styopa

LOL what? I didn't see that. Why in heaven's name would the PCs know what the NPCs are doing before they do it? The rule in question (bold mine) 1. Statement of Intent The players and gamemaster declare the intentions of all participants in the melee round. These intentions do not need to be precise (“I’ll wait here for them to do something, and have my shield and sword at the ready if someone gets close” is enough detail). Enough should be said so that every participant has as much information about your intentions as could be expected from their adventurer’s involvement in the situation. The gamemaster, in particular, should provide as much information to the players as seems reasonable. Players may not know what exact spell a foe is going to cast, but they should know that the foe is readying a spell As a rule, when we used SoI, yes, as GM I'd *declare* to myself what the enemies were going to do before I let the players tell me their plans. But I certainly wouldn't say it aloud. But I don't even see the point of this - wtf does "readying a spell" even mean in RQ? There are no material components to grab out, and I'd presume any required gestures, concentration, chanting, doing a little dance...are already included in the SR for casting. If they aren't continuing it over the round-end break, they wouldn't START doing it until the SR says so. So what cues precisely would players be reading into "oh she's preparing to cast a spell"?

Unless you're outside of melee using rolling SR, casting spells/firing missiles, then it pretty much IS a sequence of events. When we used SoI, we'd go from character with lowest INT to highest (you have to be strict about not allowing inter-round 'discussion/panning time'), giving the highest ones a significant advantage in planning. But frankly, we abandoned SoI years ago. The whole "here's what I'm going to do with the next 12 seconds of my life" ended up being so kludgy, so rife with conditional statements, so full of special rules to allow changing of intent due to different conditions, etc we ultimately decided that RQ combat was slow enough, and just allow characters to act on their SR, much like 5e, with the condition that they cannot move THROUGH a ZoC. Our system has boiled down to pretty-simple: people act on an SR based on their initiative roll modified by DEX SR. Moving into combat, longest weapon hits first, otherwise SR sequence. Acts (usually spellcasting) that cannot be completed in the round roll past the end of the round end up with a calculated SR for next round, instead of rolling. That's pretty much it. No statement of intent. Missiles/spellcasting do not get rolling SRs; if you attack/spellcast in a round, that's your action. It's not perfect, no, but it's quick.

Maybe it's more work, but I think it's simpler to simply take whatever scenarios you want to run and shoehorn them into your own campaign/timeline, than try to adhere to the canonical chain of events.

Wait, you're suggesting RQ doesn't have smooth, rational growth curves? What...?

Agree. One of the fundamental strengths of d100 systems is that while they may *seem* mechanically complex, they're ultimately more (to me) intuitively logical than others. An "armor class" is a single number but actually very vague thing, as is its ultimate impact on the damage one takes. OTOH, a sword does d8 damage, an armor plate will block 4 points of it....very logically simple, even if there are more "pieces" in the mechanism.

Meh, in our game Rune Spells are powered/guided by GODS. There's not some flow-rate-limiter on a character's mana...if the god needs to take 10 mp, they take it, in that same SR it's cast. *POOF* There's no compelling reason in my view to gimp Rune Spells whose MAIN asset is their quickness (esp now that your casting % has dropped from 95%) by slowing them down to the speed of hedge-witch spirit magic.

Sweet, thanks Rick!

Thank you. Would it at least be possible to get an RQG section for itself, to at least allow people to browse the "newest" stuff submitted for RQG?

Any updates? I guess I had in my head that we'd see the DM Screen end/Sept, and bestiary in November - but then we've passed September without my apparently noticing...

Which of course is problematic if you're slightly outside range for that rune spell...a literal reading of the rules would suggest it's impossible to move first and then cast the rune spell...

Actually, no. If toon A kills toon B on SR4 (ostensibly "earlier" in the round) obviating 2/3 of the round for B, then B would still resolve their attack but debuffed to reflect they only get to do 1/3 of their normal round's result - ie 1/3 of the damage, and maybe a hefty penalty considering all those ongoing seconds in which their damaging attacks COULD have landed that are functionally no longer available. (For that matter, one could argue then that if B in return still kills A in their stunted debuffed action, that A's attack should have retroactively, recursively been debuffed by the SR-impact of B's action, which may have let B live, which then repeated may have let A live all the way down into a ridiculous Leibnitzian recursion...) In any case, my point was honestly NOT to propose a total dismantling/replacement of the RQ combat system, merely to point out the logical inconsistencies in the current formulation. The grunting effort to explain/justify/rationalize the now-it-sequential, now-it-isn't isn't worth it. The rolling-strike ranks for people handwavingly and arbitrarily-defined "out of melee combat" (but oddly not applicable to people attacking with a melee weapon on someone unaware of them?), downshifting to a heavily-rationalized "somehow this all happens but you can only do X and Y no matter how fast you are because...reasons" is inconsistent. Seems a LOT simpler to just say your DEX SR is when someone acts(or, if you wanted more granularity and less simultaneity, their DEX is their acting point, counting down from on high). They may at that point do ONE thing: attack, cast a spell, release a shot or reload & shoot a bow. The resolution of that action may be delayed until later because it takes time, like casting a spell or reloading & shooting (or hell, even swinging a great unwieldy weapon like a poleax). They get one offensive action, and dispense with rolling SR entirely as a mechanic that unreasonably benefits people outside of melee with no justification. BTW I don't know if it was a new patch or something I somehow never noticed before but the little "QUOTE THIS?" option when you highlight text is pretty awesome. Well done, to whomever.

