Daxos232

In MRQ, (if I interpreted this correctly) your weapons don't take damage in combat when you parry a sword with another sword or shield for example. They only take damage if you fumble and you roll "damage weapon" on the fumble table, or you specifically target the opponent's weapon in an attack. In BRP it says you take damage every time you clash two weapons or a shield together. How does this work exactly? Most of the items only have 15 HP so, they would break pretty quick. I'm sure there's something else to this so that doesn't happen so often, I just overlooked it.

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That is a great example. I am sorry you went through so much work, I should have been more specific in what about combat confused me, the part about DEX ranks and determining the order of who goes first, and who goes second, and so on is what threw me off. I didn't get how everything else related to the DEX ranks, like movement and the amount of bullets you can fire from your gun, and so on. Now that you gave that example, I can't believe I didn't see how it works before. One or two examples like that in the book and no one would have any problems understanding.

That is a really good question, but I don't have any advice on the matter. Though what you mentioned in your post sounds like it may lead to something.

Since the BRP book and the basic MRQ books don't go very indepth into the crafting of items I've been working on a system for my setting. To save time and to make things easier to understand, all the measurements of materials in my system are just called "units". For example: it takes 3 units of bronze to make a sword. It takes 1 unit of kinsfoil root and 1 unit of rosemary to make a healing balm. As to how to handle a PC's skill and the kinds of items they want to make, they would have to have a high enough skill to make certain items. For example: An apprentice blacksmith has a Blacksmith skill of 15%. He knows how to make and fix simple items like horseshoes, farm scythes, arrow heads, and spear points. At 30% he can start making things like shortswords and battleaxes, when hes at like 50% he can start making longswords and chainmail armor. This is off the top of my head, I just thought of it about 20 minutes ago, and I haven't had an opportunity to test it. Only thing is if the PC is at only 15%, he is going to be making a lot of failed dice rolls to make a simple horseshoe. Even making it an easy skill roll is hard, because he's still at 30%. I have no thoughts yet as to how to solve this, other than he just automatically succeeds at tasks within his skill, but that leaves out the chance of failure.

That's the thing, I didn't add any additional rules, I just couldn't find an example anywhere of basic combat. The example they give one page 198 (i think its 198) isn't combat. It just a guy running away from people without striking back. I'm not saying the rules aren't well written, every thing in the book is great, I just had problems with that one subject. I think the book did a great job with all it's examples, just not combat. The examples for each setting wouldn't even have to be that big, proably a very short paragragh, 1 to 4 sentences maybe, for each. One involving every option would be ridiculous of course.

that does sound kinda weird without describing the setting/world we were making. The gods made a deal with Death so that he could only use skills equal in level to their dead followers so they might have a chance to come back to life and continue the gods will. Death's side of the deal is that he can eventually bring the full force of his power to bear, to make sure no one really escapes death. If we had spirit combat in our game I would, but I didn't like how MRQ2 and BRP handled other forms of spell casting, so I all spells and such are like runemagic and magic, their own separate skill. It's just simpler and I can still implement diversity by having the spells you can learned be dependent on your temple/tribe etc. M That's an awesome idea, it's a bit more final, but sounds so cool. I'll have to discuss that one with my group and see if we want to handle death like that.

We liked our idea because it's possible to beat death but eventually you would have no chance to beat him, thus making players think carefully before doing anything stupid, lol. I like that idea as well, I always thought it was way too easy to resurrect in other games like D@D, and that would be a great idea to implement.

My group and I were discussing how we wanted to handle death and dying in our games. We didn't think it would be fair to have no chance to be resurrected, and yet we didn't want people to just die and not worry about it because they can just be raised by a resurrection spell. People who keep dying should eventually die permanently for their mistakes. So the idea we had was that you'd have to bring the person's corpse somewhere, have it all intact and reattach any limbs etc, and then do the spell. At this point the character has to challenge death to some form of contest to earn their way back into their body. In the spirit plane or whatever, the character could do any kind of challenge with death, like having a footrace or crafting a better item. Probably the most straightforward way would be to fight death in combat on the spirit plane. Death would have skills equal to the character, and if challenging him in combat he would use similar equipment and stats. But after the first time you die, death would gain a cumulative +10% or +20% bonus to his skills thus eventually putting the odds in his favor should someone die a lot. I wanted to see what other people might think about that idea and how others choose to handle it.

