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Like others have said, it depends on the GM, game, genre, players, and how focused everyone is. The more the group focuses on characters, and roleplaying the smaller the group should be. Overall, I think 3-4 PCs is probably the optimum amount for an RPG, if the players are actually roleplaying. If they are just rolling dice and killing things, 6 is better. A GM can kind of cheat on this a little if the PCs pair off somewhat. THen the GM can kinda treat each team as a PC to interact with. THe main difficulties are keeping everyone occupied while still giving special attrention to characters when needed, and dealing with the effects of "crosstalk" as those who have nothing to due usually socialize with each other. Crosstalk can be fine in, say, a generic fantasy setting, but can really kill the mood if the GM is running a horror adventure. But then, large groups just don't work well in that genre.

soltakss raises a good point here. Game rules generally should reflect the "reality" that why are trying to mimic. I recall a Superheroperheroish campaign I ran a few years back w. here a character fell out (well crashed though) the window of a skyscaper. Realsistically, the PC should have been dead.or at least badly messed up from the 100 meter fall. In the game the PC was just stunned for a round, and trashed the sidewalk and a water main. Since BRP is a generic systerm, I think the way to go would be to try to make the explisive rules fairly realistic with options to "dail down" the effects as desired to reflect certain settings or styles of play. That way everyone could get what they want.

I done a litle work on this with my vehicle design stuff, so here are some of my observations: 1) THe explsoion values are a bit high.In game termsonly takes about 1 lb of C-4 to give explssion damage equvalent to a 120mm HE tank round. That just isn't right. 2) Assuming the car could set off the anti-tank mine (doubtful), the damage would really go into the wheel, which would prtotect the occupants of the vehcile, but not that much. BRP armor values kind of assume that the occupants are only protected by the skin of the vehicle, as when the vehicle is shot at. In this case, I7d probably give the passengers the benefit of the higher AP rating, but it probably won't make much of a difference, since the remaining damage is probably still going to be high enough to waste everyone. 3) One thing not considered in the rules is that the vehicle is in direct constact with the charge, and that the charge is probably shapred to maximize it's effect in the exact direction the vehcile is at, in realtion to the charge. This would make the charge much more effective against the vehcile, and less effective than, say, a grenade on those not directly over the blast. 4) Part of the explosive's effectiveness on vehicles in the real world is because vehicles as so large. A vehicle that is, say 8 times the size of a man, probably get hit with 4 times the shrapnel and blast due to increased surface area. Also, the explion can trigger secondary explsoions, fires, and other damage. So a vechile that sruvives and explosion probably wouldn't survive it for long.

Sorry for the dealy, I got "shanghaied" to do some apartment renovating, and since I have to move into the aforementioned apartment by the end of the month, I haven't had much time to work on this. But, here is a quick heads up on where I stand: I got a copy of an army filed manual (FM5-250) for demolotions, and the cube root thing is about right for brecching charges (making holes through walls), but probably doens't quite hold up for cutting charges and other types of demolotions. I7m working on converting the formulas into easy to use BRP terms, but CoC's increasing the damage and range increment by 50% per doubling causes some whacky results. What seems to work out best is to use a standardized blast radius for all explosives, since increasing damage dice increases the blast radius anyway. Sothing like -1d6 for each 50% increase in distance might do it. That way I can use the Reletive Effectivness values to allow the system to work with just about any explosive. What is looking good to me at the moment is to use something like x2 explosive=+1d6 damage. It is easy, and seems to hold up well in game terms. It also keeps a 10 kg satchel charge from doing 50d6 to everything within 20m, and killing everybody within a 1km radius, making demoliions skill kind of pointless. I'm also seeing if I can make it all compatible with my old armor and vehcile rules. What I've got for a working model is giving the object a resistance value based on the SIZ of the hole, with a modifer based on material and thickness. I need to compare it to the sample protection values in the BRP rules to see how well it will work in game play. BTW, it it helps FM 5-250 has all sorts of formulas and tables that explain how much explsoivieve you need to do just about anything. I found it online, and could put some of the more pertinent stuff up here if desired. My only worry is that the FM is real world info, and not the kind of thing that we might want to spread around. While we find it useful for gaming, there are probably some poeple out there who might want to know how to blow up bridges for less friendly reasons.

