Atgxtg

51 minutes ago, tooley1chris said:

Probably gonna lose a couple organs either way with those 2😀

And wake up in a bathtub filled with ice? Well, then I won't sweat the tablet. 

17 minutes ago, tooley1chris said:

Why make a water proof book when you can just use your $1000 tablet in the hot tub?😀

Because on of the girls might swipe it while I was distracted by the other.  Which goes to show that your RPGs are far more affordable than a tablet.😎

1 hour ago, tooley1chris said:

Not sure that was one of the options. 😀

Send them the picture! You might start a trend.

LOL!

Do you have one that's waterproof for the hottub?

3 hours ago, Nokaion said:

It works very much like CoC 7th edition and Rivers of London where there are success levels (Regular, Hard, Extreme, Critical) and the one with the higher success level succeed. If it comes to a draw, the defender wins.

That's incorrect. Per the Attack/Parry Matrix on page 127 UGE it's possible to partial parries and dodges on a defender success, even against a critical or special attack. It just downgrades the attackers SL by one. And I think that's your problem, right there. The 100% defender is always going to be able to downgrade the attack a success level. And since penalty dice aren't so much of a penalty at high skill levels they can literally do this all day long, as many times a round as they want.

So high skill + penalty dice +UGE combat matrix = almost perpetual defense. 

In RQ3 the defender needed to match the success level of the attack to dodge an attack (so specials were hard to sidestep). Also in RQ and some other  BRP  games, a parry only stopped so much damage so an attack that did a lot of damage could get through. There were all sort of advantages for beating the opponent's success level, so there penalty dice would be a big deal. But in UGE equal success levels levels let a parry stop all of the damage, you method of giving the defender multiple parries really favors the defense, as any attack needs to be at least a special to have a chance of hurting the defender. 

Another BRP game that had parries stopp all the damage was Stormbringer, but it had a Parry/Riposte rule; you could make successive parries, each at a cumulative -20%, and  the Riposte rule let a master (90%+skill) turn a successful parry into a riposte attack (also at a cumulative -20%). But penalty dice wouldn't work all that great there either.- you need the skill drop.

So I think you either need to use an alternate Attack/Defense Matrix, or drop the penalty die idea.

 

What if instead of giving the defender penalty dice you gave the attacker(s) advantage dice? I mean giving a guy with 100% a penalty die isn't going to reduce their chance of parrying much, but giving an advantage die to their 50%  opponent certainly would up the ante. 

 

 

 

 

24 minutes ago, tooley1chris said:

Im so excited by the hardback copy. I think it's beautiful!

The pages are actually less glossy than I thought they would be. The sunlight coming in the window might have messed with the camera a little bit. It was just a snapshot, not a professional photo 😎

Don't worry about it. It actually a much better sign to see the author of a RPG product getting excited  fanboying over it, as opposed to just releasing more "product." It reminds me of the old days where game designers would rush off to show each other what they did. 

 

P.S. You should post a sneak peek pic from the other books too. Dog optional. It might boost sales. 

Okay I'm replying before coffee so everyone brace yourselves. This can get a little wierd.

10 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

I definitely agree with having various types of magic such as moon magic, dream magic, flower magic, fairy magic, tree magic, animal magic, food magic, air magic, fire magic, etc. I should have made that more clear.

Oh, that's fine. I was mostly pointing out the similarities to your idea and Ars Magica, and that the latter might be useful in showing how to set something like that up. .The various Techniques and Forms help to subdivide the magical abilities such that you can't have a one trick pony. If someone is going to be a fatasic healer, fire mage, etc. they have to master the techniques   (Create, Destroy, Control, Change, Perceive, although in Latin) as well as the various forms (air, fire water, plant, animal, mind body, etc). 

 

 

10 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

I agree that having a long list of spells makes gaming easier, but seems to be so antithetical to the concept of "magic" as something wonderous, special, unexplained, etc.

So, to some extent does a long list of skills. It tens to make magic seem like a science and magicians engineers. The problem is the better we define magic the more it will seem like a science, and thus less magical. Sadly game mechanics by their nature define magic in play, making it more like a science. It tricky to do in gaming as you sort of need the game mechanics to make things work.