I think the biggest hurdle I faced when using BRP was that I could not understand the combat systems at all. I had to buy MRQ and I used combat actions from that as my first working combat system. I still couldn't tell you how the basic BRP combat system works, though I now have an idea how the Strike Ranks system works. The combat exaple one the book (i think pg 198) is not helpful at all. BRP would probably benefit the most by putting in clear, concise, and thorough examples of how combat and combat situations work. It would be great if they covered multiple genres like fantasy, modern, and superhero, to take into account examples of spellcasting, firearms, and superpowers. That right there would be a big step up.

That will be very useful, thank you. I'm going to try to do a simple Strike Ranks exercise with a friend to see how it works. Right now we are discussing whether to use Strike Ranks or ThreeDeeSix's combat actions from Classic Fantasy. Both have their pros and cons. I like the Strike Ranks ability to let faster characters have more attacks in a round, while the simplicity of CF's actions makes it really easy to just pick up and go with little confusion. It could go either way. I would still appreciate any examples when you have the time. If spell casting could be included it would help. One of the ideas we were throwing around for Classic Fantasy's system was to allow multiple attacks in a round. The original CF rules don't allow it but we thought if a character wants to make more than 1 attack or spell in a round then they have to divide their attacking skill by 2 for 2 attacks, 3 for 3 attacks, and so forth. That way a player wouldn't have to have above 100% to make multiple attacks, and so far as we can tell its not overpowered but we have yet to test it.

YES! CTHULU FTW!

Okay, now I am starting to get a bit of the picture. Thank you Thalaba for that summary of how BRP strike ranks work. It does sound a little complicated like you said but I think my group could try it. Explaining it to them might be a little difficult though, lol. I can see what you meant by it being more difficult, but giving more realism and choice. Does this system work well with large groups of combatants, like say 10 to 15 characters? And what would you recommend for handling fantasy creatures and monsters? I also noticed that BRP dones't say anything about mounts for the Strike Rank system. I would still appreciate anyone contributing an example. When you gave that example from Classic Fanatasy, ThreeDeeSix, I liked what you mentioned and I just tried to think up a system based off that. I don't know if what I described in my last post works, I would still have to balance it. Those melee fighters will definitely get that -30% penalty when blocking more than one attack, but I think I would have to make it so that you only took the penalty if you were attacked by a second (or more) person's set of actions, not the first guys first attack, then his second, and his third and so on. I also forgot about my thread that I started titled Minor Actions, Major Actions, that you replied to. I read your post and what you said was very helpful. I actually want to get my hands on a copy of Classic Fantasy, but I want to get the physical book, not the PDF.

Okay, I want to thank you all for helping me try to figure this out. It's just been giving me a big headache because I don't like RQ's Combat Actions, and I don't understand either of BRP's systems. I first got the BRP book months ago, and wanted to play a game with my group. Problem was I couldn't understand BRP's combat, and that includes the basic combat system, and the strike ranks system. So I ordered Mongoose RQ and I could understand combat actions. After we played though, it was annoying keeping track of all those, what we called em, "Little turns in a Big turn". So I went to everyone just getting one combat action, like D&D, or so I thought. We had a new player join us and he played D&D alot, he explained Movement, minor, and major actions. That sounded like something I might use. He mentioned this becuase with the one combat action per turn thing I did, one of my friends could shoot his bow, then he had to take a turn to reload and then he could shoot again, and everyone got to take their one turn in between like normal. Friend's 1st Turn: shoot bow Everyone else takes their turn. Round ends. Friend's 2nd Turn: reload Everyone else takes their turns. Round ends Friend's 3rd Turn: shoot bow again. We discussed this and thought a better system could be devised. With what ThreeDeeSix mentioned about Classsic Fantasy's system, in a previous post, I thought up this system in my head and have not had an opportunity to test this, but I like the initial idea and it could go somewhere. Total Dexterity 0-5 1 action 6-10 2 actions 11-15 3 actions 16-21 4 actions If your character has a total Dexterity of 14, then he has 3 actions. When it is his turn he can move,melee/range attack, reload his weapon, cast a spell, etc for a total of 3 things. Each of those things costs an action point. When it is his turn he takes all those actions, AT OUNCE. So he uses up all his actions, and then it goes to the next person in turn order, and that person does ALL HIS ACTIONS, and then it goes to the next, and so on, and then when we have gone around the table OUNCE, thats the end of that Round or whole turn or whatever you wanna call it. My group did not like the idea that you hadto use a combat action to block, and if you had none left, you were helpless. So instead, in this system I described above, you could still parry normally after using up all your actions, when someone else is taking their turn. Their would still be some things I have to work out in this system. For instance a melee fighter is next to his opponent. Can he use all his actions to make 2,3, or 4 attacks, depending on the number of actions he has, at one guy? I am throwing this out there because I don't understand either of BRP's systems. That includes the basic combat and Strike Ranks System. The combat example they give on page 210, is not helpful, because its not combat, its a guy who just gets attacked repeatedly without striking back at his pursuers. I looked on the BRP wiki and the combat example their is pretty much RQ combat actions. I would really appreciate a clear example, for both BRP's basic combat rules and the Strike Ranks system, involving melee,ranged weapons, and spells, so I can see how they work. I'm sorry I keep bugging everyone about this, and I appreciate all the help I have recieved.

