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I disagree. Part of what makes a game fun and exciting is suspense, and a fight where both sides go back and forth parrying each other attacks is both effective and entertaining. Just look at any swashbuckling film, or even a lightsaber duel in Star Wars. Such encounters are fun in game because they show closely matched opponents. Yes it is. I'd say that is also a matter of taste. I know a lot of D&Ders who feel that RQ combat is boring because of all the parrying and "not much happening." Likewise I know RQ players who consider D&D combat to be boring because, thanks to increasing hit points, and no actual effects to being wounded, "not much is happening". Again, I disagree. It can leverage tactical thinking quite a bit. In fact, I'd say more so than many of the alternatives, where class and level tend to dominate tactics.

To be fair here, it was a matter of personal preference. If I recall correctly the authors were more fans of the of Worlds of Wonder game system than RQ. So the BGB uses more of WoW, Stormbringer, and CoC as the base system rather than RQ. It's a legitimate design choice, just not the one some of us would have preferred. Of couse, if they had made the base system more like RQ then fans of Elric, CoC, and WoW might not be as happy with it. So no matter what they did, it wasn't going to work for everyone. The nice thing is that it didn't have to. Anyone who prefers RQ3 rules to the BGB already has RQ3 and can just use it instead. Maybe port over some tidbits from the BGB if they want to (or even from some other BRP related game that they already have). Nothing stops us from running a Stormbringer or Pendragon campaign the RQ3 rules. The stats and game mechanics are mostly compatible between BRP games. Although a Stormbringer campaign using the Pendragon rules could be very interesting.

For me, it's not just hitting the gaps but also hitting a part of the body where the damage would be more significant. A dagger in the eye might not hit as hard as a great axe in the pinkie, but it certainly more lethal. Much better protection. The muscle curiass was more of a status thing. One of the reasons why mail stuck around forever was that it really is one of the best forms of armor out there, assuming that it's made properly and has proper padding. Even when full plate came about, mail was still used to protect the areas that couldn't be covered by plate.

RQ3 Do you think that a wooden shield is more resistant to breakage than a steel sword? The thing is, as shields are good for blocking attacks they get a high AP in RQ3, but a side effect of that makes them much tougher than they should be. THe BGB relies too hevily on the combat system from Elric and CoC, IMO. But to be fair, RQ/BRB has always confused parries with blocks. A properly executed parry should deflect all damage, that is precisely what a parry is supposed to do. A block, on the other hand, sticks someting in front of the attack to take the hit instead of the blocker. Parrying is harder than blocking though. In a real fight, the great axe is actually easier to parry than the dagger! There is so much more to parry. It's also risker, since if the defender messes up the parry it's probably going to end badly. The thing about a parry is that the defender doesn't try to stop the attack, but instead redirect it away from themselves. A bigger weapon like a great axe is easier to parry since there is a lot more shaft to work with. Only if you run it that way. Nothing says that PCs acan get the equipment repaired or replaced, or that the NPCs can't show up with damaged equipment too. FOr the most part, I don't mind a character having to replace their shield fairly regularly. Shields were disposable. I'm not so thrilled about most weapons breaking that quickly, but I guess it really was a thing. I'm partial to the weapon breakage rules from Harn. In that system each weapon has a Weapon Quality Rating (WQ). When a weapon is used to block, you roll against the WQ on the weapon with the lower rating to see if it breaks. If it doesn't, then you roll against the weapon with the higher WQ to see if it breaks. It's fast, simple, and really makes high quality weapons worth their weight in gold. A weapon with a really high WQ rating is nice not only because it is unlikely to break, but it is also more likely to break other weapons.

Yeah, that could work. I'm not sure if I wan't to work it that way- I'd need to see what the weapon damages and armor protection was first. I mean if a plasma cannon was doing 8d10 or some such, then a 20 AP shield probably wouldn't cut it. Yeah. I've played a few SCi-Fi RPGs and the shield as Hit points approach is the most common. It's a viable approach. I suppose this comes down to just how closely you want to model Master of Orion.

