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When I was running Trek, the PCs changed their plans like so: -Idiots didn't change their plans much, other than learning to allocate more time to rolling up replacement characters. Everyone else: -Were less likely to escalate a situation into violence. The chances of losing a PC, even from a "successful" engagement was too high to risk it. -Were more careful, and learned to use cover and tactics in order to maximize their chances of survival. -Were more aggressive and committed when they did start a fight. With the stakes so high, there was no room for half-hearted fighting. -Were much nicer and appreciative of to opponents who used stun settings. Anybody who stunned a character could just as easily killed him, but didn't, so the PCs tended to return the favor.

Not so much. At least not now. Since I started that vehicle design project a few years back I did a bit of homework and eventually looked up to see how it really works instead of just trying to come up with something. To get tanks and battleships to work right I had to expand into weapons. Later into animals and so on. So I think I got a decent idea as how it works. The key thing is understanding that BRP uses a logarithmic table for SIZ in the 8-88 range, and what some of the tricks you can do with logs. Yea! I tend to like doing things that way since it allows me to work up bunches of stats and have them being relatively consistient just by plugging in know data into a spreadsheet. Yeah. One problem with BRP is that most of the rules were added piecemeal as the need came up, and usually not in a consistent manner. Falling damage, car crashes and such should all be on the same scale, but they aren't. Based on the STR+SIZ db, it seems that damage should increase by 1D6 for every quadrupling of the force, but falling damage uses 3m increments, and car crashes 10mph increments. I think I did up a table that tried to reconcile it all into one formula. It would mean tweaking a few vales in the book, but would give us a consistent progression to use. BINGO! I got hundreds of (mostly completed) vehicle stats done up in spreadsheets, and Erasmus has over a thousand critter stats done up in spreadsheets and databases using formulas. Yes, I agree. Stick it into a table or simple formula and it is usable by everyone.

Yeah, pretty much. But every Star Trek RPG has had some sort of way to save yourself. The old FASA game gave you a Luck roll. If you made it you just got grazed, and took only about one-third of the normal damage, which was enough to turn a kill into about a 40 point hit (in a game with % stats, so something like an 8 point hit in BRP). The ICON and CODA Star Trek RPGs let characters dodge phaser attacks, and gave characters a pool of points that they could use to augment die rolls. The latter games also gave phaser more settings (16 in accordance with the TNG technical manual). The higher settings can take out tanks and such!

BRP Mecha does have some stuff for space ships. It could work for a Space Opera setting. You could pretty much run something like Space Cruiser Yamato or Macross fairly easily. The major hurdle is coming up with your own ships. Your pretty much going to have to figure that out on your own, using the example ships as benhcmarks. You might even be able to use the mecha design rules as capital ship design rules by kicking up the SIZ scores to capital ship levels. Maybe even try adding another "scale" and bump everything up by 10 again? For something like a Star Trek setting, you might be able to come up with some sort of key for stats. Like using the Size class of other Trek RPGs as a hint. Or the phaser "type".

Yup, especially in BRP, where one or two D6 is serious damage. We got sidetracked down this path when Gollum rightly pointed out that smaller animals would take less damage from a fall of a given distance than a larger animal due to their smaller mass. He even pointed out than small insects such as ants can take next to no damage from a fall because their low mass and high drag prevents them from hitting hard enough to really hurt them. But the idea behind the terminal velocity stuff was just that the +1D6 extra falling damage per 20 SIZ in BRP actually makes sense, and a reducing damage might be worth implementing for small creatures. LOL! Sorry for all the math. I actually did all the "calculations" in my head. That's one of the reasons why I came up with 1.5*SIZ instead of 1.75*SIZ. I really just wanted to see how much of an impact (sorry, couldn't resist the pun) SIZ has on falling damage, and dropped everything else from the equations to get an answer. I usually simplify this stuff quite a bit before turning in into game mechanics. For instance the top speed formula for vehicles (the drag force equation) is pretty close to the formula for terminal velocity. The major difference is that you substitute the thrust of the engine for the force provided gravity and mass. But in BRP terms I simplified speed calculations down to about STR/2, or POW/3, each with a modifier. Which is much more acceptable.

Glad to, although I did over simplify something and made two errors. I's down at the end. , It gets a bit technical though, so consider yourself warned! What I have learned in my physics class is this: 1 = step before the fall. 2 = step after the fall. KE = Kinetic energy PE = Potential energy m = mass s = speed z = difference of heights. Law of conservation of energy: energy at step1 is the same than energy at step2. KE1 + PE1 = KE2 + PE2 1/2ms1² + mgz1 = 1/2ms2² + mgz2 m (1/2s1² + gz1) = m(1/2s2² + gz2) 1/2s1² + gz1 = 1/2s2² + gz2 1/2s2² + gz2 = 1/2s1² + gz1 1/2s2² = 1/2s1² + gz1 – gz2 s2² = 2 (1/2s1² + gz1 – gz2) s2 = square root of: 2 (1/2s1² + gz1 – gz2)

I said tied to, not equal to. What I was doing was setting up a progression between SIZ and falling damage. Partially thinking "in text".

