useless (Bard). It also got rid of "trap options" and allowed for easier out-of-the-box concepts : one feat was sufficient to be fully proficient in a skill, and the only requirement to be efficient in a fight was to have a good value in your main ability. Obviously, though, besides bad buzz and stupid comments such as "D&D is a MMO on table", the game was not suited for all kind of players, and an update was inevitable to make characters less complex, reduce the "boardgamey" elements and make it more easily understandable for all players. As for myself, I was extremely disappointed by 5e design decisions. Even if high-level casters are nowhere as powerful as their equivalents in older editions were, the game came back to a state where "magic is better", and casters are more versatile than non-casters. And their obsession with reducing numbers led to a situation where 20th level characters are just barely more competent than 1st level ones.

Two other games that were clearly influenced by RuneQuest are Légendes and Premières Légendes. Those are d20 roll-under and skill based games, and the latter is a simplified version of the former. However, they also take many bits from other US games, especially FGU ones, and might not be close enough to BRP to be in this list. Among other things, they use Margin of success a lot.

Rêve de Dragon is a french game that was heavily influenced by RuneQuest and James Bond 007. It was published in English under the name Reves, the dream Ouroboros. In this game, characters live inside Dragon Dreams (hence the name), and are defined by a series of attributes that are clearly expanded from BRP : STR, CON, INT, SIZ, DEX, etc. but also MASs and PERception (which is it self divided into Taste, Sight, Hearing and Touch). POW is called REVe ( = Dream). Skills have levels ranks from -10 to +10 (like AD&D Armor Class), with different base levels depending on skill difficulty (very hard skills start at -10, hard ones at -7, easy ones at -4 or -2). Chance of success are determined by multiplying an attribute by a factor depending on a skill rating : x0.5 for -9, x5 for 0, x10 for +10. Difficulty changes skill rating : an easy task can turn your +2 Climbing skill into a +7 one. Hopefully, a multiplication table is provided on the character sheet... RdD uses RuneQuest's rule for success qualities : Critical on roll under 1/20th of Chances of success, and Specials under 1/5th.

In French : -Les Arthuriades are a setting for Nephilim allowing players to play in a previous life in Arthur's Britain. -Mousquetaires & Sorcellerie was a setting published in a magazine in which players were in a special order of mousquetaires in the 17th century, whose mission was to hunt down witches and supernatural phe.omenon -There was a second edition of Hawkmoon, based on Elric! Rules. In French only.

I see no reason why a person holding an item could resist a spell targeting the item with their MP or POW. "Magic resistance" spells would protect anything the caster is touching, however. Also, if the holder of the target is moving, it would change the chances of the sorcerer to cast his spell in a way or another. It might be a slight modifier to the casting skill, or even a dodge roll to avoid the spell if he's explicitly making moves to lower the caster's concentration. Also, for the specific example of the Fly spell cast on pants, I would consider it to have STR equal to the spell's Intensity. Now, try to move a SIZ 13 person with STR 1...

But how would you name it ? I can't imagine using another name than Earth. Even if none if the people of that age would use it, it's much more appropriate than Midgard or Sol 3, for instance. RuneQuest Earth ?

Previously on this forum, Jason Durall explained how combat worked, and it seems to me critical and special attacks reduced a weapon's HP by an amount equal to the difference between damage and current HP (contrarily to normal attacks, that only reduce it by 1 if dmg > HP). So, a weapon dealing 18 damage to a 12 hp weapon would have reduced it to 6. If this rule still applies, and critical now double this amount, according to the attack/parry table you mention, your weapon would lose 12 hp on a crit and be destroyed.

The rules of BaSIC were not under OGL. By the time Casus Belli published the game, Open Gaming Licence simply didn't exist yet. As I recall, the game was created after a talk between Editor in Chief of Casus Belli and Greg Stafford himself. There are also some small differences between BaSIC and common BRP rules, which anyone can spot in the pdf you link even if he doesn't read french, such as the damage bonus, or the fact criticals always occur on a roll of 01 to 05. A funny error feature was that knocked out characters remained unconscious for CON minutes. In the pdf, it was changed into (21-CON), but doesn't explain how to handle characters with CON 22+. BaSIC was quite popular among amateurs, though.

Or the Capharnaum roleplaying game, whose english version is lead by Sarah Newton.

To me, there is also the fact SRs for the same kind of actions tend to be the same from one character to another. Most 1 handed melee attacks will occur on SR 7, for instance. And you'll have to rely on DEX to tell who goes first... I also prefer to have as few derived attributes as possible.

And 14 in StormBringer first editions...

I surely already said I would love a Quest for the Time Bird adaptation, and BRP would be a great fit for it. Unfortunately, it seems no-one managed to get the licence since 1986 (except Infogrammes for a videogame) and it's unlikely Chaosium would bother acquiring a licence only popular in France... And I fear a french editor would base it on D&D or a simplified D&D...

From my point of view, SR are just too complicated, and offer little benefit over the very simple reverse DEX order. The only thing it does very well, IMHO, is integration of spells MP cost into initiative.

Note that this is true for any weapon skill. Even though axe fighting is different from sword fighting, if you put an axe in the hands of a good fencer, he should be able to use it more effectively than someone with no combat training at all.

And your Manipulation bonus only added 7.5 to your left hand skill.

In such a case, I would not resolve the armwrestling with just one roll, but rather ask for successive rolls until 3 or 4 successes are accumulated. A win settled by comparing rolls would count as 1 success. Different success levels would give 1 success +1 per difference (so, critical versus normal success would give 3 successes).

This made me think of the gap between characters with 2 and 3 Combat Actions in Mythras - except, of course, in RQG it will only affect dual wielders.

StormBringer used reverse DEX order to determine initiative.

Exactly my point. That's a big change from previous RQ rules. Previously, you had to chose a position between all attack, all defense or a mix. Now, the number of attacks will depend on your weapons SR, and the number of parries on your parrying weapon skill. You can chose to do less attacks, but that's just a waste of actions.