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A Pyrrhic victory?

Handling- Here is an idea I was wonder what people though of. Vehciles could have a handling rating like in CoC. a +10% to handling would cost a number of Hero Points equal to the vehicle's SIZ (so it is easiler to make a ferrari turn on a dime than a battleship). THis could be broken down for smaller increments. +1% for SIZ/10 +2% for SIZ/5 5% for SIZ/2 and so forth. Optionally, a vehicle that is supposed to be a bit sluggish, like a tank, could have a negative handling.

darkeart, Yes, there are a lot of ways to slice it. One thing about the new BRP is that since it has a modular approach with lots of optional rules, we will all end up customizing it to suit out needs. My take based on previous BRP experience. The general tweak in the past was to differentiate damage by weapon type and rate armor accordingly. That way you could have reflective armor that works against lasers but not against slugs or axes, or ballistic armor that is effective against bullets. I think the new BRP does the same thing, but with some tweaking. There are other approaches through. One possible "tweak" would be to simply count certain attacks as "armor piecring" and have them halve, third, or quarter armor. For example, a modern bullet will punch through most medieval armors with very little lossof energy. Quartering the AP value would make sense.

Not enough deatialed worked out/checked. I want to play around with it a bit first and see how well it holds up. Ideally, I can work up some sort of meta-vehicle design rules that will be useable for ground vehicles, space and whatever. Messing with 4 or 5 different methods and seeing what gives the best results and what is easiest. My tool for calculating APs for materials seems to be holding up though.

I'd rather see a files section than a wiki. I've seen several RPgs that have them, and genera;lly find them inferior. Either they are hard to find/organize, or too many people can edit them, or not enough people can edit them, or they are hard to find and navigate. Plus you don't get any feedback from a wiki. It just is, it isn't interactive like a forum.

Not so much as you think. I'm not sure if the GM book was ever done. I got the players book and it is basically everything in a stadard Hanmaster book. I don't mind a players/GM book when they are actually done that way. For instance a book on character creation and basic rules that players could pick up.

The high points: General -Harmaster divided into GM Edition, and Player Edtion -Layout Changed -Inclusion of Optional rules, noted with check box. GM chan check those options that he wants to use. Character Generation -Family Development, Medical and Pysche expanded and put into GM Edition. -Attribute generation modifiers boxed off and put into table for easy reference -Relationship between family and occupational skills has been clarified and new options provided. Skills -Number of skills reduced; number of specialties increased. -Specialty rules rewritten -Practice, sudy ML decline revised -Personal Effectiveness table added -Some skills have been more carefully codified. -Information on language families. -Psionics rules revised and moved to GM edition. -Skill descriptions move to all new GlossDex (a Glossary style Index). -New skills (Condition, Initiative, and Spirit) Combat -Several section reclassified as advanced rules to make the game easier to for new players to get up to speed. -Numerous optional/advanced rules. -Several different weapon damage options -Optional armor damage rules -Missile combat radially revised -Quick Combat system improved Weaponcraft -Simplified and made more interesting with several optional additions Religion Ritual invocations clarifed and moved to GlossDex. Gloss Dex _Now its got one.

You mean that guy who goes around dressed as a bat?>:->

Yeah, I guess so. I know that I hated the second edtion ENC rules. Very much like MRQ, where a guy wearing armor suffered bug skill penalties. GOLD handles that differendlty, but is a little more complicated. I can fill you in onthe changesif you want. Robin did put a list on the iside cover that mentions all the changes between the 2nrd edtion and the "Author's Cut".

Okay, I did some lokking over the CoC rules and some thinking. Here are the latest tewk ideas for the BRPVDR. 1) Impales-since these reprensent hiting vital locations, slashing muscles, and tearing open ateries, they don't make sense against vehicles. So you can't get an impale against a vehicle. SPecial Successes DO get to rollon a Vehicle Special Charet, where you can take out headlight, blow tires, tear open fuel and brake lines, damage the steeering, and other things. 2) Heavy Weapons-The big gun damages do seem to be HE rounds and damage drops off over range. I'm thinking of putting in rules for Indirect fire. Basically you really can't relaibly hit a person with an artillery shell. So. I thinking of: -Reducing the chance to hit to 1/10th the skill. A success indicated that the round landed within the burst radius doing full damage. A special sucess works as normal, and a critical success indicates a direct hit, where he round literally lands on top onf the target. -A failure misses by a percentage of the range equal to the percentage missed by, with a cap of 20% of the range. So if you are firing at a target that is 1000m away, had a 5% chance to hit and rolled a 20, you missed by 15% or 150m. Note that a "near miss" might still place the shell close enough to do damage. -If a spotter is available to give corrections, the attacker can increase his attack chance by 10% per round. So eventually they will be able to zero in on the target. -Any modifiers for moving targets is doubled. 3) Autofire weapons, Burst Rate, and Ammo. I'm thinking of putting a burst rate down on weapon that caps off just how many rounds they can fire in a round. That keeps the .30 and .50 cal MGs from being able to fire off a couple thousand rounds of ammo in one turn. Of course some weapons might be able to fire off 100 rounds of ammo a melee round. I am also thinking of adjusting the cost for ammo to reflect the burst rate. So that way if a weapon fires 20 round per merlee round in stead of 1, you get 200 rounds of ammo with it for free instead of the base 10, and every 3 extra hero pints gets you another 200 instead of another 10. How do that go down with everybody?

