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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.

Ow, yeah, that's what used to happen with us. We were using Shinai (bamboo Kendo swords) with winter gloves and quite a few of our blocks and parries ended up sliding down the blade, over the tsuba, and right across the knuckles. Arms and hands got hit way more often than any other party of the body. We got quite a few head hits too, and we were deliberately avoiding head strikes.

Pendragon halved the value of most armors if not worn with padding. So a suit of mail (10 points in Pendragon) would be worth only 5 points without the padding. The tricky but with adding values is that we want to make sure that we don't leapfrog superior armor. For instance a coat of plates,over mail, over an aketon shouldn't be better than full plate.

Fair enough. THere really isn't enough data from testing yet to show things definitely. Most of the exsisting tests tend to be flawed in some way. Either the armor lacks padding, or the target isn't free standing, or the arrowheads are too high qaulity, etc. Yeah, joints are weak spots, the underarms are a big target especially if in plate. ,Just wondering but did your padding extend to your elbows? Not to mention gambeson over mail over an aketon. The idea is that the padding soaks up most of the impact force and the mail prevents cuts or punctures. Plus most medevial mail tends to be better made that a lot of the stuff we see today, since modern mail often isn't rivited. Yeah, one on one duels are a bit different -especially when it comes to targeting. Obviously in a one on one a warrior can target the places that are the most vulnerable to attack. It's possible. The thing is a good arming doublet under the mail was quite effective. Yes, a lot of the ones worn were actually prestty resistant to cutting too. It's kinda like trying to slash someone behind a pillow.

I agree. The thing is that the armor in RQ/BRP is addidtive, but in real life armor doesn't always work that way. For instance, a weapon that can penetrate plate is almost certainly going to have enough energy left over to penetrate whatever is underneath. It's worth 3 points in RQ. BTW, this whole conversation is very similar to what is in Phalanx Games Medieval Magazine #1. Phalax are the folks behind Orbis Mundi, and the magazine is devoted to armor. In the back section the author revises weapon and armor ratings for several RPGs to better match up with current data. One of the games cover is D100/RQ6/Mthras The values are interesting. The author has an aketon (padding) as worth 6 points, a gambeson at 8, and secured mail at 7. But the aketon and gambeson both add +1 to the value of the mail if worn underneath (aketon) or over (gambeson) the mail, for a total of 9. Something like a coat of plates would be worth 9 as well, or +2 if worm over mail. Partial Plate is worth 11. I'm not sure if I entirely agree with the values chosen, but it is an interesting take, especially with some of the changes in weapon damages. Many weapons will need a strong arm, high die roll, and/or a special success to get through armor.

I doubt it. Mail and Gambeson soak up a lot of impact. Telling strokes tend to be on exposed areas and weakpoints. Most strikes tend to be partially defelcted or glacing blows rather than good solid hits.When I used to do it, most of the strikes that we felt were on the hands -the opponent's weapon would tend to slide down the blade and clip the knuckles. It usually didn't do any real damage, but did lead to people dropping their weapons and being exposed.Toss a shield into the mix and a solid hit becomes very unlikely. Remember, if mail didn't work it wouldn't have been used for so long.

Yeah, although it is probably a reflection of the state of knowledge at the time. Tests and studies made since that time have revealed that a gambeson is much more effective that we used to think. Turns out you are usually better off in a gambeson than in mail! At least mail without a gambeson underneath. If I were to rebuild the armor table, I'd probably have a gambeson at 3 or 4 and treat mail as a bonus to the gambeson, rather than as a seperate entry. There aren't many places were you'd wear mail without some padding underneath.

Actually it's not that far off. Keep in mind that damage in BRP isn't linear. That is 8 points isn't hitting twice as hard as 4 points. Otherwise there would be a much bigger difference between weapons. A pistol would do 2-5 times as much as an arrow, a rifle fives times as much as a pistol, and so on. Most armors overlap in places too. Full plate usually has a placard and a breastplate over the chest over an arming doublet (yet another name for an aketon, probably reinforced with mail gossets to protect the joints and other areas that cannot be covered with plate), but all that layering doesn't ever make someone safe against hand weapons. THe existience of leather is somewhat questionable in part because leather doesn't keep for hundred of years. Still, it probably did exist in some form -after all we didn't know about wooden castles until recently as none of them lasted either. I suspect curibouilli (hard) leather probably did exist and it resists cutting better than a gambeson, but it was probably used with a gambeson. Realistically it might be higher. For the most part armor stops weapons, and the severe injuries are caused by striking at the weak points and gaps between pieces of armor. The typical sword strike against a man in mail and aketon is probably going to bounce off harmlessly. At least until some of the mail links give way.

(Breaking exile only long enough to clear the waters I muddied...) Indeed I did.

That's what I do as well. I always considered the new matrix to be flawed, as it comes from Elric! and doesn't quite work right even there. Supposedly the idea behind the new matrix was to streamline and improve upon the weapon breakage rules, but I think RQ3 did it simpler and better.