Questbird

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Nut, with that in mind, what I said before applies. SIZ and CON keep increasing for creatures, but weapon damage is capped out. So any time you end up with a 10 point difference the target becomes immune.  

Now in normal RQ/BRP game play, three 22 point hits would drop the elephant on total damage. In your system, that can't happen. 

Now one way to address this is to use the same progression that the SIZ table uses for damage, That is each doubling of damage is worth +8. That way eight guys using 9 damage rifles would get bumped up by +24 for 3 doubling, bring the total damage up to 33 (29 after armor). Which would have a good chance of dropping the Terax. 

Criticals and specials do make some difference to the +10 difference thing but yeah, this is why large creatures need tweaking (Ray Turney didn't care about large creatures in Fire and Sword).

Here's how it flies.

Scenario 1c: "Swarm of Bees" Cumulative damage, doubling variant
Each double of cumulative damage does +8 damage

Here I'm assuming that the first hit (in this case a plasma pistol) provides the base 'doubling' number for a party with mixed weapons. Could be a problem if the cyberdroid with the plasma rifle goes first, but whatever.

use Terax Resilience 38 as target
Turns out plasma weapons are impaling (BGB,p.256), who'd a known?
Impaling weapons x2 damage on special
no armour, difficult check

Weapon, Cumulative damage, bonus adjusted damage, resistance chance vs normal / special / critical
1. plasma pistol 9 9+0 99% / 99% / 60%
2. plasma rifle 30 21+8 95% / 0% / 0%
3. ball. pistol 34 4+8, 99% / 99% / 65%
4. ball. pistol 38 4+16 99% / 99% / 45%
5. plasma pistol 47 9+16 99% / 70% / 20%
6. plasma pistol 56 9+16 99% / 70% / 20%
7. plasma pistol 65 9+16 99% / 70% / 20%
8. ball. rifle 72 7+24 85% / 50% / 10%
9. ball. rifle 79 7+24 85% / 50% / 10%

This shows that a large number of assailants can take down a huge creature eventually, which is how the rest of BRP works.

I still quite liked the aimed shot idea too, which gives slightly better chances of success at a skill penalty

Revised success chances for 'aimed shot' method

Difficult shot halves Resilience

This time accounting for plasma weapons being impaling

Chance of resistance for normal/special/critical

vs. Resilience 19

Plasma pistol, damage 9(12): 99% / 55% / 13%
Plasma rifle, damage (impaling) 21(24): 40% / 0% / 0%
Ballistic pistol (impaling, x2 damage for special), damage 4(7): 99% / 90% / 38%
Ballistic rifle (impaling also), damage 7(10): 99% / 60% / 23%

Either or both of these methods could be used. I'd probably say an opponent has to be, say, 3x your SIZ to put them into practice.

8 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

There is something I'm not following here. You have 18 Damage vs. 31 Resilience as a 115% success chance. How are you determining that? 

Note: by 'success' here I mean success for the elephant in resisting the damage.

If two stats are equal on the resistance table, the chance of success = 50%.

So when resisting 18 damage with 31 Resilience the formula goes like this:

31 -18 = 13

There is 5% success chance difference per attribute difference on the Resistance table

13 x 5% = 65%

add that to the 50% base chance of success if the two were equal

65% + 50% = 115%

This formula works the same way if the resisted attribute is higher, just with negative numbers.

So for example

damage 33 vs Resilience 31

(31 - 33) x 5%    +  50%

-10% + 50% = 40%.

I don't do anything to protect the plot. Dice decide. Villains and PCs can fall at any time. Sometimes that means an adventure kind of evaporates because the players find some clever workaround.

However in another sense, you can provide 'plot armour' by providing multiple links between the plot elements, so that if the players miss one they can find another clue elsewhere (this works for all genres, not just detective ones).

Sometimes I trip myself up by asking for skill rolls to find some clue or link, but then nobody makes it and the clue goes unfound, unless I hand it over anyway. I guess that's a kind of plot armour which I do occasionally (but I always hate it when I get into that situation.)

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Might still be a little "nicer" to the monster than it should be.

What are the numbers for something like an elephant? (STR 45, CON 27, SIZ 53, POW 13, Armor 8 in RQ3)

The thing I'm thinking of is that in real lie an elephant might be big and tough, but someone armed with a decent "elephant" gun (3D6+4 damage in BRP) has a pretty good chance of dropping a elephant with one shot. In RQ/BRP it's not as easy, and pretty much requires a critical or impale to drop an elephant wit one shot. The Resilience method makes it even harder. In fact, since it takes 16 STR+SIZ to get an extra D6 damage,  it gets tough for big creatures to hurt each other. Characteristics are increasing at about four times the rate that damage increases, so the damage vs. Resilience thing is going to break down. 

