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Because shuields tend to be less sturdy than weapons. A sword can last through many battles, but a shield is usually good for one or two. Consider the effect of chopping a shield with an axe as opposed to a sword. As it stands now, you could block a charging rhino or pickup truck with a shield and not break the shield.

Well, Superworld has been an "orphan" game for over 2 years. I think Chaosium probably needs to get itself reestablished among mainstream gamers again with something like BRP before they start going after the submarkets. A new version of Superworld, as a BRP supplement, might not be a bad idea for Chaosium or a third party publisher some time in the future. One thing about BRP is that it has put certain rules together that did not go together in the past, and will probably need some looking over before including them in a campaign. For instance, Superstats and skill category modfiers have never been included in the same system before. Someone buying 30 points or so of DEX is going to introduce several previously unexplored difficulties-such a a bunch of very have starting skill scores. So anyone looking to do a updated Superworld is going to have to look over all the options available, new SIZ table, etc. and try to figure out the ramifications of the way things work now before doing and tweaking for Supers.

STR^2= lbs? IS that from somehwere or did you wing it? I suspect that it would throw the SIZ values for Battleships and other vehicles way out of whack. What is 100 tons on the SIZ table? That would probably be the best "ballpark" figure to start with.

I don't believe it would take much to fix the system. Basically just drop the "double whammy" and either raise the difficulty or the number of success. I noticed that the latest version doesn't mess with the target numbers as much as the olders games. :cool: That takes me back. But I seem to recall something about only gaining POW if the opponent had a higher POW. But I might be thinking of another game in the BRP family. Not that it would completely stop the problem. POW, and it's constant chyanging was one of the irksome bits about RQ2. I think it is odd that raising STR, DEX or CON takes weeks of dedicated effort, while POW could be raised by casting one spell.

Why? Most heroes, in real life or fiction usually start off as Joe Average and grow into being heroes. THe whole "Heore7s Joureny" thing ends up being a very short trip. Having all the PCs start off with 100%+ in a weapon skill has a much bigger impact on the game (and a negaive one) than the 2d6+6 does. In Erlic!? More like they are the ones summoning the demonds and killing Joe Average in the first place. The Young Kingdoms are a pretty dark place. It's Elric, not Lord of the Rings. Pre-Industiral= A society that existed prior to the industrial revolution. It includes medieval, as well as some more and less advanced cultures. Basically the lack of certain technologies and resources, survival becomes much more difficult. Just producing enough food to feed everybody is a big problem. Prior to the invention of the horse plow, you nned about 9 out of every ten people working providing food just to be able to feed most everyone, most of the time. And about a third of the time even that isn't enough, and you end up with famine. Unless people happen to be firends with the local noble or bishop, their "friends" probably are having enough trouble just trying to survive let alone help. Take a look at prety much any RPG setting and think out just how many people have to be farmers just to support one guy with sword, armor, and horse, his family, squire, severants and craftsmen. Its the reason why the feudal system evoved the way it did. Someine with a low stat is probably not going to be able to do his full share of the work load and would therefore suffer increased burden, making it even more difficult to get by. That'S why life expectancy was so low. Yup. Even a high CON isn't a guarantee of survival either. Without science, or (maybe) magic, there isn't much a character can do to avoid disaease other than avoid other people. Even that won't do much good if the plague targets livestock or crops. It surprises me just how much fantasy RPGs tend to downplay the whole food issue, since it was probably the single most important factor in shaping all those medevial settings. Most games give the felling that adventueres can just go down to the market and buy all the food they want, if they got the gold. Yes, character have options. Even those with low stats. Well, expect possibly low INT. Really dumb characters probably aren't bright enough to know that they need to do certain things, and hopefully one or more smarter characters can look after them. A character with a 3 INT makes a lousy PC anyway. But, since Elric uses 2d6+6, it keeps players from having to deal with such challenges. AN 8 or 9 stat isn't wonderful, but it is playable an only a minor hindrance. A 5 DEx, in any BRP related RPG is quite a hurdle. It really cuts down on the weapon selection.

Yup, it's hidden in the section with the "genric" NPC stats. I say we agree on Eric! But then we seem to do that alot on game mechanics.I hate the combat matrix, and generally prefer SB or RQ3 over it too. SB1 was a little too much, but it did get toned down a bit. OF course there was way too much magic in the RPG, since all the majorNPCs from the saga ended up needing demon weapons and (especially) demon armor to withstand any sorceror PC. My favorite character generation system for BRPmight be the the one from SB, or maybe the one from Magic World.

