Mugen

French game Légendes used the latin word Phylum/Phylae. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylum https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/phylum

What I mean is that your attempt at statting IJ will always be good and bad at the same time. He's a character in a game where the system is just "whatever the scenarist wants to work succeeds" and with no written stats. I's not a real person with real word data. In short : don't do any modification, it's already good enough. Perhaps calling him "Wyoming Smith", as an example of what an Indiana Jones-type could look like in BRP.

It may seem like a good idea to take a well-known fictional character as an example. But, as everybody has his own view on what should be Indiana Jones abilities and how to translate them in BRP terms, you'll never be able to do an adaptation that pleases everyone. Among other things, IJ is an action movie hero, which means he has physical abilities far beyond a normal human being, on top of being a world class archeologist.

And PF is basically D&D3.6. So, the only game able to rival D&D was just another D&D 🙂 Another goal of the OGL was to protect 3e from being discontinued by WotC, and it was successful at that time.

Yes, definitely, that was one of the goals of the licence. But it was not restricted to one game system, and was used by other game companies for their own systems. OGL is seen as the D&D licence because it was mainly used to sell D&D-compatible products, because it's what people wanted to buy. Concerning ORC, I only know about 3 projects or games. Out of the 3, only BRP is not an attempt to let 3rd party publishers to keep selling D&D products.

It's not a matter of "realism", but rather of suspension of disbelief. 🙂 I was just expressing the fact that it would bother me if mass was not a more important part of the equation. I didn't mean you should change the rule to please me. 😉

My guess is it's because using multiples of 5 is simpler for Passions, and that a value of 4 for a Trait has a mechanical meaning, because it's the opposite of a Famous Trait (which basically means it's not really "unsung", because you can't divorce it from it's counterpart...)

I was counting Combine as one of the MPs in the spell. 🙂

Maybe base the type of dice used for additionnal damage on SIZ ? That is, if the Wasp is launched at Velocity 150 (+3 dice), she'll deal +3 or +3d2 damage, whereas Colossus would do either +3d8 or +3d10.

To be honest, it's one of those cases where I think MRQ2 needed polish and Mythras offered an upgrade. Compared to Mythras, Enchants in MRQ2 required to block a lot of MPs. Either all the MPs in the spell, or the spell's Intensity, I don't remember well. In Mythras, i only blocks the MPs used to cast the spell, which means less than 6.

I understand that this is based on Mythras rules, but the physicist in me thinks this should be a product of mass/SIZ and speed (squared). http://www.sjgames.com/murphys/img/new6.jpg

That idea was also used in MRQ2 (in the Arms & Equipment supplement) and in Mythras Sorcery (with the Enchant spell). It seems to me Pete Nash and/or @Lozsuggested it was possible to use another MP source than the caster's for enchants in MRQ2. Cristals, for instance. But Mythras only mentions the Sorcerer's MP.

With the big limitation that you can't put more points in Shaping than your Shaping skill/10. If you put 11 points in Duration, you need a Shaping skill of 110%, and you can't put anything in Range, for instance. Among other things, protection from dispelling is not based on the spell's Intensity (based on the Invocation skill), but its Magnitude, which is a Shaping effect. A spell created to last for years that can be dispelled by a Folk Magic spell is a pity. And, again, the values given for extended duration are not the standard values, which are linear.

Note Mythras has a way to make Permenanent spells with the Enchant spell. It reduces your MP maximum by the number of MP used (which means a minimum of 2, as you'd need to use Multispell to cast Enchant AND the spell).