Elephant
STR 45, CON 27, SIZ 53, POW 13, Armor 8 in RQ3, Resilience 31, Hit Points 40

Elephant Gun, damage 22 (impaling I guess? x2 damage for special)
Armour halved vs. guns

So damage is 22 - 4 = 18
success
18 vs 31 Resilience, 115% chance of success -- 99%
special success :
damage 44 - 4 = 40
40 vs 31 Resilience, -15% chance of success -- 0% there is your instant kill with elephant gun
critical success
same result as special

That's without using the 'aimed shot' rule you suggested earlier.
So a special success will take the elephant out in one round.

As for the large creatures vs. each other. Well the system wasn't designed for that but it actually doesn't work out too bad.

RQ3 Dragon
STR 70, CON 35, SIZ 70, POW 20, with bite doing 3D6+8D6 (66), claw 1d6+8d6 (54), Armour 24, Resilience 42, Hit Points 53

Remember the damage used in this system is the maximum rather than the rolled damage.

Dragon vs. Dragon

success:
Bite
damage 66 - 24 = 42
42 vs 42 Resilience: 50% for a bite to kill
Claw
54 - 24 = 20
20 vs 42 Resilience: 160% -- 99% to survive claw attack

special success:
Here I'm assuming that the bite would be crushing (?) (Impaling doesn't seem quite right) and that claws would be bleeding.
Bite
damage 72 - 24 = 48
48 vs 42 Resilience: 20% chance of survival
Claw
20 vs 42 Resilience: 160% -- 99% to survive but must make a check at this level each round following

critical success:
Bite
damage 66 vs Resilience 42: 0% instant kill
Claw
54 vs 42 Resilience: -10% : another instant kill

So Dragon vs Dragon is still an even match, though the claws are not so useful vs. the 24 armour.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

My suggestion would be to come up with a way for the characters to do a called shot to a vital location lowering the Resilience (say half?) against that attack.  That way, the players have a chance of taking out an eye or something. Making it a called shot will still keep it a a tough thing to pull off. 

 

Quote

Old fool! Why there is a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell!
—Bilbo Baggins, to himself concerning the dragon Smaug

This is a good idea.

In BRP, skill level is Difficult (halved) for an aimed shot
But Resilience for large creatures is halved if successful. 
In the case of this Terax, the Resilience would become 19.

Below are the chances of survival per hit for the Terax based on this method
The first % is for a normal success; the second number is for a special (1/10 here since the roll is halved to begin with); the third number is for a critical result (1/20)
Note that a critical ignores armour and makes the resilience check Difficult
Plasma pistol, damage 9(12): 99% / 99% / 43%
Plasma rifle, damage 21(24): 40% / 40% / 13%
Ballistic pistol (impaling, x2 damage for special), damage 4(7): 99% / 90% / 38%
Ballistic rifle (impaling also), damage 7(10): 99% / 60% / 23%

These numbers look better, making taking down one of these creatures a difficult but not impossible task, certainly not one to be approached by those with low skills.
 

So, I've been using a hitpointless combat system in my Swords of Cydoria campaign. It works well for battles with many mooks. However always inherent with this system is how to deal with huge creatures, whose size and strength makes them extremely resilient to damage. Now my characters have unleashed a Terax, a monstrous mutant reptilian thing in an ancient ruined city. Their weapons -- even plasma rifles and grenades -- are largely ineffective against it using this system (summary of the system in the thread below).

My question is: how best to deal with large critters using this system?

A few I've heard or thought of are:

1. The 'Swarm of bees' approach. All the damage inflicted on the creature by all its opponents in the whole round is added up and the monster makes a Resistance Roll against the sum. There could be a roll for each individual attack, but against the cumulative total of damage that round

2. Enforce the Resilience stat: use average of POW CON and SIZ instead of the lazy way of just CON and SIZ for monsters, on the assumption that most huge creatures won't necessarily have an enormous POW and therefore will be slightly easier to defeat

3. Just use the normal combat rules when dealing with large critters, which seems a bit of a cop-out or a failure of the hitpointless system, which otherwise seems quite promising so far.

4. Just laugh as your players are killed by unstoppable monsters (this is not really an option).

I'd be interested to hear any of your ideas.

