soltakss

90% vs 30% gives 83%/17%. I.e. the 90% will win an opposed roll 83% of the time.

10% vs 10% gives 50%/50%

10% vs 20% gives 41%/59%

10% vs 30% gives 33%/66%

10% vs 40% gives 26%/74%

10% vs 50% gives 20%/80%

10% vs 60% gives 14%/85%

10% vs 70% gives 10%/90%

10% vs 80% gives 6%/93%

10% vs 90% gives 4%/96%

20% vs 10% gives 59%/41%

20% vs 20% gives 50%/50%

20% vs 30% gives 41%/58%

20% vs 40% gives 33%/66%

20% vs 50% gives 26%/73%

20% vs 60% gives 20%/80%

20% vs 70% gives 15%/85%

20% vs 80% gives 10%/89%

20% vs 90% gives 7%/92%

30% vs 10% gives 66%/33%

30% vs 20% gives 58%/41%

30% vs 30% gives 50%/50%

30% vs 40% gives 41%/58%

30% vs 50% gives 33%/66%

30% vs 60% gives 26%/73%

30% vs 70% gives 21%/79%

30% vs 80% gives 15%/84%

30% vs 90% gives 11%/88%

40% vs 10% gives 74%/26%

40% vs 20% gives 66%/33%

40% vs 30% gives 58%/41%

40% vs 40% gives 50%/50%

40% vs 50% gives 41%/58%

40% vs 60% gives 33%/66%

40% vs 70% gives 27%/73%

40% vs 80% gives 21%/79%

40% vs 90% gives 16%/83%

50% vs 10% gives 80%/20%

50% vs 20% gives 73%/26%

50% vs 30% gives 66%/33%

50% vs 40% gives 58%/41%

50% vs 50% gives 50%/50%

50% vs 60% gives 41%/58%

50% vs 70% gives 34%/66%

50% vs 80% gives 27%/72%

50% vs 90% gives 21%/78%

60% vs 10% gives 85%/14%

60% vs 20% gives 80%/20%

60% vs 30% gives 73%/26%

60% vs 40% gives 66%/33%

60% vs 50% gives 58%/41%

60% vs 60% gives 50%/50%

60% vs 70% gives 41%/58%

60% vs 80% gives 34%/65%

60% vs 90% gives 27%/72%

70% vs 10% gives 90%/10%

70% vs 20% gives 85%/15%

70% vs 30% gives 79%/21%

70% vs 40% gives 73%/27%

70% vs 50% gives 66%/34%

70% vs 60% gives 58%/41%

70% vs 70% gives 50%/50%

70% vs 80% gives 41%/58%

70% vs 90% gives 34%/65%

80% vs 10% gives 93%/6%

80% vs 20% gives 89%/10%

80% vs 30% gives 84%/15%

80% vs 40% gives 79%/21%

80% vs 50% gives 72%/27%

80% vs 60% gives 65%/34%

80% vs 70% gives 58%/41%

80% vs 80% gives 50%/50%

80% vs 90% gives 41%/58%

90% vs 10% gives 96%/4%

90% vs 20% gives 92%/7%

90% vs 30% gives 88%/11%

90% vs 40% gives 83%/16%

90% vs 50% gives 78%/21%

90% vs 60% gives 72%/27%

90% vs 70% gives 65%/34%

90% vs 80% gives 58%/41%

90% vs 90% gives 50%/50%

By the way, is BRP still using 1/5th Special, 1/20th Critical? What about Fumbles? Are they still 1/20th of the failure chance?

I feel it's time for some concrete examples of skill vs skill rather than wishy-washy probabilities.

There's no Hard Maths involved. Believe me, I've done some hard maths (although not too hard) and this isn't it.

A critical success beats a special, normal, failure or fumble.

A special success beats a normal, failure or fumble.

A normal success beats a failure of fumble.

A failure beats a fumble.

Simple, assuming you can work out whether you've succeeded/failed/fumbled/specialed/criticaled.

If you get the same result (i.e. both Fumble, both Fail, both succeed normally, both special or both critical) then you have to work out who has done better.

I prefer "succeeded by most", other people prefer "highest roll", they are the same. Normally it doesn't take much calculation to work out "succeeded by most" and no calculation to work out "highest roll".

So, where's the problem?

I'm not sure about the loser's level of success having an effect on the victor's levelm of success as I don't have BRP yet. presumably that is to differentiate a critical vs special from a critical vs failure, for example. It's pretty irrelevant if that's the case as BRP doesn't have any meaningful rules for effects based on differences between levels of success.

That's pretty much what I'd like to aim for. I'm now revisiting Hero Wars (which I assume isn't too different from HQ in this), with the intention of mining it for personality/relationship stuff. Having looked at similar bits from Pendragon recently, I'm now thinking they're a bit restrictive and, frankly, dull. But maybe HW/HQ is a bit too wide-ranging? And does it lack "crunch" (i.e. proper rules), or am I just not understanding it enough yet? Anyway, the FATE system has been mentioned in another thread as combining RQ & HQ well, so I guess I'd better check that out too...

Somebody described Hero Wars as "Roleplaying the Combat and Powergaming the Roleplaying" which is about right.

HeroQuest (the game) does a much better job.

Let's try again .....

I'm sure characters can be just as heroic with 185% skills as with 500%+, or even 20W11 (whatever that means. 1120%?). That's just the sort of discrepancy we've have to put up with by not having a system to guide us.

Until now...?

Absolutely. That's why I said that HeroQuesting and Powerful Gaming are not the same thing. In fact, High Level Gaming and Powerful Gaming aren't really the same thing either.

A character can have skills of 50% and act heroically and another can have skills of 300% and still act in a boring, uninspired way. I know, I've seen both.

Heroism is in what you do and how you do it, not in how skilled you are.

I always try and persuade my players to be more heroic. Sometimes it takes longer than others. My current gaming group will probably never act Heroically, no matter what their skill levels as they don't have the mindset for it. My previous gaming group probably couldn't act Unheroically, even if they tried.

