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On 5/4/2017 at 8:32 PM, Baconjurer said:

I'm trying to make a spreadsheet that will assign reasonable and consistent characteristics to new monsters I invent. I want to imagine the new monster in my mind and convert that into game characteristics. My idea is to imagine the new monster and translate it using answers to the following dropdowns. Then I'll have the spreadsheet automatically give the new monster a proper range for the characteristics.

 

That is what I do when creating new creatures. I say "Big as a horse, quick as a tiger, strong as an ox " and so on, taking the characteristics from those creatures, then fiddle with Traits, hit locations and so on until I have something that works.

My spreadsheet has Hit Points, Damage Bonus, Movement and Hit Locations, but not Characteristics, for a number of RQ-style systems.

27 minutes ago, HorusArisen said:

In my endeavour to be politely helpful I read your post too briefly/quickly, something I'm sure you've never done.

Of course not, as Conrad is perfect ...

I'll avoid bothering in the future as I'm sure my single sentence was a chore to read.

Keep posting, some people complain about everything.

My theory regarding magical items is that they tend to accumulate fater with a PC Party than with the normal populace.

Some assumptions first:

• PCs will take the magical items of their fallen foes as booty or the prizes/spoils of combat
• PCs won't sell or give away their magical items, unless they absolutely cannot use them
• Cults allow the PCs to use those items that they give to their cults, or at least some of them

So, a PC Pary with no magical items meets a party with one magical item and defeats the party. As part of the items found, they find the magical item. recognise it and keep it. The GM doesn't like having lots of magic items, so restricts them to every other NPC party. The PCs meet an NPC party for combat every 3 sessions, so get a magic item every 6 sessions. A PC Party thus gets 5 magical items per year of gaming, assuming 50 sessions per year, with a very stingy GM.After a year of gaming, the PCs have 5 magic items, which is 10 times what an average party in this campaign has, after 2 years, 10, 3 years 15 and so on, making the PCs extremely magic item rich.

In an extended campaign, a PC Party is likely to pick up, keep and use many magical items. I have absolutely no problem with this, as PCs can use these items in interesting ways.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

I suggest each of us prepares a position paper and presents it in a separate thread. Right now there are more wild theories floating about than I am willing to handle.

Prepare a paper?

I thought this was just a game, not an academic exercise.

Otherwise, the exchange is going to look like more of this:

But it usually ends up like this, with two people picking each other posts aparts, refuting opinion with opinion.

Has it ever occurred to you that both the Entekosiad and the Glorious ReAscent of Yelm aren't any better than the tribal myths of the first Heortling tribes?

The Glorious ReAscent of Yelm is both historical and mythic, but I think is mostly useful.

The Entekosiad, on the other hand, is deeply suspect. It seems to be a paper on a Lunar HeroQuestor's attempt to prove something and everything is coloured by that attempt. It is interesting and challenging, but I would not want to say that anything in it is factual. I am sure that a lot of it is, but many of the conclusions drawn are very iffy indeed.

I think that's just how it is.

Some parts of the Stafford Library are detailed histories, chronologies and myths. Other parts seem to be brain dumps of whatver the author was thinking of that day but never gpt around to finishing off. The sections quoted seem to be the latter, so they really need finishing off by someone with a lot of time on their hands.

Duplicate Post and cannot seem to delete it

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

RQ never had the means to create such a sword, except for the Clanking City mass-produced items with a magical crystal in the handle, presumably channeling some magic from the Machine God or one of the mechanical prayer mills below the city all the time. (The magic broke down when the sword was removed from the Clanking City.)

Just because something is not described in the rules doesn't mean it cannot be done.

None of the Items in Plunder could be created by the RQ rules but there they are.

I'd just have a spell that is only available to certain smiths that allows them to enchant permanent spell effects into an object.Sure, it costs POW, or whatever the rulesset uses for enchantments, but it shouldn't be that difficult.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

It's not a flaw, it's a feature. The elven blade wants confrontation with the arch-enemy orcs, and the wielder will have to deal with that. It's similar to planning an ambush with a Humakti warrior possessing the Sense Assassin gift in your party. Any sufficiently powerful item will have an agenda, and that agenda won't necessarily be congruent to its wielder's agenda.

