frogspawner

Yes, it does seem to. I'd assumed Time-Aiming was for missiles, and Location-Aiming was for either, though - and I could still argue that, so I'll stick to it!

Aaah. The classic D&D mantra imported to BRP! >:->

Never! RW yes - BRP no. >:->

Another link for the link list! :thumb:

I'm honoured. Thank you!

Six or less, generally. More can drag. (Mind you, less can drag too, unless you're pretty strict and/or well-organized).

Woah. You have Houserules at 110%! I can only envy you.

I've just come up with a nifty house-rule for attack/parry. I'm ruling that one-handed weapon skills include either fighting with a shield, or fighting with a second weapon.

Thanks. But now you have one more than me...

Actually, that was my point...I like the attack/parry mechanic and think it's part of what make BRP combat 'feel' real. But, you can get that yukky D&D feel if you want.

I hate the fact that in D&D as a player your character can be in combat and you can think, "Well, the opponent is only doing about 8 points per round, so I should be able to handle him for another 6 rounds."

Glad to hear it. Same here.

Holy smoke! :shocked: That is quit a list Frogspawner. There are several very interesting things you wrote there. I like your ideas for Martial skills and special abilities.

Thanks for sharing :thumb:

You're welcome!

(Is that "quit" Freudian, perhaps? I will stop houseruling very soon, honest. But first I just need a good Hide/Sneak/Surprise mechanism...)

Frogspawner, the fact that you house-rule the heck out of everything makes me feel better about myself! :-)

Do you use attack/parry as separate skills, or as one skill?

Sigh. And I was trying to keep the houserules to a minimum, I really was... :ohwell:

In my defence, my list of houserules is shorter than the list of BRP options which every GM must give their players - here's mine.

Oh, just the one combined skill for each weapon's attack/parry. I like to keep things simple...

Interesting take. That would certainly give combat a different feel. I don't dislike the parry / dodge roll, though. I just want some way for high-skill types to batter through it / cut down heaps of foes / whatever... :-|

A yukky feel! Sorry, that one goes too far!

BTW, the point about the "Parry AND Dodge" mechanism I mentioned before is it's another layer of defence for the PCs, but 'Joe Goblin' and his chums simply won't have it (except special ones the GM says should, like arch-villains). But the PCs don't feel safer, like they would as a D&D-style Sack of *HITs.

On a related note (while we're talking about combat), I'm finding myself very "irked" by the martial arts skill...

What I've done for this one is change MA to give an extra attack, instead of double damage (although unarmed attacks still get double damage too).

And yes, that applies to the extra attack itself as well. But there are limits - and smaller weapons can 'fit' more attacks in the round than larger ones.

But I need some rules so that the players can heroically wade through lesser foes, too. Maybe what I should do is simply have some variant of a "mook" rule...

How about this: I allow a Dodge in addition to a Parry, and Dodge (aka Defence) skill doesn't increase like normal skills but only by rewards for roleplaying. So heroes have an 'edge' - being able to miraculously dodge getting hit - but everyone else isn't unfairly reduced to being a 'mook'.

What do you think of the following house rule concepts.

I think they're very similar in principle to my preferred mechanism...

ATTACK

Normal Hit = Normal damage.

Special Hit = Special Effect by weapon type (Crush/Impale/etc, like BRP).

Critical Hit = Maximum damage, bypass armour.

Fumble = Roll on the Combat Fumble table.

PARRY

Normal Parry = Blocks damage up to weapon HPs*.

Special Parry = Blocks damage up to double weapon HPs*.

Critical Parry = Blocks all damage.

Fumble = No effect.

(* Weapon HPs 50% of BRPs, Shields 75%).

DEFENCE

Normal Dodge = Reduce hit by 10 damage

Special Dodge = Reduce hit by 20 damage

Critical Dodge = Reduce hit to 0 damage

Fumble = No effect

... so I heartily approve! No opposed-rolls complications. And in fact I wonder if your style of Dodge effect may be better (perhaps Normal halves and, for me, Special quarters?) - more scalable in theory, but in practice...? Well, I wonder.

With 70 views and no suggestions, I guess it's 'never mind', anyway. That's all right.

Well I didn't comment because I know nothing about the setting.

But I guess if it's the 'feel' of the setting that's drawn you to it, then yes you'd better not do anything to spoil it. Fireballs/Lightning Bolts and standard chimeric-type D&D monsters (although familiar to your probable player-base, right?) could ruin that pronto. Players joining your game may well be looking for something a bit different - so let 'em have it!

As for spreading the word about BRP - good idea, and good luck! If they like the game, tell 'em it's BRP (with houserules) - if they don't you can say it's Stormbringer.

Definitely a crazy idea! But if you want to destroy friendships, why not just play Diplomacy?

er... not quite. It's the system I'm more used to, and the Elric! matrix always bothered me - but the Dodge problem in RQIII bothered me more, and the BRP RAW address that...

OK, thanks for clarifying that.

in RQIII and earlier, the attacker STILL rolled damage and if it exceeded the AP of the parrying object, that damage then carried on to the target... This method also had its flaws / problems, but it arguably makes more sense of the scenario you gave.

As it happens, I don't use exactly the RQ3 Dodge or RQ2 Defence either - more a cross between the two (an 'always-on' Dodge, but damage-limited).

While we're on the subject, please could you spell out the RQ3 "Dodge Problem" that so bothered you, and the other flaws/problems you mention, so I can see how well my favoured mechanism deals with them?

It's hard to know which is the "right" rule to go with for the campaign.

Obviously, I'd recommend the old RQ-style independent rolls.

(And it seems to me from his posting above that NickM does too (Mr M?)).