Whatever the actual percentages, is it fair to say that Questing at Heroically high levels should be as much about personality, obligations and politics as about combat and the usual adventuring skills?

Well, yes and no.

HeroQuesting in essence should be the same regardless of skill/ability/power level. An initiate on a HeroQuest is as much a HeroQuestor as the Red Goddess slotting herself into the world.

But, there are areas where skill/power has its advantages. Somebody HeroQuesting into other realms where immortals live will need high skills/powers to keep up and compete. It's all very well sneaking into the next village and persuading the chief to let you sleep with his daughter and lend you his prize bull, all it takes is a couple of Fast Talks, a Seduce and a Run Away roll. But, try the same Quest in the Land of Faerie where the chief of the village shows you a row of heads on spikes of all the other young men who came to sleep with his daughter and borrow his prize bull and it's a different matter entirely. It's easy to fool normal people, but difficult to fool someone with Sense vagabond 200%.

If you HeroQuest at Heroically high levels, you need the skills and abilities to back it up. Period. Full stop. There's no getting away from it. You can have your whole village supporting you, but if you go against Ares and try to kick seven bells out of him, you need to be able to.

But, you have a good point about personality, obligations and politics.

Politics is normally a background thing where HeroQuesting is concerned. You may be HeroQuesting in support of, against or to circumvent various political powers. How you succeed in the politics can define how much you are supported/opposed and may even determine the quality of your opponents.

Obligations are important on many levels. Your relationships to your clan/village/city/nation/cult will determine how much support you get on the Quest. Your personal relationships with comrades determine whether you get Companions on the Quest. Your obligations to others may influence what you do on the Quest. A Yelmalian with "Never let an elf suffer needlessly" must make a value-judgement as to whether the elf being slowly roasted alive on a spit is needlessly suffering or whether the need is there, then you must decide whether to help him or leave him to be eaten. Sometimes obligations can make a Quest veer off into unexpected areas or can even force somebody to fail the Quest.

Personality is also something that affects a HeroQuest, or can affect a HeroQuest. It isn't the overriding thing on a Quest but it can have an effect. If you are doing one of the many "Storm God steals a maiden from her home" Quests and you have a nice, warm, friendly side and wouldn't hurt a fly then you are likely to have a different outcome to the big, brash, heartless brute. In all likelihood, the short-term outcome will be the same but the deflowered maiden may stay with the first and curse the second.

HeroQuest (the Game) covers this very well with Relationships and Personality Traits having the same weight as Skills and Abilities. BRP doesn't quite have that depth in mapping personality and relationships, but there's no reason why it can't.

BTW, my Cults of Terror says the Crimson Bat had Fly 500%, Bite 750% - and could swallow anything under SIZ 50 on a normal success (and 90 on a special, i.e., er, normally!). What other official yardsticks are there?

I had looked in all the RQ3 supplements and pulled out stat summaries of all the nasty greeblies. That's the bit that took an hour and died.

Fortunately, I've brought by DVDs to work to check the PDFs. Unfortunately, my PC only reads CD-ROMs, so it will have to wait until another day.

I've just spent an hour on a post only to have it eaten.

Not happy!

Imagine a 250% Jump heroic character leaping (for example) 5 metres from a standing jump: this is superhuman, and an ordinarily skilled person, regardless of luck, is never going to be able to jump that high. That's what I'm trying to achieve with a "very high level" skill system. (BTW - remember I haven't seen the new rules yet. I'm interested to see if it provides for some smooth progression into the Super Power rules - there may be an avenue there.)

There are physical limits to normal skills, though, at least there are in my game. Sure, with a good run up and a good Jump critical, a human can leap 7m horizontally or 3m vertically, but even with a Super-Duper Critical they are not going to be able to jump 7m vertically or 14m horizontally. In my world, that takes a Heroic Ability or Magic. Actually, several Gloranthan cults grant magic that does that with no run-up or skill.

The advantage of having a high skill is that you can do things easily that other people cannot. So, taking the Jump as an example. You are trying to jump over a chasm with lava flowing beneath and a horde of goblins behind you (a pretty normal state of affairs) and the GM says that such a Jump is Difficult and your Jump skill is halved. You have Jump 90% because you are a master/mistress but your Jump chance is 45%. Your colleague has Jump 150% and his jump chance is 75%. But, if the chasm is to wide then not even a special jump result will work - it's just too wide.

Remember also that in the case of opposed rolls (I'm treating combat as opposed in this sense), the Mastery "bump" system in HQ first bumps your own result up to critical, then bumps the opponent's result down to fumble. I'd be tempted to use this as the default behaviour in opposed rolls, and only if you STILL have bumps left would you bump up into Heroic and Superheroic Criticals (ie if you have over 100% and you roll a Critical and your opponent Fumbles, then you have a Heroic Critical - but not otherwise). Hope that makes sense!

Yes, it makes sense. I take it masteries would cancel in the same way as HQ, so 350% vs 250% is the same as 150% vs 50%.

My numbers may be off as I'm working from memory, but you get the idea. I'm aware there may be a quality leap between, say 99% and 101% - I haven't analysed that - but it's the principle I'm trying to establish. Also, it makes a less than 100% swordsman facing a 210% swordsman truly outclassed - far more than simply increasing Critical and Special chances would result in. That's a campaign power decision for individual GMs, I guess. For me, I want to have a path to superhuman levels of power available in the game system.

There is a problem with 101% - in RQ you'd get a 5% critical and 15% special. Using Masteries against someone with no mastery, your skill is 1% and 1 bump and you get no specials or criticals.

96-00 = Failure (Fumble Bumped)

2-95 = Success (Failure Bumped)

01 = Heroic Critical (Critical Bumped)

Even if you say that 1% is the equivalent to 5%, you still get no critical:

96-00 = Failure (Fumble Bumped)

6-95 = Success (Failure Bumped)

2-5 = Special (Success Bumped)

01 = Heroic Critical (Critical Bumped)

So, both results are actually worse than what the normal roll would be, on a Level of Success basis.