Do you have a similar reaction to the Earth Axe in the Munchrooms scenario in Troll Pak, or to the demonic steeds of Sir Ethilrist's Black Horse company?

Ah, I'm happier with those, but not for every magic item, otherwise it becomes tedious again.

A sword with permanently on Bladesharp 2 enchanted into it shouldn't have a personality, for example. However, it would be funny if it did, as it would have an inferiority complex comparing itself unfavourably to other magical swords.

Balastor's Axe, the Earth Axe from the Mushrooms and the Wind Sword all have personalities, which is fine.

We soon got tired of the "Every powerful magic item has to have a flaw" idea. It is draining as a player and doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would you make a powerful magic item with a built-in flaw, unless these were Fumbles?

RQ always had low-powered magic items which were very varied.

Basic Items:

• Battle/Spirit/Common Magic Matrices (including the ubiquitous Speedart Matrix on a Sling)
• Power Storage Crystals/Magic Point Matrices
• Potions
• Scrolls

Medium Items:

• Powered Crystals
• Rune/Divine Magic Matrices
• Powered Crystals
• Items with permanent spells enchanted into them

Powerful Items: 

• One of a kind specially crafted magic items
• Truestone

The items in Plunder covered all three, but mainly concentrated on Medium and powerful items.

On 4/24/2017 at 0:37 PM, Iskallor said:

Hellpits of Nightfang. There's a vampire killing folk. Time to gather your pitchforks, lanterns and garlic spirits.

I always thought hellpits of Night Fang had a great name but was quite weak as a scenario, then I stuck it in the Big Rubble and ran it in my current campaign and it was actually a very good scenario. It spawned several plot threads:

The PCs made friends with Night Fang, as they recognised him from some old tales

Eventually, the PCs un-vampired him and restored him to his former self

They found a shrine in the caves and ran away, leaving some Lunars to refound a Hero Cult of Pavis' Bodyguard

On 4/24/2017 at 0:01 PM, Conrad said:

Some kind of spacebound Psi Police would make for a great RPG, especially for OQ, as it is sufficiently different from RoH's territory (I can see it now, OQ Psi Space!). I wonder why the only thing I can think of that sounds anything like that for RPGs is GURPS Lensman? I know that the RPG Space Opera has lenses in it as well, but as far as I can find there was no official Psi Cop Campaign published by any RPG company. Am I correct, or wrong about this?  

Ever since Babylon 5, my spacebound Psi Police have to wear black and have a sinister front man.

Most of the HeroQuest scenarios work with RuneQuest as they are "Go there, investigate this, meet these and do something" style of scenario. Just make up RQ stats for the NPCs and it all works.

What I do is to use RQ NPC Stats, in a sketch form and add magic where required. Where a spell is not in RQ, I check my HeroQuest Cults Conversion page and, if the spell isn't in that, then I either make a spell up or use an existing spell. It's not particularly important to get an exact conversion for the NPCs anyway. 

He tried from the South and failed, then he tried from the East and succeeded. Had he failed, he would have probably tried from the North.

He probably tried East rather than North because he had help from the Theyalans of Dragon Pass, due to his being Humaktsson, so it made sense for him to go through Dragon pass and then westwards to Dorastor.

If he had aid from the northern people of Dara Happa then he would have come from the north, but that is unlikely due to the closeness of Dara Happa and Nysalor's Bright Empire. I am not entirely sure what was in the North West at that time, Fronela seems to be too primitive for him to relate to and he would not have had natural allies there. The Rockwoods would have blocked his path unless he went in a great arc around the West.

On 4/25/2017 at 0:09 AM, Yelm's Light said:

I'm not particularly hot on this idea, either.  It's the D&D syndrome that 'more items' is better.  I remember character sheets with a list of magic items running down the page.  That's never been what RQ was about.