THe fallout actually happened some time ago. When second edtion was released Columbia simplified a lot of the rules against Robin's wishes. He ended up doing a Harmaster:Gold edition with the rules the way he wanted them. I preferred 1st edition to 2nd, but Gold edition to first. Now, I suppose Robin and Columbia both want to go their own ways. With indie publishing Robin could get by without Columbia, but I suspect thet will fight over the system. What edition do you have? Maybe we can compare notes. I've still got GOLD around.

THe most obvious examples to me are Castle Falkenstien and the SAGA rules used by TSR in Dragonlance and MArvel Super Heroes. In all three cases, I liked the use of cards. If the rumors that Falkenstien was originally designed to be an Amber RPG are true, then card definitely would have been the way to go. I played MArvel SAGA the most out of the three, and for the most part cards worked as agood as dice, andin some cases batter. In Marvel each power an d skill was tied to an attribute (like Strength skills, Agility skills, etc.) and the deck was broken down into suits that were tied to the attributes. If you played a card that matched the suit for the action you were attempting, it was "trump" and you got to add another card from the deck. This allowed for the longshot percentages. Also, as character got good, they could master a skill, given them more trump cards. One thing that was nice about the SAGA system was that, much like HERO Points, players could hold an important card in their hand for reserve. And while someone was holding onto a card, the other players couldn't draw it out of the deck. Another neat thing was that cards were used much like hit points. As you got injured you paid off the damage in cards. So if you took 5 points of damage you had to discard 5 points worth of cards. This meant that as you got hurt your had fewer cards in your hand, limiting your options and impairing your ability to act. A neat way of handling injury. Also, more experienced characters could would have larger hand size, and there was a rule for letting them play low value point cards as a freebie. So yeah, I like cards, when the are done right.

I did/anm doing something similar with my BRP variant. Rather than use Hit Points at I, I'm using a Wound Threshold idea (about 1./2 HP). Damage below it is a minor injury, above it a serious one, and every mutiple of the threshoild kicking up the severity to Mortal. BAsically, a bunch of 2-3 point hits shoudln't kill you, at least not right away. With the Wound Threshold idea it takes a reeally good hit to kill someone outright. Although most wounds will kill you in time if not treated. I went with something like 1D100+CON for the time, varying from S/R, rounds, hors and days depending on the serveirt of the injury.

Neither of which can be agreed upon. History is so much fun. I wonder if we have stats for African Elephants in the book. I'd assume the Punic Wars will be covered. Oh, BTW, Jason's old Pax Romana stuff is still available for downloading. Its not the full supplment, but is good for a BRP Rome fix.

I guess this isn't for you then. As it is for the Roman Republic. ;)

I don't like that. GURPS does that and it is silly. Basically anyone who is good at anything ends up being Olympic level in an attribute. Just become someone is a virtuoso pianist doesn't mean that they have an 18 DEX. How about just reducing the improvement gain when going over STATx5%? So instead of 1D6, they get 1D3. Over STATx10% they get 1D2, past STATx15% they get 1 point.

Me too, for the most part. I did want to keep it for things like AAMs (Air-to-Air Missles) to represent a direct hit over a proximilty hit. But I suposed I could use a LUck roll for that. Right now I'm try to figure out the heavy guns. THe 10D6/3 yarda and 15D6/4 yeards damagfes in CoC for Field guns. If those are HE rounds, there I'll need to up the APs for Tanks. Or work up a "shotgun" rule like in HERO where multiple shots count against armor individually, If they are HEAT rounds then I need to lower the APs. If the are APFSDS rounds then I guess the area damage is from the shrapnel. My current model is as follows: M1A1 (or maybe A2?) ARMOR- Kinetic 58+16 vs HEAT; Electromagnetic 15; Radiation 15 M256A1, 120mm (HE) 15D6/4yrds (APFSDS)12D6+5(AP) was thinking of 3d6+1x10 instead. (HEAT) 19D6+2 (AP) The HE rounds should bounce of the M1, so either I need to up the armor, nerf the HE vs tanks (Half damage would work) or something.