HeroQuest doesn't have that problem because you only have 4 levels of success - Fumble, Failure, Success and Critical. 1 is always a critical, 20 is always a fumble and the rest depend on the skill. So, 19 and 20 give the same results, but 1M (1W) gives 1 = critical and a bump down to the opponent, 2-19 = failure bumped to success, 20 is fumble bumped to failure. 2M gives 1=critical and opponent bumped down, 2=success bumped to critical, 3-19 is failure bumped to success and 20 is fumble bumped to failure. So, the results are always as good or slightly better when moving across a mastery.

BRP might not have that problem if there are no specials. If so, it's a shame as I like specials.

Well, not so much a "plateau" - but certainly a qualitative improvement in ability levels rather than "more of the same", but not specifically to "ignore" lesser mortals - that's not the intent. It's meant to be a way to allow superhuman results to be achieved by extremely highly-skilled individuals using (more or less) the current system. As I mentioned, think Hercules, Gandalf, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, etc.

RQM does that with Legendary Abilities which allow for people to do heroic things. Older versions of RQ had them as Special Abilities. I don't know if BRP has the equivalent, but it should do.

Absolutely - and from board games like Dragon Pass, we always knew there were Heros and Demigods charging around the land. Dang, some of them individually were more powerful than whole _regiments_ in DP - our question was always "how do you get to be as powerful as those guys?"

That's what we thought as well. In the end, the PCs were competing with these people. The Orlanthi killed Harrek and Argrath, the Troll was trying to cure the Curse of Kin, they had fought the Red Emperor on several occasions before allying with him, they had fought an earlier version of Jar Eel, Cacodemon and Cwim held no fears for them and rarely lasted more than 2 or 3 rounds. In the end, we had more of a Freeform-style campaign with a lot of politicking and HeroQuesting to gain allies to achieve long-term goals and skills weren't that important.

"Houseruling" is the magic word there. I'd agree in principle though - the BRP engine is capable of pretty much everything.

You have to houserule because the rules are writen to stop at 100% with absolutely no thought as to what happens after that. Look at CoC for goodness sake, it has no concept of skills past 100%, or it didn't.

For some reason, we never cottoned on to this technique. I guess the PCs were always gung-ho maniacs on quests to harrow hell, etc, rather than focussed on enchantments. Did you actually use this in play? Was it a common approach?

Did we use it in play? Hell, yes. In fact, we even reached the point where we were fully enchanted and asked "What happens if we increase the level of enchantment and then boosted our CON, do we get another boost to HPs?" to which the answer was Yes, so everyone added another 3 or 4 D6 to the enchantment in case they doubled their CON (not hard - several of us had Rage of the Bull that doubled STR and CON for 1D6 melee rounds once per week). Was it a common approach? Yes, everyone in the RQ3 camapign did it, but they were all Rune Priests with 90% Enchant, so it wasn't really a problem.

Gun-ho maniacs? Ours were so gung-ho it was unbelievable. When they went on an adventure or a quest, they were up for it 200%. None of your wimpy stuff, it was climbing over a mountain of corpses to get to the Broo Hero. They went through Chaos Temples like a dose of salts.

Their rationale to the Enchantment was something like this. They could spend 1 POW to get Heal Wound that would heal a location, or they could spend 1 POW to get +1D6 General Hit Points that could make the difference between living and dying. If they doubled their General Hits then that doubled locational hits which meant they could take bigger hits without dying. If they doubled Vital Location Hits then they could absorb more damage in vital locations without going into shock. To them it was a no-brainer.

I like both these ideas, and will probably steal them immediately :happy:. The first definitely does feel like something you'd come back from a HeroQuest with; the second like the "powering up" preparation a true quester would do before entering on a major adventure. Excellent - I shall add these to my arsenal of "how to do very high level play".

You have to toughen up for HeroQuests if you are going against the Big Boys. That's an easy way to do it.

I like this a lot. How did they gain Heroic Casting? Was it a HeroQuest reward? Was there a specific HeroQuest to get it?

Heroic Casting was always a HeroQuest reward or a Gift.

There wasn't a single Quest to do to get Heroic Casting, rather it was a logical run-on for a HeroQuest.

Imagine a Humakti performing the "Quest for Death" HeroQuest. He goes to Hell, comes back with the Sword Death. He does this as an Initiate and gets a magical Sword that does +2 damage + 10% attack (a +2 sword). He does the Quest again and this time gains a special ability to get Truesword reusably as an initiate (like the Yelmalian gift). He does the Quest again as a Sword of Humakt and gets his sword boosted. He does the Quest again and gets Heroic Casting of Truesword.

What? You can't do the same quest over and over again! I hear people cry. Yes you can, people do Sacred Time ceremonies every year. Part of doing a quest is that you practice it first to iron out the problems. But, doing a quest over and over again causes problems. You may well get the same opponents over and over again or attract more powerful opponents than you would normally expect. You may have cokced something up on an earlier quest and have to overcome the problem over and over again. The benefits may become less and less.

We also played that you could ask for Heroic Casting as a reward on a HeroQuest if you were a Priest or had the spell Reusably.

Of course, Avatars and Heroes of a cult automatically got Heroic Casting of cult Divine Magic, so it wans't just for PCs.

As for "Munchkinism", I think what I mean by that is characters with stupendously high skills as a result of bending the rules, sort of GM fiat demigods with 2500% broadsword and Oratory 15%

You get that if you start off with high skill characters or roll them up as Experienced. If you start off with low skills and develop in play then you end up with almost every skill at Mastery, which is unsatisfactory for a whole different set of reasons.

The longest running player character I had in one of my campaigns was a certain Tryfan Ironsword, who started in or around 1981 and whose last game was around 1992. By that time he was a Rune Lord Priest of Humakt, and witness to countless other PCs who'd risen and fallen while he'd (remarkably) remained alive. I suppose on average he got something between 15-20 sessions a year over an 11 year period, sessions being all day jobs, sometimes multiple days in a row. We used the rules as written, and he ended up with his best skill as Broadsword 185%. That's after a decade of reasonably active play, without cheating the experience rolls. If we'd been playing HQ, with more or less 1 point increase per session, he'd probably have ended up with Sword & Shield 20W11 by that time - but the pace of improvement in RQ was always hugely lower.

