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Yeah, but the intent would be clear if not for you use of brawling. It would be closer to an improvised weapon. Yup. I could see a little table that you'd roll a d20 on to see how much of the weapon is left that would determine the weapon type, and modifiers. Maybe something simple like half weapon = half skill or some such. Yeah, it's not something that would come up all that often in the game. It would generally mean a knight wielding a breakable weapon without a squire or backup weapon, or the ability to get another weapon.

I can't say as I blame you. In defense of gaming at cons I will say I met some friends at cons who I later gamed with. Still, overall I'd have to agree with your outlook here.

Except that brawling doesn't use a weapon skill. That would depend on how and where it breaks. Even a minor break might ruin a blade for combat. Anyone who ever used a cracked aluminium bat should understand that. Maybe you got a poor quality dagger, maybe the weapon broke at the hilt and now you have no safe way to hold it, maybe it works but hurts whenever the blade hits something, maybe it shattered into a hundred pieces. It's something of a case by case thing. Maybe the Gm could use a 1d20 roll to see how good/bad the weapon is or how much remains? With most polearms the character is probably left with some sort of spear, or at least a pole or club. Most other hafted weapons would leave the character with a broken stick. Again it comes down to the weapon, the location of the break and severity. Many long speaks had points on either end, and so could leave a character with a longspear or two short ones. But there is no guarantee the weapon would break cleanly. In play most PKs would call for their squire for another weapon, probably a sword (which normally can't break). .

Yes. I think what you need to do is run a form of BRP that is more heroic than CoC, and closer to the Eternal Champion cycle in terms of style and tone. The EC and his companions usually don't die off until the end of current saga. RogerDee's idea of Pulp Cthulhu isn't a bad one either. It does the same sort of thing by making the PCs larger than life heroes who can get away with more than a typical Lovecraftian (weak) hero. Want you want is to present the Cthulhu Mythos as it would be done by Michael Moorcock rather than H.P. Lovecraft. You can look at fringe Mythos stories written by other authors to get an idea of the feel. For instance, Robert E. Howard used some Mythos stuff in his Conan stories. Well other than the above, some other alternative would be to come up with a way for the PCs to come back from the dead. Some possibilities: The PCs are some sort of otherworldly beings that can inhabit/possess a mortal body. When the body dies, they move onto another body. The PCs magically reincarnate. This works well if the PCs are some agents of a cosmic power such as the Balance and have to do something. The PCs are somehow immortal, and either cannot die, or don't stay dead when they do die. The PCs are clones and when one dies the next one get's activated to replace it. This could involve the Mi-Go, who are monitoring the PCs memories and keep everything updated for the new clone. The PCs are androids that resemble humans. In this case they can be repaired when damaged, and they upload their memories to a central computer which can program a replacement, if needed. The whole thing takes place in a virtual reality, perhaps as part of a training exercise before the PCs go out into the real world. Whenever thewy fail the programmers try something else. The PCs have some sort of time travel device that acts as a panic button, allow them to jump back in time a bit to avoid death or other unpleasant outcome. Think Groundhog Day. Note that any of the above could work without the players being aware of the specifics. They could be surprised and puzzled when, after a grisly death, they wake up an hour or so later (or earlier) in perfect health.

Probably so that they can try/get a taste of a game that they otherwise don't get the chance to play.

I think by RAW a broken weapon counts as nothing, it's broken! So by RAW most weapons that get broken are useless in combat, at least until they can be repaired. That said I could see a GM interpreting some broken weapons to be inferior forms on the same or smaller weapons. For instance a broken greatspear might count as an inferior spear with a reduction to skill and/or damage. A broken sword might count as a sword or dagger. A broken anything might count as an inferior club, etc. I think that if a GM does that though, he will need to make sure that the broken weapon is inferior in some way to a real version of the weapon. BTW, did this come up in play or is you interest only academic?

