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Yeah, depending on where you were from you could be adding a few points or even a few dice (2D4) to some stats. Strombringer 1E was not all that balanced-probably due to Ken St. Andre. Like T&T a character could wind up completely outclassed. Sorcerers in particular were so powerful that other characters had little chance against one.

The old James Bond RPG used to do this. In that RPG your roll would generate a Quality Rating, similar to RQ/BRPs Success Level. QR1 was the best result (1/10th success chance), QR2 the next best (1/5th), QR3 (1/2 success chance) and QR4 was a marginal success. Now in that RPG just how well you accomplished something, weapon damage, etc. was tied to that QR result. I'd suggest making the half result a normal success and call the other result a marginal or acceptable success. The thing is, though, just what are the benefits going to be to rolling under half, compared to a normal roll?

Relax, it's not like the SAN was doing you any good.

Oh, and to clarify things a bit. I'd just use the 2D6+6 for PCs and keep the NPCs at 3D6. If everybody has heroic stats than it all just balances out at the higher stats become the new norm, and then nobody really has heroic stats.

Hi Chogokin, I think I can help to explain the history of the attributes. Originally, there was RuneQuest. RuneQuest used a 3D6 scale for human attributes, much like most other FRPGs at that time (D&D). Since Strombringer and Call of Cthulu were derived from RQ (or, to be more accurate, the 16 page BRP booklet was derived from RQ, then used as the basis for Chaosium's other RPGs). Then, around 1982, Chasoium produced the Worlds of Wonder boxed set. WoW was a very simpled set of 3 RPGs that gave a basic fantasy, Superhero and SciFi setting by expanding upon the BRP booklet. Now to make the characters a bit more heroic, especially for Superworld, 2D6+6 attribute rangers were introduced. Also, to deal with situations such as super strong characters lifting and throwing big objects such as trucks and tanks, SIZ values were given for various objects. WoW led to the Superworld boxed set, released in 1983. Superworld gave a formula that allowed people to work out just what SIZ an object of a given mass would be. This formula matched up with the SIZ values given for objects in WoW, and with the new average SIZ of 13 (2D6+6). Also in 1983, Chaosium produced RuneQuest 3. Since RQ3 was going to be more of a generic RPG, not tied to Glorantha, some changes were made to make the game more generic. RQ3 also incorporated the new SIZ values from Superworld, with a few alterations at the extreme values. This was probably done partly to expand the SIZ scale to allow for animals and races that were smaller than a human, which was hard when the minimum human SIZ was 3. A minimum SIZ of 8 gave them more wiggle room to work with and could allow for a mouse, cat and dog to have difference SIZ stats. It also helped with giving PCs a higher hit point total, and made races suck as Ducks and Hobbits a bit more durable. Now at the same time, the decision was made to do the same with INT. I suspect that was probably so they could add fixed INT scores to animals to make them more viable as familiars. Since then, Chasoium have kept and used a variant of the Superworld/RQ3 SIZ table (with errors) in most of their RPGs, and have eventually changed INT and SIZ to 2D6+6 in CoC and Stormbringer/Elric! Hope that helps. BTW, if you want more heroic character's I suggest just going with 2D6+6 for everything rather than 4D6 drop lowest. That way you are assured that the dice wont sick someone with a with 3 or 4 stat.

But that's not morale, but intelligence. Being smart enough to know when to run away isn't the same as turning tail and running in fear.

A rough table might look something like this: Recoil/Weight STR 1.1 1 1.2 2 1.3 3 1.4 4 1.5 5 1.7 6 1.8 7 2.0 8 2.2 9 2.4 10 2.6 11 2.8 12 3.1 13 3.4 14 3.7 15 4.0 16 4.4 17 4.8 18 5.2 19 5.7 20 6.2 21 6.7 22 7.3 23 8.0 24 8.7 25 9.5 26 10.4 27 11.3 28 12.3 29 13.5 30 14.7 31 16.0 32 17.4 33 19.0 34 20.7 35 22.6 36 24.7 37 26.9 38 29.3 39 32.0 40 34.9 41 38.1 42 41.5 43 45.3 44 49.4 45 53.8 46 58.7 47 64.0 48 69.8 49 76.1 50 83.0 51 90.5 52 98.7 53 107.6 54 117.4 55 128.0 56 139.6 57 152.2 58 166.0 59 181.0 60 To use the table you'd find the recoil value of the weapon, and read across to get the required STR. Gun weight could also be factored in on the table and subtracted from the required STR. Things like using two hands (probably worth a 8 point reduction), bipods, tripods and all that could be assigned recoil modifiers which further reduce the STR requirement. For example, let's say someone was firing a 9mm (9x19) +P round ((115gr@ 1250 fps) from a 1.5 lb pistol. According to Chuck Hawk's page the Recoil is rated at 7.3ft-lbs (that already factors in the gun weight). 7.3 is a STR of 23 on the table, so a normal human is going to get a recoil penalty. A strong person (STR 15) using two hands (-8 recoil) could control the recoil. Now, using this method if somebody were to load those +P rounds into a 2lb pistol, he could reduce the recoil down 3 STR points (due to the greater weight) to only STR 20. Likewise if somebody were to load those rounds into a 8 pound SMG, we could use the table to see that the recoil should drop by 19 points, and be very controllable (for single shots).