Maybe instead of downgrading the shild HP, we could just have the shield take damage equal to the attacker's damage bonus? Maybe add it to the 2 or 4 points or instead off (maybe 1/2 or full db, or full or 2x db depening on the success levels). That would speed up shield destruction a bit, keep those shield protection spells useful, and still allow the big nasties (dragons, etc.) to rip through a shield quickly. P.S. It might be a good idea not to use the spot rule for impaling weapons. A spear or arrow would probably punch a hole through the shield and strike the personb behind it rather than chop or bash a shield into kindling.

Not necessarily. Thanks to Elric!, there is, indeed a game where PCs roll 2d6+6 for SIZ and INT while other humans roll 3D6. Personally, I am not fond of the version of BRP used in the Elric! rules. From a game mechanics perspective, I think it is probably the worse ruleset to be released by Chasoium.

Uh, could you clarify? I think it works out about the same as far an the granularity for armor/HP goes. Since you are mutiplying by 10, then 102 or 107 HP would end up being the same in practical terms. Well, What I thought was that the resistance table is set for up to a 20 point difference at 5% per point. Since 20x5%=100%, we could divide 100% by the "range" to get a % per point number. Its not really fair to the high STR characters, but fits the world of comics/managa better. Basically the farther away you get from "normal" the less the actual difference seems to matter. Any character than can throw a tank, seems to be strng enough to be able to grapple with the Hulk or Superman and not just get shaken off automatically. The kw/10 thing, is that official or a house rule? That would put a 750 hp engine at around STR 56. Or are you using the 1/10th rule for large size vehicle/mecha only, where the SIZ table seems to "flatten out"? Sorry to sidetrack, just that an actual conversion to STR bea big help in my nvelicle design rules. Currently I am using a x2 hp/KW =b +8 STR for up to STR 150 or so, and a more linear conversion for STR 150+. SO a STR 80 Truck ends up much stronger than ten STR 8 characters (combined STR 32 rather than STR 80). So ka. Maho Shoujo Shaira? :cool: I guess we'll see if Shai-chan reads this thread.

Glad you liked it. Example drawn from an actual play session of Vampire. I had ambushed another Vasmp who was out to get me, and discovered that I wasn't rolling enough dice to have a chance at staking the guy, then realized in lay that his chance of bothcing was higher than my chance of success. Our group soon realized that the game mechanics of the Stroyteller system sound reasonable, and make a lot of sense, but don't hold up in actual gameplay. Agreed. Except I would extend the use of crticals frumbles to major NPCs under the same conditions. But then, that is my point. A GM familar with the dice probabilities knows enough to avoid rolling all the time. Roll enough and eventually a PC will fumble badly and kill one or two buddies before tripping and falling onto his sword. Frankly I thing the fumble chart is more of an indication that those SCA guys are "weekend warriors" rather than reflection on real armed combat. The fumble chance was one reason why I never considered "skill check hunting" to be a problem in RQ/BRP. That any the fact that while "Joe Adventurer" is feeling clever about getting a "free" check in his Left Handed 1H Spear, the dark troll is using his club and probably is bashing his skull in.

Don't worry, you can. But depending on the style of Supers game you want to run, you might be better off using a different game system. As mentioned by most, BRP works great for characters like Batman, Captain America, or Daredevil. If you want to run a low powered game it's fine. Somewhere around Spiderman is probably the point where the mechanics begin to depart from the comics. Still, if someone wanyed to run a "realsitic" Iron Man, like in the film, BRP might not be a bad choice, just make sure to give the armor some Hit points so anything that gets past the AP doesn't kill the PC. High powered characters are "doable" in BRP, but you just have to be alert to the pitfalls and be ready to deal with them. I successfully shoehorned a Supergiril character into BRP/Superworld for a Wild Cards camapign. THe character wasn't quite as powerful as the actual character in the comics, but she was strong enough to lift and throw a tank, and that was more than enough for a Wild Cards setting. Reastically, anything bigger would probably break apart if someone tried to lift it anyway. The major hurdle with BRP supers is probably the lethality and overkill potential in the system. A character with a 4d6 damage bonus can kill most people with a single punch. It is what would happen in the real world, but not in the comics. TO run high powered characters, the best thing to do would be to reduce the lethality of the game. For instance, blunt attacks could be changed from doing lethal HP damage to damage a character power/energy pool. For the resistance chart, I suggest scaling the chart as follows to handle stats over 20 up to 20: 5% per point of difference.(Standard) 21-33: 3% per point of difference. 34-50: 2% per point of difference. >50* 1% per point of difference. Depending on just what you have in mind you can "tweak" BRP to fit. Let us know what type of game you are planning on and the folks here will probably be only to happy to throw lostsa of options and solutions at you.

