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We used to use it tactically to limit the opponent from using an incompatible spell. Throw a Dullblade and maybe some Countermagic, and it might mess up someone putting Bladesharp or Fireblade on their weapon. But all all depends on the opponent and what you wanted to avoid.

Yeah, but it probably wouldn't impale a target who was well armored. Arrow damage, is so high that an impale result is usally going to get past any worn armor. It makes shields so important in m ost versions of BRP. Now in real life I suspect we'd be safer in full plate than behind a roundshield, but in BRP not so much.

I think the solution here is to do like they do with some other impaling weapons (halbard and rapier for instance) and adjust arrow impaling damage from double damage to maybe +1d4 or some such. The Usagi Yojimbo RPG (2nd edtion) had stab and impale criticals, with the stab usually being less effective. Spears and swords could impale wile arrows couldn't. If we reduced most archaic missile weapons to +1d4 instead of double damage they would probably work out better. I think part of the trouble is that the impale happens "before" armor, rather than after. Thus you wind up with "impaling" attacks that can still bounce off armor, or light weapons regularly finding gaps in the armor. The "before the armor" approach is okay for ancient cultures, where there tended to be big gaps in coverage, but it's not so hot with medieval armor. I wonder how doubling the damage after the armor would work?

Your right, I did, and you didn't. Sorry. I guess that ends my streak, guess I don't win the new car after all. Maybe I'll get the home version of the game? Okay, then I guess I never convince you. But they will do much better at sokaing up the impact of a warhammer than mail, leather or pretty much anything that isn't plate. By gamebeson I mean an arming doublet or aketon. Basically several layers of quited or stuffed cloth that is worn under other armors as a foundation. With most armor it is really what stops the force of the blow from doing damage. Mail and scales mostly keep the sharp edged from cutting, and the padding does the rest. In fact, a gambeson without mail is better at stopping a sword than mail without a gambeson.

Yes it could, although that might be tricky to imprlent in RQ/BRP, as it normally doesn't differentiate between types of damage, except in some variants that have different types of specials. And with the way those specials work, I'm not sure if it would adapt well.

It's an okay solution. But your arguments that full mail plus coat of plates protects as well as plate and is signdicantly heavier just doesn't hold up. Plate does protect better, and the weight is about the same. Just consider the evolution. If it were about weight and cost, then for over a century plate was a failure. The whole evolution of armor with more and more plate being added to and replacing mail was becuase plate provided superior protection. Sorry but I disagree. The whole point of a warhammer was to concentrate the are of impace so as to be able to penetrate plate. Padding is probably the best or second best armor to wear against blunt trauma. Exacept that the impale chance has nothing to do with the armor worn. Thus your just as likely to have an arrow find a gap in plate as it is to piece mail, or even padding. Arrows are far more effective against plate in RQ than they were histoically. Yes, and comes down to where you want to draw the line, and also why. I for one, might bother with that sort of thing if it matter to the campaign (much like it does in Pendragon), but wouldn't if I were running a modrn or sci-fi game, where the differences between medeival armors is moot. So that's where they grey hairs came from! Seriously, I think that is really a matter of choice. Lots of people like and play Harn, and there are certainly more complex RPGs out there. In my experience Harn Combat and armor is probably a bit simpler that RQ, with everything condensed down to one or two sheets, with crticals being easy to work out, and everything worked into the combat matrix.. The grey hairs probably came when figuring out the price and weight. But again, the orginal debate was over the effectiveness, cost and weight of plate vs. mail plus coat of plates. As far as I kinow you really haven't provided any info that supports your statement. Now I'll condeed as far a price goes, at least once they could stamp out plate, but not the rest.

That extended even to the name of the game. It had been called Stormbringer for over a decade. The name change just confused things a bit. It's not like there were Elric fans who didn't recognize Strombringer. It would be like if they changed the name of Pendragon to Excalibur. Exactly. That comes down to the setting and style of play. And there are others that do going into that sort of detail , such as the aforementioned Harn. It wouldn't be hard for someone to port Harn's armor and damage tables over to RQ/BRP, maybe even streamline it down to just the three armor values (Blunt/Edged/Piercing). If they really wanted to do that. It all comes down to how far you want to go with it, and if the results are worth the trade offs. I'm actually a bit suprised that Pendragon, which is a simplified version of RQ, acutally goes into more detail regarding weapon vs. armor types. In fact, it's the main way the game differentiates between weapons.

