Gollum

Hi!

Here is another thread about animals... Yes, that is the first time I pay enough attention to them to need their full stats. And the answers to my previous thread about little creatures constitution were so bright (thanks to everyone) that I don't hesitate to post this new one.

So, here we are...

Though there is no doubt than the amount of damage inflicted by a character is linked to his strength (I prefer standing a little child punch in the stomach than the one of a 7' and 300 lbs muscle man), the damage bonus system sometimes gives very strange results.

A horse (big golden book page 336), for instance, is far much stronger than a wolf (big golden book page 340). No doubt with that. So, logically, he has a huger damage bonus (horse: +2D6; wolf: None) And as long as it is for kicks, there is no problem with that. A wolf kick may harm, but not as much as a horse's hoof blow.

But now, suppose that our horse bites. He does much more damage than the wolf!

• Horse biting damage: 1D3 + 1/2 DB = 1D3 + 1D6. Range, 2 to 9; average 5 to 6.
  
• Wolf biting damage: 1D8 + 1/2 DB = 1D8. Range 1 to 8; average 4 to 5.
  

I do agree with the fact that a horse biting can be harmful. It can even sever a finger. But this still has nothing to do with a wolf's bite! Wolves kill with their jaws. Horses don't.

By the way, do everybody know that the first purchaser of a copy of D&D was Greg Stafford?

It is the kind of thing which is outstanding but, as soon as you know it, seems so obvious.

Except that it means adding another stat, and one that would be highly similar to hit points, anyway.

You score a point here!

To be fair, though, GURPS 1-3e did use HP = Health and FP = Strength. It makes intuitive sense until you realize the best wizards would be (sickly) bodybuilders ...

Yes. The shift was introduced in the two Compendiums books, as an optional rule, and definitely adopted as the basic rule in the fourth edition. Now, in GURPS, Hit Points are based on Strength while Fatigue Points are based on Health, which makes much more sense - for wizard as well as for little and big creatures.

For simplicity, I'd go with reduced CON but a +5 (SIZ 6-10) or +10 (SIZ 1-5) for environmental hazards common in the creatures' native habitat.

Another good solution.

OTOH, domesticated animals like house cats and chihuahuas might feel the cold more keenly in inverse proportion to their SIZ, and get no bonus.

Yes. I do agree. Modern domesticated animals are not used to cold... But medieval ones, especially in farms, were more. Actually, farmers didn't feed them very much. They had to chase mouses and rats to eat.

For most drugs and poisons, maybe starting HP ((SIZ+CON)/2) instead of straight CON to factor in body mass.

I think that the validity of this solution is dependant on how frequently you are supposed to roll for CON feats that are not related to SIZ.

This would be essentially fatigue, starvation, suffocation and exposure to disease. Poison and remaining combat ready after major damage are somehow SIZ related, as seen above.

If your animal companion is exposed to such conditions often, then the split CON scores might be a necessity. Otherwise, you might just go with a "+10 to CON when rolling for Stamina" to keep it simple.

I fully do agree. Except with the +10 to CON when rolling for stamina which is a bit high in my humble opinion. The average venomous snake of the big golden book creatures has a CON of 7, for instance. So, it would raise it to 17... Maybe a flat number like 10 for average creatures, 12 for resistant ones and 15 for really resistant ones could make the job.

Not really. That's what SIZ is for. What some of us have been suggesting is using hit points instead of CON for resistance against toxins. That way you factor it for greater mass (SIZ).

Another good solution, yes. And some RPG, like GURPS, even decided to base Hit Points directly on strength...

But, in my humble opinion, the split CON score is still the best solution. It allow to have to numbers: one when there is no difference between a little and a bigger creature (like illness, resistance to fatigue while running, walking very long distances...) and another one where the size is a difference. Using SIZ or another stat may be a very good solution, but it is still a bit strange... "Make a stamina roll" is more logical than "Make a size/Hit Point roll".

