frogspawner

BRP0's Psychic Powers are like this: Require skill-rolls for each power; Use Power; Judge their usefulness for yourself (Astral Projection, Aura Detection, Clairvoyance, Cryokinesis, Danger Sense, Dead Calm (resiste mental shocks), Divination, Eidetic Memory, Emoption Control (in others), Empathy, Intuition, Levitation, Mind Blast (stunning), Mind Control, Mind Shield (prot.v.mental attacks), Precognition (!), Psychometry, Pyrokinesis, Sensitivity (to supernatural presences), Telekinesis, Telepathy (mind reading/communication)); Improve like normal skills, and new powers can be gained by training and POW sacrifice; Not sure what you mean by 'other metaphysical arts'. I hope this helps.

For me, the useful bits appear to be: - Encounter-long spell durations (frankly, just openly acknowledging an existing state-of-affairs - that they're too much bother to administer!) - Um... that's it. (OK, Social Encounters sound intriguing and may turn out useful, too). The "Points of light in a dark world" setting idea is cool. But that's not Rules. And my campaign seems to be heading that way already, anyway... :eek: Other things we learn - D&D is being changed again, so they can sell more books; and though many of the changes are actually improvements, many more are not. We are reminded that D&D is grotesquely rules-heavy, overly prescriptive (controlling, not enabling) and, increasingly and sadly, just a silly kids game.

All the more reason to buy your copy of BRP1 as soon as possible! (Before this Marco Chacon sues and they have to be pulped...)

I agree with you! :shocked: (Maybe I failed my SAN roll looking at all that 4E stuff after all... ) Hmmm - it's poor design to have two mechanisms for the same thing, though... [heresy] Maybe the Resistance Table should be scrapped and always use STATxX v STATxX instead...? [/heresy]

Oh, I see. Thanks! Hmm, if anyone is bothered by that scaling wrinkle, maybe they could try opposed POWx5 rolls (or x1, or x1/10th) instead. Would that work? What was wrong with the 'Gooses Halving Rule, then?

Nope. It looks hard to work out on the fly. And what problem is it supposed to "repair"?

Sigh. I guess so... :ohwell:

Yes, that stuff looks bad to me, too. Are you sure about this? What are your sources? Yes, more fluid melee is good. I use a simple system, which seems to work nicely: anyone attempting to dodge has to step back (or go prone, if there's nowhere to retreat...). I like this idea, if the "powers" for warrior-types can be made out to be combat techniques (not out-and-out magic). Most Feats seem suitable. Exactly so.

And thanks for posting! It's fascinating, albeit deeply disturbing. There's so much to comment on, I don't know where to start. I'm still reeling... (Or AC -40, in the terms of my era!). Yes, it's sanity-blasting stuff alright. :mad: Luckily I'm immune, being mad already. Though I'm still not as deranged as some, it seems! If D20 is so good, how come they feel the need to change it so much...?

Well, now there's over 100 votes, Fantasy & Sci-Fi are running neck-and-neck (though maybe it's just some tech-aware SF fan has hacked the system ). But if we take it at face value, both are 3x as popular as Horror. Shouldn't that mean each of these genres might get triple the sales of CoC stuff...?

And it's a very good point. The answer could be SharedWorld. And/or one of our own GateWorlds (or several of them, linked), if any are posted...

The BRP damage bonus progression goes: STR+SIZ 02-12 -d6 13-16 -d4 17-24 - 25-32 +d4 33-40 +d6 41-56 +2d6 (each +16, another +d6)

Don't worry, anyone who bothers to read such stuff can probably see that. Just try not to let that kind of comment wind you up. :cool: That's just the sort of neat idea I was hoping for. Nice one!

Er, I'm sure using any excuse to boot Trollball players around is a crowd-pleaser in that universe, but it hardly proves a rule we should use in this one... Well, if a consensus arose about limiting damage bonuses, it might mean static damage bonuses (better at lower damages) gained favour over random-rolled damage bonuses (better at higher damages). But it's always nice to hear good ideas! Seems good to me. Or maybe a limit equal to the weapon's STR requirement? Me too. Wouldn't straight +1, +2 bonuses, up to the point where you start getting +Xd6's, be consistent enough? Yeah, I'm not bothered. But if the 'flaw' bothers you, introducing a new "nearly Special" result (to go with Specials & Criticals) might fix it. That works for me! PS: Where'd 3 go?

