Kloster

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Yes, but if you aren't already encumbered rather heavily, that can take rather more than the length of time I'm talking about.

The average on CON+STR is 21. A character with 25 FP is above average.

With a SIZ of 13 (the average) he has 7 to 10 ENC taken by Armor, around 10 by weapons and shield. He is thus starting fight with around 5 FP and can go down to -25.

Without taking rest, this character can last 30 MR.

But that character has almost NO equipment. He has nothing besides armor, weapons and shield. If this character has only the basics for non combat equipment (1 or 2 liter of water, 1 day food, a rope, some torches,...), this is far below. And this is not grossly overencumbered.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

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Small healing spells are quick enough few melee attacks can land before they're off. You just don't try and to the big ones (at least on yourself) while in melee.

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Even a single melee attack is sufficient to disrupt the spell, and the result is that you're not healed. I'm not saying that it should not be tempted, nor that it never works. I'm just saying that it is easy (very easy in fact) to disrupt and that you can't count on being healed.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

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Its virtually as easy to boost armor magically as it is damage.

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True. Completely true.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Even a couple points can keep you up. If an opponent doesn't have a damage bonus, the average damage from most of the melee weapons is in the 4-6 range; 2 points of armor will often take that down where you can take a hit or two depending on the roll and where they land.

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A few points here:

- to get a Damage Bonus of 1D4, you need a STR+SIZ of at least 25 and the average is 24, so this DB is quite frequent.

- Yes, I agree, you can take a hit or 2, which means around 5/6 MR. After that, you have HP or location problems, which is exactly the durations I gave: less than 10 MR.

- Completely agree: "you can take a hit or two depending on the roll and where they land". Yes, depending.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Sounds like the sort of thing that would really appeal to me...

.....do we have any Spanish speakers on board ?

Probably "The Tweaker" (Location: Near Madrid (Spain))

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

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FPs do provide some tactical options, as well. It is a viable tactic to use wolf pack tactics, switching out attackers to tire someone down.

Like roman legionaires who rotated units to always have 'fresh' units in front line lof combat, contrasting with the earlier phalanxes who were compact, and could not replace the losses.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

The Harnmaster system is RQ derived. I know people who were involved in it's "playtesting". It has diverged somewhat but it's still recognizable.

Not only RQ, but yes, it is recognizable.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Another great proof of the elegance and realism of the RQ/BRP rules.

I dont know many systems which enable combats where the participants have to rest for a few rounds before continuing the combat. Reminds me a little bit to the lengthy sword fight scene between Arnold and Brigitte in Red Sonja.

Yup. And seeing your adversaries ducking to cover to retake their breath is both satisfying (because that means you're in good position) and dangerous (do you press your advantage and take the risk of being yourself out of breath, or do you also try to recover a little).

Fun, realistic, so good.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Unfortunately my spanish is a little bit bad. Is Aquelarre available in englisch? (I dare not to ask in german or french)

Can I buy it somewhere except ebay?

thanx for the info

I personally :innocent: would prefer french, but I could accept english or german.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

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One guy figured out that one of the advantages of Spells like Strength and Vigor in a battle was the extra FP points. Vigor 3 and you were usually convered for the battle.

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Same for us.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

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Most of my long battles in RQ3 were along the lines of skirmishes and sitautions where one side had a defible position and the attackers would start an attack, pick off a couple of guards, then fall back behind cover and rest/regroup.

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Those mostly are the 10 to 20 MR.

And some of them are really several shorter fights, because between the very short engagements, fatigue is recovered and spell are over (at least for spirit).

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Not entirely true. Character could rest and regain some FPs. So, depending on the situation, it could be possible for some characters to stop and rest for a couple of rounds before continuing. If some side had a numerical advantage and the other controlled a "bottleneck" such as a doorway, you could indeed have some very long fights, with different character taking turns guarding a doorway.

This is exactly what I described for our only long fight: People on the verge of collapse, taking breath 1 or 2 MR at a time to regain a few FP and continue fighting.

So yes, it is possible, but I saw that once in 24 years of RQ.

Most of the fight I saw were less than 10 MR.

A few were between 10 and 20 (perhaps 1 in 10).

1 was above 20 MR (and far above, perhaps 50, I don't remember exactly).

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

...

The good news is that Charlie has given me the OK to post preview material, and even offered to provide some stuff. I'm going to get out my wife's digital camera and post a few images of the book, complete with the TEMPORARY cover (which may look familiar to longtime BRP fans).

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Very good. Very nice from both of you. Thanks to all.

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The "bad" news is that today is my wedding anniversary, and I'm booked for the evening, so it'll have to be tomorrow that I get that stuff out. I'll post it on a new thread on this forum.

I hope I will never have to suffer worst news for my part.

Happy Anniversary.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

vBulletin forum threads have their somewhat distinct layout with a horizontal column with the avatar and info about the poster above the post, instead of the traditional left sided vertical column.

vBulletin can also be configured to show threads in the traditional way.