Arms Magica's Spontaneous magic mightbe what you re looking for. Other have mentioned Mage. Mage is similar in some ways, as it was written by the same folk who created Ars Magica, but magi are much more powerful there. Someone with Mastery of Life magic can literately tear a life form apart. That might be too powerful for someone with a 90-100% skill in BRP. So you'd probably need to adjust the skill required for a dot. But even so they will define magic more.

 

I was working on a freeform magic system for Prince Valiant.I was toying with  the idea of wizards basically having their own version of the Storyteller Certificate (A special award that players can get that lets them make things happen in game) which included Magical Special Effects, but that they needed to make a cast roll roll and maybe spend a gold star to be able to play them. The gold star cost was there to keep this from being too overpowered, if it turned out to be so without them. 

The idea was to try and keep magic, magical by keeping the game mechanics so reduced that it would still feel more like magic and less like a science.

 

The hard part was the more I'd want to clarify the effects/difficulties for easy of play (like say a parlor trick should be easier than running across England in an hour) the less magical it became. 

 

 

 

 

10 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

While it does make some sense that there should be guidelines for magic, why are the same issues not brought up with regards to technology using gunpowder (Calcium nitrate mixed with other high potassium materials to create potassium nitrate, or saltpetre mix that with 15% charcoal and 10% sulfur) and now you have jumpstarted weapons tech massively so that now wizards aren't the only ones with good ranged damage. I mean chemistry 50% (or alchemy 50%) should be able to get you gunpowder, mix that with engineering 30% and now you can use mills and water sluices to make the process more automated.

Well the same issues are brought up for two main reasons:

 

First off we have some idea of how chemistry, physics, mathematics and such work in real life and can fall back on that for game mechanics. We don't have the same understanding of magic. If we did, it wouldn't be magical anymore.

Secondly, it all still has to work with the same game units. 

10 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

Same thing for making a blast furnace. Metallurgy 50% should be able to understand and create a blast furnace and now you are able to create face hardened steel which provides protection unrivalled until the late 18th century at least.

Except it's more than just knolwedge of mettalury at work here. For instance it probably only takes about 20% in Capatry and Animal Hubadry to figure out how a horse collar works, but no one managed to figure that out until the middle ages. 

 

A lot of discover is less to do about an indiviual skill rating are more the ability to see connections that other don't. 

10 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

If the GM says "no" for some magic, figure out what it takes to make that a yes and go from there. You can say "no" to players without being a confrontational GM, in the same way that a GM should never be told what will happen in a game because X spell on Y page said so. It often feels like magic becomes a way for players to try and control the narrative. Skills become a way to make something maybe happen, magic becomes the way something will happen.

Yes. The major troubles with freeform magics are getting the spellcasters on the same page as the GM, and applying those effects in game with non-spellcasting PCs. I mean if a caster can turn an ogre into a frog with just a cast roll then warrriors will be somewhat redundant. One reason why BRP game have POW/Magic Points it to limit the spellcasters. 

10 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

I don't know... this is something that I think I'll try the next time I GM something.

  Reveal hidden contents

Each type of “magic” is a different skill such as Water, Shadows, Fire, Air, Divination, Electricity, etc. Cost is 1 POW = 1 Rank of Damage or Protection, Mass, Time, Distance, Volume or skill bonus (+5%) from the Universal Measures Chart on page 10.

 Add it up and that equals the COST in MP and the number of rounds that it will take to cast the spell. That COST is then subtracted from the skill. This is to simulate that bigger spells (more MP) are harder to cast (take more time and the penalty to the skill roll = to the MP cost). Roll the dice and check for success or failure. If you fail, the MP are lost regardless.

 Bonuses for the skill roll are gained for the use of magic items, ingredients, fasting, ritual, time of day, geography, hand, verbal components, religious components, etc.