We think a lot alike here. I also think that increasing the blast radius at the same time is part of the problem since increasing the damage automatically increases the area of effect anyway. I got out an Army Field Manual (5\2590) and seeing how the math looks.

In RQ3 secondary stats capped out the bonus at +10%. I think this was becuase Dinosaurs and other big creatures in RQ2 and Stormbringer ended up with insame base attack pecentages due to Strength. Flipping through the attack chances for dinosaurs in Gateway Bestiary reveals the problem. As for the two problems, yeah, your right, IMO anyway. The combined effect of the two problems is that all heroes are very vulnerable to one or more types of attack, and will probably be killed outright when running into a foe with that power. For instance, a laser could burn holes right through the Hulk, not something you'd ever seen in the comics. What might work would be to allow character some sort of default protection from other forms of armor. For instance, while a tank might have armor designed to stop kinetic attacks,just the general thickness/mass would provide some protection against lasers. Maybe 1/4th value?

Boy, you aren't kidding! Especially in the Appendix. For the benefit of those who haven't seen RQ2, I'll note that the back of the book had an appendix of a dozen pages or so, written in small (6 point?) type with all sorts of optional and alternative rules. It'S probably the best (if not the only) appendix even provided with a RPG. Lots of good stuff was tucked away in there. Of coruse it'S the fiddle factor that ruins the application. It's hard to reflect things like stoning or 20d6 fireball attacks accurately in such terms. You traded your "mark of the beast" for a Monstermark? :D

rust, Since I won't be getting my copy of BRP until after Christmas, I was wondering if you could check the BRP spot rules for explosives and see if doubling the amount of explosive increases both damage and burst radius by 50% (as in CoC). The CoC spot rule is causing a lot of problems with demolitions and the effect explosices have during game play. I suspect that whoever thought up the doubling/+50% rule failed to consider that increasing the damage also increasesthe area of effect, and that doubling the number of dice every time you quadruple the amount of explosives ends up giving small to moderate sized conventional weapons bombs damage capability and area of effect that exceeds thermonuclear devices. Even rounding the numbers down, a conventional bomb packed with 500 lbs. ton of TNT (something that could be dropped from a plane) does over 500d6 damage with a range increment over 250 yards/meters. This pretty much ensures that it will obliterate (inflict at least 100d6 damage) to any target within 60miles/100km. To be fair, I believe that the doubling rule was never intended to be used for anything larger than, say, a sachel charge, or maybe two dozen sticks of dynamite. As far a demolitions goes, this makes it hard for a character to survive his attempt, and makes it pretty easy to trash anything short of a battleship with a 20 lb. satchel charge. So I guess I'll need to tweak things.

One method, used in Harn, but easily adaptable to BRP is the "fives and zeroes" method. In Harn, any roll than ends in a 5 or a 0 (10, 15, 20, 80, 95, etc). is a critical. Either a cortical success or a critical failure depending of if the roll is under the skill % or not. Now with BRP we could do somthing like this for crticals and specials. We could even change to make crticals any rolls than end with a 1, and specials any roll that ends with a 2. We could even adapt it so that only ever other digit (01, 21, 41) counts as a crtical and the others (11, 31, 51) count as specials. This would eliminate the math but still give the same crit and special percentages as the standard system. If we split up the range from crits and specials a bit we could expand the result for skills over 100%. For opposed tests, I'd be more inclined to use a D20 and go with the Pendragon method. That or the old ICE method off adding the skill to the die roll and rolling high. D100 and rolling low is probably the worse set up for opposed resolution.

Yay! Whenever I see a "installing latest security upgrade" notice I tend to get paranoid and assume to worse. Glad it was just routine.

Sure, put the pressure on. Actually it'S fun to do stuff like this. I just hope it doesn't suck or doesn't make sense with the rest of the BRP rules. One problem I'm already noticing is that the "double amount +50% damage" rule from CoC might not work well with th AP/HP ratings for vehicles. A M183 satchel pack will probably do enough damage in BRP terms (about 30d6) to blow a tank to bits. I don't think it would be quite as easy in reality. But hey, a character actually has to get close enough to place the charge on the tank in the first place, so he can probably use a break.