To me it sounds like how fast the plane travels while getting out of the airport!

Hmm, if we ignore most of the other factors, and just stick to mass, terminal velocity is proportional to the square root of mass, and the impact is velocity times mass, so impact damage would be tied to 1.5 times SIZ.

Choice isn't a good thing? Sorry I don't follow you there. But yes, ads/flaws can lead to a lot of mini-maxing and make chargen more tedious. Or not. It depends a lot of the type of players you have in your group and why the players are taking the ads and flaws- especially the flaws. If they are trying to fit a concept that's one thing, but if they are just trying to max out their characters points, that's something else. I personally pushed Superworld to it's limits with ads and flaws, but I was trying to recreate Supergirl, and a Wild Cards version at that, in the system and so the flaws I took fit the character concept. But,. I've also seen players load up on flaws to get the most points. They generally don't do that in my campaigns, as I've made sure that a flaw actually is a flaw and that it will come back to haunt them at some point or another.

Eeek! I know a lot of diabolists! And sometimes a few little generic notes can help. For example, I think any warm-blooded animal that has fur, feathers, and/or a thick layer of fat should probably add 2 or 3 times their AP to their CON for resisting cold. Not that it will come up much. Although I suppose if a character was using cold magic against a Polar Bear, we might want to give the bear 3x it's AP. Cat-burglars!

Well Gollum, you're keeping me honest! I stopped by the library this morning and picked up a couple of books on animals, including The Book of Animal Ignorance -Everything You Think You Know is Wrong, and I think it might help out with our animal stats. While the general trends against small animals seem to hold true, there are some notable exceptions, such as the Brown Rat (can store water better than a camel!). BTW, as far as housecats go, they apparently spend about 85% of their time doing nothing; 5% of their time hunting, eating, playing, and all that; and 10% of their time going from place to place. It seems they are good at having multiple "homes" where they can get multiple feedings.

Except it isn't. Consider Shrews, they have to eat a large percentage of their body weight to avoid starvation. It 's not that they are unhealthy, but that thier smaller bodies and higher metabolisms require more energy to keep their bodies going. Smaller animals in general have a higher muscle to body weight ratio that larger animals and so need more fuel to keep going. It's pretty much the same reason why athletes such as cyclists tend to eat much more than normal folk -they need the fuel to maintain the higher metabolic rate.

It's not that complicated or hard. And the +1D6 per 20 SIZ isnt too bad an approximation. It could be improved upon, but the logic behin it is sound. That's simply not true, everything does not fall at the same speed. Terminal velocity actually varies based on shape and aerodynamic drag. That's why a fighter jet can still hit the ground faster than the pilot when the engine cocks out, even without a parachute. I think it is more a case of their small SIZ. Being small, they don't have as much volume and therefore not as much blood to oxygenate as a larger creature. This is where the cube-square law works in their favor.

Another possibility might be to swipe from Castle Falkenstien. In that game Dragons (actually Pteradons) can change in human form, but the process is very tiring. So they limit how often a dragon can shapeshift. In BERP terms it could eat up fatigue or require Stamina rolls to avoid getting tired out. CF dragons are also considerably weaker than most RPG dragons. They are powerful, but not so overpowering as say an RQ Dream Dragon. It is possible for players to play dragons, but they also tend to draw more eney fire than other characters. An armored, walking and flying natural magician with built in napalm tends to do that.

RQ3 had a few options. I think Land of hte Ninja had some hengeyoki (shape shifting animals) that could assume human form. If I recall correctly it was pretty easy, something like spending a MP to assume human form. It lasted something like until dropped, dispelled, or maybe 1 hour per point of POW (It's been awhile). So if you wanted to add shapeshifting dragons you could.