Giants pike-sized toothpicks, fair enough. They could do plenty of base damage. But a less extreme example would perhaps be a troll with a knife (d3+1, +2d6 bonus or more). Is getting the full db reasonable?

Yes, exactly. It'd probably have to be some rule like that - but I was just hoping someone might know the perfect, elegant and, yes, Stupidly Simple solution. Sorry, but that's just the GM saying "it's silly". The paradox remains.

Interesting. Hasn't it been said that rules-sets can't be copyrighted? So if you just re-worded the self-same rules it would be "new", legally. Some publishers might not care beyond that... But the Law is an Ass, so that's not the true answer. I'd say, if it has changes that are good enough, then it deserves to be called "new". In other words, it's totally subjective! (Sorry, perhaps that's not very helpful...) 'Derivative' is a loaded term, but not necessarily bad - I think anyone would have trouble coming up with good rules that weren't derived from (better to say "inspired by"?) some previous rules-set.

I can see what you mean. I realize now that I must be used to playing at the low-end of the damage-bonus scale. So let me qualify what I said - at that end, flat bonuses work fine. If it's a Big Ugly Monster doing lots of dice damage anyway, a big flat bonus probably isn't too offensive, either. But for a super-strength character-type, with a small-ish one-or-two die weapon, I can see that it would be. It's a matter of taste, but I'd probably agree that at about +5 it starts to break down. However - is this a problem that should be solved in a different way? I suspect the real problem may be that small weapons should not allow big bonuses (i.e. getting a +2d6 damage bonus when wielding a toothpick is clearly wrong). Has anyone previously recognized this problem and got a good scalable solution to it? One that isn't just the GM saying "that's silly"?

This assertion is incorrect. I've only recently seen RQ4 (RQ:AiG) so I am not a long-time devotee. I believe that absence of "+1"s for weapon damage is good, and only saw that RQ4 didn't have them when I looked it up prior to posting here. Absolutely. But what with different Special effects, I'm sure there would still be enough differences between weapons to give interesting in-game choices. By all means keep a flat bonus for some weapons, where it seems specialy justified. Perhaps the ones currently having +2's could be reduced to +1's, and the +1's dropped. If you like difference, there seems more of a difference between one with a bonus and one without, than between two similar bonuses. Same here. For BRP it's Scimitar d8+1 and L.Mace d6+2 (H.Mace d8+2). So much for the 'curved edge' theory.

I use flat damage bonuses and they work just fine. I think he's saying his group does like and use flat RQ4-style damage bonuses, in fact - he's just not keen himself. And if you've got a character in the 25-32 range it must be annoying to miss out on a +d4 and probably just get +1. But, objectively, it does give a smoother progression. No-one has objected to Bladesharp's flat damage bonus. So I think it's just that most people around here are accustomed to variable DB's, and the grainy progression they give. There seem to have been several improvements in RQ4, including both flat damage bonuses and removal of fiddly "+1"s from weapon damages. (Just dropping them, rather than rounding up to the next die, btw - avoiding an 'arms race' with armour points, and reducing lethality of criticals). No reflection on Jason's superb effort with BRP - he had to base it on what was actually published. But - ah! - what might have been...

Pretty close to mine: SUCCESS Normal effect, normal PP cost (1PP/level) SPECIAL Normal effect, no PP cost CRITICAL One effect doubled, no PP cost FAILURE Half effect, normal PP cost FUMBLE Roll on Magic Fumble Table (typically the spell fails and is lost from memory) It's just fine. But couldn't your system work without having to do this laborious translation? Each 'level' of Amplify would give it another d6 of damage, for example. Is the non-linear scale of damage Amplification really necessary?

And I use it all the time. Coupled with reduced HPs, it makes a neat "Major Wound" level at 0hp. Scares the players wonderfully, too! (Trad. fantasy genre, btw). Trying to tempt me into using it, I guess. But no, having all possible hp/pp/etc numbers is just too silly...

Yeah. It may seem heretical, but I've previously thought Elric was more suited to D&D (and, conversely, Lhankmar to RQ/BRP).

I didn't realize. Fix that pesky security certificate though, and who's to know? It looks good enough for now...

What else should there be?