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Yeah, ptretty much.

Yeah, it's not an easy fix, because it was such an easy break. In old RQ the benefits of shields were: 1) Separation of Attack & Parry skills made shield parry at least as viable as weapon parry. 2) Shields tended to stop more damage than most weapons. 3) Parry with a shield prevented your weapon from breaking while parrying. 4) Shields gave some sort of protection against missile attacks that weapons didn't. But the Strombinger/BGB combat rules pretty much sidestep all of those benefits, making shields mostly redundant.

The problem with that, in game terms, is that someone would need to have a second skill- or do you just mean that carry a shield gives someone an extra free parry at their normal weapon skill percentage? One easy fix would be to simply allow both shield and weapon parries, even against the same attack. That would give someone with a shield an additional layer of defense. It would slow down the combat's though.

I think it comes down to a case of trade offs. Time and money spent on the shield, ENC, etc. all come at the expense of something else. So instead of the shield the character could have gotten better with their main weapon (and maybe be able to split parries if over 100%), wear better armor, or learn a stronger protection spell. It really comes down to the combined attack & parry skills for weapons. Pendragon solves this by not tracking a shield skill and instead just getting the shield superior protection on a parry. This could work in BRP. In fact the shield skill could even be kept, and just say that the parry succeeds in under either skill.

It's not, noris it designed to be. The idea was to have a simple modifier that would apply once damage hit a certain threshold. It's an alternative to the granular peanlty of half wound level (i.e. -10% per 20% injury). That would be at 1/4 skill. The most likely time for this to crop up would be when a seriously injured character (1/2 skill) were to attack someone at long range (also half skill). THe advantage of this over fixed penalties is that someone with 80% skill and and 60% injury would have a 20% (80/4) chance to hit someone at long range instead of a 0% (80/2=40-40%= 0%) chance. That's what the old James Bond and Timelords RPGs did. Bond had a multiplication table and applied modifiers in 20% increments of skill. Timelords used a 1-20 skill range and 1 point(5%) increments. The major advatage of this method is that the peanlties scale with ability, so someone with a really high skill can't shrug off the penalty. BTW, If use use a 1-20 skill range and an opposed roll then the resistance table would do all this for you. At that point it's not really BRP anymore, is it? You could have them roll against their impalement percentage to see if their results get downgraded one level. So someone who rolls a special success but the rolls under their injury % gets the result bumped down to a normal success. It all comes down to how much more complication you and your players feel comfortable with. Not everyone will consider it worth the effort.

Yes it does. Since Gold Book BRP allows for multiple parries and combined attack and parry skills, shields aren't so good. Now in old RQ, where you usually get one defense, shields have other advantages (high AP, can stop missile weapons, avoids risking damage to the weapon,sperate attack and parry skills, etc.) shields are alright. Yes, but I don't think it would be worth raising a second skill just so that you can hold out a little better when double or triple teamed. In those types of BRP games, getting ganged up on is to be avoided. It's like shark repellent. If you think you are going to need it, you probably shouldn't get your feet wet to begin with.

Yes, if you don't want to have a shield skill. Otherwise, I think the shield skill would work out just about the same.

I don't see how that would help much. When attack and parry are combined into a single , raising the shield skill to the point where it equals the weapon skill for the "free" parry isn't worth it. It's probably easier/faster to just raise the weapon skill by another 30%. Now if the shield gave a flat bonus to parry (say you added you shield skill to your weapon skill for defense), or it reduced the multiple parry penalty from 30% down to 15% or so it might be worth it.

Yes, especially for skills over 100%, as any penalty at all will reduce related skills down to under 100%. Maybe if would be better to alter the difficulty of skill use, when damage reaches a certain percentage? Like is if Brawn drops to 50% related skills are DIFFICULT (half skill).

Exactly, that way a 3 point hit to a mouse could be lethal, while a 3 point hit to a human might mean a broken limb, and a 3 point hit to a tiger just irritates it. Yes you could do it that way, but if you do then I'd suggest replacing 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 with 20%, 40%, and 80% of hit point totals. THat way it could add up easier. YOu just divide someone's HP by 10 to get their increments in 10%. So a typical human with 12 hit points would have: 10% =1.2 hp (or >2+) = 5% penalty 20%=2.4 hp (3+) = 10% penalty 40%= 4.8 hp (5+) = 20% penalty 80%= 9.6 (10+) = -40% penalty (or maybe just make everything difficult) While an elephant with 53 hit points would have wound brackets of 5.3, 10.6, 21.2 and 43 hit points. Yes, but it you are going to add it up I'd suggest keeping it simple and just use 10% increments with a 5% penalty per increment. Basically yeah, although I'd consider add in some sort of Wound Shock, Pain Resistance effect. Note also that this could handle non-lethal damage rather nicely, too. Someone could get beat up with temporary damage, and be impaired until they get a chance to rest. I don't think that's a good idea. If someone has lost a leg ten years ago it probably won't make them easier to drop later. Permanent damage should probably be reflected with specifically penalties to things based upon the damage. For instance loss of legs would reduce someone movement rate, and impair skills such as climbing and jumping, while lost of arms would affect the ability to lift and manipulate objects. Loss of eyes would affect sight, and so on.

