Barak Shathur

Yes, a highly skilled polearm or great weapon fighter can get around the disadvantages, especially since he/she has a lot of experience fighting weapon and shield opponents, while the reverse is not true. Kind of like a left handed fighter. I've found that they are often able to figure out some trick that works well against people who haven't fought against them a lot, but eventually, once you've seen it enough times (and it enters the general knowledge of SCA fighters) it becomes less effective. I've seen a Crown tournament where a pole arm guy had a trick no one there had encountered before, and no one had time to figure out how to counter it during the brief time of the tournament, so it carried him all the way to the throne. But it was a one trick pony, and it wouldn't work forever. Against newbies however, it's a killer. This kind of effect is reflected well in the rules, where a highly skilled fighter gets specials more often, and it works especially well since the system is slanted toward the attacker since it forces the defender to score a special parry or dodge to counter fully. That's how RQ3 works too. It seems to me that it makes twohanded weapons a no-brainer choice, if as stated above you'll simply do more damage but have the same defensive ability as a weapon and shield fighter. I think I will limit all weapons to either attacking or defending during a round, but allowing dodging, since that is penalised when wearing armour. In addition to reflecting reality, it creates balance since a twohanded fighter then has worse defensive ability when attacking than a weapon and shield fighter, whose shield parry is unaffected by encumbrance.

I'm a scadian fighter too :). Or was, I have maybe around 10 years' experience spread out in intervals since 1988, but now I'm largely retired (I think the pandemic was the killing blow, but you never know...). My experience with greatswords and halberds was that when fighting against such an opponent, with me using sword and shield, they would often get the first attack in due to greater weapon length, which I however was usually able to quite easily parry with my shield. Once I started pressing the attack, they would largely have to be on the defensive, getting in maybe a third or a quarter of the amount of shots that I did. This was because once they've attacked and I've blocked, it's fairly easy for me to strike them before they have time to recover their weapon fast enough to parry, so in order to survive they had to either just focus on parrying until I missed, overextended, left an opening or something like that, or try to maneuver away from and around me in order to stay out of my weapon's reach and strike from that distance, which is hard to do when you're in heavy armour. Thus it was very rare for me to lose to such a fighter, and you also almost never saw great weapons or polearms in our duel style tournaments. They are just at too great a disadvantage against sword and shield. In real life, however, several things would be different. We use rattan weapons in the SCA. With a steel greatsword or greataxe, you might break the shield and change the dynamic entirely. Also in mass combat, they are very effective since they can use other fighters as cover. But my question was not one of realism, it was regarding rule interpretation. What does the BGB say? By the way, I hate their parrying rule, which says all the damage in an attack is deflected by any successful parry. And with most weapons and shields having 15-20 HP they're almost impossible to break, even with a greatsword with its 2d8 damage. For this reason I use RQ3 for weapon stats, where a shield has 8-16 AP and deflects that many points of damage, so a great weapon has a good chance of getting some damage through and even breaking it. But I've griped about this in another thread. But regarding BGB. Can you both attack and parry with a given weapon in the same round?

I need some help interpreting the rules for 2H weapons. Are you able to attack and parry in the same round with a twohander? In RQ3 you can. It's not clear to me how it works in BGB. Under "Parrying", it says "A character armed with a parrying weapon or shield can block the damage from an attack". Should "parrying weapon" be interpreted as "any weapon that can be used to parry with", or a specialty weapon such as a main gauche? If the former, does this mean that you can in effect parry with any weapon you have also used to attack with in the same round? If this is the case, a twohanded weapon is much superior to a onehanded weapon with shield combination, since you'll do much more damage with the twohander but still be able to deflect attacks completely as per the parrying rules (only benefit to a shield being the ability to parry missiles). The same thing goes with combining Dodge with an attack. Can you attack (with any weapon) and also dodge freely? Again, using a twohanded weapon seems to carry only benefits and no drawbacks here. Or am I missing something?