It was for us, back in the day.

In theory, the Glortanthan Classics are just reprints of the original RQ2 material, so waiting for the RQ2 Classic material to come out makes more sense.

However, in practice, the Gloranthan Classics contain a lot more informaiton, gleaned from some out of print RQ2 material and some RQ3 material, so contains more than the equivalent RQ2 supplements.

So, if you have the money, I'd get both, if only as PDFs.

Loz proved right, as usual ...

I liked Treasure factors for that exact same reason. It was a good way of determining how powerful a party of NPCs was.

On 4/18/2017 at 2:38 PM, styopa said:

Except, as I understand it, each pool is available to cast ANY spell that god provides, so wouldn't each line in that case be the full list of spells you could get from Storm Bull and Waha respectively?  Seems like that could end up being long lists. 

I don't know, the rules aren't out yet 

On 4/18/2017 at 2:19 AM, olskool said:

Crush:  This does MAX weapon damage plus I am allowing it to do 2 X MAX STR Bonus damage (ie. a 1d2 STR Bonus will do 4 points).  This hits the limit for the skill modifier automatically (because skill based damage cannot exceed MAX rolled Damage).  Thus you can ignore it.

Impale: This does MAX weapon damage plus ROLLED weapon damage (including STR bonus on the roll only) for up to 2 times damage.  Since the weapon does MAX damage initially, this hits the limit on skill based damage (which cannot increase damage beyond MAX rolled damage).  Thus you can ignore it.  

Slash: This does ROLLED damage TWICE plus any STR Bonus.  The Skill modifier COULD have an effect here if the player rolls a bad Damage Roll.

Critical Hit:  This does either the weapon's MAX damage while ignoring armor or 2 x MAX Damage in lieu of ignoring armor at the attacker's option.  This would include the skill modifier in either choice.

My Great Troll with his Troll Maul LOVES you! 2D8+3D6 becomes 16+36=52 damage on a Crush! Yeehah!

RQ2 and RQ3 handle this differently.

In each case, Bladesharp 4 adds 20% to the skill and +4 to every blow.

In RQ2, Berseker multiplies base skill by 1.5, with Bladesharp added on top. So, someone with Pole Axe 190% would add 95% to the skill, due to Berzerker, then add +20% for Bladesharp, taking the skill to 305%.

In RQ2 against Chaos, Berserker doubles the attack chance, with Bladesharp added on top. So, someone with Pole Axe 140% would add 14% to the skill, due to Berzerker, then add +20% for Bladesharp, taking the skill to 300%.

In RQ3, Berserker just doubles the attack chance, with Bladesharp added on top. So, someone with Pole Axe 140% would add 14% to the skill, due to Berzerker, then add +20% for Bladesharp, taking the skill to 300%.

In RQ2, SIZ 18 gives SR1, DEX 21 gives SR 0 and a Pole Axe gives SR 1, for a total SR of 1+0+1=2. Attacks are at SR 2,4,6,8,10,12, so this allows 6 attacks at 50% against 6 different targets, but I allow multiple strikes at the same target to reflect the more skilled fighter.

In RQ3, SIZ 18 gives SR 1, DEX 21 gives SR 1 and a Pole Axe gives SR 1, for a total SR of 3. Attacks are at 3,6,9, so the attacker can only have 3 attacks at 100% each, not 6 attacks at 50%. Note that the difference in attacks is always 3, regardless of the base SR, so a Great Troll with a Troll Maul and DEX 21 has a SR of 1+0+1=2, so attacks at 2,5,8. One of our RQ3 PCs had a Maul of Swiftness that reduced the base SR by 1, so he attacked at SR1, so could get attacks at 1,4,7,10.

Every attack under both systems should get +4 added to the damage due to the Bladesharp.