To reflect things like how getting shot can really take the fight out of some people. By RAW most characters can just shrug off injuries and keep on going unless they take a major wound or better. In real life any injury beyond a minor scrape or muscle pull can get someone's attention and stop the fight.

You could try a wound mechanic. Given injuries a severity based upon the fraction of hit points the represent (something like 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full, etc.) and apply a penalty (maybe 10% per severity) to rolls. You could also add in a Pain Resistance/Wound Shock mechanic (A POW roll with the multiplier based upon the severity) for an injured character to act. You could even stop tracking total hit points and instead use the Wound Shock roll to determine wound effects and if the character is conscious or dying. For instance a character who gets shot in the chest for 1/4 of his hit point might need to make a POW x5% roll to be able to act, and would suffer a -10% modifier to all actions. To keep things simple the wound shock penalty could be applied to the Wound Shock POW roll. Another way to handle it would be to make the penalty half the percentage of HP lost. For instance 20% HP means -10%, 40% injury is -20% and so on.

Of course there were advantages to using shields. Generally speaking, ducking down behind a barrier is a good way to avoid being hit or hurt. That shields don't work so well in some BRP games really points out a flaw in those games. Maybe because some people don't like tracking weapon hit points, maybe because some people model their melee combat on fencing, where a shield mostly gets in the way, but whatever reason the effect is that shields becomes liability in those games, especially when attack and parry are combined into a single skill. I think a good way to go might be to differentiate between a block (sticking something in the way to take the hit) and a parry (deflecting the attack, and making an opening to riposte). The whole alternating attacks where each combat gets their turn to attack probably more of a game artifact than a representation of melee. Something like Pendragon's opposed roll (where shields apply when you get beaten but still made your weapon skill roll), or Usaji Yojimbo's (2nd edition) method of one character keeping on the offensive until the opponent can get the upper hand probably is more realistic.

But possibly not to just keep it on. Much like an electrical circuit or powertool, the energy draw could be at a low level until the field encounters some sort of resistance and then has to increase the power draw to provide protection. Since we get to make this up we can tailor the rules to suit the needs of a particular setting. It all depends on what you need to want. Another workable option would be to handle it just like the Protection spell, but using electrical power instead of magic points. So 1 power per point with a 15 min. duration. If desired it could be prorated to 3 points of protection for 5 min for 1 power, or 15 points of protection per minute for 1 power, or even 75 points of protection per melee round for 1 point of power. So for that spell it's Protection x Duration/75. But you could adjust that to give you values that you prefer.

Keep in mind that this was something added to the game in the BGB and not drawn from any previous BRP product (at least as far as I recall). So it is really more of an example of how you can run an energy shield rather than a definitive rule. So you should fell free to tweak how it works to suit your needs or taste. Personally I'd: eliminate the variable setting (no body is going to want to run around with a 1 point shield and get their head blasted off when they could have a 20 point shield). Possibly have shields of different protection values at different prices (5 point, 10 point, 15 point, 20 point etc.), along with different storage capacities for charges. Change the energy use to use to something like 1 charge per hour, plus 1 per point of damage absorbed. Create generators that could recharge the shield at a set charges per minute or hour. Say different one sin size and capability depending upon how advanced or costly they are. I think that would reduce the bookkeeping and streamline things while still making it practical.

Yup. D20/D&D works on the concept of the character having fairly good success chances for most things, especially as they increase in level. A 20th level character with a good DEX is going to end up a decent horseman by default. d100/RQ works on a much lower success chance, with higher success chances requiring effort and experience in the specific skill. A master swordsman with an 18 DEX isn't automatically a decent equestrian. To some extent these are design choices and converting a character from one system to the other is going to alter how the character works in gameplay, even if you have a good conversion method. For example, an 18 STR does a lot more for you in D&D than it does in RQ, and does even less for those playing Call of Cthulhu.. That's just something that doesn't translate from one game system to the other.