At/after University, we played in an RQ2 campaign for several years. My character Soltak Stormspear (sounds familiar ) had INT 11 and got 220% Bastard Sword as his highest skill, mainly because his INT was 19 for Swords and INT 6 for other skills (damned HeroQuesting). In RQ2 you had to roll beneath your INT to increase skills over 100%. But, we had PCs who were higher, Raven our Yeloranan Elf had INT 25 and 280% Elf Bow, I think, and Derak had Troll Maul of about the same, but Stuart who played him was very, very, very lucky on experience rolls and POW Gain Rolls. We played every week during term time and sometimes at the weekend on all-nighters, so you are looking at 30-40 sessions a year for 5 or 6 years with one scenario every 2 or 3 sessions, so 10-15 scenarios per year, but fairly often having ex[ereience rolls in logical breaks in the scenario. After Uni, we played every week, so it went up to 45-50 sessions per year.

Some of the players converted their characters to RQ3 and we played the campaign for a number of years after that. In RQ3, you added your Characteristic Bonus to your expereinec roll and if you rolled over your skill or 100 you gained 1D6, as I recall, and these were now maxed-out characters in some ways, they had trained their DEX to 21 and STR/CON to the STR/CON/SIZ limit, so everyone had fairly high combat bonuses, especially the trolls, so skills advanced further. Derak kept on being lucky with experience rolls and his highest skill was Sense Chaos at nearly 400%.

One thing we did play was that if the PCs had been on a Godtime HeroQuest where their skills were reduced to 1/5th normal, then they got 5D6 increase if the gained expereience on skills used on the Quest - this balanced reward with difficulty. It didn't happen very often but gave them some fairly large increases when it happened.

I addressed this in my first reply above, but I'll quickly mention it again: I agree absolutely with the need for higher granularity than just "Critical" for skills above 100%. However, I'm surprised at the very high threshold - 1/500th of a skill and 1/1000th of a skill. Did you actually have PCs with 500% and 1000% skills in your campaign? How did they achieve that with the rules as written? I get the feeling we're playing experience checks very differently!

Also, the PCs had magical items and abilities that they could use.

Derak, who has Sense Chaos nearly 400%, was attuned to a Crystal that doubled his Sense Chaos skill in play, so he operated with a Sense Chaos at nearly 800%. Raven (RQ2) had Arrow Trance so could double her Self Bow skill and had a Speedart 4 matrix that gave her +60%, taking her over 500%. Brankist had a special ability that doubled his attack chance against Broos for 5 minutes once per week, he had 300% Bastard Sword, so this took him to 600%, if he went Beserk as well, he got 1200% Bastard Sword. Derak had sacrificed for Crush 40 over the years, which gave him +400% if he cast it all at once, something he very rarely did. I could go on.

Hopefully you see my point. As far as I can see - and I've been BRPing since about 1980 - you'd have to fudge massively to get a character with 500% in a skill, let alone 2000%. That's fine if that's the game you want to run, but if memory serves even the Crimson Bat and Ralzakark only got skills in the 300-400% range (correct me if I'm wrong there - I've a sneaking suspicion that the Crimson Bat may have had something excruciating like Swallow Everything 1500%, haven't got the books to hand just now). Maybe "Munchkinism" is the wrong word, but having PCs with skills approaching 1000% seems to me to involve disregarding the BRP rules-as-written to some extent. I'm happy to be proved wrong though!

No, it is possible. Having a long-running and frequent game with rolled experience, magic items and spells it is possible to get very high skills. In fact, a Babeester Gor initiate with Axe Trance and 400 MPs to cast it with has a skill in excess of 2000%, that's with no Munchkimism at all, except the 400 MPs.

But I DO definitely agree with the need for Supercriticals (or whatever) - it's just that from my experience I envisage them becoming necessary far earlier than 400% skill, if I'm not to wait another ten years before I get to use them!

Well, I use Special Criticals at 100% but they only work if you roll very low. We also had some Power Weapons, Raven had Power Arrows, Brankist had a Power Sword, that improved the level of success of a roll by 1.

It all depends on the style and power level of the campaign. Some of our old players hated the new campaign because the PCs had skills in the 300-400 range rather than the 150-250 range. BUt, skill is skill is skill, there's no difference between having a skill of 150% or 550%, one is just better than the other.

Sorry - just had to step in with a health warning as soon as I saw this!

I was going to do the same.

Be careful with Hero Wars! It's actually a bit "confusing", not to put too fine a point on it. It's basically the first edition of what's now called HeroQuest, and was a bit rushed to press to say the least. I think it came out around 1999/2000 (can't remember off the top of my head...) and many of us spent a year or two trying to work out how to play it. It's a VERY different beast to RQ / BRP, as I'm sure you've realised by now, and although you _can_ play the rules as written, you'll probably find questions bubbling up in your head whilst reading it.

Apparently, Issaries had to rush Hero Wars out because they had run out of cash and needed something to sell.

The books are cramped, the layout is abysmal and the rules are confusing. Apart from that, it's OK, I suppose. I never actually played Hero Wars, I only ever played HeroQuest.

To be honest, the HeroQuest rules (basically HW 2nd edition) are MUCH better, much more clearly written with heaps of examples, and actually a very sophisticated and elegant ruleset. Even then they aren't everyone's cup of tea, though - they are a very narrative-oriented ruleset - you won't find anything like hit points or weapon damages, or even skill or spell descriptions. It does require a massive readjustment of mindset to work out what the rules are trying to do.

Yep, I'd agree with all those comments. The rules are very clear, although Greg Stafford has tried to make an elegant and simple system confusing and complicated by adding layer and layer of extra rules that don't really help the game at all. Mythic Russia did a good job of simplifying the rules.

