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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.

Yes, it was the first of the infamous Dungeons of Doctor Demento. Originally it was done as a one off for the gaming group, before Massconfusion turned it into a series of convention adventures.

It is, because it straddles the line between fun and tedium. On the one hand, we don't want to be bothered with such minutia. On the other hand, if we ignore it, some players will tend to abuse the situation. Way back, a friend of mind wrote a silly adventure full of such rules exploits. For instance, in one room was a ship. The story behind it was that an adventurer used to carry it around, until the encumbrance rules came out, and then he couldn't carry it anymore, so he had to leave in in the room. Yeah, the general idea is to let the players know that they should behave reasonably, or to account for a long term effort, or the environment. But you don't want it to become a hassle- unless, of course, overcoming such a hassle is part of an adventure. Such as when the PCs have to cross a desert.

That only matters if the characters are going to do it. I think that you'll probably need some form of subdual damage, non-lethal combat to make that work. Otherwise, people will use weapons instead. Especially if they have high tech weapons that can knock an opponent out. Yeah, look at RQ2-3. Both systems have rules where items stuck into shields affect their use. In a nutshell. Weapons of ENC 2+ or which are still held by the opponent prevent the shield from being used. Weapons on ENC1-2 reduce the ability to use the shield by half until removed. Weapons of less than 1 ENC do not affect the shield until 2ENC worth are stuck in the shield. Then they reduce shield use by half. If 4+ECN worth on such items are stuck in a shield, the shield is useless. 20 arrows = 1 ENC. A Dart is 0.5 ENC, and a Javelin 1.5 ENC. Not really, nor should it. Contrary to how many people think greatswords are used (with both hands together on the hilt like a baseball bat), the swords are actually very versatile and can be wielded in multiple ways. Of particular worth here would be "half-swording" the technique where one hand is half way up the blade to aid in stronger thrusts. That would make a greatsword much like a spear in use, and quite good in a narrow corridor. You do not need tons of room for one to be effective.

What if you factored in for fatigue? IN real life altheltes tend to wear the least amont of clothing required for the job, as anything more is an impediment. You could require characters to make a CONx5% roil at various times to avoid fatigue, and you could subtract ENC from the CONx5% value. So if your PC is carting around 20 ENC worth of gear, it would be CONx5-20%. Yeah, damages seems pretty close to BRP standard.

Give credit to Greg Stafford. In Pendragon, whenever you take more damage than your SIZ you have to make a DEX roll or be knocked down.

It looks interesting. I'd consider addingin some sort od DEX or Balance roll for those who get knockedback (if a dragon's tail sends a guy flying back 5m he might not be on his feet). We probably need to see the weapon and armor tables to really see how it will play out. Are damaged standard BRP or something else?

I'll drink to that!

Sometimes. I'd say the damage bonus is significantly different but most weapon damages are the same or similar. How much of obstacle that is is another matter. For the most part an experienced GM can look over the weapon tables, compare similar weapons, and get a rough idea of what the approximate damage would be in Elric! Even if a GM just ported over the weapon stats directly the values wouldn't be too far off, as BRP and Mythas use similar hit points and armor values. I think most weapons are within a point or two, on average.

