Mugen

As a matter of fact, the last playtest document used opposed rolls in combat (I think it had been edited by Ken Hite). In case where the defender tried to parry and he had the same success level, the amount of damage blocked varied on which roll was highest : -APx1 if the attacker's roll was higher. -APx2 if the defender's roll was higher. In case of a dodge, the defender had to give ground if he had lowest roll, or chose hit location if he had the highest roll. I don't know why mongoose changed this before they released MRQ1.

Reminds me of my own 11th birthday, when I got the D&D Red box set In fact, it didn't take long before I switched to AD&D1, though it was much more complicated. In my opinion, and given my own experience, the problem with the BRP gold book may not be the amount of rules, but rather its lack of any setting or its number of options.

An option that could reduce mortality is to consider two pools of "hit points", similarly to Star Wars d20 : -The first pool is more like "fatigue points", resplenishing fully in a few minutes when out of battle or other stressing avtivities. -The second kind is really a measure of one's body integrity. Only major wounds (that is, wounds with damage superior to (SIZ+CON)/4) or blows taken when "fatigue" is reduced to 0 should affect it.

I must say I like the Alchemy and Enchantment rules a lot

You're completely right : there's no point in having more than one "Close Combat" skill. Thank you

This, or maybe a small number of skills : 1-Handed Weapons (covering shield use, like in Pendragon), 2-Handed Weapons, 2 Weapons.

As for myself, I would use broad skills with "mastery" or "specialty" bonuses. For instance, a Baseball player will have a very high Athletics skill base with a "Baseball" specialty of +25%.

Actually, BRP weapon skills are a sub-set of Combat Styles Technically, there is no difference between a character with "1H Sword" and "Shield and bare hand" styles and a BRP character with the equivalent skills. As for myself, there's something that is not well handled by either method : the fact that a swordmaster grabbing an axe fights as if he never learned to move in melee.

Note that using the sum of DEX and INT, and not their average, is quicker

This is also true for improvisational theater.

It depends on how you define INT, actually. One can have a very quick mind, able to make decisions and have poor results in any "intellectual" subjects. Generally, in BRP high INT is given to scientists or scholars, not to top-ranking football players or feline barbarians Actually, trying to think in a situation where you have to act quickly can be a bad thing.

Yes, and that's why I suggested a limit on actions/attacks. It could be a limitation to 1 action per round, a -25% malus per action over the first, or anything else. Simply said, a standard round of action for a 3 CA character would be 1 attack and 2 parries.

Concerning Combat Actions, a distinction existed in MRQ1 between Actions (attacks, spell casting and so on) and Reactions (parry and dodge, essentially). I'd like to see CA as the maximum number of Actions and Reactions per turn (as it is the case in MRQ2, actually). Yet, I'd like to see Actions to be more restricted, for instance with a cumulative malus.

A few ideas: -What about using a Pendragon-like solution for handling damage ? Instead of a damage bonus, you might give each character a base damage value (based on STR+SIZ for melee, and DEX for ranged), then modify it according to the weapon size (for instance, -2 for small weapons, +2 for 2 handed ones). -I don't really see the point in having both Spot and Listen skills in such a simple game. -I'm also not really fond of having a Dodge skill. In my view, dodging is one of the things you learn when you get experienced at melee combat.

What about this ? https://www.msu.edu/user/moulinfr/Errata.html

Note that if you want to have the same kind of distribution for every stat, it is possible to use 2D6+X for each of these. As for myself, I usually use the following values for humans : STR 2D6+4 CON 2D6+4 SIZ 2D6+6 INT 2D6+6 POW 2D6+4 DEX 2D6+4 CHA 2D6+4 Of course, this would not work for races that are far beyond human range of characteristics....

I had a similar idea, except that in my houserule a failed attack only did minimum weapon damage +character's damage bonus (mirroring the max weapon damage + damage bonus of a critical strike). That means the attack % is not a chance to hit, but rather a chance to do an effective attack. I also introduced the Pendragon/MRQ rule for skill oppositions: when both combattants have the same success level, the highest roll wins.

The latest version being inside Mongoose's RuneQuest II, and very good, though quite unbalanced (damage dealing spells, for instance, need to be tuned down for use with BRP).

In my opinion, I think you should play with the Characteristics scale, not rules. I mean, if your character has CON 52, there's no reason to double its hit points to make him incredibly more resistant than a CON 4 orc. You could consider to not use SIZ for Hit points and damage bonus calculation, so that hobbits can will not be penalized for their tiny stature. You could also borrow MRQ2's treatment of Combat Action. In this game, the number of actions (both offensive and defensive) available in a combat round is equal to (INT+DEX)/12, rounded up.

What about using both Cults and Sorcery rules from MRQ2 ? For instance you could say that : Rank 1 = Apprenticeship An apprentice learns the Common Magic skill. Rank 2 = Wizard A Wizard learns the Manipulation Skill. He can learn Grimoires from the "Common Sorcery" school. Rank 3 = Specialist Wizard A Specialist Wizard can learn Grimoires from one of the following schools : -Demonology; -Elementalism; -Illusionism; -Necromancy. Rank 4 = Arch Magus An Arch Magus can learn Grimoires from any school. Of course, that means you'll have to create Grimoires for each of the 5 schools.

As for myself, I would treat the problem in a slightly different way. I have very bad memories of "Complementary skill"-like rules. I would use a number of broad skills such as Athletics, Magic, Melee, Stealth, Science and so on, along with "specializations". For instance, a swordsman might have a Melee skill of 37%, a Sword specialization of +45% and a Dagger specialization of +15%, for a total of 82% when using a sword in melee and 52% with a dagger. Of course, some actions would require a minimum level in a specialization. A Science roll would allow you to know the basics of nuclear physics, but a high specialization level would be necessary to design a nuclear plant.

What about "Specialties" ? Another possibility is to call percentile scores "aptitudes" and use the term "skills" for your "traits". Also, the concept is very similar to what Legend of the Five Rings 3rd and 4th editions call "Emphasises".

Yes, but you can easily find the rules in MRQ2 which I used as an inspiration for this one

What about stealing some bits from MRQ2 ? For instance, state that if success level is the same and Attack roll is greater than Parry roll, only half damage is parried (maybe more with a shield).

Some D&D retro-clones are exact copies of the "Rules Cyclopedia" version of the game. They make references to the d20 SRD to avoid problems with WotC. I guess the same can be done with the Mongoose RuneQuest 1 SRD.