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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.

*Phew* Platonic, good thing we didn't go Sorcratic, I hate the taste of Hemlock in the morning. LOL! Batman breaks just about ever Superhero RPG though. Greg Gordon noted that he had to tone down Mayfair's DC Heroes during the design phase to keep guns from turning the Batman into the Batstain. Batman tends to slide between genres more than most superheroes. This is the hero who went from fighting gritty street-level crime to having a inter-dimensional imp with magical powers as a fanboy. Plus Batman does a lot of crossovers, so he has to be able to work in the world of Superman, the JLA, etc. I think for Batman to work in an RPG, the GM probably needs to set some parameters and (mostly) stick within them. Just look at the differences in stlye between the mid-late 60s comics and the 60s TV show.

Well, in that case, I'd say you won your argument- assuming that there is anyone to argue against. 😊 But yeah, the very feature that make RQ/BRP what it is mostly work against the typical comic book superhero style. Of course there are really multiple styles of comic books, so BRP might actually work out well for some comic book characters.

Ooh, three for three!😁 Overall I think it comes down to approach. RQ really tried to be gritty and realistic to help contrast it from D&D, but comic books generally aren't gritty and realistic. So in many ways RQ/D100 RPGS are the exact opposite of what you want for Superheroes. It can be done, but there are other games that handle supers better because they were designed to do so from the ground up. Much like how standard D&D/D20 is rather farcical for Old Western campaigns. Sure, it can and has been done, but when all the gunmen have to stop and reload their six shooters during a showdown, it gets silly.

Because it was designed for it from the ground up. Even so, CHAMPIONS has some difficulties with some of the higher powered superheros. If I recall the HERO progression system correctly, Pre-Crisis Superman would have a STR score around 250! Which is still lower than it would be in Superworld (around 400).

LOL! Yes we could, but... it would probably be well past 80 stories. THe problem here is with the simple 1d6 per 3m/10ft falling damage. It works fine for the typical fantasy RPG, but not so good for modern day. A normal person typically will max out at around 120mph is spread out for impact, and maybe 180mph if in a dive, with limps held in close to the body. That would be 12d6 or 18d6 using the 1d6 per 10mph method from CoC (and I think BRP). Now Ben Grimm, becing larger and rockier than a typical human would have a higher drag, but he'd also have a higher mass so he'd hit harder too. Yes, but the comics don't use realistic scales, or physics. So it not really a flaw with game mechanics, just that the rules were not designed to simulate the "reality" of comic books. For example, in the comics we often see superstrong character lift aircraft, elephants, tanks and even ships. In real life the stresses of all that weight being help up by only two points of contact would probably damage the object and/or lead to it falling onto/around the super character. Occasionally comics go out of the way to get the physics right (RIP Gwen Stacey). but usually comics fall their own sort of laws of physics, which is why people caught after a long fall are perfectly fine despite the sudden negative acceleration (way to go Lois Lane). There are several superhero RPGs designed around superheroes. Superworld for the most part isn't. It's based around the gritty combats of bronze age cultures required for RuneQuest. Superheroes is a bit of a stretch for it. It can work, but there are a lot of loopholes and weakspot that can be exploited.

As a general rule the "grittiness" and realism that makes BRP stand apart from many other RPGs works against the style of the comics. For instance, in the comics if a character like the Thing falls 80 stories out of the Baxter Building and lands on the sidewalk, the sidewalk breaks, and he stands up and bushes himself off mostly unharmed. In BRP he's probably dead. This get compounded by the fact that most Superheroes tend to have stats and abilities that are well past the ranges where the game system was optimized to work. Going back the the Thing example above, while it could be possible to give the thing enough (kinetic) armor to be able to shrug off the 80 storey fall (80d6 or so, unless there is a fall damage cap somewhere) doing so would end up making him "punch proof" to most character in the Mavel Universe, including the Hulk. THe main reason why is that the normal damage formula, and the falling damage formula don't actually match up very well. Normally (that is for normal BRP characters), it doesn't matter, as the values are "close enough" to work. But at the superhoero level, the differences add up. Same with the damaged based on speed for vehicles (1d6 per 10mph). It really should be the same formula as for falling (or the falling formula should be the same as the speed formula), but they are not for ease of use. That mostly works out at the nomral range, but breaks down at superhero level. Then there is the fact that most version of BRP only track lethal damage, resulting in many superheores just killing opponents in a fist fight, rather than capturing them. But...there is SUPERWORLD. Steve Perrin did a fairly good job making BRP work for Superheroes in the SUPERWORLD boxed set back in the 80s. It addresses many of the hurdles of using BRP for Superheroes. But...even it doesn't handle Supers as well as CHAMPIONS, the game is was sort of modeled after. Becuase BRP is so inherently lethal, a hero that runs into someone with an attack that they don't have any defense against can easily wind up dead.

