Mugen

That's the reason why I prefer to consider rolls under skill/10 as "Crits" and rolls under skill/2 as "Specials". The maths are easier, and it scales perfectly with skills over 100%. Of course, the frequency of those results is very different, but I'm fine with it. 🙂 However, my favorite method to figure quality of success is by using the 10s of the die, with 0 being read as 10 in case of a roll < Skill/10. I then add the 10s of the skill above 100 to the Quality.

Burning Wheel's Character Burner could be used as a basis for a Life Path system for Fantasy BRP too. I guess Burning Empires has something similar for Sci Fi. Basically, in this game Character Creation let you chose a number of Life Pathes at character creation, which represents occupations your character had before the game starts. Each come with a number of years, whose total gives your PC's Age, a number of skill points to distribute, mandatory skills you must buy, and skills you're free to invest points into. You'd have to define a rule to convert skill points, which is not so easy. BW is a success-counting system with skills ranging from 1 to 9, with a maximum of 6 at creation. That's a rather limited range to translate into a percentile one. You also need to spend 1 point to "open" a skill and give it a base value, which is usually 2 or 3. You can still make an attibute roll if you try to use an aspect of a skill that doesn't need training. For instance, if you try to climb a small wall without the Climb skill

How do those books compare to Lordly Domains ? I only know this one, and in my memory it could serve as a basis for another system. Edit: hmm... I should have looked at the comments section at DTRPG, as it seems I already have my answer there...

@AndreJaroschit seems Nephilim is missing from your list.

@AndreJaroschI don't know if you wanted to list only english-speaking BRP products, but there has been a second edition of Hawkmoon by Oriflam in French in the 90s. It was based on Elric! system.

I have the same issue with the Sorcery rules in the BGB, in which Summoning spells cost 1 MP too. It seems to me part of the rules were lost when the Elric! system was simplified to put less emphasis on demons and elementals.

What is your question exactly ? Do you ask what we want published under ORC, or do you ask what we think people in general expect from ORC games ? As for myself, I don't have much expectations from this licence. I'd like to see systems that are not D&D-like to gain more audience, but ORC is also going to be PathFinder's and Kobbold Press' D&D clone licence, so... As for what other people may want in ORC is the possibility to play in different universes with a familiar system. That was part of BRP success in the 80s, at least in France. But it was also part of its problem, as people thought it could not offer more than the very simple and mortal rules from CoC.

Truth is, these adjectives are just technical game terminology, and you should avoid to tie these to your daily use of those words. "Easy" means "a situation where there's a risk, but lower than usual", and "Hard" means "a situation where there's a higher risk to fail than usual". Not all uncertain situations are equally uncertain.

French game Légendes divided the body in 20 hit locations, plus 10 sub-locations for joints. For instance, location 18 was the lower right leg, and location 18A (A as Articulation, French for "joint") was the right knee, location 12 was the right hand and 12A was the right wrist. Location roll was made using a d100. It didn't use localized hit points, only a "major wounds" system, whose severity changed depending on damage and location. Its second edition, whose Celtic version had been translated in English under the name Celtic Legends, removed the joints from the system and simplified the wounds system. Location roll was made using a d20.

Le Département des Sombres Projets lost two of its writers in the last few years (and both at a rather young age), but as far as I know it didn't impact their will to publish Moorcock material, even though their focus is more on the Elric Boardgame and Hawkmoon right now.

I designed a long time ago a system that mixed "action points" and initiative. Basically, the idea was that your Initiative roll was also your "Action points" pool. Each Action and Reaction cost you Initiative points. You could act every time the current Initiative count was equal to your Initiative total. Reactions were usually cheaper than Actions, and you could use "quick" versions of Actions and Reactions, with lower Initiative costs. @GianniVaccaused it for the amateur version of its Imperial China game, but removed it from the professional product. It was very similar to what you can see in Revolution D100 complex combat system. It's also very similar to Feng Shui, but I read it after I designed the system.

I think I'd use FATE myself, or Revolution D100 in the extended BRP family, as its Traits can be used as simili-aspects.

