RosenMcStern

6 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

My dream would be that an advertiseing for Mythras and RuneQuest and Revolution d100 supplements could be found at the back of a OpenQuest book. 
An advertiseing for RuneQuest and Openquest and Revolution d100 supplements could be found at the back of a Mythras book. etc. 

It is ONE BIG GAME SYSTEM FAMILY! 
Show it off. 
Show all that D&D and Pathfinder players that d100 has a bigger range of settings and more adventures than they think it has!

It is a commendable dream, and I think that many people on these boards share it. I certainly do, at least in principle.

However, André, there may be some practical obstacles on the path of your dream.

My main concern here is not the procedure with which you evaluate where you hit the other guy when hitting from afar, which is not complicate in either way. The point is keeping statistics concise and reducing the time and surface necessary for the GM to write down a simple non-player character. And from this point of view, the two methods are not equivalent. Compare the statistics above with the statblock provided in existing Rd100 publications. This one is neater, and it is less intimidating in this age of extreme simplification.

The two paragraphs in the passage apparently contradict each other. The text you boldfaced seems (and I stress "seems") to imply that the restriction only applies to magical "attacks". However, it is a "descriptive" passage that constitutes a sort of preamble and explanation to the "prescriptive" part of the rule which refers to "casting spells", without making any difference between offensive spells and spells cast on oneself or weapons. It says only "cast spells".

I think that, as a general principle about how one should read rules, any "prescriptive" text overrides any "descriptive" one. Which means that the way I read the above passage is that when engaged in melee, you can cast spells only if you forfeit your attack.  The nature of the spell is irrelevant.

Consider also that this rule is already quite generous. In other variants of D100, for instance RQ3, casting spells in melee is way more dangerous, as it prevents defending, too, or uses up your action allowance to the point that you cannot defend effectively.

Perhaps, while we are not (yet) engaged in melee about the Rightful interpretation of the Holy Rules, someone should cast Summon Jason to resolve the issue.

In an attempt to make things clearer and simpler, I am considering a rule change for all upcoming supplements and editions of Revolution D100. Basically, I wish to ditch the information about the die to roll for hit locations and let the players choose it, and replace the “alternate die” for missiles with an extension of the “+2 to coverage” rule that reduces the number of things to remember.

In this way, each group is free to choose between using a d20-based hit location table imported from another game (RQG or Mythras being the most likely candidates), or just using a “location die” of those available from dice resellers. Or a plain d6 for a human.

When the attack is a ranged one, instead of rolling a different die with 2 more faces, players who desire extra realism can simply modify the +2 rule already used for armour: a coverage roll of 8 or 9, which translates to more than 9, means that no location roll is necessary and “body” or its equivalent is assumed, with the hardest armour protecting. If the target is in cover, “head” is selected instead. The extra chance to hit the body is close to that of a 7-8 on d8, so this rule leaves game balance unchanged while eliminating clutter.

As you can see in the example above, the new standard for character statblocks will superimpose location information on a picture or silhouette of the character. This will help us convey the message that “this game supports hit locations, but they are an improvement for those who love detail, not a necessity”. The die roll corresponding to the hit location will not be included unless the stats are for a creature with a non-standard number of locations.

Please note that the fact that minor wounds in Revolution are non-cumulative makes book-keeping unnecessary for all minor damage, and virtually eliminates the need for separate damage tracks for each hit location. A single track for major wounds is enough: if you use localized damage, just write down “1 to RL” instead of “1” and you are ok. More than two major wounds to the same character are extremely rare, and not worth the clutter that hit location tracks represents for a character sheet.

Please note also that it is not possible to use the unit die for hit location in Rd100, as Aquelarre does, as a low unit die increases the chances of a critical. Using it for hit locations would make critical damage more likely to occur in some locations, and completely absent from others.

Comments welcome.

3 minutes ago, Mugen said:

That would disqualify StormBringer first editions, and Revolution D100.

Exertion Points are explicitly described as being a synthesis of fatigue and magic points, and replaceable with MP if your really really wish. 

In any case, I do not know how useful this exercise in strict categorization is. You know, the second favourite thing that roleplayers love to do, after "killing things and taking their stuff", is making forum posts about "[someone else's favourite game] belonging to the blasphemous category of [forgie/ narrativist/ simulationist/ storygamey/ crunchy/ metagmey/ pickanyoneaslongasithasadetractor] games, which everyone knows are not real RPGs". I do not feel the need to provide further criteria for such kind of arguments. Does anyone?

Thank you for this report, it is very detailed and useful feedback indeed. As you know, I can read Spanish so I could skip the Summon Google ritual.