I think the effort is worth it. My RPG gaming has improved because of my experience of HQ - I've become a little less obsessed with nuts and bolts, and more open to having everyone, GM and players, collaborate in determining, for example, what effect a spell might have in a given situation, or allowing one skill to enhance another. I still like more chrome and crunch in my gaming than HQ can provide, however.

I'd agree with those comments as well.

Since playing HeroQuest, I tend to not bother too much with NPC stats and only focus on important NPC attributes. My game style was always a bit story-based, but not to the extent that HeroQuest is, so that didn't really change my gaming style. I do, however, allow players to control the background a lot more than I used to, although they don't really want to at the moment.

HQ is not at all gritty and I prefer BRP to it in many respects. We play a RQ campaign alomngside a HQ campaign and we enjoy both in different ways.

The "problem" with HeroQuest is that anything can be used to counter anything, with penalties imposed if the Narrator thinks the skill is not very relevant. This is sometimes difficult to get your head around. It also makes HeroQuest really good for Super Hero games where the Super-Quick character can dodge a Death ray by running away from it, or the Super-Strong character can simply take it on his chest.

The main example of this that I use is the situation where a warrior attacks a young woman with a sword, using his Sword Combat. The young women flutters her eyes and counters with her "Don't Hurt Me, I'm Beautiful" skill (Or just her Beautiful skill if you want). The woman's player argues that she is using her beauty to make the swordsman not want to attack her. In HeroQuest this would be allowed and is a reasonable defence.

I've discussed this example with my gaming group and other people who play HeroQuest and they all agree that they would use this tactic in that situation. In fact, my gaming group didn't even argue with it, they said straight away that it was fine. In my experience, if people can see that this is a valid tactic then they would enjoy HeroQuest, if they think "Oh, no, how can a woman defend a sword attack with her beauty?" then they probably wouldn't enjoy HeroQuest, or perhaps wouldn't get a lot out of it.

Sorry for posting 4 consecutive posts on the same thread, but HeroQuesting is an area in which I am PASSIONATELY interested.

Do you mean perhaps the Hypercrit system done by Steve Maurer in the late 80s / early 90s? The one where you divide your skill level by 400 or 1000 to get your Supercrit or Hypercrit chances? That's a heckuva Munchkin system if there ever was one! ;-)

Is it?

Specials are Skill / 5, Criticals are Skill / 20. Those aren't Munchkin. Why should extensions of Skill / 100, Skill / 400 or Skill / 1000 be Munchkin?

They are merely extensions to provide graded Levels of Success for high skills.

If you have skill success judged by Level of Success (so a Critical beats a Special no matter what the actual skills/rolls) then you really need extra Levels of Success past 100% otherwise things get really boring.

Two characters with 2000+% skill auto-critical, ignoring rolls of above 95, which makes their skill resolution very silly indeed. If you have extra Levels of Successthen someone who rolls a 04 would do better than someone rolling a 20, making the resolution more granular and interesting.

I can't see a problem with having extra Levels of Success.

Why are they Munchkin? I really don't understand what you mean by that term.

This could be an interesting thread :thumb:

HeroQuesting is ALWAYS interesting.

Firstly, my take on this is that there's no need to reinvent the wheel. It's clear that HeroQuesting-as-we-know-it is fairly well understood, and doesn't require mega-high-powered characters to do it. It's more a ritual / worship / pathwalking thing than fighting The Big Ugly Monster, and there are a lot of good essays around on how to do it. Yes, it would be very profitable to discuss the concept of HeroQuesting in milieu other than Glorantha - Arthurian, Faerie, Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian, Japanese, Chinese, etc, etc, would all be interesting to look at.

HeroQuesting is often about fighting the Big Ugly Monster, especially when you fight it in the same way that your deity fought it.

Secondly, my own interest is in how we _used_ to approach HeroQuesting when we thought it was a kind of Super RuneQuest, or indeed a follow-on from RuneQuest and next logical stage in development of your character after Rune Lord Priest. This is high-power gaming with the BRP rules, and, yes, it does involve transcending conventional human limitations (and this is where crossover with HeroQuesting the activity comes in).

The traditional progression was Normal Person-Initiate-Rune Level-HeroQuestor-Hero-Demigod-God.

Now we know that Initiates can be HeroQuestors and even non-cultists can be HeroQuestors. HeroQuesting is a Path that is taken at whatever level and for whatever purpose.

IMHO, BRP does an excellent job at mapping human beings and their capabilities into RPG terms. Again IMHO, it's the best system out for the gritty gaming of low-to-medium power gamers, and it also deals with the move into high-powered gaming admirably. The area it hasn't traditionally addressed is the next step - the heroic level play, where Gandalf takes on the Balrog, where Orpheus enters the Underworld, where Percival wins the Grail and Hercules completes his Seven Great Labours, Odysseus... well, you get the picture. ;-)

Opinions may vary, but I've never really found that BRP struggles, with some Houseruling.

I think there are some excellent mechanisms already in the BRP system, largely born from Stormbringer gaming, which express higher power for characters. These include:

1.) Multiple Attacks for 100%+ skilled characters.

2.) High number of parries for skilled characters.

3.) Divine intervention and divine "favour".

All of which exist in RQ, the Father of HeroQuesting.

However, there are two areas in the BRP system I think are still potentially weak for high-level gaming:

1.) Hit Points. Even the most heroic character is going to have about, say, 20HP. As a result, combat with BEMs like the Balrog always must revolve around Not Getting Hit In The First Place - even with the best armour, any hit from a Balrog is likely to result in defeat, especially if it's a critical. Whilst this is fine in itself as a mechanism, it could lead to a rather lacklustre combat, where blow after blow fails to land, no one is wounded, until - SPLAT - something finally happens. This could be a matter of mindset, but it would be nice to think how high-level combat could be more spicy.

