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Yeah, the idea was a natural evolution of game design at the time, and probably several people had the idea at at about the same time. I remember DMs doing opposted attribute rolls to handling things like arm wrestling back in the early-mid 80s. Pendragon used opposed attribute rolls in 85. So I think things were tending that way. I think Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip might be the first RPG to eschew stat bonuses and just use the stat. Melee was released in 1977. I suspect the nature and limitations of a microgame probably led to the direct use of attributes as the simplest way to handle things.

I doubt that, but it's probably the most well known game to do so early on. I suspect that there were some other RPGs in the late 70s and early 80s that did so but are mostly forgotten today. Even the game mechanics used for WEG's D6 system does something similar, with the attribute actually being the die roll, with the default stat block for NPCs being 2D/4D. I think the idea evolved from people playing AD&D where stats below 15 didn't affect game play all that much. When there isn't much difference between a 6 STR and a 14 STR you have to wonder if it is worth the bookkeeping. Yeas, and one of the big perks of that approach is that you do not have to track a bunch of "average" stats for NPCs. The stat block for a group of bandits can be reduced down to Str+1, Dex+1, Sword 2, Survival 1.

There are also some percentile based non-D100 games that use critical rules that could be adapted to a BRP game. For instance: HARN uses die rolls that end on 0 or 5 as critical successes or critical failures depending on if the roll is under or over the skill roll. This is very simple and easy to adpat to BRP. It could even be expanded upon to allow for multiple success levels based upon the ones die (i.e 0 = critical, 2-3 = special, 4-9 = success). The James Bond RPG uses a table with 4 Quality Ratings (Success Levels),based upon 10%, 20%, 50%, and 100% of the success chance. As the game ties most results (weapon damage, distance traveled, time to complete a task) directly to the Quality Rating the Quality Ratings were a bit more important than they tend to be in most BRP games..

HARN is somewhat similar with rolls than end on 5 or 0 being crticals or fumbles depending on if they are successful or not. It's really simple to game, scales along with skill, and doesn't require any table to use. I think the 00 =100 thing isn't that diffuclt to grasp, but a 00-99 roll isn't any harder to run than 01-100. BTW Halcyon uses a 00-99 mechanic, and I think the first game I saw using is was some sort of espionage RPG. Yeah, I even tried using it for a BRP variant I was working on. I think the 0, and 5 rule from HARN is as easy to use as doubles. Personally, I think the best method would probably be to somehow use the values on the dice as the effect (damage, distance moved, etc.) instead of degrees of success, but implementing it is the tricky part. That way you don't get the 2 point impales and such. I think I saw it in some new spy/espionage RPG, maybe Covert Ops. I recall it have very simple game mechanics with the "00" thing being a twist that stood out. I've seen more than one RPG that uses 00=Zero, it seems to be a popular thing now, so there could be dozens of RPGs out there that use it.

I recall seeing something like that too. 00 was the lowest/best roll, 99 the highest, and doubles were crticals or fumbles depending on if they were under or over the skill rating.

They added a beserker rabbit? Strangely enough there are multiple rabbit RPGs now. So many Python fans. One of the same authors. Don't forget that Steve Perrin co-wrote Strombringer and obviously did most of the game mechanics, as they are very similar to RuneQuest. Oh, I agree. It's just that I think that street so run both ways. If the BRP crowd can go exist with the D&Ders then the D&Ders should coexist with the BRPers. Although considering how D&D is going these days, I'm not sure it they can even coexist with each other. At least not at GenCon.

No problem. I need to deal with some noisy knights in the daytime, anyway. BTWwhat can I get to protect myself against area effect weapons, say,I dunno, holy hand grenades?

Good thing SAN rules are optional in Stormbringer. Now I can just picture a sorcerer making DEMON-Hankies to hand out. Groups with hankies all around should run into beings from a lawful plane with grenade launchers and napalm. Something bad should happen to their characters, too.