I have in fact run the adventure in three hours for FG Con, but its usual duration is a couple of evenings. It depends on the number of opportunities for chitchat (fewer online) and familiarity with the rules, which you lacked, although Néstor certainly had tried various elements of it already.

Reading that the game made one player want to try his hand at GMing, on the other hand, is one of the things that can make an author proud

5 minutes ago, 10baseT said:

I always thought about doing this since the combat rounds seem a bit too long for what one can do. My thought was to make the combat round 2 seconds long and keep all other mechanics the same, ie 12 SR in a round.

You will mess up missile fire an magic in this way. Two arrows out in 2 seconds is a bit too much. Weird as it can sound, the SR system has been around for a long time and its subcomponents are  quite integrated. It is not easy to houserule one of its parts without breaking the others.

It is "per round", not per fight. The counter resets at the start of each round.

"Tactical officer, divert all main power to the Motion Wave Gun, and aim it at Seneschal..."

Noted. In fact, a detailed example using an original setting could have helped. The Exodus scenario provided some clues, but it was a bit short and did not really provide ideas about the underlying technology. Users of the book were supposed to have access to fan materials about the series they intended to portrait, but there was little or no support for creating an original mecha setting.

I think I was too afraid of straitjacketing people who already had an idea of what they wanted to do into artificial limits, and forgot that there are also those without a clear idea, who might get lost if they must do everything from scratch.

Was it a problem in the mecha building rules or in the rules used to run the game?

Hmmm, this discussion is not appropriate here. You are asking about a characteristic which is not even present in Revolution D100

I think we can necro the main BRP Mecha thread in the main forum

And robotech mechas have been discussed here, too:

Well, we are certainly going to publish the materials announced for the Companion, but it is too early to give an ETA or to confirm that it will appear in "Companion" format.

Some innovations we wish to make generalisable in the Companion will appear in other settings and supplements before they get published in a generic form. For instance, Rise of the Yokai Koku will contain the first example of a questionnaire-based character generation system, and the new Rituals which will also find their way to the Companion if the core rules are not revised first.

It is even possible, although unlikely, that we decide to merge the companion contents with those of a second edition of the rules. But at present producing new settings has priority over new additions to the core.

Unfortunately, unrelated events have delayed all activities on the RD100 line for this year. The only product we will release in 2018 is the japanese scenario in PDF, which is far below everyone's expectations. But we will try to do better in 2019.

I think we have already discussed several options last year in the Chronicles of Darkness thread.

The Shade Land has very simple Corruption rules, but I cannot guarantee they would work in another context.

Frankly speaking, I hesitate to provide advice about sanity. There are already a gazillion official and unofficial sanity rules for D100 games, due to the presence of "a certain game" in the BRP ecosystem. Either you follow the basic idea of "assigning consequences when the character loses a WIL conflict", which is already covered in the rules, or the best idea is to import a playtested mechanics from another game.

Yes, but unlike we announced in 2016, it will not be "next supplement to appear" and is hard to give an ETA. We have even done an initial playtest, but the result was that the rules require an almost complete refactoring from the BRP version. 

With the current schedule of already-kickstarted books to deliver, it will take some time before we can schedule a development plan. Consider that even the BRP version took three years longer to complete than initially imagined, and you have the complete picture.

7 minutes ago, Mikus said:

I do have Mythras, ( I'm a collector of systems and choice is not a problem...😛), and I will take your recommendation and try it RAW.  Perhaps I'll find it better, meaning more fun.

Note that Loz has just stressed that a "Sword and Shield" combat style is actually still RAW, and in fact it was the default approach to styles in MRQ2 (man, the time I wasted trying to explain why there was a Sword & Shield style and a Sword Only style on the Italian forums of MRQ2...). I was just pointing out that more comprehensive styles is how most people having used both approaches prefer it now, including the authors. 

14 hours ago, Mikus said:

I think I would actually stick to Combat Styles of either 1 weapon per hand, 1 weapon and 1 shield, 1 2-handed weapon,  Empty Hand and Weapon or Totally Unarmed. For two armed gents that is.  Kali is a different beast altogether.

Like Hand and Dagger, Short Sword and Buckler, Bow(2 hands), 2-Handed Axe, Unarmed, etc.  Loss of a weapon might not hamper skill % but would drop the benefit of whatever was lost. In Legend I think you also would loose a CA. (Two Hands style is two weapons after all!)

Hand and Dagger, (now basically Empty Hand), means no cutting pokey for you, and unless you switch to Two Hand style you are missing a weapon and thus a CA. Hand blows and grapples only.  The idea of something like Sword, Dagger, Spear, Shield and Bow style just grinds me.  If so I might just have 1 Handed Melee, 2 Handed Melee, Thrown, Missile and Siege categories. Something like RoleMaster.

