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rodney418

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  1. Having said that, I've been following the development of Tabletop Forge and the way G+ is working already, and I do think that a system based on G+ Hangouts is ultimately the way it's going to go. I take your point about FG being the only publishing platform up to now though, and that's really important. If they can integrate G+, that could give FG a serious boost.
  2. I'd be very happy to join in on that, and could probably get another player or two who are interested. I own the Rome book already (which is tremendous BTW).
  3. That's exactly what I do. The mechanics of the BRP rules are more fleshed out than the CoC book, so I prefer them. I just use the CoC sourcebooks with BRP rules, works great with almost no conversion required at all.
  4. 686 downloads

    These rules extensions were designed to rebalance some small problems in Basic Roleplaying melee combat, particularly for fantasy and historical campaigns. The design criterion were: Make Shield skill more useful and Dodge skill less powerful Make combat more interesting and varied for the players, with minimal increase to complexity Do not replace standard BRP rules but enhance them
  5. After taking into account the previous discussion I've been working and testing some enhanced melee combat rules. Here's what I am currently using. More playtesting and feedback is needed, so your comments are welcome gentlemen. ---------------------------------------- These rules extensions were designed to rebalance some small problems in Basic Roleplaying melee combat, particularly for fantasy and historical campaigns. The design criterion were: Make Shield skill more useful and Dodge skill less powerful Make combat more interesting and varied for the players, with minimal increase to complexity Do not replace standard BRP rules but enhance them These rules additions are modular and each can be added or ignored as required. However all together they should create a more balanced choice of weaponry and play style. In designing these extensions I took into account the three main melee fighter types in fantasy combat: The strong heavy hitter with a large two handed weapon The defensive “tank” fighter with shield and one handed weapon The dual-wielding, light weapon rogue/duelist From that I set up a sort of rock/paper/scissors mechanism: Two-handed weapon users can do massive damage but have limited protection against Riposte attacks; shield users have excellent defence, but must sacrifice attacking skill points to put into Shield skill; and dual wielders can do lots of fast damage to multiple targets but have difficulty carrying large weapons and can have their parrying weapons broken by heavy blows. Each combat style has its uses and disadvantages, and so it allows for a more varied play style and a better mix of abilities in a party. Dodging If a character chooses to Dodge a blow in melee combat his next attack is considered Difficult, since he has unbalanced himself while dodging. [This helps simulate real fighting styles better, and also helps rebalance combat tactics in BRP which currently favour dodging too highly over other forms of defence in high-level melee combat. Now a player has to think carefully if he wants to Dodge or not, since it has repercussions on his offensive ability. It still allows a defensive fighting style if required by the situation, but also allows offensive players to gradually “beat down” an opponent who is trying to dodge all the time.] Parrying heavy weapons Since massive weapons have a great deal of momentum when swung or thrust they are correspondingly more difficult to parry with a standard weapon than when using a shield. If a character tries to use his weapon to parry a blow from a weapon of SIZ 2 or larger he must make a Difficult roll to succeed. Using a shield or dodging instead simply requires a Normal roll to succeed. [This makes Shield skill much more useful against heavy fighters in primitive, medieval, and fantasy combat.] Two weapon fighting Fighting with two one-handed weapons effectively requires a character to have a minimum STR equal to or higher than the total STR requirements of both weapons added together. For example, a Dagger requires a minimum STR of 4, and a Long Sword a minimum STR of 7, so a character would need a minimum STR of 4+7=11 to dual wield these in combat. If a character is armed with two weapons he can attack and parry once with each of them per combat round. Off-hand weapon attacks and parries are considered Difficult, unless the wielder is ambidextrous (i.e. has DEX of 16 or higher). If the wielder is ambidextrous he gets an individual attack and a parry with each weapon per combat round at no penalty to either. The first off-hand attack is at 5 DEX ranks later than the main hand attack. Any further possible attack will come at 5 DEX ranks later than the previous attack - see BGB pp. 233-234. [This allows a more rapid and cinematic style of fighting for dual-wielding characters, while still making it difficult for characters to dual-wield heavier weapons unless they spend a considerable number of attribute points in both STR and DEX during character creation.] Riposte If a character achieves a Special parry result with a shield or off-hand weapon, he has succeeded in turning his opponent's weapon away and created an opening to Riposte. The character is allowed an immediate free Riposte attack with the weapon or shield that didn't parry. If a character achieves a Critical parry result this Riposte attack is Difficult for his opponent to parry or dodge. [This is derived from the Elric! combat rules, and allows defensive characters the chance to still occasionally do some extra damage.] Weapon and shield breakage If a weapon is used for parrying and takes more damage in one blow than it has Hit Points, the weapon is immediately considered broken, and any further damage passes on to the target of the blow. If a shield takes more damage than it has Hit Points its Hit Points are reduced by the amount of the excess damage, and is considered broken if its Hit Points reach zero. Any damage a shield takes past zero passes on to the arm of the bearer. [Also taken from the Elric! rules. Adds more realism, and helps balance out shield use.]