Their INT would be much lower (though try convincing any cat "owner" of that!) and their DEX would probably be in the 2d6+6 range at most. Cats can't do fine manipulation of objects, though they dodge pretty well.

Though I'm a cat owner, I absolutely do agree with INT. Cats are usually smart, but this is not the same kind of intelligence than humans. So, since INT is more than cleverness in BRP, and in every roleplaying games, actually, I'll go for INT of dogs and wolves, and tigers (which are sometimes very smart too): 5.

For DEX, I will still take a high level. Of course, cat's don't have fine manipulators. But they are still very quick to react, and not only for dodging. So, since, DEX is mainly used for combat initiative during the game (for dodging, climbing, jumping, etc., skills are used), a high DEX score is not a problem.

Oh, and thanks for the description of cats of Dreamlands. Though I play a lot to Call of Cthulhu, I never run a Dreamland campaign.

If you drop it down to 2d6+12 you would be in line with the Big Cats in the CoC core book.

Yes, of course.

It helps, thank you. 2d6+24 for DEX? Wow!

Wow... Three answers in so little time! Thank you very much.

So, yes, after thinking a bit more about it, I came to the conclusion that a low Constitution score was not necessarily a bad idea. And I especially thought about poisons. The same dose of venom absolutely don't have the same effect on a rat than on an elephant! I didn't think at all about cold, however. I just didn't know that little creatures were more sensitive to it. Thank you for this data.

Thank you for the math about the relation between variation of Size and variation of Constitution too. It will be very helpful.

And finally, for all what you said, I think that the best solution is to split the Constitution score for little creature as well as very big ones... Indeed, it simplifies things a lot: when the creature is supposed to be more sensitive (poison, hit points...), you use the lower score. And when the creature is not supposed to be more sensitive, you use the higher one. A rat will suffer much farther from a given dose of poison than an elephant, but he won't necessarily have more chance to get an indigestion.

Hey guys!

One of my player's character has a cat and I'm trying to write down its stats. My player intend to bring him in a D&D like adventure and, after all, it will be very funny to have some combats with it!

This is a cat, so it is supposed to have few hit points because it is little. But here, I noticed a problem with the rules. Little creatures, to have few hit points, also have a low Constitution score. See the venomous snake description for instance (Big Golden Book, page 338).

For Hit points, this is not a problem. But it is for all the rest. Because it means that little creatures are necessary sickly. Feeble Stamina, feeble resistance to poisons, feeble resistance to illnesses, etc.

I a snake, or a cat, or any other little creatures necessarily supposed to be much sicklier than a human? Aren't creatures who survive in wilderness without any medicine not supposed to be healthier than humans, to the contrary?

I found Classic Fantasy to be the most useful BRP/D100 supplement that I have come across in a very long time, and I don't particularly care for dungeon crawls. I collect old school D&D for the nostalgia, but one of the reasons why I run BRP is that classes, levels, high power gaming, and many other facets of that game just rub me wrong. Classic Fantasy is a perfect fit for me when I want high fantasy, or a slightly more cinematic BRP fantasy game. Also, it has been great to revisit some classic adventures in a new format (I ran Dwellers of the Forbidden City using CF, and it was awesome).

Revisiting these old adventures with an other system than D&D is great. As soon as they speak Goblins or Kobold, player characters can try a lot of other options than just fighting monsters to grab their treasures. And BRP has skills for diplomacy and negotiation!

The old D&D adventure which best lend itself to that manner of playing is certainly the Lost City, with its different factions. It was specifically written for that. But with BRP, it works even better.

I voted for BRP. It has 32 votes now (vs 55 for Fate)

The main reason the mechanics in BRP are so utterly, impossibly, and powerfully versatile is the fact that you can easily create or use rules to expand it into any type of game,

while the game remains internally consistent.

This is why it works.

I fully do agree with that! BRP, with its simple percentage system, makes everything so easy to understand and chance of success are so intuitive that it is simple to change a rule without unbalancing the odds. When you want to modify something, you can immediately evaluate the repercussions on the game.

