Singemonkey

Thanks werecorpse. This is really good advice and not something I'd have thought of. I'm beginning the scenario tonight - which is investigation heavy so I don't need to make a final decision yet. I shall try to write up my reflections on this scenario as a fairly novice keeper, since there's not that much written about it. Seth Skorkowski has a good vid about it but he naturally doesn't really address handling it with a two player group. I've got a bit of a scheme for Sarah Keetling requiring regular updates on the investigation so that replacement investigators don't have to start from scratch in the case of a TPK.

Necroposting because I can't find much on this scenario. I've decided to run this scenario as a one-off for two... just two... investigators. Then I read through the details. A confrontation with Crater or his children is unsurvivable the way it's written. They have multiple attacks. The investigators have no reason in this period to wear any armour. Each blow they sustain is likely to be incapacitating if not lethal - and they get 2 per round. That's if the investigators aren't temporarily insane at the very sight of them and incapable of even engaging. If they can shoot first, the Crater-things' armour is proof against all handguns and likely rifles too unless there's an impale. What I'm thinking at the moment: The armour is reduced from 10 to 4 or 5 (slightly less than steel plate). The infants' armour is reduced to 2. Since my players will play pregens, I think, I'm going to have them be a group of elites, rather than beginner investigators. I don't really have players use spells since they're mythos naiive. But I think they'll have high level skills - secret agent level. Former members of special units in the war with a range of skills. Access to good weapons and the ability to use them well. This will also stand them in good stead if they experience the purge night - which could be some bloody, purgey 'fun,' if they have the means to defend themselves against many assailants.

I really like this because it factors your skill into your chance to crit so that, even though you have to make a second roll, there's no esoteric calculation needed. This seems like a really good fix short of figuring a way to work it in a single roll. This is the missing piece that says I'm going to go ahead and flesh out a simple D20 version of BRP for the game I have in mind. You can obviously do the same with a low roll - where your second roll on a natural 1 is a fumble if it fails against your skill.

I'm really interested in this. I like the idea of all the numbers in the game being on the same scale, conceptually. And I also like the simplified arithmetic that can potentially speed up decision making in play. Now CoC 7e solved the scale problem to an extent by bringing the stats into line with D100. But hitpoints for humans, for example, remain in the realms of the D20. I think the simpler solution is to bring all the mechanics back into the D20 range. Keep the 3D6 basic stats and the relative hit points and such, but divide all the percentile chances by 5. I played a bit with the idea of rolling high, rather than rolling low. But the calculation for the equivalent target to hit are simply a headache. You could use tables but no one needs that. The benefits of getting regular players of D20 based games to more easily know what they're rolling are outweighed by the extra costs of determining the different difficulty levels needed to succeed. It's very simple to use a D20 for percentile rolls with all skills scaled accordingly, and to roll low. 60% chance to hit, 30% hard, 15% extreme (or variations depending on the system) becomes 12, 6, 3 - roll under on a D20. Every +5% bonus or penalty is a +1 or -1. Every successful skill increase results in a +1. Bonus or penalty dice approach simply works as in DnD 5e - except take the lower rather than the higher roll or vice versa if penalty. Ultimately the difference is small and mostly one of feel since, even if the arithmetic is slightly easier, it's no like adding any two double digits is all that taxing. But i can make things a little easier, especially for calculating halves and quarters (etc.) on the fly (and no annoying +23% bonuses to juggle in your head to slow down the pace of a dramatic scene). And I like the conceptual aesthetic of bringing everything onto a similar numeric range within the mechanics - your character has a CON of 15, HP of 15 probably, and her skill with a battleaxe is 11. WRT critical success, it's a very fair point. I think you just have to abandon the idea of giving people creeping extra percentiles as their skill goes up OR include a second dice roll on a roll of 20. Not ideal. It is the biggest problem with converting to D20. I'll reiterate, I think the difference is small, but it could create a little bit of a smoother play experience that I'd like to try out.

Made some chars this week and I noticed that spirit combat was evaluating to 1D6+3 despite the Pow+Char being over 33 *and* the char being an assistant shaman. It should have evaluated to 1D6+4 with the +1 from the assistant shaman occupation? Phenomenal work Phil.

Phil, thanks so much for having done such a tremendous amount of work. The crunchier the system, the more work to automate character gen and the more benefit it gives to all the users. I might do my own mod to auto-generate the grandparent and parent history. Although I like the history, I really don't like having to manually go through a printed algorithm. Was there something in particular that made you not add this option?