I think the "BRP Combat can be deadly" comment bears repeating. Unlike a lot of RPGs, PCs can go from being up an active to dead and gone with one lucky hit at any time. Now add Raise Dead is uncommon or unavailable in most BRP settings and you can see that it is usually best to let the PCs outclass the NPCs by a fair margin most of the time. Also, Double teams and surprise attacks are murder in BRP Again, unlike what a lot of players are used to and expect, two or three wimpy fighters pose a very serrious threat to an experienced warrior. Without a bunch of hit points to fall back on, the fact that the foes are getting two or three attacks per combat round usually compensates for a difference in skill. Also, the realtive low number of hit points mean that any surprise attack/ambush has a very good chance of crippling or killing a PC rather than "softening" them up as in most level based RPGs.

ALsonote that "zero edition" is not the finished rulebook, but was printed and released early to appease fans who wanted to see it and didn't want to wait for the final relase, since it wan't known when the book would be ready to ship. There are a few things in the rules that were not in or corrected since "zero", so it is worth checking out to see the updates. Chaosium was going to make a file with the corrections, but I don't know if it is done yet.

I agree, I don't find it easier, or more intuitive, for skills over 100% just doable. I still prefer the old RQ method of 5%/20%. I f9ind that just give the plays a copy of the old RQ crticall/sepcial/fumble chart on an index card or somehere on the character or note sheet works out the fastest, and allows for adjustments due to modifers easily. IN fact, I think it is probably as fast and easy as any of the supposedly "faster" methods. But then, my core RQ players knew how to divide by 5 and could remember the 30/50/70/90 breakpoints fr the 5% critical chart. In most cases we could tell something wa a crit or special before doing the math.

Connecting the dots...:confused: The original post mentioned the surprise that PCs got 2d6+6 INT and SIZ whille everyone else rolled 3d6. In fact, Elric is about the only BRP deriative where PCs and NPCs roll differently for INT and SIZ. In most other BRP based games, all (human) characters roll the same for attributes. This lead to explaining that, plus some comments as to if/why this is better or worse than the way other BRP games handle character attributes. So the orginal post is kinda based on a flawed premise. Where or not this place is cheaper than therapy depends on what price you place on your SANity. There are other ways to "pay" besides money,and sometimes this place can make you pay, and pay, and pay :eek:

But it shouold have been cut in the anti-heroic mold. That is what made the Elric saga special.

Well, you and I (among others) kinda went over all this last year when I was working on my vehicle design stuff. Basically if a hero can lift a tank, he has to have a certain minimin STR score, and this, with SIZ will deterine his damage bonus, and affect certain skill percentages. I think one reason why armor values are as low as they are for tanks and battleships is so that characters who can lift a SIZ 90 tank can actually manbage to damage one with a 7d6 damage bonus. I think that is why Jason went with the low AP high hit point model. Otherwise the lifting capacity (non linear progression) quickly outstrips the damage capacity (+1d6 db per 16 points). This isn't a problem for most settings, but can be a pain for superheroes.

rust, I did a little digging and am working on a table with explosive strengths, amount you need to blow up/demolish things like doors, walls, vehicles building and bridges, along with modifiers for things like extra set up time, shaped charges and tamping. I am going to set up it to list the amounts in standard M112 blocks of C-4 with about 1 lb of explosive charge. I(ll include a table with the Releative Strengths of other explosives, so a character can figure out how much nitro, TNT, dynamite, or black powder to use if he doesn't have any C-4 handy. Hopefully I'll have it done tonight and can post it tomorrow. I just have to expand the BRP C\4 damages from 4 oz. on up to get the damages and figure out the resistance for various materials to being blown up.

What you can do is use doubles and give them a 10% (01-10) crtical chance for each 100% of skill. SO a character with Sword at 162% would critical on die rolls of 01-10, 11, 22, 33, 44, and 55. This gives the same percentages as the doubles method and can handle skill scores up to 1000%, more than high enough to handle anything you will ever see in game play.