I agree. One big difference between d100/RQ based RPGS and D20/D&D based RPGs is the relative competence of starting characters. In d100 games skills default at somewhere from 0 to 25% or so, depending on skill. In D20 games the default success chance is about 55% (DC10). For example to hit someone in combat requires a roll equal of greater than the target's Armor Class with the default being AC10. Giving someone a negative skill rating in D20 would essentially make them less skilled than a starting D&D character. IMO, a truer conversion between the game systems would probably ignore d100 skills below 50% or just pin them at rank 1 to show that the character has those skills. For combat you could average the combat skills (over 50%) to get an equivalent Base Attack Bonus in d20. For example a character in d100 with Sword 75%, Bow 60% would have an average combat skill of 67.5% which would convert to a BAB of +4, which in turn could help in determining the character's level in D20.

If I were building a BRP variant I'd consider making shield block an EASY skill, that is it would be rolled at double value. At least for the locations that would get "cover" in RQ3 terms. That would make shields much more useful, and also reflect the fact that it is really easy to interpose a shield in front of an incoming weapon.

It might if your opponent doesn't use a shield. I mean, I never ran the rule that way, but in theory it would make shields a bit more useful if those without them were considered to be unshielded. I could also see someone using dodge to try and maneuver onto someone unshielded side in combat. Kind of like how you can close against someone weielding a long weapon. I could see using dodge to sidestep and try to get to someone's unshielded side. I could make RQ3 combat more dynamic.

LOL! There is a lot of truth to that. A point or two of CON probably won't matter much when a shoggoth engulfs an investigator.

Not much trouble at all. RuneQuest 2 (p.12) PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTIC TRAINING Once a character has reached full growth (usually around age 16 in this world), the only way to enhance physical characteristics is hard training. STR Strength may be increased at the cost of 1000 L per one point of STR. Remember, if his STR is the highest amongst STR, SIZ, and CON, it cannot be increased at all, except temporarily. STR conditioning is traditionally taught by the fighting bands and guilds. CON The sages and alchemists have devised a regimen of diet and exercise which will increase a character’s CON up to the level of SIZ or STR. Again, if the CON characteristic is the highest of the three, it cannot be enhanced. The cost is 2000 L per point. DEX This sort of training is usually done by Thieves and Players Guilds. Cost of training is usually the same as STR training, but the thieves will often exact a fee of service instead or as well as monetary payment. Players (as in minstrels, not die rollers) will generally simply exact payment, but are a wandering breed and can only be persuaded to settle down if the pot is sweetened for them. Just what kind of service the thieves may exact or what extra the players may wish is discussed in Chapter VI, Other Skills. TRAINING COSTS AND TIME Basic training costs in Glorantha are 400 L a week for eight hours a day. This can be subdivided into four two-hour sessions at 100 L a week each. RuneQuest 3 (Player Book, page 39) Characteristic Increase Increase through training, or research, for STR and CON is limited by the highest value of the adventurer's original STR, CON, or SIZ. If the highest value of the three is a SIZ of 14, for instance, then neither STR nor CON can be increased past that number through training. Example: Cormac has a SIZ of12, a CON of 9 and a STR of 17. Since his STR is his highest characteristic of the three, his CON can- not be raised past that number. His SIZ, of course, cannot be raised or lowered at all. Even if Cormac's Strength is later raised through magic to 18, he will be unable to train his Constitution to more than 17. Any training or research increase for DEX or APP is limited to half again the adventurer's original charac teristic, rounded up. Example: Corrnac has a DEX of 8 and an APP of 13. His maximum DEX increase through research or training is 12, and his maximum APP in- crease through training or research is 20. Procedure for Increase Through Training When the gamemaster will allow it, an adventurer may attempt to train up his characteristics at a rate of a number of hours based on the value of his score for the current characteristic-—just as advancement in a skill by training depends on the current skill percentage. For characteristics, establish the number of hours by multiplying the current value for the characteristic X 2.5. At the end of a training period, roll 1D3-1 and add the result to the current value of that characteristic. Who Does the Training Only adventurers who have already increased per- sonal characteristics through training may train other adventurers to increase their characteristics. Thus, ini- tially, an adventurer must go to non-adventurers to receive characteristic increase training. An adventurer may help train up another’s characteristic only to the amount by which his own was increased. Procedure for Increase by Research The number of hours required for research is derived in the same way as for training. To increase a character- istic by research, multiply 5 times the current value of the characteristic to find a percentile ability in the characteristic. Roll percentile dice. If the result is higher than the characteristic times 5 add 1D3-1 to the characteristic value. It the result is lower than the cur- rent value of the skill make no change to the character- istic. A character who has increased a characteristic in this manner becomes qualified to train others. Cormac's Saga_________________________________ Cormac wishes to train up the a S g DEX of a fellow adventurer. Churchak the Scythian. Churchak's DEX is 12. After much effort, Cormac's DEX has been raised to 11, increased three points over his original DEX value of8, Because his DEX has been increased through training, Cormac can train Chur- chalc. but he can only train up Churchalcs DEX by three points, the amount by which Cormac's DEX has been trained. ____________________________________________________________