Magic item, for each type of magic: +5%, -1 MP

Religious items for attempting magic that follows the tenets of that religion: +5%, -1 MP

Ingredients that will be consumed: +5%, -1 MP

Fasting, depends on the length of the fast: 12 hours +5%, 24 hours, +10%, 3 day fast +15%, 7 day fast +20%, 10 day fast +25%, 14 day fast +30%, 21 day fast +35%, 40 day fast +40%, -1 to -8 MP

Ritual length, depends on the length of the ritual: 1 minute +1%, 5 minutes +5%, 30 minutes +10%, 1 hour +15%, 1 day +20%, -1 to -4 MP

Hand gestures: +5%, -1 MP

Verbal components: +5%, -1 MP

Important times, dates and geographic locations each provide a +5% bonus so that a necromantic ritual performed at midnight on the anniversary of a horrifically deadly battle on the graveyard where the dead from that battle are buried would get a +15% bonus (5% for midnight, 5% for anniversary and 5% for graveyard).  For events that happen only once a decade, the bonus is larger (+10%) and for once a generation (+15%), once every hundred years (+20%) or once every thousand years (+25%) or -1 to -5 MP.

 You cannot raise the skill roll higher than your base skill, so a skill of 43% casting a 20 POW spell, would reduce the skill to 23%. Using Hand Gestures, Verbal Components, Ingredients and a Magic Item can give a bonus of +20% to bring the skill check back up to 43%. Regardless of how many other bonuses are used, the skill cannot be raised above the base skill of 43%. By the same token, you cannot reduce the MP cost to less than 1. A magic spell will always cost at least 1 MP, and never be cast at higher than the base skill.

 A magic scroll is a one-shot item, and the scroll is destroyed when it is “used.” A magic scroll can be used to learn a spell (which is a specific effect that has been created and codified). The benefit of spells is that they do not take the POW penalty to skill.  For example, a freeform spell that has a POW cost of 12 will cost the mage 12 POW points and have a penalty of -12% to the mage’s skill to make the scroll. To cast the premade scroll, it takes nothing if the reader can follow the instructions. This is why scrolls are often in secret languages…only those who can read and speak the language can cast the spell.

 Magic items require a roll at the lowest skill being used.  To create a magic sword, the skill used would be lowest between “blacksmith” and the relevant magical effect(s) being added to the object.  The creator would also have to expend the POW to cast the spell.

 PCs have a certain amount of MP based on POW. At 0 they pass out. At -1/2 POW they die. If the victim is sacrificed ritually, then double the POW can be extracted.  Thus, a dying person will release their current POW, but if they are sacrificed, they will release double their POW. A magic user can use extra power than they have, but will immediately go unconscious, or die (if they hit their hard limit of POW x -1.5).

 Large, powerful spells can also be created by using more than one person’s MP by having multiple people give their MP to the leader of the spell.  The other participants can only give their MP, the leader of the spell is the one who makes the roll to determine if the spell occurs or not. The range for this giving of MP is only five feet. This also counts for sacrificing, in that the MP of the sacrifice is doubled for the purposes of the spell.

 As an example, the perennial favorite fireball would be a “Fire magic” spell.  To shoot a fireball 30 feet (rank 6 Distance = 30’) and have it cause 3d10 damage (Rank 5 Damage = 32 damage = 3d10) in a 10-foot radius (Rank 5 Distance = 10’ foot) requires 6+5+5 = 16 Magic Points. For a character with a “Fire magic” skill of 71% they would be casting that spell with at (71 skill -16 magic points =55) 55%.  If the character rolled a 63%, they would fail to cast the spell correctly, and will still have spent the 16 MP.

 Because of this, there are some magical effects that have become almost standard as they have a set effect with set costs. These spells are treated the exact same, such as the fireball above.

 To have spells ready for use and not having to wait to make them, you spend the MP before you need them (during the PCs down time). When you decide to fire them off, then you make the skill roll to see if you did it right, but this way you have the spell already available.

-STS

It's a good idea. It's just that there are some good reasons why it isn't often done, and even when it is you usual just replace one framework for another. 

 

Ars MAgica and Mage are probably the best examples to look at for inspiration, if you can.

1 hour ago, sladethesniper said:

Instead of having "spells" which have definite and measurable effects achieved with regularity and specific ingredients...

What if there was just various flavors of magic as a skill and it was up to the GM and player to literally make it up as they go.

It could work the exact way every other skill works. So in the same what that a character uses "physics" or "chemistry" to do things, they would also use "dream magic" to do things. The limits of it are thus "fuzzy" and the methods are suitably "made up" just like with every other skill. It feels weird to have a list of spells, but not a list of airplanes that can be piloted with the "pilot" skill or a list of cars that can be driven with the "drive" skill, or a list of chemicals that can be made with the "Chemistry" skill.