What do you prefer? vBulletin or traditional thread layout?

SGL.

Horizontal description fits better on my screen, so count me on vBulletin standard.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I've never used it in any forum.

I other words, "I don't care".

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Just for my personal info, what did you do with the giant death rune?

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Ricard Ibañez is the person who translated RQIII to Spanish, so no wonder that Aquelarre's rules look a lot like the Basic Role-Playing System! (BTW I love Aquelarre and I highly recommend it for any Fantasy Europe BRPS game)

Do you know if Aquelarre is available outside Spain, and in other languages?

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Well, no wonder then. Other than one specific player who's been chronically poor over his whole life, we pretty much took it as a given that once you played in a game for any length of time you were going to have at least the basic rules.

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I can remember a player who never manage to grasp the rules for casting a spirit magic spell, even after 2 years of play. As a player, I had to help the GM and relieve him of managing some of the players.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I still think in groups where it _was_ relevant, it probably just got forgotten a lot of the time (and I'm really suprised by how fast some people's combats went; at the low end, people could spend a lot of time just flailing around locally (after all, when you only have 30%, you're only going to hit one round in three; and even if they don't parry, if anyone's got any armor at all its not that likely a single hit will put them down), and at the higher end there was usually enough healing and protective magic to cause things to take a little while. I rarely saw an RQ fight of any account over in less than 10-15 rounds, and some went noticeably longer.

Most of ours were VERY short because:

- of low armor at the beginning.

- of high damage at higher levels

even with healing magic. It is so easy to disrupt somebody that tries to heal himself while engaged that it is almost impossible. The big healing starts after the fight.

And for long duration, don't forget that, according to the rules, your character collapse when he reaches negative (STR+CON). It is impossible to have very long fights.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

You've certainly had a different experience than mine. My players generally have been very efficient and very clever with magic use. I have to guide them through things the first few sessions but they have generally run with it after that.

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Except for 1 player (in around 20 years), same for us. Some tactics were very tortuous and required coordinations between several characters.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I think mostly becuase it is very, very easy. I'd say easier than most other fatigue systems. Probably not that useful, but easy.

IMO, fatigue isn't as big a deal as (over)encumberance.

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That's also what we thought, and that's why we used the default rule:

easy to use.

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It's a solid method. A few games use fatigue levels, and that works out okay, too. Doing something strenuous requires a test, and the more strenuous the more difficult or often the test.

I also liked the way the James Bond RPG handled it. You got so many minutes of activity, based on stats, and then you were exhausted and suppered a penalty (about 1/2) to rolls. In extreme cases (like in the outback on a hit day) exterion counted at a faster than normal rate.

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It also works.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I will put bets this just means in practice it gets missed fairly often.

No, it just means that most of combat didn't last a long enough duration to reach negative points, or if they do by 1 or 2, there was no roll on which that change anything.

My last character had about 5 FP free before combat start. Most fights were less than 10 MR, which means I finished at -5%. If no roll is above my skill minus 5%, there is no change.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

That would be nice, but for me it would go something like this: "Have you remembered to tick your fatigue tally? Please tick the tally! Remember to tick the fatigue tally every round. TICK THAT BOX YOU MORONS!!!"

And I'd get responses like, "Yeah, yeah, [tick!]", "I keep track in my head..." and "But it doesn't matter anyway".

I want a better system. Ticking every single round takes time.

SGL.

We didn't had this problem but I understand your point.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

We had a Zorak Zoran with a riding prey mantis for a while. We left it with the horses outside while we investigated a cave and were down there longer than expected. When we finally came out we found the mantis got hungry and ate the sorcerer's horse. The sorcerer was upset, but Mr. Zorak Zoran just laughed at him.

Every night after that the sorcerer would cast a high powered Palsy on the Mantis when it was his turn at watch. Eventually he hit the head and incapacitated it. A little work with a Damage Boosted sword and the mantis ceased to be a threat to future horses.

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I like this one.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

The problem for most people was that once you hit the penalty part, constantly having to subtract varying values got tedious. Yes, its a part of the system, but there are plenty of times when you could normally just look at a skill as listed and use it as-is. Having to do the math, even if it isn't hard math, round after round could get old.

No. As some others have explained for their case, most of the time you just tick your fatigue tally. You have to check only if the roll is close to your real skill value AND the combat has already had quite a long duration.

Except for the occasional miss by 1 or 2 percent, the only real influence I can remember is a memorable (for me) fight where most of the participants were nearing exhaustion (negative FP equaling starting value), and were taking breath to regain 1 or 2 FP , just to be able to strike without passing out.

This fight was one of the most tactical and interesting I ever had, because we all had to outthink our adversaries, to use all our capabilities, to exploit the terrain, just to avoid losing our lives.

I liked.

Runequestement votre