You might interpret it that way, but that isn't how the rule was written. More text from Page 28 specifically states: EFFECTS OF TRAINING WITH SIMILAR WEAPONS Any character knowing how to use a weapon of one type and mode (i.e., a broadsword is a one handed cutting weapon) can use any similar weapon at ½ effectiveness EXAMPLE Horus the Hairy breaks his broadsword attempting to clobber a dragonewt foe. Desperately parrying with his shield, he backs up and grabs the heavy axe used by Uras the Usurper, who is busy bleeding and has no immediate use for it. Horus is capable of attacking with a broadsword with 60% success, therefore he will be able to use the heavy axe with a 30% success, as long as he uses it one handed like a broadsword. Using it two handed, he would be relegated to using it like anyone else picking it up for the first time, based on basic chance and natural ability. If the replacement weapon was some entirely different type and mode, such as a two handed thrusting spear, he would again have to rely on basic and natural ability. Thus the intention is that someone with skill with any one handed cutting weapon would have some crossover proficiency with other one handed cutting weapons. It makes sense too. Note that this rule was also enforced with different versions of a weapon a character was skilled in too. So a warrior who picked up a new broadsword during a fight to replace a broken one was also at half skill.

RuneQuest, CoC's parent system had rules for improving attributes. Since the games are vary similar the rules would port over fairly easily.Basically attributes could be trained up similar to how skills could be trained up (which in RQ they can). The exact rules varied depending on which edition of RQ you used, but roughly it would cost 2-3 times as much as skill improvement. There tended to be limits based upon your original attributes and/or species maximums, and in RQ3 by how much the trainer knew (that is if he knew how to train STR up 3 points, then that is as far as you could be trained by that teacher). Also in RQ3, a character could "practice" to improve attributes (and skills) without a teacher. This had a similar end effect, but was less likely to succeed. I could dig up the actual rules from RQ2 or RQ3 if you are interested.

You might want to look at some card based RPGs like TSR's old SAGA system RPGs, or R. Talsorian's Castle Falkenstien. They might be a better fit than BRP. I think for your card idea to really work for BRP you would need to translate the cards into some sort of die roll. Basically as some sort of enhancement add on to the core rules rather than an alternative. Kinda like how Pendragon uses the card's in the Feast Deck. What you could do is set the value on the card as a difficulty modifier (say +25%-5 times the value of the card, so that a 5 would be -0%) or opposing skill score (say 10% times the value?), and maybe use the suit to determine the type of task and skill required (something like Spades for maneuvering, Clubs for Weapons, Diamonds for Hull/Engineering, Hearts for Tactics). Face cards could mean some sort of special event, as could joker cards. The idea would be that the player would draw one or more cards to see what obstacles needed to be overcome during the encounter, and perhaps set the parameters for the encounter (say type of enemy ship, how hostile it is, skill of it's crew, distance away when detected, etc). For instance a player could draw three to five cards put them in descending order of difficulty and make skills rolls to see how far away the enemy ship is when the PCs detect it. Alternately you could use the cards to resolve things, but have skill rolls somehow affect either the hand size or the "draw". For instance a player who makes their weapon skill roll could draw a extra card per success level) and play the best one for their attack. But in that case I think ship's will need to be give card ratings for various systems.

For me it would probably have to be Judge's Guild's Frontier Forts of Kelnore. While it's not really an adventure per say, but instead a standardized series of forts that can be individualized by random tables, it has served me well in many games. Although written for D&D (the pre-AD&D version of D&D at that)it's generic nature makes it fairly system independent, and very easy to adapt to other fantasy/historical RPGs.. Over the year's I've used it for adventures in RuneQuest, Stormbringer, MERP, Pendragon, and, recently, Tunnels & Trolls. I can't recall if I've ever used it for any version of D&D, though. But then I primarily use Chaosium's Bermuda Triangle supplement for CoC, sans Mythos stuff, as a sorucebook on the Caribbean for the James Bond 007 RPG.