My level of skill with an actual sword is so like unto negative such that any such act would likely be amplified into something lethal... Well, obviously? It seems then you're agreeing that - if my SR7 is not the "sequential" moment that I strike - if I'm killed (or, as g33k proposes) literally dis-armed by someone with a lower SR, then I should still get to resolve my attack in that round? Obviously this is an abstraction, but I'd submit that even abstractions have logical consequences. If our attack roll is merely representative of a host of dodges, feints, lures, attacks, etc over the course of 10-12 seconds, and not an actual ordering of events within that span, then one combatant's incapacitation within that span shouldn't preclude the resolution of that actor's (aborted) actions within the span up to that point. Anything else seems logically inconsistent. Worse, the arbitrary "SR are the order of events, until 'melee' then they're just a resolution sequencer" are an even bigger transitional tangle. Can one party be in melee, and another not? Are you in 'melee' if you're being attacked unawares? How far apart does one have to be from an opponent to "not be in melee" any longer? Does, say, a giant with a 20' club put everyone within 25' in melee (would that deprive archers of their multiple shots, for example)? Does any attack count as melee, i.e. a wasp? A gnat ? I recognize that not every system can cover every circumstance, and some of my examples are deliberately absurd; I pose them only to illustrate that a combat-mechanics system has to be at least self-consistent in order to inform gms usefully how to resolve (and to inform players what they can reasonably expect in) the sort of weird edge-cases that do come up in fantasy games particularly. I actually played a few combats out in PC, testing to see how usable it would be for my Traveller campaign. I think it's telling about how subtle & complicated this is when we remember that EVEN PC had no real solution to melee combat. Their mechanics for melee were astonishingly bad.

I know you're parroting the official line on this, but it's provably not true because combat results -even for melee- are applied in discrete, ordinal ways instead of holistically. If there are 12 SR in a round, let's say that you swing on 6, I swing on 7. If you kill me on SR6, half the round has passed. SR are merely the "order in which we resolve the combat results, representing the full span of cut & thrust time of the combat round...then I should still get to resolve my combat roll, perhaps proportionalized to 7/12 my damage or some other penalty to reflect my inability to spend the entire time cut & thrusting. But that isn't how it works; if you kill me on 6, then I don't get ANY action/result, suggesting that SR really does represent an actual flow of linear time.

I think the point is that in 2018 customers need more than just a FTP site, which is (pretty much) all the D/L section is today. Hopefully they're working on it.

Lol, you can store 15gig for free with google drive, or ONE HUNDRED gig for $2/mo.

They can be "legitimate issues" but the resolution can still be objectively in error. I wouldn't say it's simpler; it requires referencing a chart (quelle 1978, anyone?) when the RQ3 is just an algorithm as long as you remember the stats involved (which IMO is simpler - or easier to note on a charsheet in microtext - than remembering the whole table). Completely IMO far too much was sacrificed on the altar of retrocompatibility. (shrug) FWIW, here's a comparison of the category modifiers that result from brackets of stats, from "all 12s" to "all 25s": RQG RQ3 STR CON SIZ INT POW DEX APP/CHA AGI MANI STEALTH HP L/A/H-RQG AGI MANI STEALTH HP L/A/H-RQG (or 0.33) 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 0 0 0 12 4 1 5 -2 12 4 4 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 5 10 5 15 5 2 10 -4 14 5 4 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 5 10 5 17 6 3 15 -6 16 6 5 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 15 30 5 21 7 4 20 -8 18 6 6 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 15 30 5 23 7 5 25 -10 20 7 6 25 25 25 25 25 25 25 35 70 5 32 11 8 38 -15 25 9 8 L/A/H is Leg/Arm/Head hp (they're all the same in both rules). (note the two hp values for RQ3, as the hp table in the players book was inconsistent with the rules for creatures which stated humanoids had 0.33 body hp in those locs; rounding was natural)

Absolutely. My number is just combinations of SINGLE runes without duplications, you could also have a spell theoretically that's earth+earth, for example.