I don't know if I am making sense, but I really don't like having "magic" being used in the exact same manner as a technological item when I think it should be a skill that can be used imaginatively instead of as a tool that always works.

I would say that there could be various types of "magic" such as found in Mythras, and the various abilities, tricks, spells given would be examples of what could be done with them.

-STS

 

As this risk of repeating my post from another thread this sounds similar to what they do in Ars Magica, only a bit less structured, and thus a bit harder to game.

In that RPG magic is studied as a group of techniques (create, destroy, control, etc.) and forms (fir, water, air, plant, animal, etc.) and all spells are a combination of a technique and form. To cast your roll the appropriate technique+ form against a difficulty, but in BRP that would probably translate to rolling against both skills per the Wizardry rules, with a doifficulty modfier based on the power (or the magic point cost) of  the effect.

 

Arms MAgica had two main types of spellcasting. Formulaic magic aka spells, were tried and true abilities that were written down and studied, were (mostly) reliable and consisten in thier effects. But Ars Magic also had Spontaneous Magic where the  caster just stated what they wanted to do and the GM would determine the appropriate techniue and form to match, very much like what your suggesting. In Ars Magica Spontaneous Magic was a bit harder, less predicable, more fatiguing, and more likely to result in some strange results, especially if the caster botched the casting roll. In the game it was used mostly when a caster didn't know the right spell for a task, and tried to wing it. How successful it was depending on the just what the caster was trying to pull off and the skill of the caster. A powerful mage who was a master in creation and fire magic could easily use spontaneous magic to light a candle, torch, or  campfire pretty easily and probably wouldn't need to bother to learn any sort of "Ignite" spell, although considering their masteries, they probably already did lean such a spell long ago. In fact they probably made up and improved version of upon such a spell. The same mage might not find it so easy to spontaneously mend a broken bone.

 

Now that could port over to BRP and use one skill for magic, but I think breaking down into subcategories of some sort helps, both in keeping mages from being all powerful, and in helping to categorize effects and allow for magical specializations.  Using your skill analogy, the sciences are broken up into different skills (chemestry, biology, physics) and different vehicles and weapons tend to require different skills, so differentiating between, say fire magic and plant magic, would seem to make some sense. 

 

Anyway, just throwing that out there.

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Nokaion said:

This was a typo. The formula is Fighting skill/20 (rounded up).

That's much better. Still, I think a flat modifier for number of opponents is better. Either that or you should factor in the skill of the opponents. After all wouldn't two  90% foes be at least as difficulty as nine 20% foes?

My advice would be to: Use/adapt one of the older Attack/Parry Matrices. In old RQ (RQ1-3) a it was much easier to break weapons due to how the A?P Matrix worked and how parrying weapons took damage. This made the success level of the parry very important bot only for stopping an attack but for protecting the defending weapon (and possibly damaging the attacking weapon).  This would discourage highly skilled character from attacking groups as they could get their weapon damaged with that many parries. Likeiwse in the older versions a Dodge had to be of the same success level as the attack to succeed. That would keep the 100%+ dodges in check. 

 

Another option would be to continually increase the difficulty of the next prry/dodge. Either per attempt in a round, or by success level of the current defense. say the difficulty goesd up unless they get a special success of better. Then the guy with 100% still won't want to fight twenty guys at once.

58 minutes ago, Nokaion said:

I've made a Surrounded/Flanked rule, which means that if you get surrounded by an amount of enemies equal to your fighting skill/5 (rounded up) all your rolls to parry or dodge are hard (half value). But this rule would penalize people with less than 100% or 80% in fighting even more. (Creatures with double or triple the size of their enemies are exempt from this rule).

Fighting skill/5?

• First off that many people probably can't even attack one person at the same time. Not with most melee weapons. Try to get ten swordmen to attack the same guy and see how it work out. THey will mostly be in in others way, because 90% of the bodies out there belong to one of their allies.
• Secondly, how would anyone know what that magic number of opponents would be? For instance say you got 20 opponents ganging up on one guy, but the guy has 105% skill, so the gang up doesn't work at all.