I think it's wot mentioning there's an implicit rule in your example that in case of 2 failed rolls, the higher roll wins the contest nonetheless. Often, in roll-under opposed skill contests, failure versus failure is considered a tie, with 2 losers.

My solution is to put a cumulative malus after 1 action and 1 reaction. However the malus from actions applies as soon as they are declared, while the malus from reactions only applies to folliwing rolls. Say I declare 3 attacks. All 3 will be affected by 2 cumulative maluses. If I'm parrying three times after these 3 attacks, the first parry will suffer he same 2 maluses as the attacks, while the second and third will have respectively 3 and 4 maluses. The reason why I wanted to give a malus on all actions is because I had a terrible experience in a game where there was no "cost" in doing multiple actions except a cumulative malus. As a result, the GM rolled every attacks he could, even those that had less than 1% chance to occur due to the malus. It was boring... I also think Star Wars D6 worked like that...

Anyway, Dividing your attack is a bit of a trap option in modern BRP rules, IMHO. In the current BRP rules, You divide your attack chance by 2, while your opponent keeps his whole parry skill on his first parry attempt, and he may suffer a 30% malus on his second if you succeed both attacks. Of course, you have a tiny chance to hit twice, but you also have greater chance to not hit at all. RQ2 and RQ3 rules were very different, as you also had to divide your parry skill to parry both attacks.

My feeling is that this is already covered by the fact small weapons tend to have low damage, which makes it difficult to beat other weapon's AP. A dagger wielded by a character with a d2 damage bonus (total 1d4+1+1d2) will only damage a 6 AP weapon if the player rolls maximum damage. 1 chance out of 8. If he uses a short Sword (d6+d2), he now has 3 chances out of 12 to damage it.

My understanding is that the damage reduction from a Parry only applies to the defender, and not when the attacker chose Damage weapon. I think it would be a terrible Special Effect if you had to use it with Bypass Parry versus a Shield or any big weapon. @Loz , can you answer this ?

Then why don't you use QuestWorld ? Do you think it will not work well for your kids ? Anyway, Rune Magic is IMHO far from being the most complex aspect of RuneQuest rules, and RQG made it even simpler than before. Combat is far more complex. Also, it seems to me players will be more encline to use Spirit Magic on a daily basis, and spare Runic Magic for big events.

I managed to quote all three posts above using the "+" box. My message was not reset when I changed current page, but I had to select the Reply box first to make it reappear.

Look under the post you want to quote. There should be a "+" in a box next to the word "Quote". Just click the box to include it in the post you're writing.

I don't understand this part. Isn't Sunder the Special Effect that allows the attacker to destroy it's opponent's armor ? I have to say I don't really like it either, but it's because I'm used to RQ3's idea that armors can't lose AP.

That's the weapon's Rate of Fire. But it seems the format changed in the latest version of the rules, as it was previously either 1/SR, 1/CR or 1/xCR. 1/SR meant you could fire the weapon twice in a combat round : -once at DEX SR -once DEX+3 SR later 1/CR meant you could only use your weapon once, at DEX SR. 1/xCR meant you could only use your weapon once every x rounds, and prepare your action on (x-1) round prior to your attack.

But that means criticals will never hit outside range 1 to 5. Also, if your skill is, say, 45, your 10s die will be more likely to be even than odd in case of a success(as 0, 2 and 4 are even and only 1 and 3 are odd).

In the part you quote, I was in fact thinking about a Pendragon-style combat system, where there attack and parry roll are combined, not a RT-based one... With Resistance Table, it might possible to take the margin between the roll and the success threshold.

Using the method I proposed above gives similar results, without the burden of having to refer to a (possibly complex) table. Specials and crits are possible on both sides, and if two characters with similar skills are opposed, their respective chance of success is ~50%. I think it's because the roots of RQG system date back from the second half of the 70s, where people had different views on system design, even though RQ was way ahead of its competitors back then. If you look at more recent games such as HeroWars (now QuestWorlds) and Revolution D100, you can find that Spirit Combat has been the foundation of their conflict resolution system.