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I don't think they miss the point, it's just that by emulating D&D they have to downplay that point. If anything it highlights just how adaptable BRP really is, as you can remove some it its adaptablity. Exactly. And that's why Classic Fantasy and similar RPGs are so different from core BRP. Basically they are trying to emulate a D&D style of play with BRP, and so adapt the BRP rules to give the game that old school D&D feel. As game systems, yes, but as dice and die mechanics, not so much. RQ1/2 was pretty much a D20 system with everything handled in 5% skill increments (except for crticals, specials and fumbles). Not necessarily. It depends on what your end goal is. Classic Fantasy seems to work for those who want to play a D&D style game with more BRPish game mechanics. I confess that I don't see the attraction of doing so, but Cf's success shows that there are many who do.

Indeed. internet advice, no matter how well intentioned, has no bearing in a court of law.

I think the advantages, if any, are: Simpler math for adding up values. It much easier to add or subtract modifiers, especially a string of modfiers if the numbers are smaller. Thiu figuring out the effects of category modifiers, height modifier, darkness modifier tend to be simpler to apply with d20. Wasier opposed opposed rolls. With a simple D20 it's easy to do a high roll wins, or even a low roll wins. With D100 you typically have opposed values and critical success and special success categories, so it gets more complicated. Another question might be what are D100's advantages over D20? I think the answer to that is in the finer granularity with success chances, specials and criticals. But, just how useful that is in another question. In game play the differences between a 49% skill and a 50% probably aren't worth switch to D100 for, but the shift in crtical and special chances probably would be. But it does all come down to what someone expects to gain by changing things, one way or the other.

I just hope they don't blame me when someone fumbles and gets his head blown off! Maybe that just happens with our group?

I usually just allow missile weapons at touch ranged to be blocked or parried. The idea being that the target grabs the weapon or arm of the attacker and points it somewhere else.

Hmm, that looks oddly familiar. 😉

I'll cut & paste: Actually, almost any attack can be softened somewhat- that why rolling with the impact can help. It's just that it might not help enough to make a difference. If I had to get charged by a bison, I'd certainly rather have a shield in front of me. If nothing else it would spread out the impact, and absorb some of it instead of me. It might not save me, but I'll take whatever help I can get. Probably. But the footman could also ground the lance and put the knight into a work of pain. Or angle his shield so that the blow glances off harmlessly. It can be done. It might not be easy, but it can be done. The thing is, I don't really see the justification for Klosters tweak. In game terms anything big nough to qaulify for the rule is probably doing enough damage to really hurt a human anyway. If you tweak the rules so that a human can't even parry the blow then why put such creatures in the game? It's just a ends up slaughtering PCs. most of the time they don't evenget a say about what attacks them. If you turn it head it might change direction, and you might be moved aside enough to get a blancing blow or even a miss. You might also end up as soft cover for the bison. But the point is,m if you just automatically say the bison will win, then you makk all the battle and rune magic useless. Whose to say a human backed up with magic cannot do super human things? And if we are going to try to be ultra realistic, then how about we look into how feasible most of the mounts in glorantha really are in the first place. There a re reasons why there were never tribes of nomads riding (most) of those beasts in the real world. Most of those animals cannot be domesticated. Sure, although the saddle and stirrups will give the knight on the receiving end a chance to remain in the saddle. But the thing is those knight did block the lances with shields and it worked. Otherwise they wouldn't have bothered with the shields in the first place. Sure. About the only way a character could avoid that would be if they rolled an critical parry (and took no damage). At least by some versions of BRP. No, because damage bonus isn't doubled on an impale, only weapon bonus. Still 2D10+2+4D6 (average 27 points) is probably going to ruin the day of most BRP characters.

My favorite is also RQ3. So much so that I've adapted Strombringer/Eternal Champion to RQ3 game mechanics. I think that has to ddo with fregency of play, the easy of getting a skill check, and how long the game was going on. THe elves were the ones that really risked breaking things open. Once you get charactesr with a Manipulation Modifier of +15-20% they can advance two or three times as fast as most of the other characters. At least in theory. Sure you can, becuase you aren;t shifting the entire thing, just the part that is attacking you. Not really. They are sitting in saddles. Yes they are saddles designed for this sort of thing, but they are far from bolted to the horse. Yes, and even men of foot can block and parry those lances. Yes, the lance might knock the guy over, but that comes down to how well they pull off the parry. The idea is to get the lance to glace off an angled shield away from the person wielding the shield. And yes it can be done. It's not all that bad really. You just need a jousting lance instead of a war lance. Drop the lance damage down to about 1d6 crushing and it's not too bad, assuming the opponent managed to parry with his shield. No. He said "usually beyond a human's ability to parry, or even just to soften" and you're saying always. Actually, almost any attack can be soften somewhat- that why rolling with the impact can help. It's just that it might not help enough to make a difference. If I had to get charged by a bison, I'd certainly rather have a shield in front of me. If nothing else it would spread out the impact, and absorb some of it instead of me. It might not save me, but I'll take whatever help I can get.

