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I'm curious about D.M. Ingram's RQ-III NPC generator. I wonder what it was, when it was written, what language, and on what PC. I did have a basic program for figuring out category modifiers, damage bonuses and such for RQ3 for my Tandy Pocket Computer and later for my Atari Portfolio. I wonder just how sophisticated a NPC generator could have been back then.

Q3 also had a form of POW gain in that characters earned some Divine Magic in chargen. The idea was this was POW gained by membership in a cult that was then spent to buy Divine Spells. If I recall correctly in RQ2 a character could die by spending his last POW point on a spell, even on a temporary spell (Battle Magic), while RQ3 replaced the term temporary POW with agic Points and running out of MPs only resulted in unconsciousness. Without magic or PSI, POW can become a lame duck- especially if you play without Category Modifiers ad or STAT rolls. It probably should be relevant in things like resistance to hypnosis, interrogation and mind altering stuff.

Yeah, there are aspect of each game that are intriguing. I'd like an RQ that was mostly RQ2-3, but with opposed resolution from Pendragon, and possibly % stats from CoC7. like the idea of having skills and stats on the same scale.

Didn't Chaosium use something like that for Foes (and Fangs)? It sure wasn't done on a laser printer though. Barely above dot matrix quality.I suspect back then somebody used some time on mainframe at some college to get that done. Or maybe they had a Kaypro?

How major an undertaking it would be would depend on just how comprehensive it was, and just how nice and fancy the user interface was. RQ is probably easier to do than a lot of other RPGs since, you don't have classes and level limits to consider.

Something like a magnetic dry erase board in a calendar layout springs to mind. Then you could give each character a token and it would "stay put" on the board, in the right place, magnetically. Hang it from a wall behind the GM and it should be fairly easy to use. You could even get printable magnetic sheets and print off custom counters for the PCs and major NPCs, and some sort of numbered generic counters for the mooks.

Interesting. There was something I wanted to try in order to simulate the sort of duels we see in films, but couldn't figure out what to use as "currency". Using Strike Ranks that way was inspired. How about wounds? I assume they would be treated like (or cause) fatigue? I'm going to have to take another look at the SRD.

That's intriguing. It looks like you are using SRs similar to how AD&D claimed Hit points were being used. It has possibilities. Are there ways to recover or otherwise raise your SR during combat? From ACME's Robotics Devision. Coyotes swear by (at at) them.

This looks interesting. I've noticed that quite a few things cause someone to "loose" Strike Ranks. Other than possibly affecting the turn sequence, do loss of SRs have other effects? For instance could someone lose his attack if his SR was reduced to 0 or less? Oh, and I think it's a cheap shot that the android weapons don't take any SRs to ready. Not even so much as 1SR to open a concealed panel, What company makes those things, and do they sell a printer?

That wouldn't make sense though. For one thing nearly every weapon has some sort of special in BRP, so it would make the matrix somewhat pointless. Secondly, if the special success superseded the matrix then impaling weapons become nearly impossible to defend against. Personally, I greatly prefer how RQ3 handled this. The attacker got his special success, but since parrying weapons/shields soaked damage based on their AP, you could still defend against an impale with a shield. You might end up with a sword or spear stuck in your shield, but it sure beats having it stuck in you.

How about if the attacker criticals and the defender rolls a normal parry? That would result in the attacker getting a special success and rolling the crush against the parrying weapon's hit points. Since the parrying weapon takes 4 damage from this situation, it seems that it's probably at risk of breaking from the crush. The problem is that BRP mixes several versions of the core rules together, not all of which is compatible, not to mentionincluding some bits that are dysfunctional, such as the combat matrix from Elric!

Yeah. That's one of the drawbacks of using abstract terms such as "damage" and "hit points" to handle combat and injuries. A pole ax might hit harder than a dagger and tends to cause more tissue damage, but realistically it isn't about quantity so much as quality. A well placed blow can be far more effective and deadly. But also realistically, most people will be out of a fight long before the die (run out of hit points). Nor do wound effects hit all at once or that people would know just how serious a wound is. In RPGs we tend to just go "3 points? okay." Ad then just sort of shrug off the fact that we've been injured.