it already has been. While a few small animals have lifespans that rival or surpass humans, the vast majority do not. Rodents, insects, etc. etc. Lifespan for any creature is more complex than that. Gnerally speaking all creatures lifespan is affected by their environment, diet and level of activity. But the trend is for most creatures to have lifespans of about the same number of heartbeats. Creatuers with a higher average heart rate have shorter lifespans. If lifespan were the only criteria, that would be true. But it's not. Dogs surpass cats in several categories, such as the ability to oxygenate their blood, or the ability to tolerate high levels of lactic acid in their system. The fater recovery is not a given. As for the longer travel ranges, you might be sure of it, but few other are. The information you posted on cats aplies mostly to feral cats, not pets. That is mostly true. There are a few advantage to small SIZ in BRP, but you have a good point here. But even so is it worth reevaltuating CON, or would we be better off to factor SIZ out of CON and then use HP for those times when SIZ matters? . It's hard to say with dinosaurs since we don't have any examples to base out comparison on. It would be much better to look at elephants, whales and similar large creatures. And, generally speaking those animals do have higher stamina than humans. Should they have scores in the 30-40 ranges, probably not. IMO that is simply the case of trying to factor in for greater body mass (SIZ) into hit points and toxin resistance. I'd much rather remove SIZ as a factor for CON and use HP for somethings that CON is used for now. I think it would help address some of your issues, too. And, since I used the ratio of muscle mass to mass to determine the effect of SZI on STR and CON it would be very easy for me to use that method to factor out SIZ from CON. BTW, where did you get the T-Rex stats from? Did you use the Allosuarus from RQ3? or the older RQ2 stats from Gateway: Beastiary? I think it is a problem, I'm not sure if it is a huge one. In fact I'd say it was mostly a tiny problem. But I agree that it is a bit of a problem. I expanded the SIZ range below SIZ 1 for similar reasons. By the rules, a cat, an ant and a mose all have the same SIZ, ut we know that isn't true. Still, splitting CON opens up a can of worms. If we do that for CON, we will probably need to look at the other stats. STR in particular. Oh, and since we are talking about CON, I think it's odd that CON doesn't factor all all into the healing rate in BRP.

Not surprising. When you raise such a topic you're bound to get an opposing viewpoint- especially when the opposing view is pretty mcuh the predominant one, and has the most evidence to back it up. While modern medicine has prolonged human lifespan (I'd say modern diet and hygiene have done more to prolong it, but medicine certainly helped) the fact remains that even in less advanced eras, human lifespan was still several times that of most small animals. Definitely a better comparison, especially if you can compare with related species. But even then larger naimals tend to have a longer lifespan than smaller ones. It the downside of having a higher metabolic rate. As for the higher CON, that IMO is the result of having to adjust to give bigger critters higher resistance to toxcins and more hit points in the game. I'd love to adjust the hit point formula to make SIZ more dominant, and use HP to resist toxins. Considering that toxin lethality is rated by mass (of mice), factoring SIZ would really make a lot more sense. I'd also wouldn't mind going back to an RQ2 type of rating for CON, with most creatures getting a 3D6 roll, and some especially healthy ones getting a 2D6+6 roll. I could even go with some adjustments for living conditions and diet. But where I think we really disagree is on stamina and endurance. Small animals end up using a lot more energy to travel at the same speeds as larger ones, and can't oxygenate their blood as quickly. If you look into the physics of it, smaller size gives creatures some advantages and some disadvantages. Actually the bubble bath ting is because of the way ants breath (through holes in their bodies). The bubbles clog up the holes and the ants suffocate. But as I mentioned above, small size has certain advantages and certain drawbacks. For instance, you are probably aware that many insects (including ants) can lift or drag objects that weight several times their own body weight. Now many people think means that ants would be much stronger than humans if both were the same size, but in reality ants are so strong because they are so small. If humans were somehow shrunk down to ant size, humans would be much stronger than ants. If an ant was somehow enlarged to human size, it probably wouldn't even be strong enough to support it's own weight. Actually a few RPGs factor in size for falling damage (BRP included), but few scale it down right for insects. Your math is correct though. There are two basic factors in play here. First off the force of the impact is directly proportional to the mass. So a 4 ton elephant is literally going to hit the ground with a million times the force of a 4g ant traveling at the same speed. The second factor is wind resistance. As you noted the ant nearly floats. That's because it has a much lower terminal velocity (top speed in a fall). This is a great example of what I was talking about small size having certain advantage and drawbacks. FYI, I have done an expanded SIZ table where I use the x2 mass = +8 SIZ (or half mass = -8 SIZ) and scaled it all the way down to ant SIZ (about SIZ -100 on my revised scale). If we assume the +1D6 per 20 SIZ in the BRP rules works both ways, then a SIZ -100 ant should take 5D6 less damage from a fall, which while not perfect does help a bit. Falling damage in BRP is a bit off (it is tied to distance instead of velocity).

Yup, but we are researching what we can (and a lot of the data is contradictory, animals are tricky subjects for this sort of testing), and trying to match up with the known speeds. Another hurdle for this is that the official BRP MOV rates are much slower than the speeds reached by real animals (including humans) and we will have to scale down the MOV rates to be consistent with BRP. But I plan of scaling the speeds down proportionally, so the relative ratios of speeds will be the same as in real life (and it will be easy to adjust).

Several version of BRP have advantages and flaws, including the Worlds of Wonder and Superworld boxed sets. I think they can benefit the system and campaigns, but they can also be overused and/or abused. Quite a few BRP players and GMs are against them. Personally I think they help to cover features and abilities that aren't covered or not possible with the standard rules.

