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But, as multiple checks are not part of the core RQ rules, you don't have to. Regarding 2 (I wish I knew how to break up quote boxes with the new format)- I don't see a problem with someone at high skill levels not improving that much. That's the whole point. BTW, where are you getting a 2D6% imrpvement from? That's twice the rate as from RQ3. Basically, once someone is a master at something improvement should be slower. Now the 90% guy is also getting check boxes easier, too.

The point is in regard to what method is best for the RQ ruleset. There's not problem with somebody porting over Improvement rolls or any other rule from some other RQ/BRP variant for their own campaign. I'm kinda fond of the skill check improvement used in Flashing Blades.

Possibly. But I think the bonus should probably cap at some limit, probably INT or category modifier.

1&3/ I don't think I quite follow you here. You are saddened that a character who is training uses the training rules? Oh, and it wasn't 2D6%. Now as far as Spirit Magic goes, I agree with you. I with Spirit Magicians could improve their skill scores with spells. 2/ There is a lot of fun to building a character up to rune level. Heck, most of my RQ campaigns were not set in Glorantha and didn't have any Rune Masters characters. The last few times I tried running my players in Glorantha they got toasted by the spirit magic. They were too podding and reactive, and usually ended up getting outclassed in magic due to poor timing. 4/ That's a doubled edged sword. No good GM wants or likes killing off PCs, but the alternative is usually far worse. If the players get the feeling that the GM is fudging things to promote their welfare, then they will play dumber and take greater and greater risks, secure in their GM provided script immunity. On the other hand, if you let a PC die here and there, the players usually smarted up and play better. In my area I have the rep as the GM most likely to kill off characters. I'm also the GM who has probably killed off the fewest PCs. Mostly because the players know that I won't save them, so they make an effort to save themselves. 5/ I think your decision to fudge heavily has influenced your view o how deadly the game is. If the GM keeps fudging the PCs survival then no, it won't be all that deadly. But that's not the system, that's the GM. 6/ I don't think I'd like giving out 1% free in skill after a skillin checked. I think it would accelerate the rate that combat skills would improve. In an adventure with a half dozen fights skill could improve by 5% before the experience rolls! Somebody might become a master swordman in no time. What I might consider is to allow multiple skill checks, and then let the PC roll multiple d6s for skill improvement and take the highest. But then I could also see higher skill scores requiring multiple checks to get an improvement roll.

And I think therein lies the fundamental conflict. If you prefer Mythas/RQ6 over RQ2/RQ3, then which system are you most likely to use if you were to run a Gloranthan RuneQuest campaign? RQ6, right? Now I prefer RQ3 to any version of RQ that has come out since. RQ2 has some nice stuff that didn't make it to RQ3, and in some ways is better suited towards a Glorathan camapign. So if I were to run a Glorathan RQ campaign I'd go with RQ2 or RQ3. Now if the new RQ were to copy rules over from RQ6, I think it would have an harder time trying to establish itself against RQ6, and probably not be considered the definitive RQ. But if it builds off of RQ2/3 then it can probably be considered an evolution of Chaosium's RuneQuest.

ooh, I kinda like humanistic magic. Especially with draconic magic already established. Makes me think that the various species could have their own unique magic systems.

Good point. Come to think of it most of the "legendary/mystical" stuff that martial artists do could be handled with the Spirit Magic, rules, and the Ki rules from LotN. A martial artists with Ironhand, Mobility, and Protection up is going to be able to pull off some really amazing stuff.

Lets see. First off, somebody does tell the player when they HAVE to make a dice roll-the GM. If the GM says make an attack roll, spot check, reistance roll, etc. then yes he is telling them to do so. Technically, it the GM doesn't require a roll then there was no roll. The guideline for what deserves a skill check is that the situation must be "stressful". So.. Yes, a character fighting an opponent who has skill scores 30% lower than his is still in danger. A critical or impale can be fatal even if the opponent is incompetent. This isn't D&D. Single hits from weak opponents can kill off experienced heroes. And dead characters tend to stay dead. That there is a very real and significant possibility of getting killed makes combat stressful pretty much all the time. No, you can't roleplay a skill to get a check. Because you can't roleplay your character's abilities, or lack thereof. You may personally be very good with a particular skill that your character isn't good at, or vice versa. A player who "made a dangerous training" wouldn't get a skill check, but would be able to take advance of the training rules. Yes, the Runelord would get a skill check. It probably won't do him much good, but that's another issue. if a player makes an "excellent and wisely use of a spell but not in danger" then if he receives a check depends on two factors. First off, was the situation stressful? A character might not be in any danger per say, but could still be in a stressful situation. Like maybe he could ruin a value item with a blown roll, or lose something of value. Basically there has to be some sort of significant consequences for failure. The second factor is wheather or not the spell can receive an experience check. In Chaosium's RuneQuest, Spirit ad Divine spells don't get experience checks. RuneQuest Combat is deadly. A GM might allow the PCs a chance to flee, but theres no guarantee that the opposition or the situation will allow it. And arrows travel a lot faster than running characters. Arrows are very deadly in RQ. Even if the GM allows the characters to flee, there is nothing to say that they will do so. Or that things will go the way everybody expects when they are supposed to stand and fight. I've seen highly experience characters fumble and kill themselves with their own weapons. Have you played much RQ? it's not like D&D. The encounters aren't as heavily biased in the PCs favor, and there is always a slight chance of things going horribly wrong for the PCs, and them it's usually too late to do something about it. For example, in one campaign I was playing in, in the very first combat, the GM rolled an 02 and got a critical hit on my brand new character. Luckily for me and the rest of the group (who would have had to deal with a doubleteam on one flank) I rolled a 01 to parry it. But without that critical parry I probably would have been dead, shortly followed by the rest of the group. Multiple checks during a (long) adventure are fine. The old RQ2/RQ3 rules basically state that you get to make improve rolls about one game week after "the adventure". When something takes a long time to play, like some sort of epic quest, then multiple improvement rolls are the way the rules work. There are even some examples of PCs making improvement rolls during travel in the rules.