OH, there are bits of ridiculous in there, units with weapons skills of 30, or even 39, Robin Hood, Fezzig and Indigo from the Princes Bride. I don't think the Saxons are all that dangerous. The +5/-5 mounted bonus tends to shift them into the minor threat category against most PKs. That is, unless the PKs get outnumbered. It's ususally the mounted foes that are dangerous. Exactly. MUch like with history, that sort of stuff doesn't really come into play until the wars are over, and knights are looking for something else to do. Yes, but, once the PKs have gotten their combat skills up to respectable levels it's not all that difficult to pick up other skills via training and practice. Oh there are other armies that are more deadly. The Saxons do more damage than most other opponents, but only when they win, which isn't all that common, when their effective skill is around 10-12 vs. the PK's effective skill of 25. What keeps them somewhat dangerous is their high damage stat, combined with the 5% chance of a critical hit, and the relatively low armor protection of the early periods. Mathematically speaking, with all the die rolling, the Saxons are going to roll one or two criticals per battle, and stand a good chance of dropping or outright killing a PK with one hit. But that is pretty much true with all the armies. It's less about the Saxons are more about the laws of probability. Most groups will see an NPC roll a critical every four or five battle turns, and critical hits are very nasty in Pendragon. Mine too. They focus on Sword (or other primary weapon, but for most sword is better), Lance/Spear Expertise, and Horsemanship, and then start to look towards improving other skills, such as Awareness, First Aid, Courtesy, etc. Sometimes a PK might focus on characteristics (one PK started play with a 23 CON and took one major wound throughout his whole career), or traits (getting the chivalry or a religious bonus early can fast track a PK to hero), but even those characters work on getting their combat skills up. It's simply the nature of the setting.

Sorry for the long delay in replying, an electrical storm took out my TV/monitor which in turn lead to my computer corrupting it's boot manager, and I've been off the net for awhile. I think so to. Compared to CoC, Pendragon is pretty tame. Yes, all the player knights are going to die, but at least in Pendragon they get a fighting chance and can go out in a blaze of glory. It's not just BoA units. Frankly most BOA units are fairly tame. It's more a matter of keeping up with the NPKs. Fighting is a knights' primary purpose so combat skills will tend to be important and worked on more than other skills. At least until the Romance Period. That shouldn't be a problem. With the way experience and training work, as well as the benefits associated with any of the religious or chivalry bonuses, PKs have a lot of incentive to work on those other areas. It's just that: 1) Early on, the knights will probably focus on getting their combat skills up to the level of most knights, and will probably push for a 20 both to always get their shield and to eliminate the chance of fumbling. 2) Once PKs hit the "wall" for traiing (15 and later 20) it becomes more useful to advance in other areas with training and prictice. 2) The nature of glory bonus points is such that players will tend to use them to improve things that are already at a high value rather than on more mundane pursuits. As far as poetry or politics are concerned, it depends a lot on how the GM is running the game, and in what Peroid they are playing. I don't think the BOA armies are all that more difficult that the standard ones. Yes there is the odd elite unit, but they are rare. If your players are running into a lot of problems they might be making poor tactical choices. One thing about the Book of Battle is that there are a few ways to get killed trying something foolhardy and heroic. The vast majority of PK deaths I've seen have generally been due to critical hits (pretty much a given if you got a good sized group and at least a moderate length battle), failure to withdraw to heal up, or biting off more than they can chew (usually by going into intended melee against a tough opponent to rescue a fallen PK).

You won't believe how happy I was readying that message. Less so for the content and more so because it meant I got my computer back on line after the boot manager got corrupted.

Can I quote that?

Possibly. Or possibly not, depending on it it is effective. Definitely not, thankfully. The only politics are current events I want to see on this board are those that take place in a fictional game world. Gaming is our refuge from the real world.

Are they? That's the question. Think of someone who gets into a relationship with someone who they know to be a liar, yet they go along with it because they like them. Or someone who gets into a relationship with someone who they know cheats on their significant other, even though they have every reason to believe that said person will cheat on them too. One thing about people that we find charming is that we often go along with them despite knowing better, because they reach us emotionally and we want to believe them. It why so many cons that get exposed seem to obvious to people on the outside. The people being conned probably had some suspicions but went along because they liked the scammer and wanted to trust them.

Probably because role playing games tend to be better at handling combat and similar specific tasks with rule mechanics as opposed to actual role playing/social interaction. That is, the rules help us arbitrate if character A deactivated character B and that that means, abut to little to tell us if Character A got Character B to like them, or convinced them of their point in a debate.

LOL!👀

Can we get a spoiler warning? I think this goes into he category of "things man was not meant to see before coffee." BTW, nice natural eyelashes!

