Jump to content

Atgxtg

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    8,900

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    27

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Atgxtg

  1. Atgxtg
    It was a matter of knowing what I wanted to do with the character, and gearing my development towards that goal. I was playing a Grey Elf wizard with a high INT and DEX, who used a bow. Between my natural talents, chosen feats, magic items that meshed with my concept, the and spells I knew, I could keep any of my fellow party members at range, where I had a dominating advantage. Now, if I were dumb enough to stand there and trade blows with one of the "tanks" I'd have been dead meat, but I wasn't that dumb. As far as the game balance thing goes. Why won't those situations be fun for BMX Bandit? I think the problem is that people erroneously view the situation as a competition between player characters and that everybody's has to have the same number of pieces of candy, or somebody will be upset. That might be true if the players are six year olds but shouldn't matter with mature players. It would be like a superhero campaign where Batman complains to the GM that it it unfair that Superman can fly, is super strong, invulnerable, etc, etc., while he doesn't have any superpowers at all! I don't even think you need "Spotlight Balance". Not everybody wants to be in the spotlight equally. They just need ways to make meaningful contributions to the game. What "game balance" really does is just force everyone to contribute to the campaign in basically the same way- and are all centered around combat. Because that all that D20 is about. Combat and character advancement geared towards combat. It causes problems, too, since opponents and battles are judged more in terms of CRs and levels than in terms of planning and tactics. .
  2. Atgxtg
    I mentioned D&D not Pathfinder. But even in Pathfinder CR is still mostly a joke,
  3. Atgxtg
  4. Atgxtg
    Yuk. I absolutely detest the approach. I find it "wrong" on so many levels. If I were a player I'd drop out of the campaign. Why bother rolling for improvement if you are going to do something like this? You;d be better off just handing out a handful of percentage points each week, avoiding the rolling and just having a "balanced" rate of advancement.
  5. Atgxtg
    Good point,. I agree. Even in supposedly "balanced" systems such as D&D, some very important factors are not considered. For instance D&D completely ignores attributes and mostly ignores equipment when balancing out PCs and CRs.
  6. Atgxtg
    Ya know, what might be a simpler way to balance out advancement would be to give the "disadvantaged" races some rerolls on their improvement rolls, or on their actual percentage increased die.
  7. Atgxtg
    1) Because I was thinking of basing the restrictions off the actual stats and derived stats rather than by race. After all, a human with a 18 INT and 18 DEX poses the exact same problem as an elf with an 18 INT and 18 DEX. Generally speaking the problems with the more powerful races stem not from thier race, but from the higher attributes that go with the race. 2) I think the skill maximums you mentioned wouldn't help much, and would cause some other problems. Specifically: - By soft capping, instead of the non-humans outstripping the humans in terms of advancement, they would jump off to a good lead, hit the cap, be forced to diversity while wait they for the others to catch up, the jump off to another lead. So most of the time the non humans will still be ahead. -The forced diversification will eventually cause "balance" issues when the non-humans will be able to do everything better than the humans instead of just some things. . This will destroy any chance of a human securing some niche to excel in. And when the humans try to diversify the non-humans will have built up such as advantage as to put you right back in the same boat your started from. -The method can be taken advantage of if one of the PCs opts to diversify a human character instead of trying to catch up, "locking" the other PCs skills For example, lets say we have an elf in a party of humans, and that you go with a starting cap of 50%. Now the elf, thanks to superior attributes hits, 50% first, and has four sessions at the cap, waiting for the others to catch up. Now in that time he manages to cap out Spot. By then the rest of the PCs have reach 50%, and the GM raises the cap to 75%. One again the elf reaches 75% first, hitting the target number in 10 sessions. While waiting for the rest to catch up, he improves his Sneak skill. But, just when most of the group reaches 75%, one of the humans decides to work of his other skills, and the rest of the group is capped at 75% until he changes his mind and tries to reach 75% in something.
  8. Atgxtg
    Ooh, I missed PP. It's a possibility.Although PP by itself isn't that useful. You need spells, so I'd probably have to factor that in. IMO that is a major problem with this idea. The game system was not designed to balance off the various PCs. I also suspect that balancing out the various PCs might end up unbalancing things later on in a different way. For example, a human with straight 18s would start off with very nice stats, but be handicapped in terms of advancement. Eventually he would be outstripped by the other PCs and become a supporting character. So I would probably have to factor in for skill scores after all, and I think that ends up being a worse situation than an unbalanced party. It would mean that those who do well and improve faster would be penalized for it. At that point the GM might just as well hand out x% per session. Yuk.
  9. Atgxtg
    In Legend I'd probably apply a modifier to the XP rolls based on the number of actions, damage bonus, and hit points. I don't think you'd need to worry about the skill percentages, since a higher skill score is automatically harder to improve. It would be a bonus just like the INT bonus, and could be talled up on the sheet before hand. Or the die for improvement could be tweked from a d6 to a d8, d10 or d12, or maybe lowered.
  10. Atgxtg