How could you divide one point? THe thing is, paddng should be worth far more than 1 point against blunt trauma. Yea, I got two in a row! I hope I win the new car!

Okay, but such "White Armors" (the generic name for late era plate) were really just refinements of the earlier plate armor. And the weight of such armor varied quite a bit, depending on region of origin. Gothic (German) style was light, but Milanese (Italian) style was heavier. Maximillian was a later evolution of the Gothic style, and while light for plate, still weighted about the same as a full mail outfit with "all the trimmings". You'r forgetting munitions grade plate. Once they were also to press out plate they did start making a cheap stamped out plate for the common soldiers. "Cheap" being a relative term. It was much cheaper than custom armor, but was still something that cost enough that only professional solider would buy it. But, that became more of a thing. Men who went off on campaign and did well would buy armor and a horse for the next time around, and even get more pay for doing so. So yeah, once they could stamp forge plate it did become less expensive than mail, as it was less time consuming (something that became an issue after the Black Death significantly reduced the workforce, and upped the pay grade).

What's funny is that RQ3 was heavily influenced by Strombringer. Things such as skills being in 1% increments, and category modifiers being on a point per point bases rather than in stat ranges (ie.e 13-16: +5%, 17-20: +10%) originated in Strombringer. THe BGB might be closer to a Strombringer/Call of Cthulhu hybrid as I think CoC was the first Chaosium RPG to drop category modifiers, although the original BRP booklet also dropped them.

It's not that good. Padding is rather effective against blunt weapons. but is flexible. But doesn't account for what type of armor you are hitting at all. Plate if much more resistant to being pieced than mail, scale or pretty much any other medieval/ancient armor. So much so that most impaling weapons won't penetrate it. If you really want to be more realistic, most such weapons will bounce off the plate.

Not necessarily. Remeber there is space between the rings. A typical suit of plate is usually heavier than mail. Can you provide some documentation for that? Most of what I've seen indicates the opposite. Plate typically takes more pieces to provide coverage, but distributes the weight much better. It's not all hanginig from the shoulders as with mail. GO watch just about any youtube video on longbows, crossbows or even javelins. Arrows will penetrate mail, even mail protected by a coat of plates (which has small plates and lots of gaps) but won't penetrate plate armor. Sorry, but no. "Articulated" plate is really multiple pieces of overlapping plates worn over a gambeson with gossets of mail to give some protection to joints and other areas that couldn't be protected with plate. It just ins't as flexible as mail- no other armor was. That's why full plate armor still needed mail to protect flexible areas such as joints. Not really. Arrows ans spears could penetrate mail, and big heavy weapons could break links or even bones through the armor. Plus all armor has weak points where the armor is thinner or completely lacking. The armpits were always a good target. I'm not sure if it would be all that more realistic. All metal armors are worn over gambesons/aketons/arming doublets that absorb a lot of the impact. In fact this is yet another way in which plate protects better than mail, even mail with a coat of plates. Solid plate will spread oput the impact area, whereas mail will give, making plate much better against weapons such as hammers, greatsword, halbards, flails and maces. To be more realstic you would probably need different armor values for pieceing, cutting, and blunt weapons, similar to what Harn does. Or else speical weapon vs. armor bonus, like what Pendragon does. Indeed it is, but it's also a kettle that helps to disprove your argument about mail being equal to solid plate. A breastplate and placard are far better protection against a lance than mail with a coat of plates.

It ware more the evolution of manufacturing that made it cheaper. Once the could stamp out plate it became much faster to produce than mail and required less labor, making it cheaper. As far as lighter goes, well, not so much. A lot of the time the armor got heavier due to the need to "proof it" against crossbow bolts and firearms. Uh, no. Testing shows that plate aborbs and defects attacks better than mail+gameson+ coat of plate. And mail is more flexible than plate, and often lighter.