To me it seems best for simplicity and immediacy - i.e as soon as you roll, you know how good your hit is (you don't have to wait for the other guys roll, and then look it up on some table...).

If you prefer to go "by the book", then I'd say use the published Attack/Defence Matrix - but from what you say above, I reckon you're not averse to house-ruling.

Does anyone ever handle combat using opposed rolls in BRP rather than using the attack/parry matrix?

Effectively, the attack / parry atrix is an attempt to tabulate the results of using a special case variant of teh opposed skill mechanic for Combat.

Not me. I don't like 'opposed rolls' and the new Attack/Defence Matrix is too similar to ORs for my taste. I prefer to use the traditional RQ2/3-style independent rolls for attacks and parries (and dodges).

BTW 'That Other Forum' is probably the Mongoose "RuneQuest" one - hopefully I can mention it here without getting banned! But I wouldn't bother going there (and don't), now Mr. Trifletraxor has kindly set up this one...

But if there's even the slightest chink in the (D&)Dragon's armour, we BRP fans really should think positive and aim for it - and maybe score that critical hit...

And by way of being positive, can we please change this thread's title to "Why is BRP only popular with the Discerning Few?"

It certainly is germane and I'm not laughing. I think I raised this very point a number of months ago - but it was said (by Mr Durrall himself, perhaps?) that the text is in error.

However, I prefer that "armour values for both shield and armour are subtracted" mechanism from good old RQ, and dislike the 'opposed roll' style of the new Attack/Defence Matrix (which is related, of course - and that you were asking about in another thread).

So I still use the traditional 'Independent Rolls' mechanic - and I'll bet I'm not the only one round here who does.

The time is now and your system is in so many ways already used by me in my own house rules. I built many of them from some of the other past campaign books like Elf Quest and etc. I guess for years I was a sudo convert and didn't even know it...LMAO!!!

Thanks, I'm glad to hear it! Best of luck with the conversions.

BRP is as much your system as mine, I'd say. We seem to be pretty much in the same boat. I've had a long-running campaign that started as AD&D (1st ed) which I've houseruled/converted piecemeal to RQ2/3 (i.e. near enough BRP) over many, many years... And now to BRP proper (ok, still with plenty of houserules!).

You'll get plenty of help from the guys (and gal/s?) hereabouts, and if you find any of my campaign/rules stuff useful, please feel free...

This is at best a way overstatement, and at worst massive wishful thinking.

Surely we can rule out 'wishful thinking' from a D&Der of 30+ years standing.

To say "D&D4 has failed" may be overstatement, but if we can read between the lines and see a group of 7 experienced D&D GM's each with their own groups giving D&D4 the Thumbs Down and looking for something else...

...what better evidence do you need that it's simply the truth?

Bygoneyrs, are you and your cohorts intending to stick with AD&D/GW/Traveller or are you all intending to change to a new system?

BRP (with some houserules) should be good for all those genres...

That's pretty nifty. I've never known that.

Find yourself a copy of RQ2 then, and enjoy! There's a lot of good stuff packed into those 120 pages.

Would you mind sharing?

Certainly. Mine's not very different (the original is pretty good, after all). Instead of just adding the points for each 25% attack in step 2, I multiply the total by it at the end. (That's it - I thought I'd made more changes, but they're mostly in the Treasure Tables).

Again, care to spill the beans? I've never heard of that one either.

The MonsterMark system was a highly maths-based method, derived for D&D in the Old Days, which calculated various values: D = the amount of damage the monster would do to an average opponent each round; A = the number of rounds it would last against an average (immortal!) opponent; and finally M (the "MonsterMark" rating) = D x A x Fiddle Factor (for special abilities etc).

Far too longwinded and complex but the principle's sound.

PS: I hope you appreciate this posting - now I've lost my "666" count...

I use:

Specials: Skill / 5 rounded down.

Criticals: Skill / 20 rounded down.

It's quick to calculate.

:beetle:

I use it too, but the other way around:

If Roll x 5 is under Skill: Special

If Roll x 20 is under Skill: Critical

No worries about rounding, and multiplying is a smidgin faster than dividing.

The reason I'm thinking about using this method for criticals is because of modifiers... You'd end up having to recalculate your success levels every time.

I just use the Easy (x2) or Difficult (/2) modifers for the same reason (ok, and some non-standard x10 & /10 ones too, sometimes). Oh, and I have electronic character sheets that calculate/print the crit/spec/fumble chances automatically...

...(unless you are the sort of super-organised GM who has slots for Special and Critical for all skills on the character sheet and you do not use any kind of modifier)...

So, do I qualify?

The standard one. Because then it's not me who kills someone's character, it's the rules.

But he was so enthusiastic about it, I'll forgive him. The Adv/Dis point is so trivial (and isn't there one in the Supers section, anyway?), it makes me wonder if he's doing the opposite of 'damning with faint praise'.

(Who is this guy, though? Is he famous/influential, or just opinionated...)

I don't use Step 6. But I do use personality stuff, via variant Personality Traits rules for PCs.

That way they have to earn advantages by actually behaving in-line with their chosen personality, rather than being given loads of freebie extra skills just for saying they will...

BRP doesn't define the mechanism to increase Allegiance, so how do you 'align yourself'?

Err, page 317?

Thanks, I had forgotten that. But page 317 lists stuff like "Aid someone weaker than yourself", "Behave dishonourably", "Behave honourably" etc. It's not exactly definitive, and stated as only a 'suggestion' (and that within an 'OPTION'). Of course, if you're not using Personality Traits you'd have to do something like that.

But I feel sets of Traits tie it down better (you don't need an exhaustive list of actions and what each religion thinks of them). It's flexible, and perhaps even less open to abuse than the list-method because trait-rolls are always subject to GM approval, before the event.