I think this might be the best explanation I've seen of the benefits of BRP, although the one exception I'd take is that I think Call of Cthulhu shows that BRP is just about the best narrativist system there is.

Thank you.

Cthulhu can be played in a very narrativist way, indeed (very few dice rolls). But I still wouldn't say it is the best narrativist system (even if this is the one I do prefer, of course). Narrativists players want features that allows to bend story to their willing from time to time, like plot points. They also love when subplots (what they wrote about their character story) have an important impact on the campaign. Narrativist GMs like rules where the story is more taken into account than the rules. They like for instance having the possibility of ruling that a character automatically succeeds or fails a task, without having to roll any dice and without player risking to shout immediately: "Hey! that's not fair! I had 50% to avoid that. Why didn't you allow me to make a roll?"

So, in that matter, Cthulhu may not the best candidate. Theatrix is certainly the one which pushed the narrativist limits as far as possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatrix_%28role-playing_game%29

There is no roll in Theatrix and, worse, the characters abilities are not even used to determine success or failure of tasks. The description of characters action is what allows the GM to know if he succeeded or failed. The character stats are just a way to know how he did it (by luck or by ability).

Likewise, if the players want to succeed a Cthulhu campaign with the BRP system, especially a long one, they will have to play with a minimum gamist mode. They have to balance the skills of their team in order to be good at the widest possible range of abilities, in order to find the most possible clues, to read the most possible books, to win the most possible combats. Not against monsters, of course! Fighting them directly is suicide. But against cultists who will inevitably try to prevent them to go deeper in the investigation...

And the rules are still here to keep things realistic and consistent. Even if he wanted too, the GM doesn't have the right to decide that a gun shot critical success doesn't hurt a foe when this one is an ordinary human without armor and magic power... Or the GM will have to quickly find a very good explanation because the players will indubitably question the realism of his game world...

So, in my humble opinion, even with Cthulhu the BRP system remains a very good balance between gamism, narrativism and simulationism. But Cthulhu is surely more narrativist than other versions of the system - I fully do agree with that.

Sorry for coming so lately...

I fully do agree with everything said above and just would like to add this...

Most games insist more on one aspect described by the GNS theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory) rather than on the two other ones. GURPS, for instance, insist on simulationism while D&D insist on gamism...

In my humble opinion, BRP is the one that allows the best balance between the three.

The rules are not too much simulationist but still give a good feeling of realism and consistent characters. The rules are also light enough to allow GM and players to thing about the story and the descriptions rather than about rules... And BRP finally allows to play easily in a gamist mode for those who want to: even if there is no feats/advantages/edges, as it has been very well said above, the players can still choose wisely their skills in order to build the best possible team of player characters and, then, act strategically to use these skills at best (it is incidentally a good hint to do so if you want to avoid a pathethic failure during a Call of Cthulhu campaign: you need skilled linguists, skilled scientists, skilled investigators and also skilled combatants) .

Brief, everybody can be happy with the BRP system... Of course, the drawback of this very fine balance is that if you really love one of the three manner of playing, and only that one, you may find that BRP doesn't fit you. The pure simulationists will find that it is not precise enough. The pure gamists will find that there is not enough options to optimize their characters. And the pure narrativists will find that there is too much random (and not enough way to control the story).

Hello. I'm new to the BRP, but a 30+ year veteran of RPG's. Wondering if there is a sourcebook for sci-fi settings for the latest edition of the BRP. If not, is anyone talking about doing this, or has anyone done a "home version" of this?

Thinking of running a unique sci-fi setting for my group, and I'd like to use the BRP if I can.

Thanks!

You will find your answer in this thread...

http://basicroleplaying.com/showthread.php/3256-Sci-Fi-based-BRP-game-that-is-not-dead

... Which is not so old. The last answer was posted in august.

Yes, this sounds right on the money. Scrap what I said regarding using Grapple, of course, the Entangle mechanic was there all along...thanks for pointing that out!