  6. Not if you give them less CON
  7. Yeah, I've been up close to Spanish fighting bulls and they are truly scary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Fighting_Bull On average about the same weight or slightly heavier than the polar bear. If one of those rams into you you're in big trouble.
  8. I'd like to know what's happening with the Pirates monograph, if it's not happening I'd seriously consider doing one myself.
  9. You make good points as always Rosen.
  10. Quoted for truth. My regular gaming group are well above average intelligence (one has a Masters degree, heading towards a Ph. D, and she's certainly far from being a dumb-ass) and they all HATE the 20% Special rule, not because they can't do math, but because they come over to hang out, drink and eat chips, and have fun; and doing math isn't fun (at least for them). Now you may disagree with that, and that's cool if you do. I personally don't find it a problem to calculate 20% of something, but the players don't like it and it's their game as much as mine. Apart from that one thing they love the BRP system because they can look at a character sheet and go "hmm.. I have a 42% chance of doing this, therefore I need to roll 42 or less". Difficult roll or Easy roll is half that or double that, that's relatively intuitive. 10% of that is easy, just drop the last digit. Anything more than that starts to impact the fun of the game to a considerable number of players, and that's the reality of the situation. Because of that I rarely use any other modifiers now, because it slows down the game and makes it less fun for some of the players, who would rather role-play than do math, no matter how simple that math might be. Basically in my games most of the time the player gets a choice of Easy, Normal, or Difficult chance to do something, and that's about it. I'm seriously thinking of adopting the MRQ 10% Critical and getting rid of Specials as well - as Daddystabz says, it's just easier and more intuitive. When I first started running BRP I thought the Special and Critical rules were great, but my players are slowly disabusing of that notion I'm afraid.
  11. The BGB weapon tables say "SIZ/Enc" so take your pick :-) You're right. It shoudl be Difficult, not impossible. Not sure if I'd bother making the distinction for thrusting weapons, I'd still say it's harder to parry someone thrusting a spear at you than someone attacking with a dagger. So on balance I think making that distinction adds another layer of complexity without any real game benefit. I took the ambidexerity rules directly from the BGB Two Weapon fighting section, and I think it's fair enough. Putting 16 points into DEX does mean less for other attributes, so I think it works, and we have a draw a line somewhere. The weapon SIZ limitation helps rebalance it, since you'll either be using two small weapons (such as dual daggers) and not doing too much damage, or using something like sword & dagger which means you have to put points in both those skills, and hence have a lower chance to hit with each one. And against an armored foe two smallish weapons still don't do anything like the damage a large two handed weapon will do. Admittedly as it stands I can see that the current weapon tables do leave a couple of openings for that to be abused - using a Battle Axe plus Hand Axe is a bit over-powered. One way around it might be to add the minimum STR requirement for each weapon together, so a character would need a lot of STR as well as DEX in order to wield larger weapons e.g. two Daggers would be easy to wield (4+4 = minimum STR 8), but Battle Axe plus Hand Axe would require 9+7= minimum STR 16, considerably higher than the human average. For a character to have both STR & DEX at 16 entails keeping other attributes relatively low, so he'd have to think carefully about CON and not have a lot of much else. This would allow the classic fantasy dual wielding archetype without having everyone automatically doing it. Understood, but that's hard to emulate in an RPG without getting into so much detail that the game gets bogged down. Hence the D&D construct in the first place I assume. On the other hand it's a mechanism that most players are familiar with, and it helps preserve game balance. I am happy with Riposte on a Special, but I'd still go for Critical Parry giving a Riposte that's Difficult for the opponent to parry or dodge because I think it gives combat a touch of extra spice. Even at 100% skill in the off-hand it's only going to happen once every 20 parries, so I don't think it unbalances things. And it helps in breaking the deadlock of "you hit, I dodge; I hit, you dodge" that often occurs in high-level fantasy combat in the rules as they currently stand. I really appreciate your feedback Rosen, and everyone else who's chimed in on this thread, it's been very enlightening and useful. Back to playtesting now...