    Another way to slow advancement would be to increase the number of checks/picks required to get a skill improvement. That will slow down the advancement of the more powerful characters. I don't think any sort of hard cap is a good idea. AD&D used to do that. What happens is that the powerful characters keep their advantage until they hit the cap, and then the players grow increasingly frustrated when they are unable to advance while everyone else eventually outstrips them. What ususally happens is the the capped players will either drop out of the campaign or want to bring in new characters. Instead of a hard cap, a soft one, where it gets harder to advance but still possible is, IMO, a better way to go.
  11. Atgxtg
    LOL! I took that entirely in the wrong context. I though what you meant by "in Legend" was Evles according to the legends of various cultures-not MRQ2/Legend! Oops. :lol:Your post just made my night. Okay, soda cleaned off the keyboard-let me try to get it right this time. IN MRQ/Legend elves are indeed better. There are quite a few important, but subtle differences between Mongoose's version of RQ and Chaosium's. And they can really change the way things play out. Frankly I'm not fond of varying the number of actions since it such a overwhelming advantage in a system like this. There's not much that is going to offset a character that gets twice as many attacks. Year, as mentioned MERP and RoleMaster balanced out the racial advantages of Elves by giving the other races more background points which they could spend to raise skills, attributes, acquire gold, magic items and so on, but that is not going to offset a character that gets twice as many attacks. Not for long, anyway. What I think you need is some sort of perk that gets refreshed every session but I can't think of much that is going to offset a character that gets twice as many attacks.
  12. Atgxtg
    Not necessarily true. It's like mixed level parties. They are a no-no in D&D and most level games- and for good reasons. For instance fireballs tend to wipe out all the low level characters. But in other types of RPGs they can be possible and playable. It has a lot of do with gaming style, plus the fact that with fixed hit points the GM doesn't have to keep escalating the opponents. As far as elves being better in combat due to higher DEX and INT, well to some extent it is logical. On the other hand, it sounds like you were running a Mongoose-flavored system where the number of actions were tied to stats. That isn't how RQ or BRP works, not was it something considered when the races were statted up years ago. Oh, and as far as elves having a weakness to iron, it is in the legends, just not in all the legends. You see, there are various cultures with various legends and which weakness a mythical creates had depended on the culture the story came from, and their beliefs, and even then there were variations and changes over time.. The weakness to iron is Celtic, and probably originated from the fact that most of the native cultures in the British Isles were invaded and defeated by opponents who wielded iron weapons. Specifically the Tuatha Dé Danann (the Irish Elves). Most FRPG elves are inspired by the Elves of JRR Tolkien, which were based somewhat more of Germanic Elves.
  13. Atgxtg
    Abbot & Costello Meet The Sorceror Riding Griffin, his Pet Dragon, Orc War Band and the Foraging Troll. That would have kept John Gant busy.
  14. Atgxtg
    First off mix-species parties are very rare in traditional RQ/BRP games. That was because the settings were different that the typical high fantasy setting common to many other fantasy RPGs. In Glorantha (the original RQ setting) most of the races are hostile to each other and just won;t adventure together-more like kill each other on sight! In Fantasy Earth (the dealt setting for RQ3), the races were based on their legendary antecedents rather than on the common FRPG archetypes, and thus treated as rare mysterious beings- not player characters. In the few settings where a more typical approach was used (Magic World, for instance), the goal was to mirror the abilities fo the races, rather than attempt to "balance" them off against each other. Some races will simply be more powerful in certain areas. I think the difficulty here is your coming from a D&D/Pathfinder background. You have certain expectations about how RPGs work which do not necessarily apply elsewhere. For instance supposed "balanced" encounters. In D&D the encounters are pretty much designed not to really challenge the PCs much (despite the term Challenge Level), and mostly serve as steeping stones for PC advancement- which, along with the accumulation of treasure, serves as both major motivations, goals and rewards for the PCs. Not so here. In BRP the motivations, goals and rewards are more story driven. Campaigns generally don't revolve entirely around combat the way they do in D&D. The fights are not so easy, as even a weak opponent can score a killing blow on a critical hit, and death being more or less a permanent thing. So character design isn't so much about what race X gets that" balances" them against race Y, but about the cultures of X and Y and why people want to play an X or a Y as a PC in the first place.
  15. Atgxtg
    Well, for starters, the two would be unlikely to cross paths. The current Phantom during the time of the "haunting" of the Paris Opera house would need some reason to go to Paris and get involved with the whole Ghost of the Opera house thing. Assuming that he did get involved then he would probably have some idea of what to expect (that is a person behind it all) due to his own origins. Being trained to hunt down criminals, he'd have a distinct advatage. Erik (the Phantom of the Opera), main strengths would be his familiarity with the Paris Opera House, but I think the Ghost Who Walks would be able to deal with that fairly well, since it wouldn't be the first time he had to enter a villain's lair and deal with traps and ambushes. I think the most likely outcomes would be that Erik get's captured or kills himself to avoid capture. Or maybe "dies" but the body is not found (say if he blew up some of the gunpowder under the Opera House and got caught in the blast. . One figure is a hero who seldom fails and the other is a tragic figure who seems doomed to fail. About the "best" Outcome for Erik would be if he killed "a" Phantom but then had to face his successor.