[quote=RosenMcStern;18152 Someone who can read Japanese, you mean.

I was thinking of using the a x10 scale, but just "factor it out" before hand. So 15d6 would be 1.5d6, or 1d6+1d3 "mecha scale". When mecha fight mecha, everything would be treated as a normal man vs. man fight in BRP, with much smaller numbers. When the mecha interact with "man scale" items/people, just muttiply the results by 10. That way we can have, say, Great Mazinger, punch an enemy mecha, inflict enough damage to kncock it back through a building, and the mecha fall onto a car and still have everything go fast. This would also "factor out" the stat differences at mecha scale. a STR 120 mecha vs. a STR 100 one would be treated as a 12 vs. 10 on the resistance table instead of a overwhelming 20 point difference. A x10 scaling table could be: 1=1 2-1d2 3=1d2 4=1d3 5=1d3 6=1d4 7=1d4 8=1d5 9-1d5 10=1d6 P.S.> WIth the old SIZ chart, a 8*1 scale would have solved this perfectly, since in RQ3 x2 mass was +8 SIZ. There might be a reasonable approximate formula that might make scaling easier for BRP, but it might take a little crunching to find it. I had done some work on a mecha addition for my vehicle design rules, but need to get the rules more in sync with the values used in the publish BRP. That's what I get for writing supplements for a game that hadn't been released yet. Ideally, I love to get it so people can just plug in the stuff like tonnage, kph, and powerplant ratings and get usable stats for BRP. It would make crossover games a lot easier.

Rosen and soltakss pointed out the mechanical difficulties well. I think the solution to the probloem, if one is desired, can be found in games in DC Heroes. TO allow for the greater range in stats among PCs, Greg used a "resistance chart" that scaled along with the stats. I think BRP could work better at mixed power levels by swcaling and even capping values and powers according to thier relative ratings rather than than the simple add subtract method. Tweaking a few things to work more on the ratio of the ratings rather than the actual point spread would make BRP a lot more "Supers Friendly". (sorry, couldn't help the awful pun). For example, treating a 40 vs. 20 the same as a 20 vs. 10 (instead of the same as a 40 vs 30) would help, as would capping damage by the ratio the attack ocverwhelms the defense. So a 15d6 attack vs 15 points of armor+hit points would be limited to say 6d6 damage or some such. But, frankly, why bother? If you want to run a high powered super campaign, you are probably better off using a game designed to pull it off, and most of BRPs features will probably be obstacles.

It can be an important aspect when the matter of probablity comes into play. OFten there is a big difference between what a player or GM expects a character to be able to do, and what the laws od probability allow a character to be able to do in a game. Sometimes the mathematics behind the method will intrude on the play of the game, and ignoring the math can skew the gameplay. Some examples: Storyteller System (multiple D10s): The double whammy of varible difficulty and required sucesses to perform an action means that, statistically speaking, the best way for most characters to drive a stake though a vampire's heart is to hand the vampirethe stake and hope he botches. RQ/BRP/CoC/etc (D100 with degress of success): The minimum critical and fumble ranges are so high that most weapons vechiles and other tech is too unreliable. If between 1 and 5% off all aircraft pilots actually fumbled on take off or landing air travel would be bannded. Likewise, big nasties such as dragons, can't really assauslt a castle successfully, becuase one of those archers manning the walls is going to get a crtical. I bring this up just to point out that the dice do matter, GMs and players should be aware of how, so they know when it is best not to rely on them.

To some extent yeah, but SIZ and INT were the "problem stats" with RQ3, and so were the ones adjusted. Personally, I favor 2d6+3 for stats, and used same for my BRP variant rules last year. One "bug" with the increased SIZ was that the db formula stayed the same, so most people caught the D4 damage bonus. Would someone with very low score in any stat survive for long in a a pre industrial society or be able to function competently as an adventuer? Probably not. But improbable is not impossible. As Jason points out, Erlic is a classic example of an adventuerer with a low CON. The Erlric RPG kind of cheats. IT uses 2d6+6 for PC heroes as opposed to 3D6 for normal people. Part of the fun of an RQ2/3 character was in starting off with "Joe Average" and watching him develop into a hero. In RQ stats could be trained up, and that 18 STR means a lot more when you built it up from a 14. It sort of ironic though that Elric is the RPG that uses 2d6+6 for stats, since it is the BROP game where the stats probably have the least impact. A 4 DEX in RQ is a much bigger hinderance than a 4 DEX would be in Elric.

