AikiGhost

Have you seen this?

Barbarians of Lemuria - 1KM1KT

Its really really good IMHO.

One of the main reasons I have never liked doubles as crits is

if you have a 98% skill, your only two failures are 99 and 00,

both of which are now fumbles. I don't like that a "master"

in a skill can only make catastrophic failures, and has a 2%

chance of doing so.

-V

We always played that a roll of 96 or above was always a fail regardless of your skill level.

Yep I've been using doubles under skill = crit, doubles over skill = fumble for as long as I can remember (IE: About 6 or 7 years ).

I first saw it in an old white dwarf article for WFRP some 20 odd years ago.

Because shields are hand held and when in use have some "give" therefore they soak more damage than Armour which is basically a surface that doesn't move held onto the target thats been hit and so has next to no "give".

As much as I like BRP, I prefer roll-high bell-curve mechanics.

Thats the mathematician in you talking rather than the roleplayer!

As a GM i almost always like the simplest solution that gives vaguely in genre results. For semi realistic/dark genres thats always been BRP for me.

An interesting idea, and indeed I prefer BRP for that kind of games - although

I still do not fully understand why a percentile system "feels better" for such

setting-oriented games.

73% skill is so much more obvious than Stat +3 Skill +7 Situational Bonus +1 +1d20 vs target number, that you don't have to think about it. This means you can get on with roleplaying your character and involving yourself in the story.

Good stuff, just one comment about playability though. For such massive numbers of dice on damage rolls Id personally abandon 15d6 and so on and roll 1d6 x15 instead. having to repeatedly roll Bucketfuls of dice will only slow down play.

Jason has stated on these forums that he liked the concept of Defense that was in RQ2, but did not insert it because it would become a super-skill more valuable than any other skill. In any case, it is still there as a super-power so you can easily add it. But I would not recommend doing so: Dodge represents this better.

perhaps the thing to do would make it = to 1/2 of a PC best defensive combat skill?

EG: If you best combat skill (this could include the dodge skill I guess) = 80% your Defense would be 40% which you could split as you wanted?

RuneQuest II had a defence rating, which was subtracted from opponents' attacks. That was in place of the later RQIII dodge, though, because in both RQII and RQIII you could also parry (maybe not at the same time - I need to open the book again).

I wonder why they abandoned the defense rating? It would seem to make more sense to me. Giving you a default defense rating and the allowing a full parry or dodge as an action.

What was the RQ2 defense rating based off?

"There are only so many different ways for a human being to move, thus there are only so many attacks and defenses that can be done".

Absolutely this is why freestyle wrestling matches look so much like combat judo (as opposed to Olympic judo) matches. Once you minimize the rule set all the grappling arts also start to look very similar.

YouTube - Longsword techniques/Hosszúkard technikák

Funny actually theres quite a bit of aikido in there

As RMS mentioned, it depends on the degree of "realism" you want to use in

your campaign.

If you want to use the rules to model real fencing, defenses against failed

attacks are a good way to mirror the uncertainty of a fight, where one can-

not lean back and study calmly whether an attack will hit or fail, and whe-

ther it really was an attack or a clever feint.

If you prefer a faster and simpler combat system, defenses against failed at-

tacks are unnecessary and only slow down the game.

Well if fencing is anything like boxing you dont actually make any decisions at all. You basically do what you do in training, not time for actual thinking of any kind. This becomes more and more the case the better you get.

For me a more realistic way to handle it would be to have a static defense skill of say between 0 and 50% which is taken from an attackers skill before he rolls. No need for a parry roll at all.

Because the defender doesn't know ahead of time whether the attacker will hit or miss. If you wait until you know if the attack was successful or not, then it should be too late to decide to actively defend yourself. In a real fight you parry a lot of attacks that you aren't positive will hit or not, but you don't want to take a chance: same in the game, if "realism" is your goal.

But surely a bad attack requires next to no effort to avoid (IE: no defence roll needed), whereas a decent attack requires a strong effort to avoid (IE: YOu must make a defense roll). Certainly I've never made people roll defenses against failed attacks, it seems unnecessary and also to slow things down for no good reason.

It happens in real world fencing, too.

Sometimes one cannot be certain that an attack will miss, and therefore pre-

fers to dodge or parry instead of just waiting to see whether one will be hit.

Besides, many feints work that way, by drawing the opponent into a dodge

or parry with a fake attack in order to create an opening in the opponent's

defense.

I'm not talking about real life, I'm talking game mechanics. Basic attack roll assumes the defender is not standing dead still anyway otherwise attack base would be 100%

Why would a defender dodge or parry an attack that was going to miss anyway?

I think what makes the d20 roll a bit faster than the d100 is the calculation of specials and criticals.

This is the reason why for years I've used doubles as fumbles and crits. roll a double under your skill its a crit, roll a double over your skill its a fumble. Easy and quick, works like a charm.

I also ran a campaign set in the D&D 3rd edition setting "Scarred Lands" using Stormbringer 5th edition with no significant issues.

Don't forget that BRP doesn't have Classes, so anyone who is able to learn magic can do, cultural and religious taboos notwithstanding, and anyone who can pick up a sword can use it, so the lines between Magic User and Fighter are very blurred.

Id say that's entirely dependant on the GM and the world. I for example used to RQ3 in my own (ex D&D) campaign world and made it so that any non wizard or priest that wanted to learn magic had to roll POWx1 or less to have a talent for it, otherwise that PC would never be able to learn it.

I've read that powered characters often are too powerful when compared to non-powered characters.

So if this is the case, can it be said that in a fantasy campaign, wizards won't work well with fighters?

Quick question for you, have you ever read a fantasy novel where the wizards were balanced with the non wizards? Which definition of fantasy are you using? IMHO BRP can be balanced, but personally Im not concerned either way.

In my case I do crits and fumbles on doubles so a d20 wouldn't be much use to me. If you want d20 play pendragon IMHO.

Feinting rules...?

I know I've read them somewhere, but I can't find them now. Can someone point me towards them?

Em :confused: I just covered them in my post.

Allow the use of the feinting rule.

An attacker can drop up to half their attack skill and a corresponding amount comes off their opponents dodge/parry skill. It will make the fights shorter if nothing else.

This is good in highly skilled combats but its even better with extremely good swordsmen vs average guys. Is also gives people with over 100% attack something to do with all those extra percentages.

EG: Attacker with 112% vs defender with 65% dodge. Attacker decides to feint by 30% therefore hes now rolling 82% attack and the defender is now defending with 35% dodge

I run A/State using BRP. I find the sanity rules are useful for encounters with the shifted

So what were saying is publishers need a license available from Chaosium that allows game designers to make full games using the BRP rule set that say "BRP compatible" or similar on the cover that contain the setting along with the rules fully tailored to genre? I think I agree with this one.

I did think it was kind of funny seeing BRP criticized for being "dated" in a time when every week sees the release of some copyware version of original blue box D&D.

Also, I didn't really follow his logic with stating that it's dated in that it lacks advantages/disads, which most modern games have, but then he later goes on to say why they wouldn't be ideal for BRP.

I think it's because hes trying to point out that what many new gamers see as a bug is actually a feature. Personally I have no problems with Adds/disads in BRP but when I said perhaps the new BRP core book should have them as an option I was shouted down.