Yeah, I think you're onto something here. In many cases if somebody is impressed by, attracted to, etc. with someone else, and that someone else starts showing them some attention and is friendly, they will still be quite malleable, even though they are partially to fully aware of what is going on. The old trope of the cute girl talking the smart nerdy guy into doing her homework for her comes to mind. The guy knows he is being played by still goes along with it because he likes getting her attention. With a Charm spell, I think the problems might cropup later on, after the effect has worn off.

Yes, but chance of success isn't the same thing as ratio between tho stats. While people intuitively think of things as being proportional, that's not how everything works. For instance, lets say you had tug-o-war between someone who was STR 8 vs. someone who had STR 16. While the stats are in a 2:1 ratio, and the amount that each can lift is also in a 2:1 ratio, the reality is that outcomes aren't going to be in a 2:1 proportion, and the stronger character is going to win the tug-o-war pretty much every time, and the 10% vs 90% chances of success are much closer to the actual outcomes.

Yes, at least initially, when Superworld was done up. Later the progression was altered a bit at the low end to prevent SIZ from going negative, and at the high end to try and make it more linear. Mostof these changes didn't matter all that much though, as the game rarely uses SIZ scores below 8 or above 88. Yes, by applying the square-cube law we can determine that if you somehow magically doubled the height, width, and depth of a creature (or object) would would cube it's mass for +24 SIZ. Glad to be so illuminating (). The nice thing about there being some sort of defined formula is that there are a lot of tricks we can do with it. Scaling creatures being one example. It can also help with vehicle design and performance, if you know something about the relationship between velocity, force and power, you can almost reduce vehicle speed down to a (STR-SIZ)/2 sort of formula. . Weapon damage better yet another. If you look at the damage bonus table you can see that each +16 is worth +1D6. That means that each quadrupling of the force is worth +1D6. With a little work, that could be used to determine a weapon's average damage based upon it's kinetic energy.

The formula used in Superworld and latter adapted to RQ3, CoC, and BRP is kg=2^(SIZ/8)*25. The key point is that the mass (and weight) double for every +8 to SIZ. In RQ3, CoC and others this progression is flatted out a bit at the low end (SIZ below 8 ) and at the high end (SIZ above 88). Also, someone goofed when copying this into CoC and misaligned the kilogram and pounds tables. Either they made a cut and paste error, or got confused that 1000 kg equal a metric ton, while it takes 2000 pounds to make up a short ton. Way back, when the BGB came out I pointed this out and asked Jason which coulmn was correct, and we told me to use one or the other, which I did in the table I posted. I beleive that Chasoium updated the table sometime latter on. Well, that actually doesn't exist in most version of BRP as the game uses the SIZ table. But any SIZ that is ten points below STR is automatic. To be honest this isn't all that great, as, technically, most characters would have to roll to see if they can pick up a bowling ball. THe orginal intent of the table was for things like characters heroically lifting large rocks to throw at enemies, or a portcullis or some such. It wasn't designed for determine what a character could relaible bench press or carry around in a backpack. Still, if we use the old Superworld table and STR-10 as the automatic success point, we get around 25kg/55 pounds as a carrying capacity for an character with STR 10). Uh, yeah,. 😳 I think I posted the revised chart on the forums somewhere the one that went with the goofed up table in the BGB, I know I still have it on a hard drive, somewhere (I did it up over a dozen years ago, and have a couple of dozen terabytes to search through). I also have the old RQ3 SIZ tables and the Superworld SIZ tables as well as a few alternates and additions (using the SIZ table to rate eletrica POWer, or to denote Speed).If anyone want's I have spreadsheets with the tables as well as a method to covert a given mass or weight into a SIZ score. I kinda use that sort of thing a lot when stating up animals and vehicles. I find it a lot easier and consistent to be able to look at the mass of a real world animal and use the cube-square law to scale a similar creature up or down than to work entirely from scratch. IMO the original Superworld SIZ table is the best one, as it sticks with the doubling progression, which makes a lot of things easier in terms of design and play-ability. For instance a Showa-era Godzilla that is SIZ 156 or so is much easier to use in game than one that is SIZ 2000