THat's fair enough. Not every RPG is for everyone. Mmmm, it depends. If you try to cover every type of comic book character from every universe, then yes. But that's not how most comic books work. Most concentrate on one or a handful of heroes and present them in a consistent fashion. Crossovers are a bit more loose and open ended, and also where most of the controversial stuff happens. But that is more of a problem with crossovers than with comics. Exactly. No, but then not every SciFi setting can be satisfactorily described by any one set of rules, either. But I do believe that one set of rules can satifactory descibe one particlar comic book, or even one comic universe-or at least the majority of it. A DSC or MArvel RPG can cover DC or Marvel. Yes there will the the odd "How the Duck" type comics that don't quite fit the setting, but then that it the whole point of such oddball comics. Exactly. BTW, this is also why I'm hesitant of crossovers, even in mutiverse settings, as it becomes nearly impossible to do justice to everything in the crossover. It become very difficult not to have one character steal another thunder. The Hulk is a problem in the Marvel Universe, being one of the strongest characters on Earth, but wouldn't be so in the DC universe. If that were easy to pull off we wouldn't have rules in the first place. Probably Chmapions, although how well it does so in another thing. Somewhat, at least with the boxed set. I think it's has a weakness with character vulnerabilities. Namely that if you run into a character with a power that you didn't take some sort of defense for, you're probably a sitting or dead duck. What you don't get is the safety net that characters get in the comics that prevents the bad guys from frying a hero's brain. A good GM can and will compensate for that. But anything Superworld does, some other Superhero RPG probably does better - and that might be a consideration, especially for GMs who own some of those other RPGs.. If I were going to run a Superhero game, then I'd probably go with the system that best matches the setting I'm going for. Thus I'd probably use one of the various Marvel or DC games for those settings. Superworld I'd probably save for a custom setting, or for a Wild Cards campaign, seeing as it was the system used for the campaign that the novels are/were based on.

Yes, that why driver skill and vehicle handle stat should be very important in a chase. It doesn't really matter if your supercar can go 200 mph if you can't control it at that speed. If the driver can only handle a car going 80, then many of the advantages of the supercar are negated. That's why I think the number of range bands moved should be based mostly on the driving roll.

Thanks. I was working on a Vehicle Design System at the time as was trying to come up with a formula that works for all the vehicles listed and this was as close as I could get. In my defense though, some of the listed stats in the BGB don't make a lot of sense. A Battleship is not as fast an an 18-wheeler, for example. It is similar, it's just that Bond gave you more options in a chase other than trying to alter distance. It also could handle different types of vehicles or mixed vehicle chases a bit better. For instance, in a player was driving a Stuz Bearcat and being pursued by a Sophwith Camel. One of the things that was nice about it was that a character had to go last in a chase in order to outrun an oppoent. Otherwise they'd just be a Extreme +1, Extreme +2 etc. This worked out good in play as it meant that if the players wanted to end the chance they would have to let thier opponents act first, and thus possible get closer or even shoot at them.

But that holds true for any medium used for storytelling, not just comics. Film, TV, books, radio, it is all story driven. Luke is going to blow up the Death Star, Sherlock Holmes will catch the criminal behind the plot, Frodo will destroy the One Ring and defeat Sauron. The problem isn't that comics are any worse in this regard than any other medium. It's that many (most?) RPGs are not designed to be played with a strong narrative approach. Most stories have to unfold a certain way for the story to work, and there is no guarantee that the dice (or the players) will go that way. BRP is particularly difficult to run that way, and there are very few ways to alter the die results- at least by the rules. Even the Hero Point option was a late addition. I don't blame you. The original Wild Cards campaign was something like that. A Superworld campaign where most of the players were authors. THat works too, but it's probably not what most people expect or want from a superhero RPG. Yeah that could work. In fact that might even work better with non-powered heroes. Something like Pulp Cthulhu could be a good fit for characters like the Shadow, the Green Hornet, or even Batman. Maybe something like Doc Savage might work as the template for a group. But for people who want to play a superhero group, they are probably better served by other RPGs. That's not a slight on BRP either. It is just that some game systems are better suited to certain types of play. D&D doesn't really work well for "dark and gritty" campaign.

Not quite. A weapon had to be capable of inflcting at least a Heavy Wound (HW) result to be able to kill with a single attack, which required a Damage Class of D or greater, and probably a specific show or blow for increased damage. This meant that most people (anyone with a STR below 14) couldn't kill someone with a single knife strike. They could incapacitate (IN) then and then finish them off with a second attack, though.