See I don't just make this stuff up! Something along those lines has always been in each version of RQ/BRP/Stormbringer/Erlic/CoC/Pendragon/ElfQuest, etc. It's something that we mostly don't think about, since in the normal course of an adventure anything worth rolling for is usually worth an experience check-especially for starting characters. So most GMs get into the habit of always allowing a check and, over time, the whole GM agreement thing is forgotten. Eventually players think that any successful skill roll warrants a check. But GM approval, is in the rules, and can certainly curb any blatant skill check hunting.

I've occasionally seen it, but I find that when a player makes a habit of it it tends to backfire. Basically the player risks the consequences of failing/fumbling a lot more times in order to get the additional checks. Then there is the fact that the opposition will get more chances to roll the dice and get in a lucky hit, or when they become aware that someone is switch to a skill that they are inept at, exploit it. Technically that is how GMs are supposed to handle it by the RAW. A GM could simply view most skill check hunting as practice and allot practice hours rather than skill checks. Hmm, maybe even on a 1 for 1 basis.

I don't believe so, but then you run into the problem of players wanting to just hang around and study. Frankly, I thing the RAW is about as good a way to handle it as any of the alternatives. Basically, if you are worried about people skill check hunting just remind them that if the bad guys roll a crit and kill them while they are fumbling with thier third best weapon, well that's just too bad. If you really want to give the players something for using a skill repeatedly then you could use extra checks as a modifier to the % roll to improve the skill. Although if you do that I'd suggest going with a doubling progression just to avoid really high bonuses after a long session or battle.

Sure the scale. And in several ways. One possibly would be to add a modifier for the weapon. Another would be to use a multiplier. A dagger can do 12 point ts in RQ/BRP. Yeah, it requires a special or critical success but specials come up pretty often. And that's before modifying for damage bonus. It is artificial. The whole concept of damage and hit points is artificial. As far as how much damage weapons do, it's also somewhat artificial. In real life it is not about quantity of damage so much as quality. A 5 point chest hit isn't as dangerous as as a 2 point eye hit, despite the "higher damage" value. That's one of the drawbacks to a hit point system. A wounding system, as opposed to a straight hit point system could help too. In the variant I was working on, I did want to be able to scale things, and used a logarithmic progression for values. I also used a wound threshold system, where the severity of the injury was linked to how much the damage score exceeded the wound threshold. Now determining what kind of damage a weapon does is nice, but there is very little BRP for dealing with it. A sword that does 1D6+1 and a spear that does 1D6+1 are functionally the same in game terms. As far as things being annoying for people who are bad with maths- well, This variant isn't going to make things any worse. If they are playing BRP they are already capable of rolling a die and adding a modifier, since virtually every weapon in the game has some sort of damage add, not to mention db. BRP in general is going to cause problems for those people. The Resistance table, special and critical chances, spell effects, situational modifiers, skill category modifiers The game is rife with math. Matter of fact, the variant actually simplified a lot of the math, since it could handle opposed rolls and got rid of the resistance table, and the need to calculate critical and special chances. BTW, the concept of coming up with a way to reduce the math in BRP to help streamline play and make the system more accessible to those who are bad with math has merit. It's worth it's own thread to figure just what we could get rid of and how. Anybody else interested?

I agree. I've only seen a few players deliberately start changing weapons to try and get some extra skill checks, and it inevitably backfired on them.

I think you will still get that. In fact I think you will get more of it, since players will need more checks. By frivolous, I don't mean non-challenging. I mean that players will start purposely looking for ways to get more chances to make rolls rather than to resolve a situation. They might switch weapons, attempt some sort of called shot or other maneuver rather than go for a simple strike that could end the fight. They might even decide to provoke more fights in oder to get more chances to earn checks. Basically, by allowing more checks in a contest, and requiring more check to improve you give the player more incentive to go skill check hunting, and to switch weapons in melee rather than less. And the more often the dice are rolls the better the odds that a PC will end up on the wrong end of a special or critical.