Yeah, I've been working on a way to replicate that without a table. Something along the lines of rolling multiple dice against the Primary Chance instead of a %-dice roll.

Except that in real life you can. A parry isn't a block. You not trying to stop the attack outright, but shift it slightly to the side so that it misses. The latter has been done. Knights used to regularly parry and block lance charges from other knights on horseback, which is functionally the same thing as parrying the horse. In most RQ/BRP games, the higher damage such big creatures do is ususally enough to make parrying the entire attack difficult. A lance charge could do 1D10+1+4D6 (20-21 average) and a shield will stop 12.

I suspect that might come down to personal taste, style of running, and what version of RQ/BRP you're running. In RQ 3 High INT and DEX characters, such as elves, could have a Manipulation Bonus well over 10%, and that lead to a much faster rate of increase in weapon skills, although the highest I ever saw a PC get for a permanent skill was 165%, and that was in RQ2.

It is a great RPG- it is so well adapted to the genre. I don't think QRs are really that much of a innovation- it's basically the same as RQ success levels, but with 4 grades of success instead of 3.

Ah how about bonus dice? Similar effect but without the math.

That was one of the things I like about the James Bond RPG. What it did was use an ease factor (skill muitplier) to determine the actual success chance. So a skilled scientist doing a routine task would succeed about 95-99% of the time. BRP has something similar with the difficulty ratings, but the multipliers are much bigger, as the base skill is higher. Now to be fair to BRP, rolls are supposed to be made only when the situation is stressful, so a chemist in the lab would probably not have to roll for day to day tasks, anymore than they would have to roll their 30% driving skill to get back and forth to work everyday.

I get your point, although it takes a very high skill (350%) for normal successes to happen less than 30% of the time. What if you had skill values over say, over 200% cancel each other out? So someone with Sword 350% vs. an opponent with a Skill of 320% would be treated as 200% vs. 170%. That way the special and critical chances would cap off, but the relative differences between skills would remain. Oh, and be glad you're not dealing with Pendragon, it exacerbates the situation- although characters are usually dying off before it becomes a big problem. No problem. I just tossed the idea out there, I'm not championing it. Another idea might be to require more than one skill check to improve a skill over 100% (say two checks for skills over 100%, three for skills over 200% and so on). This would slow down the skill progression once 100% was reached, which would help to minimize the problem, and slow does the rate that it escalates.

Have you considered the RQ3 method of just going with the scores unmodified? In my experience the increased chance of specials and criticals make up for the ultra high skill scores, and the ratios are a lot fairer than what happens in RQ2/RQG with parry reduction.

I don't think it's that important to him. If it were he'd have just revealed himself and told us all what the deal was. If a being with godlike powers were to appear in public and demonstrate his powers he'd get many more converts far more quickly. But that wouldn't be as much fun for him. I don't think it's his view n how humans should behave, just that he gets his kicks making us go insane. I suspect that if everybody was at SAN 0 he'd be bored because he couldn't drive us insane anymore. He'd probably want to make peopel sane just so he can drive them insane. Sadly there seem to cities where that is happening. These days a sports team can't even win a championship without rioting, mayhem and death. Maybe we all should be speed reading the Masks of Nyarlathothep?

Only if the result was random. I don't think the summon spell can actually force him to appear. He chooses to do so. He want to cause madness and insanity. Yes, becuase he'd rather drive them mad and get thim to do his bidding that just destroy them. He is in no way benevolent, nor is he even indifferent. But he has lots of space and time to watch and can't find anything worth watching so he comes here and toys with us. It beats cable. Trickster gods usually serve a purpose, teaching important life lessons to members of the faith. Nyarlathotep doesn't do that. He knows there aren't any important life lessons for humans to learn. That's kinda the point. In his eyes we only exist to amuse him.