Yeah, but I think it would be better just to give the shield 10 AP instead.

But is that a bad thing? I mean you could easily speed up combat with a one roll, winner take all model a la HeroQuest, but most RPGs don't because that usually isn't what we want. If someone wants the fastest method of resolving a conflict in a BRP based game, go with the opposed method from Pendragon. It's fast, brutal, and most opponents don't last for two rounds.

Yes I have, there used to be an armory in the city where I lived. As far as the bronze curiass goes -no protection to the armpits. A mail hauberk provided much better coverage and protection. You don't need to hunt for gaps in the armor when there are unprotected areas to strike instead.

Well the original drop a point when exceeded came from RQ3. It was a marked improvement for weapons, which used to break after two or three of parries in RQ2. The main "bug", IMO, is that it makes shields a bit too tough, as they have high AP scores. IMO, shield should probably have lower AP scores, but should be easy to parry with. Yeah, you can off off with all sorts of interesting ideas, especially with SciFi, as that's not as well defined in BRP, as pre-industrial weaponry. Does damage come off the hit point shields before damaging the ship or both at the same time? If you ship above got hit for 25 points would that do 20 points to the shield, 20 points to the ship, or both?

What I started to tinker with was the idea of starting off weapon skills at DEXx10% or so. Realistically, hitting someone with a melee weapon isn't all that difficult. Most people will hit most of the time, unless the opponent does something about it. That worked out okay for melee, but wasn't so great for skills. But basically the 1-100 scale for rating skills doesn't match up to well with using them. That meant either coming up with some other modifiers to match the skill to the difficulty, or alterting the dice rolled. One thing I was looking at was the way FASA did it in the old Star Trek RPG. In that game, things that required a basic proficiency, would be rolled on 1D10 instead of 1D100. So someone who was a qualifited shuttle pilot would only need a skill of 10 to drive it around safely on a routine basis. A professional pilot would need a skill over 40, and would roll against the difference. I was thinking that using differernt die sizes could work here. Someone who is a novice swordsman might roll 1d4 or 1D6 while a skilled warrior could roll 1d10, and so on. Exactly. That was a problem I noticed as well. In theory we thought it would be 1D10-1D10 (parry) with modifiers. In reality, it's much worse than that, as you normally couldn't roll higher than 1/10th your skill.

I'll bite. You probably should start a different thread for it, though. The easy way would be to adapt the RQ3 weapon damage rules. Basically anytime the armor's AP are exceeded it's protection drops 1 point. You could do spilt values, but frankly i wouldn't. If you wanted less durable armor you could drop he AP by more than 1 point each time it is exceeded. Something like ablative armor might drop even if it isn't exceeded. I dunno. It's not much different that a low tech melee fight with shield and armor protecting wearer. You could just say that whenever a shield is penetrated it gets blown, or if it gets beaten by X amount it gets blown.

And I can assure you, it's not the same thing. Living skin on an animal is a lot less resilient that hardened leather. Double so in a fight against someone who is moving. More like there are more gaps to find with plate. One of the reasons why non-rigid armors worked so well was because they could cover and area and still allow for freedom of movement. Plate doesn't allow that- especially not the plate we see in a typical RQ/BRP campaign. Nothing wrong with trying to get someone to change thier mind. And I'd have to see that to believe it, as I've seen just how good thich leather is at stopping an attack.