When I took a look at Strike Ranks in the BRP book it was kind of confusing. Is it pretty much just BRP's version of Combat Actions in Mongoose's Runequest? If not, whats the difference. IIRC I don't think the BRP book explained Strike Ranks with spellcasting and how they would work. I have heard a little bit of how Classic Fantasy's system works, is it pretty much the same as RQ combat actions and BRP's Strike Ranks? My group plays medieval fantasy, and we are having a hard time deciding upon a combat system to use. We do not like mongoose RQ's combat actions.

Ok, threedeesix, i really like that idea. That sounds like a simple system that works. I am wondering how that affects spell casting. How many actions would a spell be? I take it that movement would cost an action, as would using a skill in combat such as picking a lock. That also reminds me of another question I was thinking of. I had pretty much the same idea for movement rates. Right now my characters can move 5 spaces on a board. For every 5 Dexterity above 10 they would get to move one more space, but I wondered if that would be too overpowering for high Dexterity characters. Also when you said "round up" does that mean a character with a Dexterity of 19 would have technically 4 actions because 19 is closer to 20, while a character with Dexterity of 16 would have 3 actions because 16 is closer to 15 than 20?

My friends brought up an interesting idea when we were last playing. It started when they thought it was lame that it took 1 combat round to reload a longbow to be able to fire it the next round. We talked about the way D&D does it with minor/major actions and moves. Looking at the book I can't see why it couldn't be implemented for our games. Just wondering if anyone has done this with their games and if there are any issues to making it work.

I've been working on and off my setting now for about 2 and a half months now. The reason it's taking me so long is because I wanted to make a good setting and that takes more time than I thought. I started out using mostly Runequest SRD luxury edition as the base, and adding in stuff from BRP I've play tested with my group a couple times and we discuss all the rules and things we want to change. With further comparison, I don't really like some of the things RQ does, (resilience,persistence,and athletics is lame, the resistance table from BRP is better) so its getting to be more BRP than RQ now. I've finished character creation, equipment, magic, skills list, combat, and some other stuff. Now I just have to make cults/guilds and stuff and make up a crafting system from scratch for the various craft skills. Conan BRP sounded pretty good because the setting is already there and so are the cultures/cults and things like that, and I think his setting is better than mine lol. I really like R. E. Howard's work, I've read many of his original stories. I'm still going to finish mine though and then maybe do a Conan BRP after.

That BRP conan idea sounds really good from what i've read in the posts. I kinda wish I had just done that myself for my group instead of coming up with my own setting from scratch for my group. I can't seem to find the stuff that was posted for it in the downloads section though.

thank you Rust, I appreciate it, that example will be very helpful.

I think I remember somewhere in the downloads section their was an expanded resistance table for characteristics higher than 21. I can't seem to find it anywhere though. If there isn't how might I handle higher characteristics?

lol Thalaba I'm designing a setting similar to what your describing. I wanted to make a customized world and I only have the BRP book and Runequest 2 core rulebook. Neither of which have a defined setting so I picked out the rules i wanted from the two and have been working on the setting. I was going for a bronze age setting with the use of iron just recently discovered. I'm hoping when I finish to be able to put it in the downloads section for free. I've been working on it for 2 months now.

thank you for that. Ive been trying to figure that out for a while.

I've been trying to download/buy the supplements but whenever i click on the links I can never get anywhere that gives me the actual link to the thing.

I have taken a look at the downloads section and I found some really good stuff. Hounds of Adranos was a great quest and that issue of that gaming magazine had some great content. I used some of it for a couple of my games. I was wondering if there is a section on the website that has more quests and stories available. With the number of people playing BRP I would guess that a lot of GM's have great stories that they have used. It would be cool if their was a page where they could all be shared and viewed by others for their campaigns. This is just an suggestion I have, it may be more trouble than it's worth for whoever is running and maintaining the site to keep that all organized, but it could be a great resource for BRP players and GM's.