Probably HARN. It goes into a bit of detail with smithing. I think the base crafting times are based on, or adjusted by the smith's Skill Index (SI), which is basically the tens digit in their skill score. Thus a smith with Smithing 90 (SI 9) will usually complete a task faster than a smith with Smithing 40 (SI 4) would.

Yes but it wasn't the default. From what I've been told, it seems the whole idea of allocating points for stats was because some people didn't like having to play characters when they rolled poorly. Probably not without some justfication. A 3 CON or DEX in RQ is like having a terminal illness. I might do it, depending on what sort of campaign I was setting up. For instance if I were running a campaign where people could buy replacement bodies that were somehow manufactured, then a point buy, or even an increasing price scale might make sense.

Yeah, unless somebody accidentally resized it or altered the aspect ratio. It's easy enough to make a mistake when formatting, editing or printing. I don't know how many times I've accidentally started to print an entire PDF when I just wanted a table or character sheet for a game session. 😃

Then you haven't looked at Rogue Mistress or Hawkmoon.

Probably. If a culture used something like wergild to adjudicate damages, then I could see the price of the damaged coming off the ransom. So if someone had a ransom of 2000L, but lost a hand, and that had a wergild of 500L, the final ransom could be reduced to 1500L with the idea than the injury had been settled. I could also see situations where someone might be pressed for money and accept a lower ransom than normal. Maybe someone needs to buy something before the next High Holy Day so they are willing to let a couple of hundred Lunars slip by in order to meet their deadline. A lot of this would probably depend on just how much animosity existed between both sides, and other factors. Are rival clans or cults involved? Is one side just a hired mercenary with no real stake in the matter? Was the fight particular nasty? Did anybody die? It all probably matters. There might even be cases when the captors decide to waive the ransom - perhaps to settle a matter or to prevent reprisals.

Yes, exactly. Even with the stress of an instructor breathing down their necks it doesn't match up to actual combat condtions. Nah! You already were at the place I was pointing towards. The thing is, in play, people tend to avoid making rolls with skills that are below 50% if they can help it, as they expect to fail most of the time with those skills. Modifiers, if any, aren't something they can factor for, and can even vary from GM to GM. Compare that to a d20 game where a task is assigned a Target Number. A player with a +4 skill knows they have a 25% of making TN 20, 50% of making TN 15, 75% chance of making TN 10, and a 100% chance of making TN 5. While BRP does allow for modifiers, there is no example scale for applying those modifiers they way there is in D&D, or even Pendragon.

Accidental double post.

But wouldn't your BRP quickstart be considered "legitimate" simply via your being part owner of Chaosium, even if it wasn't originally? 😊 It's like using a forged check to draw money from your own bank account!😁 Honestly, I think the border issue might be down to printer or paper settings. Maybe it was formatted on 8.5"x11" and printed on A4 paper, or vice versa? "Fit to Page" wasn't checked, or some such.

But most people aren't skilled at 50%. The typical soldier in a modern army only spends a few weeks on the rifle range, and probably doesn't have a skill much greater than 30%, yet quite a few will quality for marksman, hitting 75% of the time. No, they are rated for use under stress. That's why most version of BRP don't require rolls for normal use. Characters don't have to make read/write rolls for every letter, drive rolls to get back and forth to work each day, and so on. In real combat people aim. At least they do if they are trying to hit something. They might not take that much time to aim, but they do aim. Yes, and in real combat there is the "problem" of the opposition shooting back, which tends to mess up people's aim and make them rush shots. And that's better than the average person in a gunfight too. I believe real word data shows a 15-20% chance of hitting a man-sized target at 7m or less. It's much like how a basketball player can shoot 90% from the free throw line, but only about 55% from the field and 35% at the three point line.

Yes, but that doesn't match up all that well with reality at times. For instance, in real life someone with 50% skill with a firearm can probably hit a target most of the time. Yes, or my idea of using 1D10 or 1D20 for easy rolls instead of 1D100, but doing so limits the character to a normal success. So if a driver exam (a stressful task), might be rolled on 1d20 and someone would only need a skill of 20% to pass.