I think the intros are a good idea, but the real problem is finding a way to get BRP out in front of the D&D crowd. Back in the early 80s the gaming RPGs were much more geared to promoting the RPG hobby than today, where they promote one RPG system or company. So it was possible for someone reading Dragon to stumble across the occasional article for RuneQuest, DragonQuest, or Traveller. Today, the internet does allow us to better communicate with each other, but it also tends to make us less likely to see something that we were not looking for. Free scenarios on BRP sites only work for those already dfamilar with BRP. We need to figure out a waqy to get this stuff out where it will do the most good. I'm thnking back on how I got into RQ/BRP, and it was a very indirect route. I was helping a friend a fellow D&D gamer move his book/gaming store and in the process "discovered" the Elric novels. This got me hooked on Elric, and eager to buy an Elric based RPG--Stormbringer. Strombringer led to RuneQuest, and so on. If I didn't look at the right place at the right time, I might have missed out of BRP entirely. Like a lot of BRP fans, I think that BRP would be a lot more popular if more gamers were exposed to it. But us telling each other how great it is is just "preaching to the choir". What we need to do it to find a way to take "our message" into "enemy territory" and covert or cross-pollinate some of the D20 crowd. To do that, we have to do more than make stuff accessible. We have to find a way to get it up in the spots where the D20 crowd are looking. Anyone got any idea how?

Not you fault. Chances are you wern't around and gaming when RQ was at it's peak 25 years ago. Even back then, most of the gamers I knew were not familar with the system or had played it much. One thing us grizzled old RPG vets can do every now it then is pull out some long dead RPG system and surprise younger gamers who were never aware that such a game had existed.

Not really. The Palladium version is based off of Robotech rather than Macross. The Palladium stats are inaccurate, since much was done without consulting the actual Macross stats but by making stuff up. Some mecha as misidentified, or have the wrong equipment. THe best solution would probably be to have someone to do up stats from scratch based on the actual data for the mecha. Not that you have to be the one stat these thing out personally.

Don't feel too bad, I think Go Nagai has the same trouble. Apparently putting Grendeizer in the same setting as Mazinger has caused a bit of trouble.

THe 13 average for SIZ and INT wee probably to allow RQ to better handle "generic" fantasy. With humans on a 3-18 range, it made it hard to stat out something like the SIZ of a hobbit. The 8-18 range gave humans a decent spread for stats while creating more "room" to handle smaller, or less intellgent creatures. It also helped out with the new hit point formula, where SIZ was much more important. As a plus, it eliminated the low SIZ and or low INT human PCs. Such characters were little more than a "gamer's challenge" anyway.

Defense.... Sounded good in theory, but didn't play out to well. Early on, it didn't affect combat much (a 5 or 10% defense has a minor effect on the chance to hit), but did complicate the game more, requiring recaculating attack crticial and special chances. As denfese improved, it started to dominate. A character with a 60% defense was usually better ff that someone with a 120% parry. With RQ3, the "dodge" skill was develoved, and it took the place of defense, and was probably the main reason why defense went the way of the Dodo. Personally, I prefer active defenses, since they give the player more of a hand in hi character7s destiny. I hate it in other RPGs when someone looses a characrter to a lucky die roll, and can do nothing about it. One idea that I like, but that doesn't translate well into BRP, is to only have the PCs roll for tasks, against a set difficulty, both for attack and defense.

Oh, so true. I've experienced that nightmare. It killed both the setting and any pretensions of balance between the various prestige classes-specially between different interpretations of a particular class. So you end up seeing six differernt version of the Gladiator, Templar, Healer, or Swashbuckler.

There are some other threads on this on the forum. Probably worth searching for, since they go into some detail. The consensus (at least I think there is a consensus) is that BRP is better suited towards a more gritty/realistic style of superhero game than most of the major Superhero RPGs. The Major Super RPGs tend to try to emulate the "reality" of 4 color comics.

Looks interesting. It kind of reminds me of the way they handle crticals in the Usagi Yojimbo. In that RPG players got to pick an attacks "special effects" based upon the degree of success (number of crticals),. One thing UY did, that might go well with the "Combat Exploits" idea is to give certain options to certain weapons. For instance, in UY, a sai got the disarm special effect as one of its specials. So a character who rolled one or more crticals could choose to disarm a foe. Most weapons have 2 or three special "built in", and these really helped to differentiate weapons.