I thin you'd be better served here by giving the gang modifier based entirely the size of the gang, not the skill of the defender (otherwise it just exacerbates your problem with high skilled characters). Personally I'd go with two foes is difficult, four is very difficult.  Of course I cut my teeth on RQ, where was for highly skilled warriors (RuneLords) not to taken on multiple foes as that negated most of their skill advantages. Runelords had retinues so that they could take the enemy apart one on one, not have "a fair chance" taking on a group by themselves. 

 

Dog Star? You can't be Sirius.

It looks pretty good in hard copy, although maybe the glossy paper is a little too reflective on camera to do it justice.

 

 

P.S. Hey that's Altair. No Altair IV (anymore)?

 

44 minutes ago, conajofa said:

For people that know about Legend of the Five Rings [ @svensson ], Minor Schools are my approximation to the Paths in contrast to the Schools. But I will admit Minor Schools still don't convince me, but it can be my perfectionism kicking in.

If you want to distinguish between the two, you You could use Ryo or Bujutsu (Science or Study of War) for School and Budo (Way or Path of War) for the minor schools. 

3 hours ago, svensson said:

@conajofa @Atgxtg

Thanks for being understanding. My wife tells me that I can come across as arrogant when I'm trying to be polite. /shrug

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

 

Don't worry, it looked to me like a communication error. At least you didn't say her dress was colorful. That is was a diplomat say to a Japanese woman at a social at an embassy party. Unfortunate he attempted to say it in Japanese, and the Japanese word for colorful is very similar to a Japanese word not used at diplomatic events. So compared to that - your golden.

 

  

3 hours ago, conajofa said:

ESL, so probably a mistranslation of "Cortesano"

It's not a mistranslation, but an example of how society and language changes over time.

 

Originally the word courtesan mean a female courtier, that being a person who attends a powerful person of status' (i.e. a noble) court, and was some sort of retainer, knight, or in the case of a female, a lady of the court. The word was borrowed into English where overtime, as the definition of a powerful person of status shifted, so did the role of a lady who attends one. Geisha is somewhat similar in the artistic and social skills requires, but lacks the social stigma that is attached in the West. Mistress is also similar. The word courtesan is somewhat archaic today, and is mostly used as a polite way to refer to a member of  the oldest profession. 

 

So the word does/did mean what you thought it meant, but it has a secondary meaning in English that is much better known. 

 

3 hours ago, PauliusTheMad said:

That sounds and looks like a mighty useful tool indeed!

Maybe. The original idea was to allow me to stat up a lot of things at one go by finding a similar creature and then plugging in the difference in size. I use the same approach for statting up lots of vehicles and weapons too. But you do have to go over the final results to look for problems. A Woolly Mammoth isn't exactly the same as a scaled up Elephant, but a scaled up Elephant is a good start. And using the cube-sqaure law and the creatures mass will get you in the right ballpark. 

 

We were certainly getting lots of dinosaur stats, including stats for several species of allosaurus. It's a pity we didn't finish the book.  Here's a excerpt.

Allosaurus (Epanterias) amplexus

Average Length: 12 m

Average Weight: 2 tonnes

Diet: Carnivore

Period Extant: Late Jurassic

Characteristic	Roll	Average
STR	3D6+45	55-56
CON	3D6+28	38-39
SIZ	3D6+40	50-51
INT	3	3
POW	3D6+2	12-13
DEX	3D6+6	16-17

 

Move: 8

Hit Points: 45

Damage Bonus: +6D6

Fatigue: 94

Armor: 12 points thick scales

Attacks:

Weapon	SR	Attack%	Damage
Bite	5	65	2D6+6D6
Claw	8	55	1D8+6D6
Kick	8	55	2D6+6D6

Notes:

Skills: Skill 1, Skill 2 etc etc

Optional Statistics

Location	D20		AP/HP
	Missile	Melee
Tail	01-02	01-02	12/15
R. Leg	03-05	03-05	12/15
L. Leg	06-08	06-08	12/15
Abdomen	09-11	09-11	12/18
Chest	12-15	12-15	12/18
R. Claw	16	16	12/12
L. Claw	17	17	12/12
Head	18-20	18-20	12/15

 

Allosaurus europaeus?

Average Length: 7 m

Average Weight: 1000 kg

Habitat: Large, seasonally dry island with open woodlands.

