frogspawner

There are all kinds of effective attacks (in that they have a fair chance to disable someone under the right circumstances) that are generally crappy at penetrating armor; a fencing sword is not particularly easy to dodge, but its hardly high damage, for example.

I don't think BRP makes that distinction though. That's a separate issue - but if you wanted it, maybe rapiers etc could be house-ruled as 'difficult' (i.e. half-chance) to dodge?

Perhaps parrying with a shield should be an easy task or parrying with a weapon should be difficult.

That sounds a good idea (for those of us who don't use separate attack/parry skills, anyway).

Because in the vast majority of real world combat situations, the archer's won't politely wait whilst you nip back and get your shield...

Well, in your example (twenty archers on a wall) they will!

... I have made some changes to shields in the revised version of Classic Fantasy that help to make them slightly more useful than just depending on parrying with your melee weapon.

That looks good too. (In fact it's hard to argue against the shield-arm being protected like that in any case). Bit tricky of not using Hit Locations though. And it's validated by Rust's...

...illustration of a crossbowman with a shield on his back. For reloading he would turn around and kneel down, fully protected against enemy missiles by the shield.

Unfortunately, there is no equivalent to this rule if you use DEX ranks.

For Dex Ranks, wouldn't the equivalent rule simply be to forbid weapon-parrying of simultaneous attacks, i.e. those on the same Dex rank?

Against every arrow in a round my large shield gives me 60% chance of blocking...

But the point here is it gives you that protection whether or not you're skilled with a shield. So why not concentrate on developing (whatever) weapon skill, and just pick up a shield when facing archers?

If a rapier hasn't done as much damage, it hasn't been as effective. A great axe has greater reach and sweeps through a greater area, so it should be harder to dodge, one could argue...

The problem with your argument, Frogspawner, is that BRP pretty much does connect damage with force (albiet not 100%); its not a system that assumes damage is primarily about effectiveness...

Any difference between force and effectiveness is too fine a distinction to worry about.

Am I the only one that's getting double posts every time I post something?

'Twould seem so!

What were typical rewards for outlaws in the Old West? That might help, if you can estimate the GP-to-Dollars exchange rate...

...doesn't jusify your claim that "Dodge reducing damage by a fixed amount is fine."

It's fine by me! :-) It's a workable, not-too-unrealistic rule - to me. I'm not insisting anyone else use it, just suggesting it, as requested.

One thing that I think isn't fine about it is that a fixed amount makes dodging more efective against rapiers than great axes, as the latter do more damage.

If a rapier hasn't done as much damage, it hasn't been as effective. A great axe has greater reach and sweeps through a greater area, so it should be harder to dodge, one could argue...

In fact it's counterproductive. Big nasties ike trolls and dragons becvome undoagable due to thier high damge dice...

Against such Big Nasties you'd be daft to rely on just Dodge... or just Parry.. or just Armour... you'd better have all three!

Please provide an example of a game system outside your house rules that uses [Dodge reducing damage by 10].

I can't think of any, but there's no need. We shouldn't reject a rule just because no-one's used it before - nothing new would ever be invented!

They are not necessarily slow because they are heavy, but if they are slow (and with swung melee weapons they usually are), your houserule creates unrealism. As with the old parry rule, you are arbitrarily relating damage done to difficulty of avoiding the attack. The actual factors involved in this are others. Not that other systems model everything perfectly, but using damage as a measure is one of the worst ways of modeling this.

Damage is the measure of a blow's effectiveness - whether from strength or skill (via special/critical) or whatever. So I see no problem with also using Damage to measure the counter-effectiveness of Dodging. In fact, it's neat.

Well, after 72 hours...

Hmm, -45% from skills but probably a price worth paying.

If you give an amount of damage that a Dodge can avoid, then it will stop fast but weak attacks but not very heavy, but slow, attacks. It should be the other way round.

Dodge reducing damage by a fixed amount is fine. Fast attacks aren't necessarily weak, and slow ones aren't necessarily heavy - that's just your assumption. There's no connection with attack-speed in that rule. Larger weapons may be harder to dodge due to longer reach...

Okay, you were referring to frowspawner's hourserule, not mine. My mistake.

Not your mistake, that was Rosen's implication ("Not only that..." referring to your "halving damage"). But I missed that too until now.

I have all specials doing double dice damage (e.g. a sword doing 1d8 damage does 2d8 upon a special).

Well, fancy that! Me too!

Halving damage getting through disfavours the armoured....

Ah - "through"! Now that may help - but I'm not sure even that really 'disfavours the armoured'. This exceeds the capacity of my poor brain...

It's a nice idea to have a kind of 'HeroQuest' to enact a Resurrection spell. I'd favour erosion of the character, though, rather than an all-or-nothing succeed/fail test - which is likely to leave you with the same 'dead character' problem half the time. In RQ2 (the real one!), characters lost 15% from most skills each day they were dead (and progressively lost their magic spells too).