Oh, that's easy. Just look up the recoil energy on the SIZ table as if it were a weight or mass. That way recoil would be on the same scale as STR. But, since recoil force is pretty low (ususally less that 15 ft-pds or 7 kg) you'd need an offset of some sort.Basically, the SIZ table follows a x2 mass = +8 SIZ progression (so each +1 STA is about a 9% increase). So all you'd need to do is figure out what you think is a good value for one weapon and then use the doubling +8 progression to get the values for all the other weapons. We did something like that awhile back to determining the lethality of real word poisons. Now to make this work, you'd need to factor in the mass of the weapon, too. If you look at the Chuck Hawks data, you'll see that some weapons that have greater energy have less recoil than some lighter weapons just because of the added mass.

Yeah, and why it'sprobably best to simply recoil a bit. Have stocks and bracing apply a modifier, and possibly reduce the bonus for folding stocks. But a game like BRP would probably need a few changes to make automatic weapons work out reasonably right.

Not it won't. The stock used will not INCREASE the recoil force. At worse it will still REDUCE recoil somewhat it due to the added mass. What the "wobbly" stocks do is make bracing a weapon less effective.And I say bracing a weapon is worth more than 1 point of STR. An average person firing a SMG two handed is going to be able to handle recoil much better than a strong person firing the SMG one handed.

Autofire usually makes you less accurate-it depends on how fast the weapon cycles, how much recoil the weapon has, and what kind of support the weapon has to help deal with the recoil. But automatic fire increases the number of shots fired (yeah, I know, duh) which in turns results in a greater chance of hitting the target. So something like 5 shots at 20% can have a higher chance of getting a hit than say one shot at 50% (And they do, about a 67% chance of getting at least one hit). And it's actually a bit more complicated still, since there are usually a few shots in a burst that don't really have much chance of hitting-especially with longer bursts.But overall someone firing a burst is more likely to get a hit than someone firing one shot.

Actually, there doesn't. That's a myth. All you need is some niche protection (So the players feel they contribute something), and a heavy bias in the PCs favor (since few campaigns can last of the PCs die off all the time). Yup. You only can really "balance" characters that have similar classes, skills gear, and most importantly, players. It doesn't work that way. In RQ/BRP/etc. you don't add that in "after the fact" The Base skill score is your starting chance to use a weapon or shield. If your skill gets raised above the base score of a weapon/shield, then you don't add in the difference if your score is higher than the base score of the weapon being used. So if somebody started with a buckler (say 5% base chance per your example) and later raised their shield skill to 40%, then it would be 40% with any shield, and wouldn't increase just because they picked up a target shield or a tower shield later on. The higher base chances for the bigger shield just mean they are easier to use, initially. In most cases this makes the differences in base percentages between different weapons under the same skill moot fairly quickly- usually before the 30% level. In fact, if a GM wanted to be technical, there is a rule in some versions/editions of the rules that actually reduce someone's skill if they switch to a different/unfamiliar weapon in combat. That can work. Just what options you have available to use depend a bit on which version of the game you are running (although it's not impossible to port over chargen stuff from one version of the game to another-it's mostly compatible. Personally I think the best ways to limit starting characters skills are: 1) Limit how many points they have to spend ('cuz if they only have 50 or 100 points they are less likely to use them all on ONE skill) 2) Set a cap such as "no skill above 75%" or some such. (Works like charm, if a bit artificial. Those with good modifiers just hit the cap quicker and have more free points to spend elsewhere) 3) Go with Nicks suggest of "max X%" to any one skill.(Also works, but can give the GM some surprises if somebody has some really good modifiers. I once has a Aldryami PC with really high INT, DEX and STR (well, good for an Elf), and would up with an ATTACK modifier over 20%. That might give you some headaches, especially if you set a fairly low skill add limit. 4) Just tell the players what sort of skill range you are looking for and ask them to build their characters to fit in that range (works great with most players,)

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about skill caps. I can't really think of any time where a GM used one, at least during the start of a campaign. I might have seen someone do something when creating experienced characters to add to an existing campaign, but then it was along the lines of "no skill over 75%" or some such. Otherwise it really ins't an issue. RQ isn't like D&D where every character has to to be "balanced". BTW, What system are you converting from?