Sounds more like a general criticism of BRP games rather than Stormbringer specifically, as the same hold true for CoC, RQ, etc. Stormbringer does have ripostes, which speeds things along. Probably the fastest BRP based method is the Pendragon mechanic of replacing alternating turns with an opposed roll. Barring ties or special combat maneuvers, somebody is going to hit every round. Personalty, I prefer the attack/parry/serious injury method to the increasing hit point attrition method used in a lot of RPGs. A 5, 10 or even 20 point wound loses context when a character's hit points can double, triple or more as they gain experience, especial for non-fantasy settings. It's gets kinda silly when two gunfighters empty their pistols into each other and then have to stop and reload before finishing the fight.

But those were just flesh wounds.😉 Beat me too it.😎 BTW, Can I play a rabbit for my next character? 😁

Murphy's Rules. I still love how someone in RQ with a low CON can survive having both arms cut off but someone with a high CON cannot, due to higher hit points in each location. MUrphy's Rules were funny but not all the examples give were feasible, but then they didn't have to be. It might be a Murphy Rule, but in actual game play no player ever tried to parry with a hankie. It doesn't really matter if the hankie can block infinite damage if you can't make the parry roll. It might be a funny Murphy Rule, but it's not funny enough to kill your character over -especially when the character already has a weapon on hand that they can use with some proficiency. I've yet to see a player opt to parry with an old shoe at 5% when they could just parry their broadsword at a much higher percentage. I suppose a character who gets into a lot of bar fights could develop some skill with a beer stein to the point where it might be a legitimate option, but that also has some inherent drawbacks, such as the risk of spilling beer! A Pyrrhic victory at best.

RQ3 had probably the most utilitarian magic systems of BRP, especially Sorcery (and by extension, Lunar Magic). Sorcery was a bit flawed by relying too heavily on FreeINT, but Sandy Peterson's Sorcery rules addressed that. Classic Fantasy might also be worth a look. It allows you to run an old school D&D style of game with BRP, so I assume it has rules that emulate the classic D&D Magic-User. I'm not sure what they are, as I don't own CF, but I'm sure there must be someone on the forums who does, and can provide some info on it.

Me either considering the typo. Sorry. What I meant to say is that does the abstraction really simply anything? Based on your comment latter on in the post it does, but at the cost of restricting weapon breakage to deliberate attacks, eliminating weapon damage (other than complete breakage), and apparently eliminating the ability of weapons to blow through a successful defense with a lot of damage. And you do you. But the purpose of this thread was to help Lloyd do Lolyd. He wants a Master of Orion style of game with shields that get slowly chewed up by energy weapons. That's why he started this thread. Maybe I missed something in your posts but how do the Mythras rules emulate that? Now if you are trying to convince him that he shouldn't use such a weapon attrition system, then you need to explain why Myhras would be a better fit for what he is trying to accomplish, or why he should abandon his current idea for the Myhras method. Which is a radical change, both in terms of weapon durability and in defense. It is also one that wouldn't work towards Lloyd's goal of emulating Master of Orion, where energy weapons slowly destroy shields. It is when the game is titled "Basic" role playing. Even Jason noted that the BGB was misnamed. Who relied on cliches. You're the one who brought up claims of Mythas being more "crunchy and fiddly" than BRP. No one was doing anyone a disservice, and I'm glad you are so pleased with Mythras. Now if you prefer Mythras that's perfectly fine, lots of people do. But not everyone does (that's okay too), nor does Mythras' method for handling weapon (and shield) damage seem to emulate what Lloyd is trying to do, and the latter is what this thread is all about. If the weapon damage rules from Mythras, do not help to do what Lloyd has already stated he wants, then it doesn't matter if they are good or not. We were all trying to list options for Lloyd to use for his campaign, specifically things that would fit his previously stated desires for how things should work, based upon his idea of capturing the style and feel of Master of Orion. As he wants energy weapons to slowly wear down shields during combat, I suggested the RQ3 model as a good way to do that.