  16. Atgxtg
    Depending on how old they are, you might want to reduce their stat scores. 2D6+6 (or 3D6) is okay for 15 year olds, but you might want to subtract 1 point a year if they are younger (i.e, a 9 -year old would roll 2D6 for most stats, maybe 1D6+6 for INT and SIZ.) -or maybe you could just use D4s instead of D6s when rolling up their stats. You could use the aging rules in reverse to increase their stats at the end of each year. I agree with the others that that you don't need professions, but I could see you using some sort of generic "types" that could mimic professions. What you might want to do is limit how many skill points they can put into "non-type" skills, or maybe just give them a flat bonus to the appropriate skills.
  17. Atgxtg
    Try this: According to the RQ/BRP SIZ table, mass doubles with every 8 points of SIZ. SIZ 8 = 50 kg SIZ 16= 100 kg SIZ 24= 200 kg SIZ 32 = 400 kg and so on. By that reasoning, SIZ (=ENC) 36 would work out to about 565 kg (about 1250 pounds)- just a bit more than half a ton. That's assuming the weight is reasonably shaped and can be stacked on the cart so that the weight is evenly distributed. IMO, it is a lot easier to work with weight and general bulk in cases like this rather than ENC points.
  18. Atgxtg
    Yup, taste differ. I'll confess that I generally don't like 15 min. radio shows, plus quite a few of the radio series were turned into episodes for the TV series, and that didn't help as far as I am concerned. I can visualize Superman ducking the thrown revolvers.
  19. Atgxtg
    I liked GH, but don't care much for Superman. At times it was bad. Yes, sometimes it made an "okay" mystery show, but that isn't what Superman is supposed to be about. But they had the problem of handling a Superhero series where the only super powered being in the hero, and he not only was one of the most powerful heroes to begin with, but got progressively more so as the series progressed. The 15 minute format didn't help much either. Like most 15 minute shows, they barely have any time left to advance to story once they get through the intro, two commercial breaks, and closing. But I still can get past the "Superman's friends don't drown." power.
  20. Atgxtg
    That can happen in just about any "realistic" RPG In one RQ campaign, in the very first roll of the very first fight, the GM rolled a critical hit on my brand new character. The only reason why he survived was that I lucked out and rolled an "02" parry, and deflected it. But we aren't always so lucky. I recall one "Weekend of Doom" where I rolled up and lost a half dozen characters in a half dozen RPGs. All from a GM "lucky" critical hit. As it was the same GM in all the games, the other players were starting to comment, and only half jokingly, that the GM was after my characters.
  21. Atgxtg
    My pharmacist won't even slip me a cough drop. I've listened to some Blue Beetle, but am more of a Green Hornet fan (nice logo ya' got there). BTW, speaking of mad scientists - I always wondered why they had to resort to robbing banks and such. With their ingenious inventions they could have made far money money than they tried to steal just on the royalties. But then, why does a "good mad scientist" have to double as a soda jerk? Maybe it was a cover to hide the fact that he was really Abraham Erskine?
  22. Atgxtg
    I'd say the result's are biased since they focus on lethal trauma. Thus injuries where the victim recovered aren't factored into the results. With that in mind, it's hardly surprising that 70% of the results are chest and head hits. Since the vast majority of strikes in combat aren't lethal, they aren't counted in the paper. If you want to increase realism, and mesh up a bit better with these results I don't think you have to change the hit location chart. Just have characters pick a target location, roll twice, and then take the result that is closest to their target. I bet the results, especially for fatalities, would be fairly close to those in the paper.
  23. Atgxtg
    Not quite. Crocs tend to attack from ambush, bite on an an extremity (easier to grab) and then drag the victim into the water to drown. Once in the water they will spin, tearing off chunks. Cats are less likely to tear out your throat then they are to hold you down and try to crush your windpipe and kill you from asphyxiation. Dogs and wolves will want to attack in a group, hit you from various sides, and them try to knock or pull you down. But it all depends on the relative size of the predator and prey. What a Lion can do to a man, a housecat cannot, so the housecat will probably just run away, or if cornered, go from the closest body part and get in a quick nip or slash before taking off.
  24. Atgxtg
    YOu can adjust the base damage without getting rid of the db. What I did, and what RQ/BRP had already done is adjust the base bite and claw damage based on the SIZ of the creature and applied an db. For instance, large sharks and dragons do more than 1D6 with their bite in BRP.
  25. Atgxtg
    Just an artifact. IMO the most useful part of RM was Arms Law. Which was a book of tables that customized the damage of each weapon. Each weapon type (shortsword, broadsword, battle axe, club, etc.) got a page with it's own set of % tables for damage and which determined the critical hit tables used. Some similar weapons (samshir, tulwar, saber, cutlass) could use the same table but have slight modifiers against armor types to differentiate them. That was probably the neatest feature. IMO RM's streamlined relative Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) is a better buy, and more useful. It has fewer tables, more streamlined rules, and somne info on MIddle Earth and the various races and monsters. Plus an adventure (with maps) that could be adapted to BRP.
×
×
  • Create New...