Diet: Carnivore

Period Extant: Late Jurassic

 

Characteristic	Roll	Average
STR	3D6+40	50-51
CON	3D6+23	33-34
SIZ	3D6+32	42-43
INT	3	3
POW	3D6+1	11-12
DEX	3D6+7	17-18

 

Move: 9

Hit Points: 38

Damage Bonus: +5D6

Fatigue: 84

Armor: 10 points thick scales

Attacks:

Weapon	SR	Attack%	Damage
Bite	5	60	2D6+5D6
Claw	8	50	1D6+5D6
Kick	8	50	1D10+5D6

 

Notes: At this time the European archipelago was very close to North America, and whether this is distinct from all known Morrison Allosaurus species is not certain.

Skills: Skill 1, Skill 2 etc etc

Optional Statistics

Location	D20		AP/HP
	Missile	Melee
Tail	01-02	01-02	10/13
R. Leg	03-05	03-05	10/13
L. Leg	06-08	06-08	10/13
Abdomen	09-11	09-11	10/16
Chest	12-15	12-15	10/16
R. Claw	16	16	10/10
L. Claw	17	17	10/10
Head	18-20	18-20	10/13

 

Allosaurus fragilis

Average Length: 8.5 m

Average Weight: 1.7 tonnes

Habitat: Short wet season, otherwise semiarid with open

floodplain prairies and riverine forests.

Diet: Carnivore

Period Extant: Late Jurassic

 

Characteristic	Roll	Average
STR	3D6+44	54-55
CON	3D6+27	37-38
SIZ	3D6+38	48-49
INT	3	3
POW	3D6+2	12-13
DEX	3D6+6	16-17

 

Move: 9

Hit Points: 44

Damage Bonus: +5D6

Fatigue: 92

Armor: 10 points thick scales

Attacks:

Weapon	SR	Attack%	Damage
Bite	5	65	2D6+5D6
Claw	8	55	1D8+5D6
Kick	8	55	2D6+5D6

 

Notes: The remains the genus Allosaurus and its species

are based on are not adequate, so taxonomic designations

are not certain. All Morrison Allosaurus have usually been

lumped into this species, but there is considerable

diversity among the specimens, especially in the

length/height ratio of the skull, and it is improbable that

any one species spanned the 7 million years or more of

the Morrison. A lower Morrison skull and skeleton may

be a juvenile A. fragilis

Skills: Skill 1, Skill 2 etc etc

Optional Statistics

Location	D20		AP/HP
	Missile	Melee
Tail	01-02	01-02	10/15
R. Leg	03-05	03-05	10/15
L. Leg	06-08	06-08	10/15
Abdomen	09-11	09-11	10/18
Chest	12-15	12-15	10/18
R. Claw	16	16	10/12
L. Claw	17	17	10/12
Head	18-20	18-20	10/15

 

Allosaurus unnamed species

Average Length: 8.5 m

Average Weight: 1.7 tonnes

Habitat: Short wet season, otherwise semiarid with open

floodplain prairies and riverine forests.

Diet: Carnivore

Period Extant: Late Jurassic

 

Characteristic	Roll	Average
STR	3D6+44	54-55
CON	3D6+27	37-38
SIZ	3D6+38	48-49
INT	3	3
POW	3D6+2	12-13
DEX	3D6+6	16-17

 

Move: 9

Hit Points: 44

Damage Bonus: +5D6

Fatigue: 92

Armor: 10 points thick scales

Attacks:

Weapon	SR	Attack%	Damage
Bite	5	65	2D6+5D6
Claw	8	55	1D8+5D6
Kick	8	55	2D6+5D6

 

Notes: This has been placed in A. atrox, which is based

on inadequate remains. By far the most common

theropod in the Morrison, some Allosaurus species shared

their habitats with Ceratosaurus and Torvosaurus. There

may be more than one Allosaurus species in the middle

Morrison. The classic nontyrannosaur large theropod.

Skills: Skill 1, Skill 2 etc etc

Optional Statistics

Location	D20		AP/HP
	Missile	Melee
Tail	01-02	01-02	10/15
R. Leg	03-05	03-05	10/15
L. Leg	06-08	06-08	10/15
Abdomen	09-11	09-11	10/18
Chest	12-15	12-15	10/18
R. Claw	16	16	10/12
L. Claw	17	17	10/12
Head	18-20	18-20	10/15

 

 

 

 

 

 PM me an email address and I'll send you the spreadsheet and you can try it out for yourself. If it proves useful I might just upload the sheet to the forums.  