I think it was more a case of typing AP to mass.,a though this would be very similar as both size and material would affect mass. But does that abstraction really simply anything? Yup. That's because there is no real difination of just what is BRP anymore. Orginally BRP was a 16 page booklet of trimmed down RuneQuest rules. Then it became RQ3 with all the RQ and Glroantha references removed. Then it became a collection of various rules from various Chasoium RPGs, none of which were actually BRP. So just how complex it is depends on what rules or rule variants you are using. I'll add a bit of irony myself in that adding more options and variant rules to the rulebook makes the rules more "crunchy and fiddly" as it means a GM will need to make choices rather than use something "as is". I think it's more accurate to say that BRP can be less "crunchy and fiddly" than Mythras/RQ6 or it can be more "crunchy and fiddly" depending on what version of BRP you use.

But RQ3 armor points weren't size based. A long wooden spear didn't have more AP than a shortsword. And the orginal Stormbringer way was even faster with less bookkeeping. . But faster and less bookkeeping isn't always better. Most of this comes down to personal preferences and emphasis. I think Lloyd want's weapons/shields slowly losing armor/hit points from attacks and will take the bookkeeping that goes with it, as it better emulates the style of Master of Orion that he is trying to capture for his campaign -especially for high tech personal shields.

Since the BRP Gold book takes rules from multiple Chasoium RPGs, including RuneQuest, and mixes in some new stuff to boot, I don't see why RQ3 rules would be off limits to someone setting up their BRP game. There is so much cross-pollenation with BRP games already. People are mentioning rules from Mythas and LEgend and techincally those aren't even BRP, so why should RuneQuest, the parent system of BRP, be excluded? Heck, considing that Lloyd is working on a Sci-Fi setting, we might even bring up stuff from Futureworld or even Ringworld.

I don't believe it is all that useful. In real life you can parry heavy weapons with light ones. Otherwise the rapier and small sword never would have replaced the heavier arming sword. It's just a lot harder to block with a lighter weapon. THe thing about parrying is that you don't try to stop the attack directly (that's a block), by instead redirect the attack so that it doesn't land on target. Even when blocking shorter weapons tend to be tougher. The same lever effect that makes larger weapons hit harder also means then tend to take more damage from doing so. That's one of the main reasons why swords started off short. It was difficult to make one long without the tip bending of breaking in combat, especially out of bronze.

Considering that RQ forums havew been entirely taken over by RQG, the BRP section makes as much sense as anyplace else. Besides, BRP is more of an umbrella term for the various Chasoium RPGs. CoC, Stormbringer, Worlds of Wonder, are all BRP. Actually he is using a homebrewed variant.

In RQ3 Dodge had a couple of weaknesses: First off, the success level of the dodge had to equal to exceed that of the attack. That tended to mean that those who relied on dodging would eventually take a nasty hit when the inevitable special or critical hit popped up. Secondly, a fumbled dodge lead to the character taking at least a normal hit. In practice that meant that every so often a dodging character would zig when they should have zagged, and jump right into an attack that would have otherwise missed. Why? I don't see how your charring a dagger instead of a sword makes it any harder for you to dodge the opponent's spear/arrow. Perhaps not. I would think it just comes down to if the opponent can reach you or not. The dodge doesn't just back pedal but could jump, duck, sidestep, or just about any other move that avoids the opponent's weapon. BTW, RQ3 did have a couple of special attacks such as a sweep that a giant might use. Basically the sweep attacked an arc rather than a specific character, and the attack hit each character in the arc, in succession until/unless the attack failed to knock a character down. A big powerful creature could send characters flying like bowling pins. Well, if you go with weapons having AP, then shields should have AP too. So a tree hit from a giant that does 50 points of damage, is going to damage a a shield somewhat, although that would probably be of only academic interest to the character holding the shield, as most of that 50 points has probably gotten through to them. That was a big reason why shields were of limited value against giants, dragons, and other huge nasties in RQ3. A large shield might stop 16 or even 18 points, but that hardly matters when the opponent is doing two to three times that in damage.