Indeed, and sometimes a player could spend a HERO point to alter an encounter, or even to alter reality a bit. For instance a PC who just escaped from a castle dungeon might spend a Hero Point to find a sword or mace conveniently placed along a wall. Bond was probably one of the best RPGs in that regard, as skill with the weapon was generally far more important than the caliber of the weapon. A Beretta .25 in Bonds hands was far more lethal than a .44 Magnum in the hands of a novice, or even a AK-47 in the hands of a typical soldier. Not just in terms of hitting, but in terms of shot placement and lethality.

Ah. In that case I think it depends upon what a give group considers to be fun. That can vary tremdoubly from group to group. Yes, but that's your house rule, not RAW. So you can't really expect everyone else to handle things thesame way. Yes, somewhat. I disagree with the idea of changing something just because you don't like it. A GM should have some sort of reason as to changing a rule, ususally becuase it doesn't make sense, doesn't work well well, or leads to some other problems. Again I will question the "It is really about having fun" bit. I once played with a group of D&Ders, some of who never wanted to plan and would just charge recklessly into combat claiming that they "just wanted to have fun." At the end of the session all their characters were dead, and I asked "are we having fun yet?". To me, taking the time and effort to come up with a plan was more fun that having to write up a new character every game session. So we must have had different ideas of what was fun. I originally spoke up because after seeing the same half of the group die off week after week, that maybe they'd have more fun changing their tactics and having their characters survive a session, but no, apparently that wasn't fun to them. If we just threw out the rules on the basis of "more fun" then people would do all sorts of stuff that they could claim would be n"more fun" for them, like not letting player characters fail or get injured. Part of what makes a game enjoyable, and fun, is that the players can fail, get hurt, and ever die. That's what makes the players success all the sweeter. So a campaign needs to have "un fun" stuff, to make the fun stuff "more fun". It's pretty much the same thing as with so called "Monty Hall" dungeons where players get too many rewards. In thery it seems more fun to have more and better stuff, but in practice it just devalues what the characters do have.

Sorry. Flashing Blades was a Swashbucking RPG published by FGU in the 80s. It is similar to RQ/BRP in some ways. My point in mentioning It was that in Flashing Blades hits that roll over half the hit chance do the basic weapon damage (usually around 2 points but thatvaries by weapon type and type of attack) but a hit that rolls half the hit chance or less does an extra d6 damage, and that ususally turns a light wound into something serious. I don't think it's all that complicated, We do something similar already with impales, and invoke yet another special damage rule for criticals. So I think if we could reduce it down to a standardized doubling mechanic it could end up being simpler than what we do now. But then, I'd like to get rid of most of the weapon adds too, so as to avoid weapons always being able to piece certain types of armor (i.e. daggers vs. leather). MGF Sorry I don't know what you mean there. Could you explain what MGF stands for. Certainly it should carry some risk. I think the question here is does the level of risk as portrayed in the game match up with the level of risk the weapons have in reality, or in the setting being emulated. That's something that can be debated, as we don't have a lot of data from actual swordfights to aid us in designing games. Even data for more modern weapons is somewhat lacking as people in fights tend to have more pressing matters to deal with, like surviving the fight, rather than collecting data for game designers. I think we can generally agree that the chances of breaking a limb with a punch are somewhat higher in BRP than in reality.

I toyed with something like that. Inspired partially by Flashing Blades, I considered halving all weapon damaged and then doubling the dice per success level. A sword might do 1D4/2D4/4D4 or 1D6/2D6/4D6. That way a lot of hits would be minor strikes for minimal damage-especially if we added in another success level (marginal, half the success chance or higher).