I might implement Traits as sub-skills rather than inherent in the Combat Style.  Such as Silent Kill being a 'Trait Skill' that can be used with any reasonable Combat Style but you are limited by the lower of the Style or Trait.  As long as the Trait seams reasonable for the weapon. Then again not having actually played one of these MRQII gems, (and they do look like gems!),  I really could be talking out my backside. I suppose water fighting with a knife is quite a bit different than with a club.🤔

From my experience most players stick with 1 ranged weapon and 1 or 2 melee weapons, like sword and dagger.  In real life try entering combat with 5 or 6 various weapons.  Way too encumbering for adventurers.  Perhaps heavy infantry or cavalry but even then I a bit much.

I do not want to sound condescending, but you should really read more about the history of non-classic d100 rulesets before thinking about doing your own houserules. I can remember reading the exact same comments from other people dating back to 8 or more years ago. This discussion has already been done, and represents periodically as new people with a long experience of the classic rulesets appear on forums.

So, let us split my reply into two parts: the rules considerations, and the reality check considerations. Different people might attribute more value to either one of these aspects.

From a pure rules-wise point of view, the “one weapon, one skill” only works properly with the “experience check” advancement model. In that model, since your character progresses mainly through field use of the skill, it does not really matter how many skills you need to support your combat techniques, as long as they are actually used in battle. After a main confrontation, you will have earned the opportunity to raise ALL of your relevant skills.

Enter Advancement Points instead of Experience Checks, and everything changes. Now you have the ability to improve ALL of your stealth-related abilities (both hide and sneak) with one point, ALL your perception-related abilities with one point (two points if you also use Tracking), and ALL your magical abilities with two points, barring multi-grimoire sorcerers. But unless your combat style includes all weapons you use in battle, you will need several points to improve your martial prowess as a whole. It does not sound very consistent, does it?

The point of combat styles is simply that they represent “how they trained you to fight in the army academy”, and it is extremely reasonable that you received this training, and progress in it, as a whole. Your personal inclinations will probably make you have a favourite trick  among the standard ones, but a simple “specialization” houserule in which, frex, you add +10 to one weapon and subtract -10 to the others is more realistic, and simpler, than going back to tracking a different skill for each weapon. YMMV, but really, how many of your doubts stem from actual fighting experience, and how many from growing up with ol’ good RQ Classic?

As for the Sacred Cow of realism... well, as others have pointed out, the standard war equipment for a soldier usually included four different weapons at least, each with its specific purpose. At the very least, you have a “main” weapon with long reach/damage (or a ranged weapon), a sidearm for close quarter combat, and a dagger for various purposes. You will often add a shield and/or a thrown weapon for use by non-ranged fighters. This is a realistic war load for a competent fighter who wishes to be prepared for all eventualities, and it does not make you overencumbered, nor does it look like a golf bag of weapons – each of these weapons have a separate “hanging point” on the fighter’s belt or sash, and one of these is carried on the shoulder.

The fact that your average player may not want to carry about all these is again a rules artefact: once Joe the Average Gamer has discovered the weapon that provides a damage/difficulty to manage ratio that lies in his comfort zone, he will tend to stick with it and initiate arguments with the GM about his desire to use it even in combat situations where a real fighter would switch to another weapon. I still remember my old RQ3 days of “No, you cannot use a pike in closed spaces. I do not f***** care that it halves the damage and adds 2 Strike Ranks, with the enemy so close you must drop the damn polearm and draw a javelin.” No hope of explaining the player that there are no “universal” weapons, and each war tool has its own specific use – though admittedly some are better than others.

5 minutes ago, simonh said:

I prefer the DEX rank system in Elric. [ ...]

Instead of locations I prefer dice for armour, again from Elric. So you might have a suit of armour that gives you 1D6+1 armour points, which you roll if you take a hit. If you take half your general hit points or more in a hit, you roll on a major wound table that includes disabled limbs and such. So you get almost the same detail of outcome from radically more succinct and straightforward rules. Determine if the hit is significant first, then generate the extra detail if required, instead of generating all the extra detail then seeing if it actually mattered.

None of these are major issues. It's just personal preference. Taken together, I find as a GM the game flows a lot more smoothly.

It is worth noting that the BGB tries - albeit the implementation is not perfecct in many points - to leave the door open for using either option, locations or variable armour/major wounds, or DEX Rank vs. Strike Rank, with little or no impact on the rest of the rules. RQ2, RQ3 and RQG, instead, "choose for you", stating that you should use locations and Strike Ranks, unless you want to do a huge amount of houseruling. To be honest, I fail to understand why the option of putting this choice in the hands of players was not chosen when the new "RuneQuest married with Glorantha again" was designed. Neither of these options is fundamental for the Gloranthan feeling of the game: as the conversion rules for PendragonPass of the '90s said, "If King Arthur can fight without Strike Ranks and Hit  Locations, so can Prince Argrath." YGWV (and YCWV*).

