Harwel

Resistance roll, mage's POW vs guard's POW. I would use that for anything physically in contact with a target that would have an adverse effect on that target.

Honestly with how messy Sorcery was in RQ3, I have to say I would prefer using the straight BRP Magic and Sorcery rules with an expanded spell list over porting RQ3 stuff. Especially if no effort was made to update the information.

Some attacks can't be parried though, and IIRC you can't combine dodging and parrying in the same round (which is a strange rule IMO which I frequently ignore). Also, in parrying, you risk weapon damage. So there is downside, though maybe not enough.

Another difference: Magic has no POW requirement, while Sorcery requires a POW of 16+. Also, I don't have the book or PDF on me, but IIRC with Magic you can ready a number of spells equal to 1/2 INT, while with Sorcery you ready spell levels based on INT, so a Magician should be able to have a wider variety of spells at their fingertips.

In the next BRP game I run, I won't be using SIZ either. HP will be the average of STR and CON, and damage bonus will be based on STR alone, exactly the same as the OP (halve the STR+SIZ in the BRP book and round up). I plan to keep APP as Charisma. I think SIZ can easily be cut with virtually no effect on the game. I personally prefer fixed armor values to "soak rolls" just for speed, but that's just me. I like the OP's ideas overall.

You might try Pen and Paper Games, it's a pretty large player registry.

I do play the way I want to. Forgive me for wanting to talk about it on a forum about BRP!

You're right, you don't see the point. The thread is about modifying rules that you don't care for. Please show where I said I think Chaosium should have checked with me first? Chaosium can do whatever they want with the game, and I can modify it however I want. It's a thread about HOUSE RULES, as I stated very clearly in the first post. Had I known it get so many defensive and negative replies, I never would have posted it. I can assure you I won't be making that mistake again. Many people adopt conventions they like from other games when they find they work for them. I've already gone into why I dislike point-buys, and why I dislike "what you roll is what you get". Once again, show me where I do that. I merely point out an inconsistency in how stats are measured that no other game I can recall having played has, and it makes no sense to me. So I adopt different rules. I guess it's a no-no to discuss that around here though? Actually, I have no problem at all with a person who has a profound mental disability (as would be reflected by an INT of 5 or less) not having as much cognitive ability as a smart animal. Anyway, by this point I'm just completely boggled that I try to start what I think would be a fun discussion about house rules and rolling stats, and a bunch of people get their panties in a bunch. I don't know whether it's funny or sad.

I addressed non-humans in an earlier post. Thanks for trolling my thread with snarky comments though!