Ah... It's been too long since I read Mongoose RuneQuest II. 😄 It seems I never read the table again since that time. 😅 (I'm not able to delete quotes and smileys on my phone, so I'm keeping those...) 🙂

First, in Mythras you're only allowed to spread a number of points in spell manipulation equal to your Shaping skill/10. It may only cost 2 MP to add range and duration to a spell, but if your skill is 80, you'd only have 8 points to divide between those two. Second, Mythras manipulations are linear, whereas in RQ3 they are exponential in their lower tier. As a result, Range 9 in Mythras is only 10 times the base range, whereas in RQ3 it's more than 1000 times the base value (I don't have the numbers in mind). Plus, in Sandy Petersen's rules there's no duration anymore : spells are either instantaneous or permanent until dismissed or dispelled, but they reduce your Presence. Third, RQ3 also has Sorcery Enchants, which allow you to freely add X levels to a spell with no extra MP cost (even though it first cost you POW), or crystals and MP matrices to increase your MP maximum. Note that in SP's rules, MP matrices were way more effective than the base RQ version, creating multiple MP storages at once.

IMHO, the best way to achieve this is to give non-magic users "something" to compete against them. See how Shadowrun characters can have cyberware, for instance. A defining concept in BRP is that characters are defined by their skills, and nothing prevents a magician to be as good at fighting with a sword or being sneaky than a non-magician. Every character can fight with a sword, hide in darkness, find hidden objects, etc., magicians and non-magicians alike. But magicians have the benefit of being able to do thing other characters can't. Concerning your "ranks", Nephilim (its French 2 first editions, at least) had a system with 3 different skills of increasing power level for each kind of magic. Before learning rank N+1 skill, you had to first rise your rank N skill over 90%. To learn a Rank N spell, you had to have appropriate skill at a given level, depending on your You don't necessarily need to use muiliple skills like this, though. You could require Skill 40% to learn Rank 2, 80% to learn Rank 3, and so on...

I second RuneQuest Sorcery, but more precisely the revised ruies Sandy Petersen created in 1998 or so. In this new rules system, Sorcery is limited by one's skill and "Presence". Presence is based on vows the sorcerer takes and acts as a limit to the number of spells can keep active at once. The vows, which were meant to fit SP's view on Malkioni sorcery, could be replaced by something else. A major drawback is that RS3 Sorcery requires a *lot* of skills. One per spell, and one per "Art. Quite like if in Mythras you had obe skill per manipulation category, except Sandy Petersn introduced new manipulations, such as the possibility to cast a spell quicker, cheaper, or prepare it in advance to be released instantly.

IMHO, in most cases specialties should be treated as bonus to a broader base skill. That is, if I'm a sword fighter I'll have a generic Melee Weapon skill at a given percentage, and a Sword specialty which I'll add to my Melee Weapon skill when I use a sword. Same for drive, or ride. Other solutions exist, such as using similar weapons skills with a malus, but I think they're less elegant -even though this option doesn't require to re-write experience rules to take specialties into account.

I don't remember how it works in BRP, but I like the fact it can be done with a Special Effect in Mythras

As for myself, I think I would break ties using the character with the best roll on each side of the contest. That is, if the following characters are in one side : One with 2 success and a roll of 18 One with 2 successes and a roll of 3 And the other side is : One with 1 success and a roll of 18 One with 3 successes and a roll of 3 Then, the second group wins because of the 3 successes of the 4th character.

Yes, RQ1 can be described as OD&D without levels and thieves skills as the basis of every character ability. You could also make very similar games by following one of these two paths: Remove levels from d20 Replace d100 roll under by a d20 roll-over in BRP But the second path will require less work than the first one to have a working game system, as magic and health depend on characters' level in d20, whereas the second option is almost immediate.

To be honest, even if it was legal to mix BRP ORC and d20, I think it would be a pretty bad idea, given how different both systems are. It could be possible and quite easy to change the roll-under d100 mechanism in BRP with a roll-over d20 one. But introducing the hit location system from RQ in d20 would simply break the game.

OGL BRP and ORC BRP are completely disconnected. BRP-OGL SRD is not under ORC licence and BRP ORC is not under BRP-OGL, and Chaosium already stated that they won't change it. BRP-OGL is more or less a thing from the past, but Chaosium saw no reason to withdraw it. BRP-OGL is also not the same as Wizards of the Coast's Open Gaming Licence, and is more restrictive.

I think it would be better to put all rules questions about the Starter Set in a single thread, in order to help any Chaosium staff member to answer those.