Yes. Thanks. I considered that this rule was made only for flexible weapons like whip or bolas... And never thought about the fact that it can be used for other ones... So, scrap what I say about grappling too.

Just a note, though : if the player character really wants to make his foe fall down, he'd better accept the hard difficulty (skill/2) rather than waiting a special (skill/5).

If you succeed in attacking with a halberd, the next action could be a STR vs STR roll to pull the rider from his horse. You might want to make the first roll a special, so that it acts a bit like a swordbreaker.

In my humble opinion, requiring a special is a bit too much. The STR vs STR roll gives a character about one chance in two to succeed, though he scored a special result...

Why not just applying the same rules than with the Grappling skill? After all, it is nothing else but Grappling with a weapon.

Many games that are otherwise quite detailed in their rules have features that many GMs either read and don't remember, or read and don't really feel comfortable implementing. Even GURPS is quite explicit that when you're not under any stress, most tasks you're trying get a +10, so even a character whose skill might warrant a 10- on 3d6 has a nearly 100% chance of avoiding failure under normal circumstances. You get the same result from the "don't make them roll for something if it doesn't matter" rules that many games have anymore.

Actually, actions without stress gives +4 rather than +10 in GURPS. But it doesn't matter. What you say here still remains true. +4 on 3d6 is really huge. You go from 10 (50% chance of succeeding) to 14 (more than 90% chance of succeeding).

Furthermore, GURPS has this rule: any ordinary task attempted in a mundane non adventuring job automatically succeeds. No roll is needed to drive into town for instance, even when you just know the skill by default (that is when you didn't spend the least point in it) and, so, just have a 5 in Driving...

So, as very well said above, most role playing games have this kind of rule.

My indie gaming friends would say, so what? Why do you want realism at the expense of narration? The answer is, I don't want realism at the expense of narration--I want both.

As RosenMcStern, I fully do agree with that. It really summarizes the strength of BRP. A game which is exactly right in the middle line between extremely narrativist games and extremely realistic ones and which do both... With very simple rules!

There are more granular systems that are more realistic but that sacrifice ease of play and narration.

Yes. GURPS is one of those. GURPS rules are more realistic than BRP ones. At least, they give me that feeling. But there is so much more calculations and things to handle during play that you inevitably loose narrativism. Hard to make good descriptions when you have to make 3 or more dice rolls for each combat second...

Disadvantage: It's easy to die in BRP...

To my mind, this is not really a disadvantage. Usually, when a warrior has been injured by a good knive blow in the stomach or a bullet deeply stepped in the shoulder, he thinks that he was very lucky and immediately stops fighting. BRP rules reminds that combat reality: once you are injured, don't insist or you will die! It's time to go to hospital.

Wow! Thank you very much for these very quick and interesting answers.

Yes. Did anyone play to FuturWorld or read it? What is it worth? And what about Ringworld, which is quoted in the Credits of the Big Golden Books ? Is it a good game too ? - if it has already been explained in this thread, just tell me on what page. Thanks in advance.

For game systems with 2d6 :

• a +/- 2 corresponds to about +/- 30%
  
• and a +/-5 to a +/- 50%.
  

If the start is the average, of course, because +2 has much less impact when you have 9 than when you have 7 for example.

In my humble opinion, the decision to rule that +/-2 is like an easy/difficult action and +/-5 is like an automatic/impossible action sounds fine. Indeed :

• 50% - 30% is about the same as 50% / 2
  
• 50% - 50% is 0%
  

Furthermore, doubling or halving numbers has more impact on higher numbers than on lower ones - even if the statistic results with 2d6 are not the same (bonus and penalties have more impact on average numbers than on extreme ones, low or high).

I suspect I would want a little finer-grained system than most that have been proposed. A little more Hero/GURPS-y, honestly. But that's me - always a quest for greater detail.

Cthulhu by Gaslightt is the closer that you can find, then. Add to it the different powers of the big golden book and you will have what you are looking for, with very little work to do by yourself.