33 minutes ago, conajofa said:

. So, for example, if a player is in School A and then later also learn about School B but School B has similar skills to School A, then he automatically increase in Rank in the school.

RQ2 had a rule for converting over similar skills (like say from Broadsword to Scimitar) where you could covert the skill over at half cost/training time. Something like that might be better than just automatically increasing in rank. You could have them improve twice as fast (2d6 instead of 1D6) to reflect the similarities.

If you are going to go with school feats and such, you might want to look at Mythras. Mythras had fighting styles rather than weapon skills, and has special abilities for characters with high combat skills. 

 

Another approach:

• Each school covers several related skills.For instance a school of kenjtsu (swordmanship) might teach Sword, Iaijutsu (Fast Draw), Dodge, Etiquette, and Poetry.
• When a character rolls to improve skills trained at the school,  add 1/10th their school skill to their improvement rolls (so they will improve faster from belonging to a school).
• Students will get a certain amount of free training in school related skills  each month equal to 1/5th their school skill, which can be saved up.
• Possibly add 1/10th school skill to their base chance in the rschool elated skills as well?
• A school could have one or more special techniques that become available at higher school ratings. These could be a combat special (like in Mythras), a magical effect like a spell, or even a Ki Skill from Land of the Ninja. Naturally for Rokukgan these would be those that fit a particular school. 

,

 

 

That is somewhat reminiscent of Ars Magica.

It that RPG magical power (Vim) can come in multiple forms, say to a type of spell (usually a form, i.e. air, fire, water, earth, animal, plant, body, mind, image, a raw magical power).  Also different sources of magical power (magic, faerie, divine, infernal) work differently, and interfere with each other, and sometimes bleed over into each other. . A mage can collect magical energy and either use it or store it (depending on their abilities). Most covenants of magi form near a source of magical power that they can tap for thier own uses. POW that is tied to a specific purpose can be very useful to a mage working on projects in that area. For example a mage who was strong in plant magic might benefit from being near a faerie forest, as a magical faerie plant might how POW that he could tap. 

Casting if done by combining their skill in a technique (Create, Destroy, Control, Change, Perceive) with one of the Forms I mentioned above and rolling that against a spells difficulty. In BRP terms, this would be similar to RQ3 Sorcery/BRP Wizardry and rolling against the lower of the two skills.

 

But not that much different.

 

So pretty much like Mugen said, it's Magic the Gathering. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

So how do you get the magic to power stuff? For instance, if a human wizard finds a tome of elish spells (Gold), how does he get gold magic to power the spells that require gold magic? 

In BRP POW has no affiliation, it just is. But with colors will each caster devote themselves to a single color,  and their power gets that affiliation? Or can they be affilated to multiple colors (and if so what the point of the colors). Are there schools that teach spellcasters special techniques to attune their magic? The cloest we have to this in BRP is the cult affiliations in RQ.

I'm not knocking it, I'm  just trying to figure out how this would work in game for the player characters. 

 

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

Does that mean White mixed with any other color makes a pale color ? Pale Blue, Pale Yellow, Pink, Grey ? Same with Black : Dark Blue, Dark Yellow, Dark Red ?

Yeah, if the OP wants to go with that idea. That way mages could get some clue about a spell by the aura it gives off. So if you see a spell with a dark yellow (mustard?) color aura you know it some sort of mix of elf/faerie magic and infernal magic. . A healing spell could be palet green (or pale grey) and so on. That could be a cool form of shorthand communication to spellcasters. 

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

To be honest, this 5 colors system sounds a lot like Magic:the Gathering to me (and predates it by more than a decade), but I think it's easier to know where each spell goes in M:tG. In part because there's literally thousands of examples in...

That's exactly what I thought, except some of the colors are different. Still, I think the core concept is sound, that is subdividing the spells by their effects. Ars Magica did something similar with Techniques and Forms. Come to think of it Ars Magica's spell domains (Magical, Faerie, Infernal, Holy) are also similar, but concered more with the source of  a spell rather than the effect. 