Yes in RQ1 a dagger did 1d6. Except it's not. I don't think there is a single weapon in RQ that has the same exact damage as OD&D. Yes, there are similarities, but that is probably more due to the dice available than anything else. Just look at Savage Worlds, same basic die spread (d4, d6,d8,d10, d12) so weapon damage look similar. They all try to fit the weapon damages to the scale available. Mongoose is a another can of worms. LOL! I was working on something along those lines,.Basically the damage was the tens die with modifiers for damage modifier weapon type, and success level (doubles were critical and you got to add both dice). The big hurdles I had trouble with were: Getting opposed skill rolls to work with the limited success chance inherent in most BRP games. With an opposed roll you can assume that the higher roll won the exchange, but with the "blackjack" method we would up with a lot of cases where nether combatant succeeded. Modifying success levels sot hat they were no longer tied to low rolls (so we could have the tens die be the damage) Trying to work parrying in a similar fashion. For example a 80 hit vs. a 45 parry would mean 4 points slip through. G How to handle skills over 100%. Out best stab at it was to give such skill a +1 to damage per 20% over 100. I was leaning to the sum of the % rolls to try an open up the spread a bit. Yeah. One of the things I liked about Sanguine's Usagi RPG was that weapons had a choice of crticals, which gave the wielder options under certain circumstances. The wielder might even had a extra crtical type or two available depending on what abilities he knew. I guess Mythras does something similar.

Most real leather armor is stiff and hard for a dagger to pierce. Daggers are ususally better at finding gaps. Which is why daggers were used against downed foes in armor5. It's probably as effective at finding the gaps in plate than with any other armor. I think you miss my pointt though. Namely that with 1D4+2 a dagger will always puncture leather in RQ/BRP. That's what I dislike about the adds.

But still doesn't justify it having a higher minimum damage than a spear. IMO, the old 1d6 damage for daggers in RQ1 is really a better way to go. Not always. Greatswords could be used to thrust, just look at half-swording technique. Part of what made the greatsword a formidable weapon was that it could be used in multiple ways, making it all the harder to defend against. With a spear or a mace you kinda know what sort of attack to expect. With a greatsword, it could be a slashing attack, a thrust, a smash with the pommel. Usually by clicking on the quote box to highlight it and then pressing delete. But I think overall, we love to tweak things with RQ/BRP here and there. It's part of what attracts us to the game system in the first place. Plus the overall simplicity of the system makes such changes a bit easier than in some other RPGs, because we don't have things like "game balance" to worry about. We don't have to consider things like class limitations when we tweak a weapon's stats.

Possibly. I still wish daggers did 1d6 like they did originally, rather than 1d4+2. I find it odd that a dagger can penetrate some armor all the time that a greatsword can't. Yeah, it's a smoother progression, and only slighter faster than the standard one. Personally, I think I favor the idea of just upping the weapon's damage die. So rather than 1D8+1+1D4 it would look something like: 1D8+1 changed to 1D10 (to get rid of the add but keep the same average damage) 1D4 changed to a bump up to the damage die, to 2d6 But then I run a lot of Pendragon, and gotten used to the idea of the damage stat being based on the character, not the weapon.

That's kinda why I don't like adds for weapons. You reach a point where it becomes impossible to nick someone or for armor to stop a hit. There are no one or two point dagger hits; leather will never stop a dagger, etc.

Quite, often in games where the players roll their attributes. About 25% of humans don't have a 9 DEX on a 3d6 roll. Conversely , over 90% of humans have a 7 DEX or better on a 3d6 roll. Yup, and I'd say RQ3 is a better game system than BRP, too. In large part becuase BRP is more of a toolkit for building your own game system. But then what would be the reason for BRP? Orginally BRP was a trimmed down version of RQ used an an introduction to The Chaosium's house system, with core components that were the foundation for all of Chasoium's RPGs. The BBG,on the other hand, is most of the rules and variants from those systems combined into one book that can be customized to fit a particular setting or genre. But if you really prefer the rules from RQ3 over BRP (and I do), then just use RQ3. Even if there are some things about BRP that you prefer to RQ3, port over whatever it is that you like. I used to run a Young Kingdoms campaign with RQ3 rules because RQ3 had things that I wanted that Stormbringer lacked. It was easy enough to convert over to RQ3. That is the nice thing about the similarity between the rules in old Chasoium games. Thy are all about 90% the same, so it's easy to mix 'n match what you want.