In RQ, you could get beyond that with no trouble at all. You could use Strengthening Enchantments to double your General Hit Points, then use Strengthening Enchantments on infividual Hit Locations to double those as well. It was expensive but doable.

Also, we played that you could use Hero Points (different to Fate Points, gained through HeroQuesting) to permanently increase a characteristic above species maximum. So, 3 Hero Points could increase CON past 21 or past the STR/CON/SIZ limit. It took a while, but we got high CONs for some PCs.

Some magic increased CON past normal maximaum. If you have a spell or effect that doubles CON past Species Max then someone with CON 21 SIZ 15 normally has 18 HP, but has 29HP for the duration of the CON-Doubling spell or effect. Stack that with Strengthening Enchantment with a lot of spare capacity and that gives you 58 HP.

I'm not saying that every character would do this, just that it is possible.

And, to counter claims of Munchkinism, this is merely using rules extensions that were brought in to reflect divine gifts. There's nothing really Munchkiny about a PC with 58 HP over one with 18 HP.

2.) Magic. High level spell casters just end up getting loads and loads and loads of spells. In RQ, you could have buckets of Shield and Truesword spells, so that every combat was enhanced in pretty much the same way. I've never really used RQ sorcery, and don't know what the new BRP magic systems offer, but there is no real equivalent of Very High Level Magic available for PC use.

We used Heroic Magic as I've covered elsewhere. In my current campaign I'm using Divine Presence, which counts as generic Divine Magic that can be used to cast a Divine Spell that the PC knows, working in the same way as Heroic Magic, expcet that Initiates get Divine Presence on a One-Use basis and Rune Levels (including Acolytes) can repray it in the same way that they repray reusable Divine Magic.

I'm not talking Munchkin gaming here, remember - I'm trying to envisage what a character does after reaching Rune Lord Priest (or whatever) level, and wants to go further. That is, of course, assuming that Hercules is not just a bloke with 21 STR and 500% in Sword...

OK, can you tell me what you mean by Munchkin Gaming?

In any case, Hercules would have 500% Club and a lionskin that made him immune to edged/bladed weapons and .....

Apologies for the long post!

No problems, HeroQuesting cannot be covered by a short post. Nor can Powerful Gaming.

OK, I split it in two. Somthing about the message being too long.

I dunno, Triff, sort it out will ya?

One thing is for sure. HeroQuesting is not just High Level (Powerful) Gaming.

Sure, if you plan to fight and kill the Wargod then you have to be pretty hard. But, if you plan to copy what Perseus did to get Pegasus, is that as difficult? What if you want to marry the daughter of a nearby chief but have no money or status, can you perform an Abduction Quest and carry her off to be your wife and if so how powerful do you have to be? What about the fairytale stories of fools and normal men who cross over to the Otherworld and bring back treasure? How powerful are they?

So, I don't think that a discussion of High Level Gaming is that important for HeroQuesting. What is more important is to understand what HeroQuesting is and how it relates to the setting you are using. Once you do that then you can work out what extra rules you need.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for High Level (Powerful) Gaming and with a few tweaks RQ/BRP can be extended into those realms where some people are afraid to go.

Talking from a RQ background, the barriers to Powerful Gaming using the RQ Rules are:

1. Levels of Success for skills

2. Availability and scaling of magic

3. Coping with demonlike/godlike beings

Without going on a Super RuneQuest rant, these are the things that I have tended to use to make RQ scalable.

1. Levels of Success for skills:

Failing on rolls over 96 / Fumbling on 100

Only having normals, specials and criticals as success levels.

Someone with 500% skill should not fail 4% of the time, the same as someone with 100% skill. Similarly, they should not funble 1% of the time, the same as a 100%er. The way I have got around this is to introduce a sliding scale where the higher the skill the less often people fail. This is in 90% (Mastery) increments, so someone with 180% succeeds on a 96, 270% succeeds on 1 97, 360% succeeds on 98 and 450% succeeds on 99. If they rolled 100, then I'd say they only Fumble if they don't achieve a Special success on another roll. So someone with 300% who rolls 100 will only fumble if he fails a 60% chance (61-100). This means that someone with 500% only fumbles on 96-100 on the second roll, which isn't too bad.

Someone with 500% skill auto-specials, which is fair enough, and has a 25% critical chance, but there is no further chance of getting a good score. This means that opposed rolls get a bit boring. I give a Special Critical (1/100th of skill, round down), a Super Critical (1/500th of skill, round down) and a Hyper Critical (1/1000th of skill, round down) that only come into play when a character gets skills of 100%, 500% and 1000%

BRP has different ideas about Specials and Criticals, so the calculations may differ but the ideas remain the same. RQM has no specials, but I like specials and would continue to use them.

2. Availability and scaling of magic

A priest with Shield 40 takes 40 days to pray it back at a Temple. I play that powerful priests may pray spells back faster depending on various gifts.

A priest with Shield 40 can cast it once then doesn't have access to it until he prays it back. A nymph-daughter of Voria has Flowers but once cast has to pray it back before casting it again. I have the idea of Heroic Casting that is one level up from normal Divine Magic use. Someone with Heroic Casting of a Divine Spell can cast the spell using his own Magic Points (Power Points in BRP - or is that PP? What's the problem with PP anyway, is it something like Nut ), so a Priest with Heroic casting of Shield, 15 POW and Shield 5 can cast Shield 8 using 8 MPS, then cast Shield 6, using 4 MPs, leaving himself with 1 MP. Such castings cannot be used with One-Use spells, otherwise they cost POW rather than MPs, and they can't draw on spirits, MPs in crystals or enchantments and so on.

I don't have any Heroic rules for Sorcery or shamanism, except that my Shaman rules and Spirit Combat rules are different from RQ2/3.

3. Coping with demonlike/godlike beings

Godlike beings are big and strong and have a lot of Armour Points and Hit Points, otherwise how could they have survived against other Godlike beings? In RQ/Glorantha, we have stats for Cacodemon, Crimson Bat, Mother of Monsters and Cwim, all of which make these beings hard to kill. HeroQuest (the game) has stats for many other powerful beings.