It kinhd of depends of what something is trying to blow up, what kind of explosive you are using, and how you place the charge. It takes a lot of explosive to actually destroy (break up) a buidling, bridge or some rock, but much less to take out a support and cause said object to collapse under it's own weight. The while point of the demolitions skill is to allow someone to recognize and take out the supports so that an object collaspes, rather than blowing it apart. I can dig out some stuff for blowing up buildings, bridges and the like. I've even got so real world stuff for determining how much you need to cut through steel bars (and train tracks). But you might be better off keeping it abstact: For a simple guideline, I'd suggest using the damage listed for explosives in the rules (I think BRP has the old CoC xd6 +1 d6 per so much more explosive on the weapon charts) and compare the damage inflicted to the SIZ of the object on the resistance table to see if the explosive force is enough to knock the object down. A demolitons skill roll could kick up the "success level" of the explosive attack on the object, making it more likely to take down a big object with less explosive. A successful demolitions roll could inflict double damage, a "special success" do max damage (or triple), and a critical might do 4x damage. This way you only need to give bridges, building and rock a SIZ rating based on their mass and go from there.

The hard part about trying to rate certain challenges is that it isn't so much a finite rating score, but more of a case by case judgment. D&D can use level as a loose guide to relative power of a foe, as well as his expected wealth and equipment, but as others have mentioned it isn't entirely accurate. For instance, in D&D, stats are not factored into the CR rating for most NPCs, so a group of CR 1 Orcs, with above average STR scores can be much nastier than their CR indicates. Since BRP doesn't tie gear and magic in with relative combat ability like D20 does, it is harder to use an abstact rating. With BRP, the best gauge of relative power is probably the relative skill scores of the characters. You can probably use a character's skill in his primary weapon as a rough guide. A 10% edge is significant, but not telling, while a 30% difference or more is probably going to have a significant impact on the outcome of the encounter. From that you would want to adjust for differences in stats, equipment/armor, and magic. And then adjust for situation and tactics. Even so this is a very rough guide. Something like, an Allosaurus, with 50% bite skill, and doing 12d6 on a bite, is obviously much more threatening that a typical bandit with 50% in sword or bow, unless the foe in on the other side of a ravine, in which case an archer with 50% in bow is more of a challenge that the 30 foot long pincushion.

Another reason why BRP isn't that popular* Player expectations and goals. Recently I've been running a CODA LOTR campaign (I statred it before BRP was out, otherwise I might have run BRP instead). ZOne thing I've noticed is that most of my players don't seem to "get" the system or the setting. Instead of taking advantage of the system'S flexibiliy, character options, and colorful setting, the players seem to be trying to play it like D&D. They are hunting for XP, gold and magic, and are disappointed that the world doesn't work the way the expect. A lot of gamers, especially those who have nearly exclusively played D&D, bring those expectations to other RPGs, and get frustrated with the new game when things do go as expected. IF D&Ders don't rack up XP awards, and find a certain amount of gold and magic, they thing something is "wrong", and usually blame the RPG. I7ve seen this in the past with RQ related game too. Most of my players started off with D&D and hand to learn to adapt to other RPGs and how to appreciate the different features of different games. For example, most of the D&Ders I knew wern't bother that you couldn't run a swashbuckler type lightly armored fighter in AD&D. They just accepted that high defense/AC required heavy armor and that was that. SO I think in order for BRP to be more popular, players have to want the features that BRP has. Unfortunately, a lot, if not most of the gaming world, doesn't seem to care about those features.

It seems kinda high since artillery shells in BRP only do around 15d6. The problem with the lineral approach is that nothing else in the game is linear, so stats, hit points, etc quickly get overpowered. What you might want to do is to the the damage dice to the Damage Index rating for phasers. Say DI 3.5 = 1d6 and so forth. With the way explosions work in BRP, I suggest you give settings 11+ a blast radius and a distance per die drop off. That would also reduce the number of dice needed to damage something big. Rather than doing thousands of points of damage.

For RQ, especially in Glorantha, this was the idea. But several other Chaosium games didn't work that way. A lot of this comes down to gamers' preferences and styles of play. Case in point, those who are fond of the ElLric! RPG are happy that so much of it was used for the BRP rules. On the other hand, those who are not fond of teh Elric! RPG are not as happy that so much of it was used for the BRP rules. With all the differernt varaitons of the "Chaosium House System" that were relased over the years (RQ2, RQ3, Stormmbringer, CoC, Elric!, Ringworld, Superworld, orginal BRP), there is just no way to please everyone all the time.

So Triff, What happened to the site over the weekend? Was it just an upgrade, or did the site get hacked, and you had to install new anti-hacker protection?