Glad to chime in. Let me try to clarify them, maybe then they won't look so great. As it stands in the BGB vehciles get a MOV score and a RATED SPEED, the latter of which is used in chases. Now there is no offical method of dertemining a vehicles RATED SPEED (or MOV for that matter) and they are just sort of eyeballed. That's fine if you want to use the vehicles listed (well, not really, as water vehicles seem to be as fast as ground vehicles), but what if you want to add addtional vehicles? My idea was to have RATED SPEED = 1/10th MOV (for vehicles with MOV scores below 100) or RATED SPEED = square root (MOV) for vehicles with a MOV score of 100 or greater. This gives a value that is pretty close to the listed vehicles. In practice this meant that a vehicle with a MOV of 100 (RATED SPEED 10) chasing after another car with a MOV of 80 (RATED SPEED 8 ) would move two spaces faster, on average, and either gain two spaces or move two spaces further away each turn. This is where the driving rolls would come in. Higher success levels would net a driver an extra space or two, and failed rolls would slow the vehicle down and require a roll to avoid a crash. Thus the driver in the MOV 80 vehicle has some chance on beater the driver of the faster car. The reasons why I think using RATED SPEED is better than using MOV are: You don't need exact distances and measures. In most cases you don't need to know if a car moved a distance 60 or 66, so it's extra bookkeeping with little reward. Actual speed and distance tends to be less important the faster you are travelling. For instance, if you are in a vehicle with a top speed of 1 mph and I'm in one with a top speed of 2 mph, I have advantage because I have the ability to move twice as fast as you can. But if you in a vehicle with a top speed of 200 mph and I'm I'm in one with a top speed of 201 mph, I have little to no advantage anymore, and it comes down to driving skill. That's what makes a square root progression nice, as you will need a larger difference in MOV rates to get a bonus. Thus an airplane with MOV 450 and one with MOV 475 would both end up with the same RATED SPEED of 21, and the contest would be decided by pilot skill. You might want to adapt the chase system from the old James Bond RPG. What it did was set up a number of range bands (Close-Medium-Long-Distant-Extreme, Extreme+1, etc.). Each turn characters in the chase would bid an Ease Factor (read difficulty) to see who went first, and then picked a maneuver such as Pursee/Flee, Quick Turn, Double Back, Force, or Trick (anything other than the previous options). During a Pursue/Flee maneuver the Quality Rating (read Success Level) would determine how many range bands the vehicle traveled that turn. Can with high acceleration and handling would be given a bonus to maneuvers, thus a Ferrari is going to blow the doors off of a VW Beetle. There were also some limits of maneuvers based on the relative speed. For instance a man of foot cannot choose the pursue/flee option in a chase against a car as the car is much faster. Instead the man is going to have to try to lose the car by ducking into alleyways (quick turn), reverse direction (double back) or pull off some sort of trick to get away, such as climbing up a fire escape. The range bands corresponded to the ranges for missile weapons. This mean that a medium range shot for a pistol was also a medium range shot for a rifle, but this kinda made sense as pistols tend to be easier to use while running or when leaning out a car window. All in all the system is fairly simple and easy adapt to BRP.

One idea I was toying with was slightly modify RATED SPEED to be the square root of the MOV rate (or 1/10 MOV for values below 100). This is fairly close to the official value for most ground vehicles, scales nicely to give the relative speeds of other vehicles (that is a difference of 30 MOV means a lot at low speeds but not so much at high speeds), and would allow the RATED SPEED figure to be the distance traveled (or number of "zones) moved during a chase (or the difference between the two rated speeds if you just want the relative position). You could then adjust the SPEED travel by +1 for a special success, +2 for a critical, -1 for a failure (with a second driving roll to avoid a crash), and so forth. The goal was to keep things fairly simple while still allowing for relative skill and relative capabilities of the vehicles involved. I did have some ideas for acceleration and such, but they were more like OPTIONAL rules, than necessary ones. Translating this into your examples above... Vehicle stat: SPEED/MOV 200, would work out as RATED SPEED 14, with the distance actually traveled based on the success level. Obstacles and clutter could either give a driving penalty or reduce speed to a OBSTACLE SPEED (say half RATED) or both. Maybe a a large truck on narrow road might limit vehicles behind it to SPEED 7, but a driving roll at -20% could let a driver slip past for their full RATED SPEED? I think this might work out better for you as you won't have to keep track of exact MOV rates or exact distances.

How heavy do you want to go? A few examples are listed in the rulebooks as has already been mentioned, as has the Investigator Weapons books - both of which are nice addtions to a standard BRP game. There are also stats for some other heavy weapons in related games, such as in the BRP Big Gold Book, and there are quite a few "generic" weapon supplments with stats for CoC. If you got an idea of what you want stats for we can probably tell you where they are, or even cut and paste a weapon or two. Investigator Weapons, Vol 1. has stats for a Browining M1917 (.30-06) and a Lewis Gun (various caibres in the .303- 7.92mm "family") as well as a Schilt No.3 Flamethrower.