Yeah, but realistically there really was no such thing as a "too-tough-to-hurt attacker." If they ignored somebody he'd just get time to aim a well placed shot. Something like KPhan2121's "double feint" type rule (ala Pendragon) seems about right here.

No, because I didn't use the standard roll low for critical and specials - it was a variant. Linking the damage to the tens digit also made it more skill dependent. I did use the 1's die for the hit location, eliminating another roll (1-2 = RL, 3-4 = LL, 5 = AB, 6-7 CH. 8= RA. 9 = LA 10 = HD) You could also shift hit location by trading off points from the tens die to the ones die. For example, if you rolled a 59 (5 points of damage to the Left Arm), you could trade off a point of damage to get a 4 point head hit.

What I did in a BRP variant was to tie the weapon damage to the 10s digit. Strength and weapon type was accounted for with a modifier. That way it reduced the number of die rolls (no damage roll needed), tied the different amounts of damage to gradients of success (the 10s die), and didn't add more math. The sharpened stick is actually quite effective.That's why it is still around. But I was thinking more along the lines of a dagger. In game terms it doesn't do as much damage as a heavier weapon, such as, say, a battleaxe, but it is probably more likely to actually penetrate the armor, especially with a thrust. Plus, whenever you end up with somebody being virtually immune to an attack gameplay gets weird. Characters will start to ignore the attacker.

I agree. I'm mostly in the fixed armor camp. Partially for those reasons and partially because it gives better PC survival. But, a variable armor roll does "make sense", especially since armor protection isn't always the "all or nothing" approach that comes with critical hits. Sometimes you hit a weak spot but not the weakest. You see many types of armor consist of various materials which might overlap in places, so the armor protection wouldn't be uniform. For instance, on a suit of gothic plate, there are two layers of plate on the chest, but other places (i.e. joints) are protected by cloth, leather and/or mail, while still other places have no real covering at all (eyes, although the visor/eyeholes make them hard to hit). So a variable armor roll does make sense. But, IMO it's usually just not worth the trouble. It can/has been done in other RPGs. The problem with doing so in RQ/BRP is that you wind up with situations where a weapon can never score a minor cut, or always ends up taking out a limb because of the way hit points work. Worse still, you also wind up with situations where somebody can never penetrate a certain type of armor with a certain weapon, without scoring a critical or special. And then there is the db to factor in. You can wind up with a situation where armor becomes too good, or no good at all.

I think this will lead to more skill check hunting rather than less. Since players will now need a lot more checks to improve they will simply try to use their skills more frequently. In my experience (sorry, too good a spot for a pun), I've found skill check hunting to be a non-issue. If the players start making frivolous rolls, then they don't get any checks. If they start making more non-frivolous rolls (i.e. switching weapons during combat) then they tend to open themselves up to the consequences when they fumble or when their "no-threat" opponent rolls that "lucky" (actually inevitable) critical. I've seen more than one player lose a character while trying out his "great idea" for faster improvement, and I have absolutely no sympathy for them. If you were in a real fight for your life would you prolong the fight, take a few more hits, and risk getting killed just so you can possibly improve faster in your secondary weapon? Would you do over it time and time again?

Sure it does, and for several reasons. First off it's possible to get a good hit on a well protection spot. Likewise, it is possible to score a glancing blow on a poorly protected spot. Then there is the fact that not all weapons would do the same amount of damage- a solid hit from a pole axe is probably going to hit harder than a solid hit from a dagger regardless of what armor the target has.

Good. The SR system is a good method for doing things. Its just that we are all very familiar with it and can pick apart it's weaknesses. That said, it could probably do with some minor tweaking here and there.