Modelling these approaches

Rather than  answer my own post, I'll just add to it

First, I'll introduce our nasty beastie:

Large Reptilillian Terax
Monitor Lizard of Great Size
CON 37 SIZ 74 POW 2 Hit Points 56 Resilience 38 Armour (vs. guns) 3pt hide (normally 6)

This has been disturbed from an ancient slumber and lets say it has been trapped in rubble, exposing itself to a perfect 'shooting gallery' for our intrepid heroes(?):

Heroes, damage adjusted for armour
1. Norukarian Smuggler, Plasma Pistol (licensed), damage 9
2. Cyberdroid, Plasma Rifle (authorised), damage 21
3. Demetrian commander, Ballistic Pistol, damage 4
4. Guernan officer, Ballistic Pistol, damage 4
5. Norukarian noble, Plasma Pistol, damage 9
6. Bodyguard 1, Plasma Pistol, damage 9
7. Bodyguard 2, Plasma Pistol, damage 9
8. Targan soldier 1, Ballistic Rifle, damage 7
9. Targan soldier 2, Ballistic Rifle, damage 7

I'm assuming everyone hits the Terax this round.

Scenario #0:  Hitpointless System as written, using Hit Points (56) as target

Chance of Terax survival
1. 99%
2. 99%
3. 99%
4. 99%
5. 99%
6. 99%
7. 99%
8. 99%
9. 99%

Scenario #2: System as written, using Resilience (38) as target

1. 99%
2. 99%
3. 99%
4. 99%
5. 99%
6. 99%
7. 99%
8. 99%
9. 99%

Scenario 1a: "Swarm of Bees" Cumulative damage, use Resilience 38 as target
1. 9 99%
2. 30 90%
3. 34 70%
4. 38 50%
5. 47 05%
6. 56 (01%)
7. 65 (01%)
8. 72 (01%)
9. 79 (01%)

Scenario 1b: "Swarm of Bees" Use hit points 56 as target

Shows cumulative damage and chance of Terax survival
1. 9 99%
2. 30 99%
3. 34 99%
4. 38 99%
5. 47 95%
6. 56 50%
7. 65 05%
8. 72 01%
9. 79 01%

Scenario X: Normal hitpoints combat, Kill by attrition

Actually this isn't normal at all, since maximum weapon damage is used in the hitpointless system

So this would probably take twice as long.

Showing cumulative damage
1. 9
2. 30
3. 34
4. 38
5. 47
6. 56 - Dead
7. -
8. -
9. -

Analysis

"Swarm of Bees" vs. hitpoints (scenario 1b) gives a similar result to normal hit point combat (scenario X). These results assume no critical hits, which make the resistance rolls Difficult. Swarm of Bees vs. Resilience seems a bit of a pushover. These creatures shouldn't be either easy or impossible to beat.

On 3/29/2016 at 7:59 AM, Mysterioso said:

Choose Your Own Adventure books are still around too to help with the reading.  We were lucky that the public library had a bunch of them. 

The Fabled Lands series is a pretty good crossover between gamebooks and real roleplaying. It is a fantasy sandbox setting made of 6 (soon to be 7!) interconnected books. There's no fixed path; you choose one of several character types and wander around back and forth between the books (which are roughly geographically separated, although there are adventure links in between the books). Along the way you accumulate skills and gain and lose treasure. Written by Dave Morris and his cohorts, so generally good writing. I call these books the Clipper Ships of gamebooks, because they are the apex of the form but came out just as the gamebook market crashed in the 1990s. There were originally supposed to be 12 in the series, but only 6 were produced. However, thanks to fan interest, not only have the original 6 been republished (available from Amazon) but a 7th one (The Serpent King's Domain) has been commissioned by a successful Kickstarter. I guess if it does well we may hope for the remaining 5 books to be produced one day.

Nice quote from Xenophon too.

My game world is Nehwon (home of Lankhmar, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser). Over the years, the game licences for that world have moved from TSR (D&D) to Mongoose (MRQ/MRQ2) and now to Pinnacle (Savage Worlds). I like collecting the material anyway, so this conversion guide will be very helpful, thanks.

10 hours ago, TRose said:

  Im very careful about tossing bad guys with a large attack bonus at players.  A Great troll with a War Maul, even with just a 30% chance to hit can kill a player in one shot. Toss a few at the players and one will die.

 I decided to use the damage bonus for size and strength out of RQ6( It scales up slower) just so I could toss large bad guys at players and not have them end up as a red spot on the ground.

Yes I've had several player kills from large creatures. They are much more dangerous in BRP combat than in D&D, and something to watch out for. I might check out that RQ6 damage bonus chart too.