So how do you like your dodge sirs and madams? ...OR something else?

My way is definitely "something else":

Normal Dodge avoids 10 damage, Special 20, Critical All. (No fumble effect - but also no extra-attacks or anything. Keep It Simple.)

I also allow Dodge in addition to Parry, even of the same blow. (Hence avoiding the 'which is better?' problem.)

The trouble with halving damage is it means Dodge isn't that great for the unarmoured (or lightly armoured).

Voted before looking - SO glad I didn't spoil it! Nine-nil, nine-nil, nine-nil...

The 'lifekept' body might need MAJOR repairs...

I see now. Thanks again!

...souls departed at a certain number of turns after 'death'. Lifekeeping kept the soul there...

So Lifekeeping herbs work if applied (shortly) after 'death' - Thanks!

I presume the 'dead' would then recover if their body was healed-up normally? (If not, and Life-giving in some form is still required, that'd seem to make the lifekeeping pointless. Also I don't know of any 'awaken the lifekept' herbs in RM).

Nope, no contradictions there. Except for what you say about POW being impossible to increase beyond 21 - but I'd be surprised if that's correct.

Not quite on-topic, but could anyone please tell me just what effect RoleMaster "Lifekeeping" herbs had?

IMHO you should be able to port most any fantasy or technofantasy setting material to Chronicles - it's a big world, and there are a *lot* of ways to play.

Well that's good. It's nice to have permission from the author herself for some such crossover, even if it doesn't become canon. But no bog-standard elves/dwarves/hobbits/orcs/trolls - well, I guess that's a good thing too! Thanks for the guidance...

How about a Bar-Room Brawl? (Can you get hold of the 'Rumble at the Tin Inn' RQ scenario from White Dwarf 33?) Being on an airship would make it a bit more risky...

Yes, this is very good news. An official setting for BRP! It deserves our wholehearted support.

I wonder what already-published stuff might be compatible with Future Earth...for example, how easily would it accommodate The Realm of Classic Fantasy? Could/should any of SharedWorld be transplanted (even unofficially) to Urth?

PS: Is there anything more than coincidental similarity to the Urth found in the 'Book of the New Sun' books?

...one day when thestars are right the Elder Things will return and destroy the world. But since there are the fantasy heroes, they can at least delay their return if not outright stop them at least for another day...

Very close to the premise I've used for my campaign. Go for it! :thumb:

...why would a Deep One cause SAN loss but not a Sahuagin?

I got around this by giving them, instead of simple sanity-blasting horribleness, mind-blasting psionics.

This seemed 'right' to me, because psionics had been in AD&D since time immemorial but also most people think nobody in their right mind would use them! >:->

I give only half the usual HPs (yes, half). But let 'em stay alive until -CON. (Basically, Zero HP is the 'Major Wound Level).

This has three effects:

(1) PCs are more nervous of losing HPs and try even harder to protect themselves.

(2) Although running away on half-HP (or even less) may be seen as cowardly, it is perfectly acceptable if you're on zero/negative. So foolish heroics are minimized. (And falling down unconscious below -CON/2 also helps).

(3) Although they feel more vulnerable and as though they have less, characters effectively have about 50% more HPs.

Well, attached here is the one-page char-gen for my own homebrew, that I will be converting for BRP when I get time. (And others can do so for other systems, I guess). Quick and easy, and every player can have a copy - so no problem there. If that still isn't quick enough for you, the GM could always pre-gen a half-dozen characters and hand them out.

Keep adventures short, one-session affairs until you're confident the drop-out problem is past. The BRP QuickStart freebies (converted to your preferred genre) are ideal.

As for marketing, well I've made my suggestion before: something like the attached char-gen, plus a one-page (solo?) adventure on the back, printed by the hundred and posted through letter-boxes. Or for a more targetted audience, stuck amongst the D&D books on the shelves at your local Waterstones...

BRQp1.pdf

And, lets face it, making a character in BRP is time-consuming and thought-consuming. Especially if you are new to it. There needs to be some more stream-lining, for starters.

True. For my own variant, I've trimmed char-gen down to one page (quick and easy, with hopefully still enough details included to be interesting). I will be doing a version for straight(-er) BRP when that reaches the top of my to-do list again...

Unfortunately it does not. It is intended to be a virtual gaming table, with character sheets, dice, maps, tokens etc, and doesn't have a standalone/non-GM mode.

Shame. I wasn't really meaning 'stand-alone' with no GM, just that the GM/Players could visit at separate times. It is possible to do that as well as having all the VTT features you mention, e.g. RPGtonight. (NB: This is not a recommendation! Also unfortunately, that site is kludgy as heck - nice idea, though...)