  12. After a lot of thinking about the various suggestions and criticisms in this thread, here are the modified rules that I'm currently using, which seem to be both relatively realistic and playable without having to change the standard BRP ruleset too much. I thought I'd post them in case other people might find them useful as an optional addition to their own games. --------- Melee weapons of SIZ 2 or larger cannot be parried by another weapon (their mass means they have too much momentum when swung to be stopped successfully), but can be blocked by a shield or dodged. This makes a shield much more useful in primitive, medieval, and fantasy combat than it currently is. If a character is armed with two weapons, and the off-hand weapon is smaller than SIZ 1, he can attack and parry once with each of them per combat round. Off-hand weapon attacks and parries are considered Difficult, unless the wielder is ambidextrous (i.e. has DEX of 16 or higher). If the wielder is ambidextrous he gets an individual attack and a parry with each weapon per combat round at no penalty to either, though the off-hand attack is at 5 DEX ranks later than the main hand attack - see BGB pp. 233-234. This allows dextrous duelists to use the rapier & main gauche combat style effectively, though they will still be dependent on dodging to defend against large heavy two-handed weapons, which seems realistic enough. If a character is wielding two weapons each of SIZ 1 or larger, all his attacks and parries are Difficult, it's just too hard to balance the weapons efficiently. If a character achieves a Critical parry result with a shield or off-hand weapon, he has succeeded in turning his opponent's weapon away and created an opening to riposte. The character is allowed an immediate free riposte attack with his main hand weapon which is Difficult for his opponent to parry or dodge. This helps simulate real fighting styles better, and also helps rebalance combat tactics in BRP which currently favour dodging too highly over other forms of defence.
  13. That's interesting. Then as an optional rule you could just add that only one handed weapons (and staves?) can be successfully parried with another weapon, and that two handed weapons can only be blocked by a shield? Would that make sense as a simple, fast solution that remains relatively realistic?
  14. That's why I said "except when the PC is ambidextrous" i.e. has a DEX of 16+. That way a player can make a duelist style light fighter but only if their stats allow it. Otherwise they need to be using a shield (which means putting skill points into it) or parry with their main weapon. I think that allows for relatively balanced gameplay without any alternative being overwhelmingly good or bad.
  15. Was just thinking the same thing. Lets try this: if the PC gets a parry with a shield or off-hand weapon that's one step higher than the attack (e.g. Special parry vs normal attack) that allows the PC a free riposte that can't be parried by the attacker's primary weapon, but can be parried if the attacker has a shield or off-hand weapon. And if it's a Critical shield parry vs. a normal attack then the riposte can't be parried or dodged at all. That still makes shield use quite powerful without unbalancing the game I think. Also parries with shield should be at normal shield skill whereas parries with an off-hand weapon (main gauche instead of shield for example) should always be at -30% unless the wielder is ambidextrous, which in BRP means the PC must have DEX of 16 or higher I believe. That allows for a dexterity based duellist style (such as rogue with twin daggers) as well as a heavy STR long sword & shield combo. I think I will test this solution out, it is a relatively simple extension to the rules as they stand and should make heroic fantasy combat a little more interesting and balanced.
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