That isn't really relevant, since as I've stated multiple times now, no character is going to be running around with an extreme low SIZ unless they really really want to play a midget. And again, this was never a problem when it was a 3d6 roll. Did you play RQ2 or older BRP? If so, did you ever have problems with PCs of extremely low SIZ or INT? I did not. I've asked this question in almost every post, and I never get an answer. I wonder why. You also state that "most grown human males who have conditions that cause small stature are not at the low end that a 3d6 roll would give". However, the precedent does exist. SIZ 3 is (according to RQ2, last major game that used a 3-18 SIZ that I know of) is 70-100cm and 10-20kg. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2969038/Worlds-smallest-man-meets-woman-with-worlds-longest-legs.html The world smallest man came in at 2'5". That would be 73.7cm. And once again I ask: how many times have you had a player play a SIZ 3 human male? I'm willing to bet the answer is zero. Again, not relevant since low SIZ affects a Duck the exact same way it affects a human. And it's still a weak argument. Someone mentioned a scale of 1 INT = 10 IQ. That's fair, and I've seen it lots of places before. I've used it as a rule of thumb myself for 30+ years of gaming. The average IQ of a person these days is between 85 and 114. http://www.iqtest-center.com/iq-scores.php That would put an average human squarely in the 10 INT range. My minimum scores were higher than 6. Generally I had people reroll stats below 9, so I'm not sure what your point is here. Also, my experience is that most people would prefer to roll their stats than assign points. Rolling stats is fun and adds uncertainty to character generation, rolling that 17 is an "Oh hell yeah!" moment. Point-buys are I guess maybe fun for accountants? I've met very few people that prefer point-buy character generation. Here's my whole point in a nutshell: 1. Having all human stats scaled the same gives more options for character generation and more consistency. 2. Having all stats scaled the same makes things simpler and easier to explain. Let's a hypothetical conversation with a brand new player. GM: All stats are 3d6 and an average score would be 10. Oh, except SIZ and INT, their average is 13. Newbie: OK. Why's that? GM: You roll different dice for INT and SIZ Newbie: How come? GM: Because it's fairly detrimental and maybe a little unrealistic to have PCs with extremely low scores in those stats so a game designer decided this would be better. Newbie: OK, but why not just not assign extremely low scores to those stats. I mean, we re-roll really low stats anyway, right? And if it's that detrimental, who would want to anyway? GM: Look, that's just how it is, OK? Compare: GM: All stats are 3d6, and an average person has a 10 score in everything. Roll14 times and use your highest 7 rolls, place them where you want. Newbie: OK. I go by a general rule in life that if I have to fall back on "because I'm the daddy and I said so", I'm probably wrong. There's simply no benefit from the change, and there are some drawbacks to the way I play. No it's not a huge deal, but it annoys me. It's easy enough to house rule away. My point of this thread was to feel out how many people feel the same about it. Clearly so far the answer is "not many". People may want to cite systems as far back as the original CoC as having implemented this different dice standard for SIZ and INT. Just because it's an old change doesn't make it a good change. I didn't like it then, and I increasingly dislike it as new books come out continuing what I consider a silly, pointless inconsistency. It's a hamfisted, inelegant solution to a supposed problem that never existed.

Very cool. I tend to be a little more structured and try to plan ahead, which has its own set of considerable drawbacks since "no plan survives contact with the PCs" anyway.

But what if you had been choosing stats for an "incompetent head of a physics department"? Are the stats driving the plot, or is the plot driving the stats? Not saying one way is better than another, just asking a question.

And again, this standard messes with conventions I used 10+ years to correct a non-existent problem. Why fix what isn't broken? Messing with conventions I've used for 10+ years isn't a non-existent problem for me. Gee, thanks for your permission. I don't especially care for point-buys as they tend to become a minmax game, and "redistribute points" becomes a point-buy system with a random number of points you're allowed. But my way is faster than rolling ad nauseum until you get the stats you want... ... and WAY less of a pain in the butt than this!

The average person is rather dumb when you get right down it anyway. Dumber than a trained dolphin would not surprise me for many people I've met... Besides, who actually ROLLS NPC stats? I generally assign stats based on what the NPC is supposed to be. Farmer Bob is a big, burly, healthy guy of average intelligence and dexterity, hmmm STR 14 CON 15 SIZ 15 INT 10 DEX 11 POW 10 CHA 10 GO!

Extreme low scores are thrown out by most people anyway. Again I ask, tons of other games use 3d6 for the range, how many times has this posed an actual problem? I played D&D and RQ2 for years and years and remember all of one person playing a low-INT character once as a lark. It didn't last long, I assure you. It shouldn't be measured differently because it largely removes some perfectly good and useful character generation dice rolling conventions and the ability to assign scores where you want the them, which to me is a big problem. It's a hamfisted answer to a non-existent (in my experience) problem. Non-humans are different matter, because when you select a non-human race you commit to those strengths and weaknesses, and accept different averages from the human norms of 10-11 being "an average person's score". Again, as I said, I think that's perfectly acceptable, and again, you're house-ruling away the different scaling of SIZ and INT, as I said I do in the original post. Bottom line is that I think players should be able to roll all their stats the same way and assign them as they want, in accordance with their character concept. What if they want a very intelligent mage/scientist/whatever type and can't roll above a 9 on their two 2d6+6 rolls but manage a 17 on one of their 3d6 rolls? Do they revamp their whole concept based on their rolls? Do they reroll? Do you let them shuffle the points around anyway (most likely)? Most people have a character they want to play, then roll dice, not the other way around.