14 hours ago, nDervish said:

Note that this makes specials more common than in the vanilla rules.  In vanilla, it's actually only a 15% chance of a special, not 20%.  (Special isn't just "under 20% of skill", but "under 20% and over 5% of skill".)

Practically that is true for most people who use the normal mathematical method (the critical results are considered to subsume the specials), but 20% chance of special is what is stated in the rules.

Here's a 'visual' dice rolling method I came up with (for BRP) which works on the numbers rolled instead of doing calculations on the fly, which gives accurate probabilities of success for BRP. In practice however, my players were already used to the mathematical method, using 20% as a critical (the Elric! method) or special (as in BRP) so they found it a little harder to adjust, and we didn't really use this system in the end. The critical failure chance relative to your skill is easier to do with this method. It's rarely done by the mathematical method, since it's a bit harder and players usually don't have any incentive to calculate their chance of critical failure . (In Elric! fumbles are on a 99-00 or 00 if your skill is 100+ I think).

Roll d100
1 or 2 on the units die is a special. If the result is equal to or under your skill, special success; over and it's a special failure (optional)

If you roll an odd 'tens' result, eg 10, 30, 50 etc. which is equal to or under your skill, it's a critical success*

In other words, a 0, 1 or 2 on the units die indicates a more powerful result. Roll low still applies!

*OPTIONALLY, if you roll an odd 'tens' result over your skill it's a critical failure (though there aren't rules for this in BRP). If you use this rule you shouldn't use the normal fumble rules. Note that such critical failures are more likely than fumbles.

I like Akerbakk's roll doubles method above, except that it is 10% instead of 'vanilla' 5%, and a special exception has to be made for '00' which is always a fumble in just about any d100 system.

On 3/11/2016 at 2:33 AM, K Peterson said:

Cannibalize? I hope you don't mean literally.  I think it would be more effective to "suck" INT from other people than pull from your own diminishing resources. (Gather your dim-witted apprentices/cultists together and use them as your battery). I don't know if that capability exists within Advanced Sorcery, as-written.

Elric! had the spell Wisdom of Slortar which allowed for a temporary increase in the INT characteristic. Up to 9 extra INT, but the duration is limited to the caster's POW in rounds.

Different editions of RuneQuest had the Tap spell which did "characteristic-sucking" from unwilling participants. I can't remember, though, if that was a characteristic-drain-for-characteristic-gain, or if the drain converted into usable magic points...

 

 

RQ had that cult (from RQ3 Shadows on the Borderlands) which steals knowledge - literally wiping books and scrolls clean, and storing the spells in mummified heads which the cultists would collect. It's not exactly cannibalism but it's pretty grotesque and it would make a good enemy cult.

I've heard of sorcerers sacrificing other stats to gain INT, eg. STR, CON. CHA or DEX, representing either diabolical deals or simply letting your body waste away as a consequence of too much Library Use.

There's a related topic about starting new with BRP/d100 systems here: 

On 2/20/2016 at 0:14 AM, threedeesix said:

Well, its a dump stat until the character needs to resist a spell that magic-user has just cast on him. At that point I'm sure he'll wish he put a few more points into POW. 

 Don't forget the good old Luck Roll. I also use POW as a component of Resilience for my hitpointless combat system ((POW+CON+SIZ)/3) but that is not canonical RQ or BRP.

Another way of looking at it: weapons not designed to parry take damage from parrying. If your fist (not designed to parry, well metal weapons anyway) connects with a weapon it takes damage. Whoops, though, your 'weapon' hit points is the same as your own. Chop his arm off. Try dodge next time.

On 3/5/2016 at 7:59 AM, Chaot said:

I voted BRP but it's really Elric! with bits and pieces added every time.

I voted other because Elric! is really my prime system, and it wasn't listed.

I'm running two games at the moment, with one on the back burner, and alternating with being a player in a couple of others. My group plays something every month, so we can't finish campaigns quickly. It's a compromise but it keeps us going.

One of my games is a long-running (2 decades+ on and off, with different characters and campaigns) fantasy campaign set in the world of Nehwon (Fritz Leiber's one -- after Fafhrd and the Gray Mousers' retirement to Rime Isle) using Elric! rules as a core with a few mixins from the BGB and occasional extradimensional forays into the Cthulhu Dreamlands. For magic in that game I've incorporated the Rolemaster Spell Law book*, and also the freeform magic system from Maelstrom*. That campaign has been dormant for a few months though.