HeroQuesters need to be able to fight these beings on an equal footing.

Firstly, I have the Rule of Equivalence which says that a HeroQuestor meets similarly powered beings while on a HeroQuest. Technically, that should be similarly-powered beings to the HeroQuest being performed. So, a HeroQuestor who is an initiate should meet initiate-level creatures. Semi-Divine HeroQuestors should meet semi-divine opponents. Why/ Because it makes the game easier. Also, why should Mighty Mark the Lunar HeroQuestor bother opposing an Orlanthi initiate on a Quest when he has servants such as Mini Mike to do it for him?

Secondly, anyone on a Godtime Quest (in Glorantha) has all skills divided by 5. Why? To make the game easier. It allows us to use creatures from the Monsters Book without having to make silly looking skills for them. It also means that not every blow is a special and makes combat more interesting.

Thirdly, anyone on a supported quest has the backing of numbers of people. This backing can take several forms. One form is a number of Hero Points to use on the Quest. Another form is a boost to a skill or spell. Another form is to make a spell Heroic for the duration of the quest. The people supporting the quest can be damaged or even killed by a quest failure, so this is not a trivial thing to happen.

So, RQ can be made more scalable so that HeroQuesting can succeed and so High Level or Powerful Gaming can be done. No PC should be made to retire just because he becomes a Rune Lord or reaches 100% or becomes a Hero or kills a God or for any other reason that the Player or GM has grown so tired of the character that he is retired.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts about HeroQuesting. As always, these are My Opinion Only and only really apply to my games. But, they are My Opinion after thinking about HeroQuesting for over 20 years

Your Game Should Vary .....

Hmmm, this has turned out to be a long post and should probably be split into two, but I'm tired and my wife is annoyed with me for being on the computer for too long ......

There are problems with HeroQuesting that have nothing to do with game design.

First of all, what is HeroQuesting?

We all know, or some of us know, what HeroQuesting is in Glorantha, but can we use that in other worlds?

My first thought would have been "no". But then I watched the BBC/NBC Rome and in the last series, a woman who had been wronged performed a ritual where she camped outside her rival's house, dressed in sackcloth and covered in ashes, crying out for justice for several days with her slave pouting askes over her head, when her rival finally came out, she made a sacrifice to the gods of the underworld and cursed her rival. This is clearly a HeroQuest Ritual in the Gloranthan sense. She took a well-known ritual and directed it at her rival, made a sacrifice and caused a measurable effect.

Star Trek the Next Generation had a number of episodes concerning Worf performing various Klingon rituals that had several real effects. These were also HeroQuests in the Gloranthan sense.

So, Gloranthan-style HeroQuests do have their place where religion is strong and magic has an effect. These aren't the myth-changing HeroQuesting but are the Myth-Emulating HeroQuests.

Quests that cross into the Otherworld, however, are very different indeed. Some settings have Fairie as a place where people can cross into. Medieval Britain, and presumably Ancient Britain, has stories of people crossing to Elfland where they lived for many years without aging. There are fairytales of people crossing over into Giantland or going to the Underworld and bringing things back. Ancient Greece has Heroes going to the Underworld or magical world and bringing items back as do many Mythologies around the world. Mythic Russia (the game) has interaction with Fairytales and their inhabitants.

Quests that change the nature of the world are another matter again. If you have Ares as the God of War and your PC goes to Olympus and defeats him in battle then kills him, then the PC becomes a God of War. This is a Quest that is quite possible. What happens to the worship of Ares? Well, dead deities are worshipped, so his cult would continue, but he would perhaps lose some spells. Certainly many worshippers would defect to the cult of the new Hero and the balance of power would change.

How can we use HeroQuesting in games?

The first type of HeroQuesting can be modelled fairly easily by having different Rituals for different HeroQuests, with each ritual giving certain powers or abilities to the user of the ritual. Frogspawner kindly alluded to this when he mentioned the way my HeroQuesting rules work for Gloranthan RQ (they also work for the HeroQuest game). There may well be other ways of doing this. I've played with many different systems for HeroQuesting and some of them have had some good ideas but none has really worked for me.

The second type of HeroQuest raises problems of its own. How do you cross over into the Otherworld? What forms does the Otherworld take in your setting? What creatures live there, what can you do there and what can you get out of it? How does magic work on the Otherworld? Is each Otherworld different or do they share the same rules? How powerful are people from the Otherworld? Are they deities with god-like powers or are they just spirits and sprites with some magical ability but nothing vastly superior to normal people? How do you get back to the normal world and what can you bring back?

The third type of HeroQuest raises its own problems. How do you interact with the deities of your setting? Do they live in a certain place (Olympus, Asgard) or are they out of time? Can you just go there physically or do you need a ritual of come sort? How does magic work in the realm of the gods? How powerful are the gods? If I am a HeroQuestor of Athena and I go to Olympus to fight Ares, how can I compete? I might have Truespear 10 and Shield 30, but how does that compare with Ares? Surely the God of War should be more powerful than that? What are his skill levels? I may have 500%, is this enough? What is a WarGod's skill in his best weapon? 500%, 1000%, 2000%? When do I become powerful enough to chellenge a God? What happens when a HeroQuestor succeeds in a challenge or HeroQuest? What can he bring back? Perseus brought back Pegasus and Medusa's head, Jason brought back the Golden Fleece and Medea. What are the effects of a HeroQuest?

All these things must be considered before developing a HeroQuesting system for BRP.

One thing is for sure. HeroQuesting is not just High Level (Powerful) Gaming.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts about HeroQuesting. As always, these are My Opinion Only and only really apply to my games. But, they are My Opinion after thinking about HeroQuesting for over 20 years

Your Game Should Vary .....

(v.) (mainly brit) To perform a quick head-butt

(n.) (Mainly Brit) Head

See? You lot must have dirty minds

Looking at areas where radiation has had an effect (Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl) it doesn't look as though there are screaming hordes of mutants running around nor does it look as though entering such zones means instant death.