Oh, and maybe we have gone a little bit off topic.

* Your Camelot Will Vary

21 minutes ago, soltakss said:

I thought that 3e was D&D with a lot of things from RQ

So does its author think.

Quote

Not sure what the point of debating different versions of D&D here is, though.

It is not an RPG  forum if you do not flame.

And now, let's flame about what you can be call an RPG forum instead of what you can call an RPG.

15 hours ago, Mikus said:

I choose 'All Inclusive' style with a trait of '1 hit 1 kill' please  😀

Funny, because (minus the 1 hit 1 kill variant, but there are options for that, too) this is exactly what you get when you play OpenQuest, Renaissance or Revolution D100. Of the MRQ-derivatives, Mythras is actually the most restrictive one when it comes to determining how many weapons you can apply your skill to  .

5 minutes ago, Crel said:

Where does that term come from? (Not trying to challenge, just curious. )

I think that Mearls himself created or used it. They consider it an intentional feature, not a bug. YMMV.

1 minute ago, Mugen said:

What I'm saying here is that if you have a character with attribute 8 and not proficient and another with attribute 20, proficient and level 20, one has 20% chance to succeed at a DC 15 task and the second has 85% chance to succeed at the same task. That does not make a big difference considering one is Mr Nobody, and the other is at the pinnacle of human capabilities in a fantasy world.

This is feature of 5E, it is called "bounded accuracy". The superiority of stronger monsters and better characters in 5E is represented by them having more HP, not a better chance to hit or to avoid damage. 

4 minutes ago, TrippyHippy said:

But, by extension, you are criticising what you don't know.

No, Trippy. I never criticised 5E and I wrote it very clearly in my comment above, beyond any chance of misunderstanding.

Quote

I was absolutely not discussing what the merits of 5E are or are not. 

I kindly request you to not "strawman" the discussion by attributing to me a criticism I did not make.

Now, I see no problem that you claim 

Quote

That is why I say 5E was 4E done right.

This is your opinion and you have argumented it in detail. It simply does not correspond to the opinions I have heard from the bulk of 5E fans I know. Perhaps we are in contact with different groups of people.

19 minutes ago, TrippyHippy said:

I'm not sure either of you have played a game of 5E. 

I have not, and I never claimed to have. This does not prevent me from knowing what people bitch... er, complained most about 4E. And what they say to have finally found in 5E. Which ie more or less what you said above.

I was absolutely not discussing what the merits of 5E are or are not. This is of no interest to me.The point (mine, not jeff's) is that I find the definition of "4E done right" not suitad to 5E, given that you yourself have written that the defining points of 4E were tossed to make 5E. I have never heard anyone say "5E is 4e done right", I have always heard "4E sucked/4E was not a RPG, while 5E is good". Which is not the same.

The rules on page 175 (which alone is worth the price of the whole 400-page book) explain one thing very clearly: you do not roll all the times you use a skill. Only non-routine, significant tasks require a skill roll. In all other case, you should simply check with your GM that the task is routine for you, and move on with the interesting parts of the story. Examples:

• You are trying to chop a log in your backyard: no Axe roll.
• You are trying to chop down the mast while the ship is in a storm: pretty sure you have to roll under your Axe skill. In some cases, the roll may become Easy, letting even unexperienced characters succeed.

Now, the point is that actual combat is hardly a routine affair. At least not in a gritty game like BRP, where there is no guarantee of survival even for the strongest warrior: the trollkin with a spear and a critical roll is always a possibility. This means that even if you count that "hitting a helpless foe is Easy" (and the rules support this, mind me, it is not a GM ruling), your doubled chances leave you a lot of opportunities for a miss. This is a sign that "beginners in the art of axe wielding vs. helpless foes" is not the sweet spot of the BGB rules, rather than a systemic flaw in skill-based systems.

It also depends on how the BGB models combat. In Mythras or Revolution, Joe the Fresh Axeman would have two or three opportunities per round to hit a target which does not defend, so even with a skill close to 50% the chances of not spilling blood would be much lower. Not to mention that the BGB has a round length that is double that of Mythras or RD100, thus the correct comparison would be one blow in BRP vs. 4 or more in the other systems (probably 6 if Joe has a semi-decent DEX). As you can see, a more detailed combat system is a good antidote to this "whiff factor".