The other one I'm running is a Swords of Cydoria science-fantasy game, using the sourcebook and the vanilla BGB and my own hitpointless combat system*. I'm loving that one, have done about five sessions so far.

I'm also paused in running the 'Curse of Cthulhu' campaign, with my investigators stuck in Transylvania.

Most of my campaigns are published adventures strung together or modified.

* described elswhere on this forum

So fellow Elric! players, you are sitting on an un(officially)-sellable piece of RPG history. I guess you can keep an eye out for additional dead-tree versions (I have two, but I'm not selling; it's my main game  ).

Drama has conflict

News stories have conflict

Ideas can conflict without drawing blood (but not always).

Even a single person can be conflicted.

Conflict belongs in a dramatic storytelling game. It's an emotive word. 'Sequence', by contrast, is not. It sounds bland, mathematical, logical, mechanical. Even to describe game mechanics it sounds...well mechanistic. And, to me, boring. It certainly implies none of the drama of "the staging of something similar to a cinematic sequence in a movie". Maybe it's because every element in a sequence (using the mathematical sense here) is given equal weight, while scenes in a movie or conflict can be noisy or quiet, emphasised or not, and generally build up to a climax, followed by a denoument.

Go with 'conflict' I reckon.

On 2/12/2016 at 9:51 PM, Chaot said:

I like it.  Are there stages of being wounded or is it 'one and done'?

It's 'one and done' for the fight, but afterwards you determine how wounded you are: Fine, Walking Wounded (basically, skills halved), Dying (can't do much at all) or Dead. Similar to fatigue levels. But after a stun combat I guess everyone would be Fine or at worst Walking Wounded. For healing, you can make a check each day to see if your condition improves or worsens. Physick and so forth can help, making it so you can't get worse at least.

On 1/28/2016 at 9:56 PM, Chaot said:

Interesting.  I don't use hit locations but I'm tempted to try this out using weapon damage v hit points on the resistance table.

Things I've done in my game.  After a successful grapple the attacker can try to choke the opponent unconscious using the Drowning spot rule.  Each round attacker must succeed with grapple and opponent makes progressive Con checks to stay conscious.

Using Major Wounds there's always the possibility that someone might pass out during a fight if they lose half or more of their hit points.  I add a death countdown that is measured by negative hit points as well.  Depending on the game I usually set this at the character's Con or at half the character's Con.  Once hit points reach zero the countdown begins.  The character is unconscious and near death but can be stabilized with a Physik check.  

A hitpointless combat system like the one I'm trialling works this way. I am using (Maximum weapon damage minus armour) vs. Resilience* on the resistance table, to avoid multiple rolling. If you resist, you can keep fighting. If you don't, you are out for this fight. You don't need to worry about how injured you are until after the fight is resolved -- and you don't even care for NPCs. For a bar fight or 'stun' damage you could use the same system, but just rule that all KO'd participants wake up with a sore head (but otherwise none the worse for wear) a bit later.

*Resilience: avg of SIZ CON and POW for PCs, or just hit points for NPCs to make it easier to use published stat blocks.

Traveller 2300AD had three body types: Endomorph, Ectomorph and Mesomorph. A way (especially for North Americans) to remember the difference is: Mesomorphs play football, Ectomorphs play basketball, Endomorphs play hockey, and Normals play baseball. I guess the Belters would be Ectomorphs mostly.

A lot of people love(d) playing in Tekumel and I would like to try it one day, if I can find/interest the players. It seems there is probably enough info out there to cobble together a workable set of BRP/Runequest rules for it, so never say never.

In its long history, Tekumel has lacked a stable set of rules and a fully developed classic adventure or campaign along the lines of Masks of Nyarlathotep for Call of Cthulhu, The Enemy Within for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Against the Giants for AD&D, The Traveller Adventure or Griffin Mountain for RQ. Of course, such things are difficult to develop if the game rules don't stay stable. But had such a product existed Tekumel might not have such a reputation for inaccessibility.

As a somewhat heretical contribution, I acquired the River of Cradles RQ3 campaign. I liked most of the stuff I saw so I plunked it (it being the Prax region) into my homebrew (ie. non-Gloranthan) campaign, without too many ill effects. The early Gloranthan stuff set in Prax, Big Rubble and Griffin Mountain is well-written, hangs together well and in my opinion is quite re-usable outside of Glorantha. So my answer to the question is just get started with one of those early campaigns. The cults and cultures work nicely and give you a good introduction to the world. You may become addicted and want more. I enjoyed running River of Cradles but I didn't feel inclined to change worlds afterwards.