Should players who do not attend regularly have parity? Generally speaking, parity isn't necessary in games where the PCs aren't playing against each other. What's important is that each PC has some meaningful way to contribute. BTW, this touches upon the question as to what function character advancement serves in the game. Is it a reward of some kind? If so then why should a player who doesn;t show up be rewarded? If it is a tool to promote character growth, then it gets a bit tricky. I for one, don't mind letting characters get training while they aren't adventuring. IMO it sort of makes sense. How much sort of depends on how much they are willing to spend, although I could see some issues if somebody shows up after a really long break. Dave. who dropped out after the first game session, returns after six years....

Hope they are quick about it. Bladesharp 10 only lasts for 5 minutes. Hmm, I wonder if Fireblade is an active spell in RQ4?

Can we disagree and debate about gaming without getting angry and insulting each other?

Yeah the demons are the biggest problem. In old SB demon weapons that did +4D6 or more were fairly easy for a summoner to make. The summoner built the demon on a pool of points equal to the sum of his attributes, and for demon weapons only had to put a couple of points in SIZ and 3D8 into POW. That usually left 60+ points free to be spent elsewhere, and the damage for demon weapons was 1D6 per 10 STR. As far as the skill ratings go, SB did cap at 100% (plus magical enhancements, if any), while Elric! goes over 100% and actually suggests starting PCs off at 100% or higher, so you might want to raise the skill scores for the significant NPCs in the adventures.

The poor choices were Which were radical changes. I think a third of the old RQers dropped off the Mongoose forums within two weeks of the games release, complaining about how various changes made to the ruleset were going to cause a domino effect, and lots of problems.

I don't agree with that. When a PC gets experience and improves, it's no reward, because in most RPGS the GM ups the level of opposition to compensate. So all that happens is a spiraling escalation. In a game like RQ that actually works against the players, since the greater to abilities of the opponents the greater the chance of a player getting killed by a lucky roll. And coming back from the dead isn't all that common in RQ.

Wh?\y?. I generally allow it. Going strickly by the rules, in order to get a check the character has to make the roll in a stress situation, and that means that the character is at risk. In RQ, it's just not worth risking two or three more chances of getting impaled, maimed or killed just for an extra skill check.

Okay, heres my replay to your comment on the pros and cons of skill checks vs. spent experience. I think you'll see we have very different views. Skill Check System Positive It rewards activity learning matches action It rewards actually doing things. Characters who do more can learn more. It can encourage skill diversification Pretty easy to administer. It's not hard to check off a box, or roll percentile dice. Negative Requires a good eraser Can (and will) wear out character sheets quickly. Points of Contention No Player control on character development. Since skill checks are gained in skills that are used, and the player usually decides what skills he is going to use, the player has a great deal of control over character development. If the player didn't want his character to improve in greatsword he shouldn't keep using one. One of 4 or 5 advancement mechanics in the game. Not really. The training, practice, and POW gain rules are basically the same game mechanic, slightly modified. Random. Not really. I've never seen a character improve is a random skill. It was always something he used. Now how quickly a character improves and at what increments are somewhat random, but why is that a negative? That's why everybody isn't a master swordman. Can be abused without proper gm'ing. Yup. definitely. Of course that's not a negative of the skill check system, but of RPGing in general. Anything can be abused without proper gm'ing. And I say that spent experience systems are just as open to abuse. Spent Experience System Positives What a lot of players expect and want. To be rewarded for showing up and playing. Negatives Can lead to players over specialising characters. Yup, in fact it actually encourages it, since spending an improvement point outside of a characters primary field of can result in the character falling behind and becoming vulnerable. It is a change from what we have. Yeah. Which is why any change really needs to be a solid improvement, over what's there. Throttles the rate as which characters advance. There just are enough improvement points to improve combat skills, perception skills, healing skills, and POW at a decent rate. Anyone who tires to cover them all is going to take forever just to get to mediocre. Leaves some big gaps in important areas. Since players can only improve a small number of skills they will invariably leave some vital skill unimproved. These can turn out to be Achilles heels, when the characters runs into something that happens to hit them in a weak area. Turns character advancement into a stick an carrot game with the GM. Basically, character improvement becomes all about pleasing the GM. Eliminates the ability to learn from training and practice. Points of Contention Player control of character development. First off I don't think that is all good. Secondly I don;t think it is all true. The Gm controls both the rate at which improvement rolls are doled out, and which skills need to be improved the most. A GM who rums a lot of ambushes will make perception skills very important and thus force the players prioritize those skills. A GM who runs a lot of combats will force the player to priotize combat skills-at the expense of everything else. Same with languages, social skills. magic or whatever. One system can covers all advancement. Not as written. There would need to be a way to earn IPs from training, and since POW is't on a % scale, it would need a different method. Not random players always rewarded. Why should character advancement be considered a reward? it isn't. Think about it. The character gets better, so the GM throws tougher opponents into the adventures, who have a better chance of critically and killing off the characters. Relatively simple to administer. Not any simpler than skill checks. Telling a player to put a check mark into a box during play isn't complicated, is it?