Ouch! You sank my battleship! Good Luck and Best Wishes.

Which is precisely why I prefer the RQ to BRP, where weapons/shields have AP and lost AP only when they take/block more damage than their AP score. For example if a sword (10 AP) parried an 11 point axe hit the sword would lose 1 AP, and only be able to stop 9 points from then on. Yeah, short of a giant or dragon, or other maga damage situations, such a weapon (or shield) would be indestructible. Of course it would take a lot of money time, effort, skill, and permanent POW points to create such an item in the first place. Sorry, I have to decline the award. I pretty much paraphrased Gene Roddenberry from 1965-66. When discussing the aliens on Star Trek he said something similar in that he had to cast humans in the alien roles, as there were not an aliens around to cast for the show. He followed it up by stating that if anyone did know of any aliens they should have them contact him immediately for a regular role on the show. Besides, the only reason why we don't have any magic items to study is because I keep letting the fluid out of the eight ball when studying it.-"FUTURE UNCERTAIN, ASK AGAIN LATER"

Statstically yes, but in actual practice I don't think there would be too much fuss over !d8+1 vs 1d8. It's not like going with 3d6 or some such. Keep in mind that he is going iwith SIZ+CON for hit points (double that of BRP) so increased damage would have been a possibility. I'm not so sure. It's been a few incarnations since I looked at Mythras hit point and damage rules (i.e. back when it was Mongoose RuneQuest) but characters used to be able to soak a lot more damage, especially if they had a high resilience skill, than their BRP counterparts.

That's another reason why I prefer RQ3 Armor points. Damage below the weapon's armor points got soaked up by the armor and ignored. Thus, an echanted sword with 40 AP was not only very hard to break (you'd have to do about 80 points to deliberately break it at one go, or exceed 40 points multiple times), but can also stop a lot more with a parry. Well for the crystal sure. I'd think that for an enchanted blade, the enchantment would be in the blade. Basically whatever the magic is effecting if probably what's magical. Of coruse the thing is with magical items is that as we don't seem to have any around to study, we have a lot of leeway in how we interpret things. Case in point in D&D a creature that needs a magical weapon to injure takes full damage from a magical weapon, while in RQ such a creature usually only takes the magical component of the damage. Thus a Sword with Bladesharp 2 on it only does 2 points of damage to a werewolf- which might actually be worse than doing no damage. Either approach is equally valid.

It depends on how it breaks. It if it just the tip or the tang it is possible to file down the broken section, make a new hilt to hold the shorter tang, etc. The Seax was often made from the remains of a broken sword. But if you want something comperable to what it was before it broke then reforging is the way to go. In some legends reforged weapons are considered superior and/or magical. Sigurd for instance. In fact, that's probably something Tolkein draw from for the Lord of the Rings. For magic it's a tough call. Most RPGs tend to assume that when a magical item is broken the magic leaves it, but...going back to the aforementioned legends, the opposite seems true. The magic is there, it is just that you need someone who is very skilled to fix/reforge the item without ruining it. But as it's not really covered in nmost BRP games, it's up to you. Personally, I'd probably assume the item can be repaired, but it would be difficult to do so. Any bound spirits, demons, etc. would probably be freed when the item was broken (the exception would be if the spirit were bound in a gem on the pommel or some such and the blade was broken). Depending on if I wanted this to be a one roll repair or a task requiring multiple rolls to fix would determine the skill modifier, and consequences of failure. But it really comes down to just what BRP game you are planing and how you want things to work in your campaign. If you want broken magical items to be lost forever, then you don't need any special repair rules. IF you want to allow broken magical items to be restored, then you might want something.