Most of the illness/death/damage was done in the immediate aftermath of the event. Further down the line, many people got cancer or other radiation-induced effects. Perhaps there are more congenital problems with births and descendants of survivors, but I don't know how much is talked about and how much is hidden in ther records.

So, looking at real world properties of radiation isn't really the way to go.

The Forbidden Zones have several properties:

1. Being nuked is a bummer

2. Cities are ruined and the survivors either died out, ran away or mutated

3. Mutants live in the cities. Mutants are a bummer.

4. Most of the Forbidden Zone is wasteland and is therefore difficult to survive in. A lot seems to be desert, for some reason.

5. The Forbidden Zone was forbidden for a reason, well serverl reasons. It was dangerous, it had ancient relics that could corrupt good apes, it was a Human Place and therefore should be avoided, Ape Religion is based on certain falsehoods that the ape leaders know about but don't want everyone to know.

I shouldn't think that much of the Forbidden Zone would be that radioactive any more. Most radioactive isotopes very quickly degrade, having relatively short half-lives. Materials with long half-lives are not that radioactive, by their nature if they have long half-lives it takes a long time for half the material to decay, which means the rate of decay is low which means the radiation is low. So, much of the danger is from material with short or medium half-lives and effects the immediate surviovors or the next few generations.

After all 420 is an odd number.

Actually, to be pedantic .......

(Where's the Pedantic Smilie when you need it?)

All us RQ fans watching said "He could have nutted him in RQ doing 1D6 + DB damage".

I suspect that phrase has an entirely different meaning than the one used in the United States.

Ah, that didn't even enter my head.

Your "nut" in English slang is your head, or can be, so to "nut him" means to head-butt him.

I don't know what "nut him" means in American.

Perhaps he should have gone and had a fag instead .....

My biggest rule gripe (beside the idiotic skills "head butt" and "kick" with 1d6 damage) about CoC

There was a children's TV series in the UK years and years ago called Tucker's Luck, a spin off from Grange Hill, and the main character was invitied to play a game of AD&D. He rolled up a warrior and the DM asked him whar he wanted to do against a foe. Tucker said he wanted to "Nut him" and they all recoiled in horror and said "You can't do that" so he quit the game.

All us RQ fans watching said "He could have nutted him in RQ doing 1D6 + DB damage".

So, don't belittle the Head Butt attack!

I think you're gonna have to justify that comment somehow...

Do I? Really?

Personal taste is the main reason. I just didn't like any of them and I re-read his collected works twice just in case I'd read them on a bad day. Nope, they were rubbish.

He writes in a dull fashion. All his stories are the same. You can't visualise what he is talking about and have no empathy at all with the characters. As horror stories, they are not scary, which defeats the object. If you compare with someone like EA Poe, Lovecraft's novels come off a very poor second best and Poe isn't fantastic either, but he's a lot better than Lovecraft.

The idea of seeing something that breaks your mind because it is so different was fine in the 1920s when new theories such as Relativity, Quantum Theory and the Expansion of the Universe were changing how people thought about the world and shattered what people thought about how things worked. But, nowadays with films and TV Shows, we see aliens left, right and centre, we have graphic horror films that leave nothing to the imagination and we have been desensitised to a lot of things. So, seeing some half-fish creature isn't going to break my mind and send me to the loony bin.

But, I know that a lot of people like his stuff. There's a game designed around it as well, I think, that is/was fairly popular.

This thread is about people's opinions. I believe, not an absolute measure of how bad books are. So, my opinion stands.

I think most of Lovecraft's stuff stands as a fairly decent 'homage' to Dunsany... which I much prefer to all the Tolkienesque Eurofantasy that litters the shelves.

An homage to Dunsany? Sorry, I didn't study Comparitive Literature at University and I'm not a book critic. What do I care about homages? I've never read anything by Lord Dunsany, mainly because I haven't heard of him before. I'd have preferred something original rather than an homage.

Can we pull the Wild West stuff from this thread into another thread? It's interesting but hasn't got a lot to do with Fate Points.

:focus:

This thread has persuaded me not to buy the pre-release version and also to wait until the published version hits the shops.

I'd rather wait a couple of weeks and buy it from a shop than order it, pay shipping and then have to wait for 6 weeks for it to arrive.

If we wanted to be completely true to history, we should probably drop gunfighters and cowboys from the profession tables. Just too rare. It seems that at their heyday there were less than 40,000 Coybows in the Old West. That is about 1 person per 1000, at best.

Yah, boo!

Sure, there were loads of farmers, farmers' wives, shopkeepers, tailors and so on. But so what?

If you have a Wild West setting you don't want to play a shopkeeper who just keeps shop. Well, I wouldn't, anyway.

You'd want to play the farmer whose family was slaughtered by bandits, the pioneer whose sister was captured by Indians, the civil war veteran who has become a bandit, a lone gunslinger, the whore with a heart of gold, the crazy prospector, a group of bandits and so on.

People don't play the 90% of people, they prefer the 10% of the population who were exciting and interesting.

The Apes seem to have guns that they've made themselves or guns that they had salvaged many years ago. So, they would be pistols and rifles of some sort.

The mutant humans had guns that they had kept from when they were a military organisation, so they had access to some automatic weapons. They'd be difficult to maintain, though, and would eventually break down, so there wouldn't be that many of them left. After all, they had a working H Bomb and ICBM which they didn't make themselves!

The big difference between the films and the TV series is the level of development of the humans. In the films they were almost the equivalent of herd men in Glorantha, semi-intelligent with no language skills, almost ape-like in nature. In the TV series, the humans were much closer to us, with language and civilisation, acting as slaves rather than animals.

I prefer the approach of the films, but I see that the TV series allows the astronauts to blend in easier.

Hawkmoon has Technological Enclaves where some technological skills have not been lost. This is the equivalent to the mutant humans in Planet of the Apes. I can see that happening more than just in the one place. As in any post-holocaust setting, you'd have dead cities, mutants, wormwoods and new civilisations.