Could be, but I'm not sure if it is necessary. Since the game mechanic uses a resistance roll, you kinda get that effect built in.

Exactly, by possessing/attaching itself to a body the Spirit becomes vulnerable to being separated from that body by the aptly named "Sever Spirit" and, as noted above, that is how Death is defined in Glorantha. At least that is how it logically seems to be how it work work, to me. At least I could see it working that way. Now the interesting thing would be just where a severed Spirit would go. For living characters we have all that cult affiliation stuff to rely on but where does a disease spirit go? Does it go back to the spirit plane, or could it hang around and try to "repossess" (sorry couldn't help the pun) the victim? Perhaps that is why they use Spirit Combat to reduce the Spirits MPs?

Yeah, something like a resistance table roll would probably match up better with the rest of your system- and make Healing 1, 2, 4, 5, etc. useful.

Well that's a big change from the normal rules. Not being able to heal other during combat greatly reduces the usefulness of healing magic.

JUst hope that your aim is good. Don't want to kill the wrong spirit.

Funny, I could see them using it to cure disease (killing the disease spirit) but not for healing (battle or otherwise), or assisting pregnancy (you mean childbirth, right?)

If you are going to use a fixed amount of healing per injury level, I suggest that you tie the amount required based on the hit points of the character (maybe 25% of their total HPs). That way characters with a lot of hit points don't wind up with bargain healing. This would become a problem for characters than can control a large creature. Someone with a warhorse, pet bear or some such could easily afford to pump 3 points into healing whenever the creature got hurt to bring it back into the fight.

it wasn't clear-at least to me. Maybe becuase in some RPGs they do something similar after a battle to see how banged up a character is after the battle. Often an injury that doesn't present much of a problem during a fight can become serious or even life threatening after the fight. Stuff like cracked ribs or minor cuts getting infected and going septic. Alos, how does first aid or magic work with this variant? Both in terms of during the fight and for healing up afterwards? Since we don't get or track damage points we don't know how many points of Heal to cast.

It looks like all you have to do is roll a fumble. I don;t see anything specially in the "How Injured Are You?" section that says you have to be hit or fail a resilience check. It just says "at the end of the fight, make a CONx5 check". So, technically, a character could make his resilience checks or not even get hit and die from a fumbled CON roll. Unless I'm missing something somewhere in the text. Personally, I think the character should at least get hit. I could see something like an easy CON roll for those who got hit but make their checks, and possibly even a difficult CON roll for those who either did really badly on their resilience rolls or who got an "overkill" effect (i.e. damage beats resilience by 10+ for an "autofail").I'm not all that committed to the latter, but do think the "must be hit/damaged" thing should be spelled out.

Yeah, I think the second approach better reflects how things would go normally. In most versions of the rules, Shouldn't that be 1d8+1+1d4? for a max of 13?, up to a 22 on an impale? But otherwise, I agree that the second method seems to match up more closely to what would happen in most versions/variants of BRP/RQ. A 22 point hit through armor would most likely drop just about anything. In RQ a dragon could fight on for a few more rounds with CONx1% rolls, but you don't really need that. BTW, You might want to fine tune the "how Injured are You?" section a bit to reflect how severe the resilience rolls a character had to make. It would seem kinda silly for someone who took only a minor hit (or, if I read the rules correctly, no damage at all) to drop dead. In addition to being a bit unrealistic, it is probably going to cause a lot of PCs to die prematurely, since most PCs with have a 2-3% chance of fumbling. Maybe something like a First Aid roll could bump the CON roll to easy or maybe just bump up the result a success level (maybe 2 for a special,)?

Yes, that's why I think using a portion of hit points works. In RQ a hit that gets 30 points past armor is going to be a big problem for a dragon. The same in Strombringer and most other versions of BRP. Note that if you're worried about human scale opponents you could factor in some sort of fixed add, say 6 points to keep their resilience scores the same while reduce the resilience scores for larger things. You might also want to do away with the automatic results on the resistance tables, and go with the 5%/95% min/max rolls (or even 1%/99%). That way a character always has some chance of dropping a big creature, and a human always has some chance of soaking a hit from a big creature. Another option might be to alter specials so that they don't increase damage but instead reduce resilience. If an impale halved resilience then impales wouldn't be much different to people, but capable of dropping bigger monsters.

Except BRP is a trimmed down version of RQ, and most versions of those game mechanics either use hit locations or a major wound mechanic. Without such a game mechanic it's pretty hard to drop even an average human with one hit. With most weapons the attacker will need to get a impale and/or do really well with his db. Of course two or three hits will drop just about anybody. But since your resistance tabel mechanic doesn't have any sort of cumulative effect you wind up with big critters just shrugging off injuries, with no effect.