The BOA is something of a mixed bag. Several of us have chattend a bit about it in the past. Some units and insanely overpowered, and others are so pathetic as to not be worth starting up. There also seems to be a lot of errors in stats-at least as far as matching things up with the values from the core rulebook. I think BOA could certinaly benefit from some edting and correction. IMO, the book does have three "hurdles" in design that probably led to some of it's shortcomings. 1) BoA tries to make the various units distinctive and interesting in some way. This is what lead to a lot of the places where armor and damage values don't mesh with the core rules. This can lead to problems when payer characters realize that some enemy unit has rare/special armor that they want., and capture enemy troops to try an incorpate that armor into their own outfit. 2) BoA also attempts to cover all eras, and this lead to several units who were either over or under armored. 3) The BoA also has to try a challenge player knights of all skill levels. This latter one is a real problem. In Pendragon, especially KAP5, it's quite possible for a group of PKs to get the weapon skills over 20 and be able to mop of the floor with most of the on the tables. To offset this, there are a handful of super units on various tables, but those units become overkill vs. any lesser knights. They are supposed to be. Pendragon isn't a "nice & safe" sort of RPG. PKs are at risk, and players who don't want to lose characters should play some other RPG. But, I think you might be overlooking something about how long two handed weapons work, that could make a huge difference, see below. The weapon should only partially negate the mounted bonus, specifically the -5 to footmen. It shouldn't negate the +5 to being mounted for the horseman. That might be why your having such tough fights. Typically, PKs can go through most foot units, execpt for the special units, or when they get double or triple teamed. Frankly, if you are using the core rules book, most opponents in the BoA should be a cakewalk for the PKs, with only other knights and the occasional overpowered unit being any real threat. Well, keep in mind that the whole feudal system was geared around providing knights for battle. The whole "squire" thing was really a 7 year basica training program. So, to some extent, the PKs should be upping their weapons skills to have a decent shot at survival- it's what real knights did. Most of my players try to get Sword, Lance and Horse up to 20, ASAP, both to eliminate the chance of fumbling (barring penalties), and to greatly increase the chances of getting a critical hit when the +5 mounted bonus kicks in. Yes, I do use the BOA, but I also go through and adjust some of the stats. Not so much to reduce skills, but usually to correct damage stats that don't seem to match with the rules (for instance when someone does 5D6 with a sword, but 4D6 with a javelin), correct typos (when someone does more damage with one great weapon vs. another), or to adjust the armor values to fit the time period. I could post one or more of my customized army sheets if you like. If I could somehow magically alter the BOA, I think I'd like to make it a bit more standardized in terms of skill and gear. For instance raw, green, regular, veteran and elite troops would each have certain skill ranges assigned to them. Something like 7+1d3, 10+1d3, 13+1d3, 16+1d3 for skills. Then I'd like to rate armor based on what is available during a given period. So a unit with poor armor, typical armor, or best armor would wear different armors at different time periods.

While napalm itself didn't exist until 1942, there were previous flammable substances of a similar nature, so it wouldn't be impossible for somebody to make a flammable substance that could take out a zeppelin- gasoline and soap chips, for instance. But, as you pointed out previously, it's not something a fishmonger is likely to know- unless he was a pyromaniac. Hey, maybe you solved the Hindenburg disaster.? A crazed fishmonger.

Yeah, as dynamite is essentially nitroglycerin stabilized by soaking it in sand, sawdust or clay, the nitro can "sweat out" of the dynamite over time. Nitro is pretty unstable. In fact, just making it and/or dynamite is a risky endeavor.

Feel free to tweak it. Depends on how you want to go. You could just give them a flat +1 or +2. Alternatively, you could just give them a better die roll with the same average. For instance 2d4+3 instead of 2d6+1 to reflect the fact that their head isn't exposed. Hmmm, you know, with a little tweaking we could add up the point values of armor on various parts of the body and covert that to a random die roll. That could handle stuff like mail byrnies, a coat of plates, and half plate armor, If anybody wants to go that route. Or just give a base value/die for the torso armor, and add ones for the helmet and limb protection.

Sorry, the streak tips were done and I had everyone on ignore for a few minutes. Can I retroactively give you full credit? Oh, and I had intended to mention the Fear Check mechanic used in Chill as well, but, well, the steak tips were done.

Indeed. Yes it is, and it's could be argued that it is justified, as full plate armor actually means several layers of armor, overlapped to limit the vulnerable areas. It's actually kinda tough to hit someone in a spot that isn't protected by something. But, we could go with 2d6+1, 2d8-1 or whatever value we think a more appropriate for the armor. I'm just saying that the 1D10 used currently isn't on par with the fixed protection, where 2d4+3 or 2d6+1 would be.