frogspawner

I'm not bothered what gets adopted as default BRP (being confident it'll be fairly sensible) - I'll be buying BRP stuff anyway. All I want is to find the way that's best... It is all about feel. You like the Opposed Roll - fine, but some of us don't. And no way is it the best for 30 years! I feel there are quite a few issues about ORs that are not yet resolved: rolling low or high-within-low; extra maths; trivializing potentially exciting contests (e.g. sneaking, bargaining...). For me, the challenge of finding the Perfect Mechanism is still ongoing. Care to join me, or wish me luck?

RQ3 (or was it 2?) said perception always beat stealth, I think (can't find the reference). However, I agree it's not always so clear-cut. I'd suggest deciding in favour of the status quo in any given situation, i.e. whoever stands to lose something (their pocket contents, their job as guard, their liberty, their life...) should have the advantage.

Yep. Harder than not doing so anyway. And it's unnecessary. Why must there always be a winner, immediately? Ties happen. Same here. It's all about the feel. I think it's the way it'd spoil the immediacy of a 'Dramatic Moment' (slightly). But a 90% attack will get past a 30% parry about (90x70=) 63% of the time. So the same numbers will give very different probabilities if you use opposed rolls. How can that be right? That's great - 'spot on'! All that's needed is a good interpretation of the tied situation, like this! Call it a draw?

Pardon my ignorance, what do you mean by the "culture wars"?

There you go - one number minus another! Hard maths! :eek:

Or one-way time travel from the near future, as per Julian May's Multi-Coloured Land books (that'd not be a bad setting, either...)

Re-colonization by humans from (a variety of) ancient outposts established on far-flung stars?

I think the "Hide/Spot duel" is the classic example that makes people perceive a need for opposed rolls. So if we can come up with a good system for it, using a sequence of normal rolls, then we can forget the whole Opposed Rolls issue... and the hard maths!

(Regarding opposition to opposed rolls: ) I'd prefer to keep the (Sneak/Spot) rolls entirely separate, and not affect each other at all if possible. Something more like the attack v parry system in combat, perhaps? (without opposed rolls, of course!) Or maybe somehow use a concept of "layers" of success: Just sneaking by/away is easy (one success required); but sneaking close to someone to pick pockets is harder (two successes); and assasination is even harder (a third success required)? Currently I use a system where each side makes it's rolls (Sneak/Hide and Listen/Spot respectively) but the success levels just contribute bonus/penalties to a final perception-type Idea Roll by the spotter. Still not really happy with this method though.

Exactly. Right again, of course. Sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned "high level" - just loose talk. The point was the roughly-equal importance of personality/obligation etc. Politics/obligations are probably too setting-specific to generalize into a system easily. But personality should be manageable. That's pretty much what I'd like to aim for. I'm now revisiting Hero Wars (which I assume isn't too different from HQ in this), with the intention of mining it for personality/relationship stuff. Having looked at similar bits from Pendragon recently, I'm now thinking they're a bit restrictive and, frankly, dull. But maybe HW/HQ is a bit too wide-ranging? And does it lack "crunch" (i.e. proper rules), or am I just not understanding it enough yet? Anyway, the FATE system has been mentioned in another thread as combining RQ & HQ well, so I guess I'd better check that out too... Very sad. It'd be good to get a consensus on what skill-levels constitute "High", "Hero" and "Superhero", just for consistency's sake. (BTW, the roasting elf's suffering was obviously needless - elf can always be eaten raw.)

Quite. It'd be up to the player to decide when to spend the point(s). However I'm intending to only allow it for 'luckily' escaping death, not just improving any old rolls* - and that is a GM decision. (*The Death Star shot could be argued, though - given they'd die if he didn't make it. But maybe Leia's roll, not Luke's...?). Just one roll of 'Defence' ability, I think, but xPOW spent on it (decided before rolling). If it comes up, the damage is reduced by 10 (20 for special) (or some other sort of bonus for non-damaging deadly stuff?). A 'lucky escape' would normally be interpreted as riding the blow, involving a 5ft knockback, or possibly the shot hitting that bible/flask they always carry in their breast pocket... But not going back in time and changing things that had already 'happened' (i.e. been rolled). Because, yes, it's all about how it feels. Is that ok? Absolutely.

Yeah, bad news. I just Ctrl-C it before hitting submit (like carrying an umbrella to prevent rain). But would that've helped in this case?

Thanks for the advice, gents. I shall give it a try, allowing Defence rolls at a cost of 1 POW (MP, I mean). Hopefully it'll be balanced between magic-specialists and combat-specialists by the fact that the combat-guys will need it more often, and the magic-guys put themselves more at risk the more they cast... One further thing I'm not sure of - should they be able to do more rolls if the first fails, and so on until POW runs out?

I'm sure characters can be just as heroic with 185% skills as with 500%+, or even 20W11 (whatever that means. 1120%?). That's just the sort of discrepancy we've have to put up with by not having a system to guide us. Until now...? BTW, my Cults of Terror says the Crimson Bat had Fly 500%, Bite 750% - and could swallow anything under SIZ 50 on a normal success (and 90 on a special, i.e., er, normally!). What other official yardsticks are there? Whatever the actual percentages, is it fair to say that Questing at Heroically high levels should be as much about personality, obligations and politics as about combat and the usual adventuring skills?

Uh, oh... ...and they're absolutely right. I got the 'deluxe' boxed set of Hero Wars a few years ago (that same book, plus three others: Glorantha - Introduction to the Hero Wars (background), Narrators's Book - Game Mastering in the Hero Wars, and one of related short stories (quite good). Interesting, but I still haven't figured out how to play it. And it's put me off HeroQuest (the 2nd ed.) big time, too. But not HeroQuesting...