Here's a Google Sheets mass list of the runes, all possible combinations of Elements: Powers Forms Condition 0 No Element 0 No Power 0 No Form 0 No Condition 1 Darkness 1 Harmony 1 Beast 1 Mastery 2 Water 2 Disorder 2 Man 2 Magic 3 Earth 3 Stasis 3 Plant 3 Infinity 4 Air 4 Movement 4 Dragonewt 4 Luck 5 Fire/Sky 5 Truth 5 Spirit 5 Fate 6 Moon 6 Illusion 6 Chaos 7 Life 8 Death Ergo, spell 3835 is Earth+Death+Plant+Fate....maybe a necrotic vampiric vine grows in a 1sqm area that drains 1hp from each limb moving through the area (armor protects) and that reduces movement through that 1sqm by 1, for each point of intensity, you can: - increase the area by 1sqm, or - increase the damage die from 1 per limb, to 1d2 per limb, to 1d3, etc. - increase the slowing effect by 1. So, having a 5 sqm area, doing 1d6, and slowing by 3 would be 4+5+2 = 11 intensity. There are 2646 possibilities. Let's keep those Sorcery spells ORGANIZED people, this isn't SPIRIT magic or some arbitrary "god" doing this. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qcu2APJR0T_qGAUx2OCBJEf8IOxsYDdKFY7nJO4q5p4/edit?usp=sharing

That's RQ3's method, basically.

Every system has pluses and minuses, it's up to what the gm will tolerate. Point buy systems encourage min/max behavior, where every character has the best stats in their desired role, but are considered fair since the players make their own choices and start with the same point allocation. The detriment is that everyone is cookie-cutter optimised for their role, losing that little extra bit of "making do" that can sometimes make the most interesting character play. Pure random systems mean some people benefit from luck, some don't. The losers likely feel their characters are gimped thereby. They are "fair" in the sense that nobody is preferenced by the randomness of the system itself. The detriment of course is that some characters may be so differently-abled than their player's goal character, the player may never feel interested or invested. (I daresay that the tenor of modern mmorpg and rpg mechanics makes this even more painful for players with expectations built on a history of only those games...) GM-wish-granting systems can be great in that everyone ostensibly gets to be what they want, but some animals are more equal than others: it tends to disregard the realities of human nature and envy when there is the slightest perception of arbitrariness & favoritism (even if it's not real, to say nothing of it is). "Anyone surprised that the gm's girlfriend has better stats than everyone else?...." I was at a con once where we were going to play a one-off and the DM said, in absolute seriousness: "+2 to a stat for someone who gets me a slice of pizza before we get going". Ah, Dave, I miss neither you nor Arduin. Personally, I strenuously avoid any hint of a situation where I might be perceived to be ruling on characters personally...nope x100. That's what dice are for. I'm the gm, I just adjudicate the world as objectively as possible.

Understand that RQG is 90% RQ2, with some other stuff bolted on. Sorcery didn't even exist in RQ2, it was invented in RQ3 in a set of mechanics that some people like, some people dislike, the RQG authors largely falling toward the latter source of the scale. This meant that for RQG they had a lot of things they wanted to fix. My point is that sorcery is the least developed of any of the magic systems. In fact, RQG is the first (I think? I didn't play Heroquest, so I don't know what that introduced to canon) to make an explicit connection in the Orlanthi pantheon and sorcery in LM (ie making it belong in Dragon Pass ), previous works anathemizing sorcery as that "godless bunch from the west". LMs sole and unique connection would certainly explain the Truth Rune bias. So there just isn't much material yet, but most certainly will come with Western campaign expansions.

I used to think this was just a retcon - that the rapier in RQ2 was in fact just an anachronism. I mean, it's fantasy and not meant to be historical reconstruction, it's not a big deal. But I was clearly wrong; the RQ2 appendix *specifically* states clearly "This is not the overlong laborate(sic) weapon of our Renaissance, but instead a basic cut and thrust weapon. Lighter than Broadswords." So rapiers should actually be pretty common (that high dex requirement is a little tough) for anyone who wants a longer blade than a shortsword/dagger, but doesn't want to swing/carry a broadsword. I would however give it the option of doing impaling damage (ie "cut & thrust") making it not a bad choice, tactically. Less damage, but chance to impale.

I know we're not all simulationists here, but the idea of anyone smaller than a giant dual-wielding two 4+' blades* makes me die inside a little bit. *ostensibly IIRC this is what D&D/RQ2 meant by 'Bastard Sword'. An "actual" bastard sword would really be only the size of a broadsword with a longer handle, suggesting that the idea of either capping damage bonus for 1h, or multiplying damage bonus for 2h use is IRL spot-on.

I was barely even acquainted with him, but even in those few interactions he was one of the most purely kind-hearted, generous, warm people I've ever met. The man was truly giving in a way we can all aspire to be. The world is a little bit lesser for his passing. My deepest sympathies to his family, and to his close friends at Chaosium and around the world. Greg is, I'm sure, exploring whatever really comes after this and is likely having more fun than anyone. I can't imagine someone more prepared to actually enter the Hero Plane than our favorite Shaman, Greg.

Thank you Greg, for everything. You live on in the games we play, and I can't think of much more wonderful than that. There's a condolence thread in but this is a post HERE because not everyone cruises all the forums.