Well, most bullets haver a high enough energy/area ratio to penetrate most armor available at the time. It was possible to make armor that could stop a bullet, but such armor would have been thick, bulky, and still leaf vulnerable spots. Of course, if you got an old stove plate and can goad someone into aiming at your chest...

It one of the thing I didn't like about MRQ because it makes stats mean nothing. Once you character is written up it doesn't matter what your stat is. With a skill plus modifier system or even my category modifier variant, and improvement to a stat is reflected in skills. So if you get stronger or faster you skills go up a point.

I agree, at leat in most cases. If the mechaic is fast to use, and restricted in the number of times you can use it, it works fine.

Tweaker, I'd go with a discount too. In Superworld, you would get the basic vehicle for free and only play for powers, weapons, and improvements. Things like SIZ and movement would be free. So vehicles would cost a lot less. I did it this way just to get some sort of design frameworld and relative cost. I'm still tweaking some values too, and will probably need to adjust things more after BRP comes out. I thing I want to do is reduce the ammo costs. By WoW rmost the cost of the M1 is due to the ammo. In fact there is a typo in my write up above (I'll need to update it, and it is short 3000 points due to 7.62 ammo). SOme good news though-I seemed to have worked out a method for calculating weapon damages and armor points for vehicles that seems to work for most of weapons I've plugged into it so far. One problem has been the impale rules. Basically, since the armor range is fairly compressed in BRP, the double damage from an impale ends up making tanks vulnerable to heavy machineguns and light cannons. I'm thinking of either eliminating impales against vehicles, applying the impale after armor, or putting in a hardened armor tweak, that protect a vehicle from implaes from lower tech/hardness weapons.

Some games do it that way. Like SPirirt of the Century. There a character can make a declaration. That is they use a skill to make up some fact or detai, and spend a Fate point to make it happen. If they make their skill test, then the fact is true (i.e. "The Eqgyptians would often build a secret door in their tombs."). The difficulty of the roll is set by the GM. Bond on the other hand uses a sort of two stage process for such things. First, you have to coninve the GM to let it happen. So finding a loaded gun in the desk of a mafia Don would probably be more likely to fly that finding a loaden gun in the desk draw of mother superior). Likewise, finding a sword hanging on a castle wall is an easy sell, finding on on the wall at McDonald's isn't. Also the GM can make something cost more than one Hero Point. So falling out a building onto an awning might cost 1 hero point. Falling onto a passing flatbed truck loaded with mattresses would be a lot more pricey.

Some of that depends on the nature of the game. With Bond it worked because combat was so freakin' deadly. You don't have hit points, but instead take wounds based on the success level of the attack and the damage class of the weapon. So if you get hit for a KL (=Kill) result. you are dead. So in that case, being able to spend a point ot two to turn a KL into a HW (Heavy Wound) helps but keeps the tension. "Roll overs" only applied in two specific circumstances. One was a tied draw roll (you rolled again to see who shot first). The other was when someone rolled off the table and ha to get thier dice off the floor. Yeah. Some campaigns are very combat heavy. Bond actually encourages avoiding combat, and stresses than hand to hand is usually a better option than gun play (the more people you kill the bigger the paper trail you leave. Not good for a spy). Still, a climatic showdown is traditional. Also since characters earned Hero Points through thier non-combat actions it gave them more incentive to do non combat stuff. I once saw a guy rack up 10 hero points early in an adventure when he cleaned the bad guy out at the casino and stole his girlfriend. He ended up needing those 10 points by the end of the night. Someone really didn't like him. I'm not a fan of increasing hit points. Basically, if you have a Hero Point or two, you might think you can get away with something, but if you have a lot of hit points you know it. D&D/D20 is a good example of that. A guy with 100 Hit Points isn't too worried about being killed with one shot.

Yeah, but it isn't just damage capacity. For instance, when playing a solo or with a small group a fumble, especially in combat, can end the campaign. I once had a character who in the first attack of the battle of the campaign was on the wrong end of an 01. It happens. It's nice to be able to mitigate that suff a little.

What I did for my BRP variant was to add Skill CAT/5 to improvment rolls. So a person with a 30% Manipulation Skill Category would add 6% to improvement rolls.