Seems fair to me. I'd cut & paste replies but haven't figured out how to do that on the forum yet. I used to know how, but Triff used to change the forum software several times a year. I miss the old

It's called levels of experience. Many people like them. Go check out D&D for their merits and drawbacks Seriously, an advancement system that is "evenly balanced between players" is a myth or joke. Why should all characters advance at the same rate? Should somebody who just sits like a lump and contributes nothing advance as fast as someone who is doing all sorts of things? The skill check advancement system has some flaws, but it sure beats any of the abstract, controlled and so called evenly balanced systems I've ever seen. Generally they are either so controlled that the players have little choice in what advances (i.e. D&D level), or so evenly balanced that characters are forced to become one trick ponies and you wind up what is essentially a class system in all but name, where players are afraid to "waste" improvement rolls on a skill that's outside their narrow focus. Pentallion has a point. Skill check hunting does get raised on a fairly regular basis, and does get shot down pretty quickly. In most cases, skill check hunting is a problem that is created and enpowered by the GM. Not necessarily intentionally so, but done so never the less. And since people are raising opinions, one of mine is that since we now have all sorts of versions and variant of RQ that have incorporated such divergent ideas such as GM allocated improvement rolls, action points, custom specials and critical hits, opposed rolls, etc. etc. could it be possible to have at least one version of RQ on the market with actual RuneQuest rules? The systems been changed, adapted, simplified, revised, re-envisioned, renamed, revised, resurrected, revamped. updated, altered, and adulterated in just about every way imaginable. By now, there should be enough variants to please just about anybody who wants to play something related to RuneQuest. Why not actually have the actual RuneQuest rules in print, and not just some variant system that swiped the name?

Well, I've known RQ for over three decades and I agree with them! I didn't even see anyone skill check hunting in combat until a situation cam eup where a PC had to check weapons for a legit reason. A guy with mace at 97% got disarmed and watched his mace fry out of his hands, over the railing and down several fights of stairs. Not wanted to get skewered, he did the only thing he could and picked up a 2H sword whose own he had killed a couple rounds earlier. Not great since, he couldn't use his shield. So he got lucky, dropped his foe and got a skill check. Another player thought that that was a neat way to "get double experience" and started doing it deliberately. I think he lasted two weeks playing around with a sword and shield at base percentages. It the extra round or two that the bad guys get while he was switching from greatspear to sword & shield that did him in. Since then, every so often somebody get the bight idea, and I haven't see one last a full month doing it. I'm not trying to kill them, mind you, but I roll open, and unparried crtics and impales are unforgiving.

What do you mean by " but not likely life-threatening unless I'm being a punitive, reactionary DM"? If the NPC rolls a critical do you fudge the results? And do the players know it? If I knew that I could get a "free" skill check I'd go hunting. And if you PCs are taking chances like that against Chaos monsters they deserve to go up in the explosion. I can almost see taking the risk if up against a 30% Trollkin. But Rurik can tell you how that can turn out. Considering how dangerous crits and impales are in RQ, taking another 2-3% chance for death/dismemberment just to pick up a skill check is stupid. Better to spend the extra week or two in town and pay for training.

LOL! I've see so many characters die off because of that thinking. Invariably, while the player is hunting checks, the NPC he's fighting is hunting heads -- and gets on, thanks to the extra round or three that the player gave him by going to a secondary (or worse) weapon

But if it's all Rune Magic, what about Draconic Magic? Or the Lunar Spirit-Sorcery hybrid?

More like an Orlanthi culture ruled by Malkonian Sorcerers who view the Orlanthi gods as lesser, supporting deities. Not the sort of thing that the people in Dragon Pass or Prax would do. The whole revisionist Glorantha has me wondering just why they couldn't get along with the Lunars, and join the empire.

That's kinda the point. Argath went on a big illuminated witchhunt, but was in fact (secretly) illuminated, himself. It wouldn't have worked out the same if people knew he was illuminated and accepted it. It would defeat the whole justification for going after the other illuminated beings.

Perhaps, but it doesn't fit in with Orlanthi culture. Now sorcerers are an accepted part of the Lightbringer pantheon. What next, are they illuminated, too?