Maybe only half a war doesn't allow time for that to happen...

Oh my god. "This product may contain nuts" the packets said. And, innocently, I ate them... <spits copiously>

It certainly should be interesting - so far so good! Agreed. I also agree that BRP does great for gritty-level adventuring. And now it's at least claiming to handle super-levels too... I'm sure we can help it acheive that aim, even if there are some gaps initially! How do the Divine Intervention/Favour systems from SB work? Could they do the job, or be extended? I see the problem with (lack of) Hit Points. Maybe something like the 'Defence' ability I described over on the Fate Points thread might help. As for super-spells, that's what HeroQuesting could be for. One reason I like soltakss's HQ system (from reading, I've not done any such exalted adventuring) is it makes Heroic acts (like super-Jumping) possible if you have done the relevant Quest - effectively you gain a super-Rune spell for it. This fits seamlessly with the existing Rune magic system - if you assume the normal Rune spells are just ones with easy, well-known Quest-paths and just take an afternoon's role-play and incense-sniffing at the temple (and POW sacrifice) to get. I'm not convinced of a benefit, mathematically, to dividing into 'Mastery levels' and applying 'bumps'. In your example: 150% Jump gives 30% Special, 7% Critical; but 50% Jump +1bump would give 50% Success (bumped to Special), 10% Special (bumped to Critical), 2% Critical (bumped to super-Critical). It just seems to add inaccuracy in translation (and slightly upgrade the results). Why bother? I'd probably allow a critical Jump to cover double height/length anyway. Is the idea for these Mastery/bump things to make a kind of 'plateau' of Heroic activity (then Superheroic, then Godlike...), so that Heroes can basically ignore non-heroes trying to oppose them, and rise above the common herd? PS: Is "BEM" a bowdlerized acronym for "Big Ugly Monster"?

Yeah, I agree! But it's better than not having such Defence at all - that way you 'screw up' every time (at least this way, you have to be doubly unlucky for that bad hit to coincide with the failed defence roll). But I know it's not ideal - that's why I'm asking the massed intellect of the forum to help come up with something better... I see what you mean. I wanted a mechanism that wasn't too reliable, though, i.e. predictable as to when it was going to 'run out' (like the D&D abomination of gross numbers of HPs). Not RQ2-style Defence either - that just races away and becomes daft pretty quickly (and difficult to calculate). Maybe using a POW point per Defence roll (like you suggested before elsewhere - thanks again!) would make it selective, reserving it for use only when significant (a principle I approve of generally). I'm just not sure about the feel of an 'elective' mechanism: would it be too much like "OK, I'm killed - so I'll play my Get-out-of-death-free Card"? Too much like a spell? (Also, I have the problem of not currently using POW. And it'd be more valuable to some characters than others). But I'm coming round to liking the idea more... I'd say the fledgeling heroes are on their own, though - it's the ones who've made the grade to 100% Defence that deserve saving from unexpected ignominous deaths...

Where you see munchkinism (powergaming?) in the super-RuneQuest idea, I see design elegance and scalability. Venturing into the "Otherworld" is a good excuse for simply dividing skills by a factor (5 or whatever), and avoiding scaling problems. We've got a good system already (BRP) - so let's use it. Really? I would have thought the whole other-world idea of HeroQuesting would lend itself pretty well to all sorts of other worlds: Faerie-style, Arthurian, Olympian, Native American (of course - and hence even Western!), Australian, Cthuloid... It looks like the "bumping" idea has crept into new BRP as an option for the way to use Fate Points. (Which I tried a few years ago, but didn't like). Some of the benefits you could get from HeroQuests could be like that. And that'd be a better excuse for getting them. Absolutely. It's crying out for a good HeroQuest system! Let's find one...

So you don't see the problem - because you've already solved it by giving POW-gain rolls for successfully resisting. Pity the rest of us, trailing in your wake... At least now we have all a solution, as the official BRP way gives 'em for that too. I'd recommend fewer, bigger bonuses (say, doubling the skill) rather than fiddly "augments" of +10,+20,+50 or whatever. Straight adds are inconsistent in value between low (say 30%) and high levels (say 120%), and make it harder to calculate new special/critical chances etc. As for HeroQuesting, it's time to use that nice new "New Thread" button...

Three cheers for Creeping Imperialism!

About a Defence/Luck skill used to avoid damage... That's why the version of Defence I'm talking about isn't divided. Just roll it, full-value, against any hit and reduce the damage accordingly. Just the right level of esoteric-ness for me, thanks! I have had to field complaints from players about exactly this point - Hero Points (aka Defence points round my way) are too valuable to submit to the vagaries of increase-rolls. And they were right, too - so now I have to just award them, straight, without the usual mechanic. But, as I give them as rewards for good roleplaying, I think the linearity is fair.

I trust you already got the one I mentioned a while ago (from the images) about Chapter Eleven being called "Creatures" on the contents page, but referred to as "Bestiary" on p16 & p19 (and maybe elsewhere)?

Yes, sheer numbers will be overwhelming at some point. Once a character reaches 100% Defence, though, they can pretty much rely on ignoring most incoming damage. Enough to give them delusions of god-hood? I hope not - players still seem pretty nervous at that level (which I'd say is about equivalent to Rune-Lord). I'm reluctant to give up this system unless it's proved to be broken. Thanks for the suggestions, but: #1 doesn't eliminate chanciness, adds admin and would make POW much more valuable; #2 seems to act after a hit has happened (a fine distinction, I know) but that doesn't feel quite right - and again it adds admin overhead. By all means give 'Fate Points' for critical/specials if you like - but I actually prefer to have a mechanism that rewards RP (and by not 'spending' the points when they are used, you get a tally of how much good RP you've done with that character, which I think is neat). BTW, what are the Book options?