22 hours ago, jezreel said:

As GM, how do you provide  balance in a game?-  by which I mean giving the players a good level of challenge ?    is it just down to experience? or are there rough guidelines?  I can see that you could roughly equate the numbers and skill levels of opposition to those of the players, but this would soon get tiresome. What about a larger group of lower level denizens  or just one very strong monster?    

In my experience, it is experience.

A party of well-trained PCs who work together can always defeat a party of roughly equal numbers and skill.

A party of chickens-with-heads-cut-off PCs will always lose against a roughly equal party.

A party of well-trained PCs who work together can usually defeat a party of fewer numbers but higher skill.

A party of well-trained PCs who work together can usually defeat a party of higher equal numbers but lower skill.

A party of well-trained PCs who work together can sometimes defeat a party of higher numbers and skill.

A party of well-trained PCs who work together can often defeat a single opponent, no matter the skill.

How can players assess the strength of opposition - when to fight and when to run/parley/surrender  or do GM's just cheese the challenge level to make every encounter winnable?

If the opposing party has higher numbers, they might be tricky, unless the PCs work well together.

If the opposing party has a Brute and some normal opponents, it might be tricky, unless you take down the Brute.

If the opposing party uses missile weapons then they are likely to cut you down where you stand.

If the opposing party is well-trained then it will be harder to beat.

If the opposing party is a rabble then it will be easier to beat.

But, a well-trained party with some magic and proven tactics proves very hard to beat, especially if PCs have access to Hero/Luck/Fate Points.

And how does magic fare against muscle in the game?  

It depends on the Magic.

In old-school RQ, Bladesharp 1 didn't make a lot of difference, Bladesharp 4 made a bit of difference against a normal foe and Bladesharp 8 cut through plate armour. Similarly, a good whack of Protection made normal foes struggle to do a lot of damage, except on a critical. 

Divine magic was even better, Shield 4 in RQ2 gave a lot of benefits, especially stacked with Protection 4, in RQ3 the limits were off so defensive magic could give very high armour points. However, for RQ3, offensive magic was limitless so your foe could have Crush 20 Bludgeon 10.

Berserker was good in RQ2, especially when stacked with Shield and Protection, we used to wander into combat with 12 points of magical armour, plus 10 points of iron/leather giving 22 points of armour, so we didn't need to parry. We also played that Storm Bull Berserker gave Protectoin as a side effect rather than Countermagic for Zorak Zorani, so that increased armour to 24. Given an Allied Spirit with a healing matrix, a Berserk Rune Lord would be very hard to beat in hand to hand combat.

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Sure, that's been Chaosium's approach since Stormbringer. Adapt the rules to the setting . About the only point of contention I have is that RQ is a game that uses the BRP engine. It isn't. Or at least in the case of RQ, RQ2, RQ3 and Strombringer it wasn't. BRP was a derivative of RuneQuest, as was Stormbringer. It was only later on, with WoW and CoC did we see RPGs built around the "BRP engine". 

Sometimes it needs repeating - RQ came first, then BRP was derived from RQ, then they mixed and intertwined in many ways.

1 hour ago, styopa said:

Not precisely your question, but I'd posted earlier in this thread something like it:

"Becoming a Rune Lord (RQ3) generally involved becoming 90% in what, five or six skills?   Generally, those would be things that the character is doing/enjoys doing (otherwise why pick that cult?) so we could assume they 'start their Rune Lord effort' at better-than-middling skills

Starting at a base of 60%, with a skill mod of 5%, getting to 90 takes 32 skill rolls (st dev 12 - I only ran about 170 iterations, that would settle down with more)

Likely the character is going to try like hell to get a skill check in every one of their primary target skills at least once each play session, certainly.  Let's say they only manage that in 80%.

Playing 2x monthly, then would be 40 sessions or a little more than a year and a half of play."

With physical skills, you could gain experience, then train, then gain experience until you reached 75%, then it was all experience. Non physical skills could use trainig up to 90%, which was useful.

21 hours ago, blackyinkin said:

Of course if your desert has Sand Yachts and your sailing campaign has dolphin riders....

Exactly, tailor your skill list to the setting ...