I don't think Nyarlthotep is really a trickster god. More like an agent of destruction and chaos. That he has multiple guises isn't so much a trick or gag, but his merely assuming the form that he thinks will best help him to accomplish his goals. Whether or not any humans have figured that out of not probably doesn't concern him. He probably doesn't hide it, he doesn't doesn't bother to spell it out to most people, either. It's not like it really makes any difference. Cultist and followers are useful in that they can make his job easier - that is when they can. Less Loki or Coyote and more Doomsday weapon with a mind and a purpose who gets a lot of leeway in how he does his job, with a lot of time to kill. Or maybe like a cruel child with an ant farm, and we're the ants. He might be amused if one or more of the ants do something clever, and might even give them a reward for it, but in the end they are still ants, and only so entertaining, and he has lots of other toys to play with.

But that is already accounted for in RQ, where the bite is going to do a lot more damage that the shortsword can stop. THat's howit works in RQ, expect that the parrying object also loses a point of AP, making it less effective in the future. But the game does give advatage to adult vs. child or giant vs. adult. Specfically: The adult tends to have a much better damage bonus. The adult has higher attributes than the child, which translates into higher skill scores (category modfiers), and more damage. The adult tends to have much better combat skills than the child. The first two also apply to giants vs humans. In RQ3 a human could try to parry a giant's club, but would probably end up knock across a fiend or driven into the ground like a tent peg.

True, and even hitting someone with a 1kg sword might not be the same as hitting them with the same 1 kg sword, depending on point of impact, angle of attack and such. There are a lot of variables.That's why most RPGs have variable damage.

Bioth of which are somewhat more efficient that arrows. Yes, but just what is considered to be "fun" can vary. A player who is player an archer with Bow 90% is probably going to have lots of fun peppering the bad buys with arrows before they can exchange blows in melee. Yeah, but individual efficiency is probably a bit higher in RQ than is probably should be. Conversely, individual efficiency is probably too low in games like D&D, where an archer could literal empty his quiver into a tough opponent before dropping them. Since bows typically get two attacks per round and can impale they give an archer a significant edge against melee fighters.

We had a PC pick up greatsword skill specifically because of the times he lost his shield, either from damage, or from impaled weapons. He manged to get it up to 70% before he was disarmed on a stairway, and was forced to use it. Not quite was his opponent had hoped for. 😁

I disagree. What I think will happen is that a lot of specials that would otherwise have been blocked by the PCs will get through. This actually favors the NPCs becuase: The NPCs ususally have numerical superiority, and so get more rolls and more chances to roll a special success. The NPCs don't have to survive and encounter and come back next session, where the PCs generally do. That is the loss of one PC is generally more important to the game that the loss of dozens of NPCs. I don't blame you. The problem with it, IMO is that it's too low, with the average value being less that the fixed value. So instead of stopping blows it tends to shave off a few points. Go watch boxing. In general a person is much more balanced and stable with both feet planted than when trying to kick. Momentum is mass times velocity (speed). You can't have momentum without speed. Likewise Force equals mass times acceleration (change in speed). Now as higher mass means higher intertia, a lighter object can acclerate more quickly and can hit harder. Plus with melee weapons, it's not just the mass of the weapon, but the mass of the person being wielding it. UH, no. A great weapon also stops when it hits something. There really isn't a huge difference. Yes, greater mass potentially means a greter force and thus a better chance to inflict injury, but it's really more about balance here. The laws of motion will point out that anyone capable of swing a weapon hard enough to actually knock someone over with the force would also be swinging hard enough to knock themselves down Unless there is a huge size (mass) difference between the combatant (i.e grown man vs. child or giant vs. grown man) Equal and opposite forces. Knockdown is more a matter of unbalancing or stunning someone. Depends on what version of the rule you use. The old Slash rule from RQ2 had cutting weapons roll damage twice (this was when impales did max plus rolled) and crushing weapons rolls damage bonus twice. As you are doing a RQ based game and importing bits from BRP you have options. Yes, although like much else it depends on the circumstances. Depends. If you have someone with a high db, high skill, and/or can using magic then it becomes alot more common than you think. Not really. The typical damage bonus for a character is +1d4, and bladesharp 4 is a pretty common spell among warriors in games with magic. Fireblade would be even nastier, and nearly as common 3D6+1D4 can get through just about anything . Magic really changes things, and is really common in standard RQ. Everyone starts with some magic in standard RQ. Someone under Fanaticism, Berserk or using Truesword might find cutting through a shield to be a better option, especially with their higher chance of getting a crit or a special.