You might not need them Early on, blackpowder weapons didn't penetrate armor as well as modern firearms do. Armorers would even "poof" thier weapons against firearms (and crossbows) by test firing a round at the armor and leaving the dent to show that the armor was, indeed, bulletproof. Such armor sold for a lot more, too. So if you wanted to you could just assume the same level of technology and go with the stats without any AP modfiers. It would probably make the most sense, too as once bullet start penetrating armor, armor starts to go out of use. If you want bullets to penetrate armor, I'd suggest just lowered the value of lower tech (or non "poofed") armor against firearms. In Elric! the easiest way to do this would probably be to lower the dice rolled. For instance, Full Plate (with helm) protects for 1D10+2 (ave. 7.5) in Elric!, but you could lower the die from 1D10 to 1D6 or even !d4. Considering the damage rating of blackpower weapons, it won't take much of a reduction to get through the armor. I'd say just reduce the armor die by a couple of steps, depending on just how much protection you want the armor to provide, if any. You could always rule that the blackpowder weapons just bypass armor, but that might make them too good, and leave players wondering about wearing armor. For instance, if you reduce the dice by one step...Leather = 1d4, Mail = 1d6+1, and Plate = 1d8+2. if you reduce the dice by two steps...Leather = 1d2, Mail = 1d4+1, and Plate = 1d6+2. if you reduce the dice by three steps...Leather = no protection, Mail = 1d2+1, and Plate = 1d4+2. if you reduce the dice by four steps...Leather = no protection, Mail = 1 point, and Plate = 1d2+2. if you reduce the dice by five steps...Leather = no protection, Mail = no protection, and Plate = 2 points (or 1d3 if you prefer). You can just slide up and down on the die size until you get the values that you like. Probably not. As I noted above, at the time plate armor was still in heavy use, firearms weren't always guaranteed to piece it. However, many version of BRP have an "impale" rule where some weapons do double damage on a very good hit. This is in addition to the critical hit rule. THat kind of leads to a lot of missile weapons getting past armor a lot of the time. Oops correction! The Basic Roleplaying BGB did have official rules: Primitive or Ancient armor only offers 1/2 protection against high velocity or energy weapons. also If armor value is being determined randomly, you should roll for the armor's protection, apply any modifiers, then divide in half, rounding up. Note the term high velocity. Weather or not you consider Blackpool weapons to be high velocity is the question. Historically they fired large, relatively low velocity (for firearms) balls or bullets, which is why plate armor was actually effective against them. Personally, I think I'd rather tweak the armor dice than divide the die rolls in half, too. Perhaps the best thing for you to get, if you can find it would be the Basic Roleplaying rulebook, usually referred to around here as the "Big Gold Book". The BGB is a collection of rules from various RPGs produced by the Chasoium over the years, all of which use the same underlying rule system. Pretty much any BRP based Roleplaying game (Elric!, Stormbringer, Magic World, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Elfquest, Worlds of Wonder, Superworld, Ringworld, etc.) is mostly compatible with other as at least 80% of the game system is the same for all those games. THe BGB collected a lot of that stuff into one book. It might be quite helpful for doing the stort of stuff you are doing, but it's out of print. There are also a lot of "D100:" based RPGs that aren't BRP, but still similar enough that you could take stuff from them, such as anything for RQ6/Mthras, OpenD100 or even BaSiC.

Yeah, that works. Just as long as they have some chance. Assuming the PCs have the abilties to do so. See what I mean? If the skills are very narrow then it becomes impossible to cover all the bases and it becomes very easy for the group to get taken down by something they lack. Large ships full of NPCs can help with this too. If you got a space cruiser with a thousand crewmen aboard, then the GM can easily throw in an "Astrobiologist" or "Temporal Mechanics Engineer" into the game if the PCs find themselves in sudden desperate need of one. But probably works fine for the game. Same with Civ. Relasitically, most technologies would probably require several other technologies to learn, and most techs aren't all or nothing, but tend to have layers of knowledge to impart. Plus most new technolgies grow out of older tech. It's not like lightbulb technology was created in a vacuum (😉) but that it came out of existing knowledge of electricity and material science. Same with laser technology. It's all additive. For instance, Blu-Rays came about because of knowledge of light wavelengths. Blue light has a shorter wavelength that red light, thus a blue laser makes a smaller mark than a red one. That was pretty much academic until someone decided to use lasers to write as much information as possible onto a defined area (the disc). I suspect the same idea will have merit in the medical field one day, if it hasn't already. I'd like to see that. Are you using your own ship design system or some preexisting system. I'd have to see how you do up ships and aircraft to see. On a possibly related note, I recently bought a Naval Wargame and was midly disappoin ted that it used generic stats for aircraft, so maybe indiviualized stats might be useful after all. Possibly, I kinda depends on how you do it. Reminds me of Blake's 7. The main characters were a bunch of convicted criminals/freedom fighters in a oppressive empire , who somehow got control of an advanced alien spaceship. It's a great set up for a RPG.

Yes. just as long as the player characters can get those skills before they need them.