Sorry 😳, my reponse might have been colored by my experiences with trying to help D&D players to adjust to other RPGs. I find they often come with assumptions and expectations that don't fit the new game. For instance, one D&Der used to say that a fight wasn't a "tough fight" for him unless his character has lost at least half his hit points. That sort of thinking in BRP is suicidal. I always though SB combat and parrying was exciting. At least prior to Elric!, thanks in large part to the riposte rule. With skill cappat at 100%, two skilled combantant's might make two or three attacks with the chances of parrying the subsequent attacks dropping off at an alarming rate. Yeah, but it probably works out okay considering that you almost never have to roll you native language skill in either game. LOL! That's more than I ever agreed with. It's kinda the problem between trying to give a good spread of skill competency while still keeping the mechanics simple to implement. The nice thing about D100 games is that a player can look at a skill score on the character sheet and have a pretty good idea of thier chance of success. It's much more clear and direct than most other systems. All of which were designed around an opposed roll game mechanic. That gives you the advantage of a sliding scale. That allows you to have a greater than 50% chance of success at some tasks without needing a skill greater than 50%.

Plus possibly a roll for hit location. Officially no. Generally speaking the drawback of doing so outweigh the advantages. One key thing about BRP games is that damage and injury tends to be much more severe than in most FRPGs. So the parry and defense mechanic is much more important than something like the Armor Class value in D&D. Perhaps the best work around, as already mentioned is the Pendragon solution. In Pendragon (which uses d20 instead of D100) characters don't alterate attacks and parries and instead both roll at the same time with the results treated as a opposed contest, with the winner inflicting damage on the loser. If the loser's roll was under his skill score then the loser gets a "partial success" and gets protection from his shield. This could be ported over the BRP.

Exactly my point. Most other RPGs can accommodate such things by varying the Target Number required to succeed. In D20 a TN of 5 is beatable by anyone with a skill of +4 or better. BRP doesn't quite handle that as smoothly. While latter versions of BRP have an EASY difficulty that doubles skill, it doesn't mean as much. Doubling a 20% skill to 40% skill leaves a skill unreliable. Now some some of tiers for skills that used a D10 or D20 to succeed at, for a normal success could handle that better. For instance, if driving a car was done with a D10 or D20 at low speed instead of D100, most drivers could actually maneuver at 10 mph without crashing.

Somewhat, but not all that much. Master rating has always been 90%+ or 100%+, veteran around 75% (where training drops off in most games), and professional somewhere around 50%. If you look at NPC statbooks for games like Elric! they look remarkably similar to those from RuneQuest or Strombringer. Even similar to CoC, if you ignore for differences in technology. For the most part the dice and mathematics do not change. Someone with a 33% skill is going to fail two-thirds of the time no matter what version of BRP you use. Now versions of BRP that allow skills to go over 100% can potentially change things but only if/when the characters get to that area. It's much more of a thing in Elric! where PCs are encouraged to start off with weapon scores over 100% then in, say RQ where "RuneLord" is more of a long term goal, and not a factor at all in early editions of Strombringer, where skill capped at 100% (plus any magical enhancements).

I think that has a lot to do with expectations. I find that D&D players find RQ/BRP combat to be "boring" becuase of the parries, as it feels to them like nothing happened. Peopel used to other RPGs though tend to find the close calls and whittling down of weapons to be exciting. Most of my players like the fact that just about anybody can drop a character with a crtical hit. It keeps the element of danger that my players like. For us, if we know that the opposition has no chance of dropping out characters, then the fight becomes boring. I'd might rather run a fight between experienced fighters in BRP than in D&D. Yeah. I think the issue here is that skill score not only represents the chance of success but overall proficiency in a field as well. This doesn't really match up that well. For example the average native speaker has around a 30% skill in thier language, but most people can spell their own name correctly over 99% of the time. Likewise, I'm no master swordsman, but I will probably hit you more often than not, unless you dodge, block or parry. Yes, I know that in BRP we are only supposed to roll for task that are stressful, but there are times where that yardstick doesn't always make sense. I doubt someone with Electronics at 5% could make a living at it. What would probably help would be to have some sort of relative scaling of skills and difficulties. BRP does have the difficulty multiplies, but they don't get used all that much. I've never seen a GM say that it was EASY to hit someone with a sword (which is is). Perhaps the best take on this I've seen in a D100 based system was the was FASA handed in in the old Star Trek RPG. There basic tasks were rolled on a D10, so anyone with a 10% skill in, say, shuttlecraft operations, could fly a shuttle around and do routine tasks. There was another tier at skills 40, and characters with less than 40 would have to roll against 40-skill, and past that was the full D100 scale. Maybe something like that might work for BRP? Say roll against 1D10 or 1D20 for simple tasks but be limited to a normal success.