Oh, I just stumbled across something on my hard drive that might help. Way back in the early days of the BGB a couple of us got together to do a dinosaur book. While the project got stalled due to other things (a move and change of jobs), I did make up a spreadsheet for it to help scale up and modify creatures. I called it the critter Fitter!. You plugged in a existing creature and then scaled it to the size you wanted and it would scale mass attributes, natural weapons, other  game stats, and the dice required (you could customize the dice used, say from D6s to D8s for Chaos creatures). You could adjust armor based on a multiple of the damage bonus. It was a bit crude, but it worked, and did most of the "heavy lifting". It looked like this:

 

I could clean it up a little and make it available if it would help.

 

Just wondering but do some things overlap?

 

For instance what if a spellcaster were to raise a thrunderstorm. Technically, it's controlled natures, so it's Grey Magic, but it's unleashing elemental energies so it would be Purple Magic.  Is such magic in both colors? If not, what if the rule to determine what color.

If a spell can be in or require multiple colors then you might want to make your colors White (Silver), Blue, Yellow (or Gold), Red and Black so that you can mix colors for spells that mix categories. So a spell that is both Yellow and Blue would be Green, and so forth. 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, RedCrestedSlayer said:

Got it, so, my main question is if I wanted to start building from the ground up is that a way to do it for 'realistic' stats and then change it from there if these creatures don't conform to normal laws? i.e. if I make a SIZ 4 creature, they'd have something like STR 8 as an average?

Yeah, most creature will have an average STR  within 5-8 points of their SIZ- basically what Joerg just said about having a chance to lift itself. Real world creatures probably wont vary by more than 16-20 points. Now you can do whatever you want to with the writups, but you are also going to need to account for anything weird. For instance if you modify a fruit fly to have STR 50 you'll have to explain why they aren't snapping people in half, or maybe they are snapping people in half. They'd probably need a lot of calories for those muscles too. Those muscles would probably add a lot of mass (well a lot for a fly) so they probably would have to flap like a humming bird to fly.

Just what you can get away with, depends on how well you can justify things, and as Jeorg noted above, some of that depends on if you are doing a realistic or fantasy setting.  It helps if you know a little about science, animal behavior and such (a 25 ton dragon is probably going to need to eat something, probably something big or several somethings), but really, you can do just about anything, assuming you can make people believe it. 

Experiment with some existing species to see how it works out. Take a wolf, add some STR and SIZ,  give it 4 point scales and you got a decent critter for an alien planet or fantasy world. Take a cat and give it teleport, and it probably okay for the fantasy world, but needs a bit more justification for a sci-fi setting (it would probably need to be intelligent and/or have mental powers). 

 

Generally speaking minor changes are easy to pull off (no one will probably even notice a SIZ 4 critter with 8 STR) but more drastic changes will be more obvious and might require more/better justification (SIZ 4 creature with 16 STR) or downright impossible to get players to buy into (without laughing). Like that STR 50 fruit fly. Magic helps a lot here.

 

 

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

Played and GMed it. If you have a set of RQ3, just use that. Otherwise use BRP & The Magic Book: https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/82071/The-Magic-Book (which has the all RQ3 magic and is still available see https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/role-playing/systems-versions/ for the relationship.).

 

"He got all of that one! It's outta here!!"

The Magic Book does solve the magic system difficulties. 

 

 

I think I should point out the OP's question was if "BRP was a good fit for Land of the Ninja?", not "Can I use LotN with BRP?."

It's kinda of like using a Cthulhu Invictus scenario with BRP Rome or Mythic Rome. Sure you can do it, but obviously there is going to be Cthulhu Mythos stuff in the adventure that won't be in BRP Rome or Mythic Rome, that will only make sense if you are familiar with Cthulu Invictus and CoC. 

 

A lot of this will come down to just what a GM want's to use from LotN:

• Chargen , weapon stats (which you mostly don't need as BRP covers them), cult write ups,  divine, spirit and sorcery magic,  ship stats, and economics are all for RQ3 and wouldn't port over directly to BRP. 
• Names, Homelands, New Skills, Ki Skills (although some of the actual skills are different), Social Castes, Clan Structure, HON, Drinking Rules, Ninja Skills, Ninja Equipment, most creature stats, and the scenarios probably would port over directly.(except for the magic).