That's the way to do it! I suppose when you get into something destructive, it brings back memories of childhood.

LOL! That's probably true about just about everything. We end up making decision about what to simply all the time in gaming. In the end we just sort of pick a compromise between easy of play and enough detail to "sell it" to the players. ROTFL. I saw a friend almost get decapitated by a little storage tin playing around like that. The blast unrolled the tin, which flew right by his neck like a square metal Frisbee. Of course this was on the same day that I made powerful poisonous gases out of a few readily made household chemicals. I cleared out a hornets nest in a garage that way partly to prove that it was indeed true. How we survived our teens is the real question.

I think it's because most blasting caps are electrically detonated. However, most vehicles have an electronics ignition and yet don't fall under electrical engineering. I would say that Electrical Engineering could be used to make explosives detonate, but wouldn't help with estimating how much explosives you you need, or how to place them correctly for best effect. That would seem to make the most sense to me, and I do have a degree in electronics. Yeah, I could probably wire up a change and make it go boom- that's easy, but nothing about blowing things up was ever covered in my Electronics classes, other than how to avoid it my circuits from doing so. In game terms I see this as you need the guy with Demolitions skill to plan out and set the whole thing up properly, but once that is done, anyone with Electrical Engineering can do the wiring and set off the charges. But that's all just my thought, nothing official.

Just a question, are you replacing the normal Stormbringer previous experience with the Elric approach of adding 20% to thirteen skills, or combining the two? If the latter then it seems like you want to run SB3 but with slightly better attributes and skills. In that case you are heading in the direction of first edition Strombringer.

Perhaps. I always thought that the levels were unnecessary. Come to think of it, Aftermath uses a variation of the same system without levels. Still, Bushido is a great RPG, with or without levels. I still use it as source material for similar genre games.

Me too. Ft I switched to Strombringer and RuneQuest years ago in part to get away from classes and level. I know what you mean. Back in the old AD&D days you could often tell what class someone was by what gear they wore or carried. People in leather armor with shields were not to be trusted. Yup. I agree. I once ran an adventure where the PCs were put in charge of a fort, with the expectation that they were going to be attacked by the enemy. The PCs not only spent time working on the defenses, but also trained up the garrison over the winter, improving their weapon skills by 5-10%, and this ended up playing a factor in the eventual battle. Ten archers at 35% were significantly better than ten archers at 25%. You can do that sort of thing in BRP, but usually not in D20. True. I mostly agree. Now I do play a lot of Pendragon, which is RQ/BRP based, but does use a d20 for task resolution, so there can be advantages to altering some of the game mechanics. Pendragon handles opposed rolls very well, and even manages to eliminate the alternating attacks of most RPGs for an opposed roll with the winner damaging the loser. Even so, game mechanics in Pendragon are far closer to RuneQuest than to D&D. But I think you're mostly preaching to the choir here. Most of us are BRP fans already, that's why we're here. Those who favor d20 with classes and level probably prefer other games. That's okay too.

I'd add e) figure out what your goals are and work towards them. In D&D selecting your class essentially assures that you will eventually be good at the role you selected. As long as your character survives and earns experience points, you will level up and become a better fighter, wizard, cleric, etc. Yes, there are things a player can do to optimize this, but in general level is the key measure to success. But in BRP/RQ whatever role you select doesn't mean as much as what you do to press towards that goal. A warrior who doesn't work towards improving skill with weapons doesn't automatically become a better warrior. A warrior has to fight and (maybe train and practice) to improve in BRP. A so-called wizard who climbs a tree and shoots enemies with a crossbow justs gets better at climbing and shooting a crossbow, and doesn't improve with magic at all. I've seen more than one player get frustrated when their character didn't somehow automatically morph into the sort of character they wanted them to be over time -especially in Pendragon. In BRP games, if you want your character to be a good swordsman, archer, hunter, plumber, whatever, you need to work on the appropriate skill set.