Well, you could work out the average damage per round and use that to figure out how long the should take, on average for the item to break. If you want, you could allow one roll and adjust the time based on the result. For instance, if a door had 5 AP and 20 HP, and the attacking character did 1D8+1+1D4 damage each turn, you can take the average damage (8) subtract the 5 AP and assume that the character will do 3 points of damage a round to the door, and that he would break through it in 7 rounds.

Yeah, stats are not as cut and dried as one number. It usually doesn't matter too much in play, and when it does there tend to be things we can do about it for people. But animals tend to get the short straw. Besides, the focus on the game is such that if we bother to get stats for an animal, it's probably not going to die from cold, starvation or exposure in the game. It certainly isn't evidence of a high one. I have multiple allergies as well, and spent a large portion of my childhood in the hospital, so I suspect that I do. On the other hand, I didn't get sick much from other things. No, but that's because realistically CON (and health) have very littleng to do with soaking trauma. That's pretty much a function of mass. Where CON should matter, and for the most part doesn't in BRP, in in how quickly and completely one recovers (or not) from an injury or illness. It does as far as dehydration goes. But you might not have it to the same severity. Not everyone who has asthma has it to the same degree. I have a friend who has asthma who smokes. If I did that I'd wind up in the Emergency Room. Did your Constitution improve, probably. Sounds like you worked yourself into better shape. Yup. It does depend on what we test. My hypothesis was that smaller animals would have less stamina because their higher muscle to body weight ratio would allow them to burn off their energy reserves faster. Sure it is. Cats, rats, and snakes probably don't have as good a diet as humans, so their resistance could easily be lower. Then look at thier shorter lifespans compared to humans. If they were as fit as humans, why do they die so young? Ususally from a illness? And there is little evidence to prove that their resistance is higher. That depends on how much weight they have to lift. You see, the smaller mass of those birds is what makes that feasible. They shouldn't. Not for everything covered. But then, neither should humans, and we tend to let that slide. The idea is for the CON score to represent the ability to handle most of the things covered under than stat. A GM can make some adjustments for special cases, like when your husky gets at your Halloween candy and eats the chocolate bars. Yup, although a good part of what makes insects so resilient is their small size and comparatively simple biology. Still, a blast of Raid is far more dangerous to an ant colony than to a human. Heck, wading though a bubble bath can kill an ant. And they certainly are much more susceptible to cold than a human. I'm not saying that small animals must have a low CON, I'm just saying that I don't see much evidence for their having a high one. I've seen evidence of some small animals being good at one of two areas covered under CON, but nothing (yet) that supports a higher overall rating. The question is can we get some more data from somewhere?

Yes, I've seen that. The major problem with calculating that kinda stuff is STR. While STR is based on mass (SIZ), just how much muscle mass a creature can have can vary considerably from species to species or even from individual to individual. And that can make a big difference in speed. But we need some sort of MOV score. We can't have all the animals just stand there. I'm not even looking for precision (at least not yet), but just something that gives a good ballpark figure. I am aware of a formula that was used for animals that actually did a good job, but I can't seem to find the actual formula. I run into a few of these roadblocks in the past while working on this project (and some others) but up to know have been able to find a reasonable solution. So far this one's eluded me. But...I had an idea the other day for another way to attack the problem and I think I might have something. I won't be perfect, but hopefully it can get me speeds to within 20% or so of actual value for most animals.

Sorry, it gets a bit more complicated. rusts example tend to introduce other factors that are not covered under CON. For instance, the polar fox has a pelt, and is native to a colder environment. Both factors that add to it resistance against cold, but which wouldn't help to resist other things (heat for example). The snake's ability to go a long time without food has much to do with it having a very different type of metabolism, not necessarily a better one. Take that snake and put in in the same cold environment as the human and polar fox and guess which one dies first. So it's not necessarily true that a certain animal should have a high CON or stamina because of one aspect of resistance that it excels at. It's not necessarily false either, hence the dilemma. But an animal that is good at multiple resistances has got something going for it. Hmm, taping that other animal thread we got going and applying the cube-square relationship to CON like Erasmus and I have done with out animal stats, adjusting CON 2 points for every 3 we adjust SIZ the relationship between SIZ and CON looks something like this. SIZ CON hp 10 10 10 7 8 8 4 6 5 1 4 3 I can trash that pretty quickly. I'm an asthmatic (so low CON and Stamina) but have about a 11km walk home from work every day. THat's on top of all the walking I do at work. So I would say there is more to it. As for survival that has a lot more to do with the fact that animals still actively maintain the skills required to acquire food, and most humans do not, since they can simply buy food. It has little to do with CON and Stamina, except that the "couch potato" factor.