I'm a (more or less) retired SCAdian (started in 1989 and went off and on for the next 25+ years), and in recent years I've tried out HEMA a bit. I wasn't aware of the HEMA connection to Mythras, that's a fun fact. Thanks. For a player like me, who loves history and has done a fair amount of so called "experimental archeology" through my SCA activities, historical accuracy is part of the fun! Now I'm going to give Harnmaster a try. I like their tactical advantage function, it adds the quality of pressing an advantage, but available to everyone, not just certain characters all the time.

My brother from another mother!

Thanks, I'll take a look! One thought I toyed with is to only allow one attack per round regardless of action points, while any extra action points can be used to parry against several opponents, or possibly do other non offensive things as well. How do you think that might work? Should extra parries be penalised in this case, in your opinion?

Completely agree. Another solution would be to have the shield have AP (how much damage they block) and HP (how much damage they can sustain). In that case, both are lowered by 1 point (to follow RQ3 rule) each time the AP are overcome. You can then have a wooden shield with 12 AP, but only 8 HP, for example. Which system are you talking about in this case? In RQ3, the shield APs seem about right to me. In BGB, both shield and weapon AP are way too high, but then again, like I said in the OP they ruined the parrying system by making a parry deflect all damage. No difference between parrying a dagger or a greataxe. The problem with reducing APs for weapons and shields is that adventurers wind up with deteriorating equipment while their NPC opponents always have just gotten their off the shelf, which seems a bit unfair. I really like the shield breakage system from the Swedish BRP game Drakar och Demoner Expert (I'm Swedish), where every point of damage that exceeds a shield's AP gives 1 on a d20 to break it. So exceed it by 5, it breaks if you roll 5 or under on a d20. Simple and brilliant.

If it's in the errata, I view it as official. However, not everything in the errata constitutes an improvement. For example, the armour overlap rule in the errata generates a terriffic exploit in that it lets you get away with just doubling the weight of the lesser armour instead of tripling it. Now you can layer bezainted under ringmail and get better and cheaper protection than plate. Also, why should the outer layer have to be heavier? Can't you put a cuirboilli vambrace over mail for example? This was one of the big weaknesses of RQ3 in my opinion, and I always houserule it (I've been using the BGB specials instead). In BGB it is at least somewhat balanced IMO. A slashing special only has to get through armour to create serious bleeding issues, and the crush special can break stuff and stun. And remember, in both versions the impaling weapon is likely to get stuck, so if you have any opponents left after impaling someone you might be in trouble. This is exactly what happened in my current RQ3/BGB campaign, where the long spear guy heroically impaled the orc leader but got his spear stuck, and failing to yank it out (and lacking a good backup weapon) was eventually cut down by the other orcs. I've tried out some battle scenarios on my own and the action points give me a headache, so it's more than a 'feeling'. But if I can do away with them, as in Imperative, I might try it out if I get a chance. Right now I'm stuck with my RQ3/BGB iteration.

The point I was trying to make is that they innovated a little too well, what I want is more like a tweaked RQ3 or BRP. Some of the changes in Mythras break the game for me (as far as I can tell from just reading the rules). But I'll give Imperative another look, thanks for the tip.

I've looked at Legend and Mythras, and there's a lot to like. For example, they fixed damage bonus progression which is great. I think I like the no total HP solution. But Action Points sound like a total nightmare for me as GM. So now each round contains up to three sub-rounds, though some NPCs will use up their actions quicker than others, and I have to keep track of all that? Also, a special effect with every hit? That makes the special effects seem less special somehow, IMO. I could play it if I houseruled it a lot, but then I'm houseruling again and might as well play a different game. Oh and with regards to action points, it just seems incredibly unbalancing to have a bunch of characters with extra attacks right out of the box. That should be reserved for bosses, and PCs at a really advanced stage.

In RQ3, blunt weapons halve the AP of flexible armour (like chainmail), so they can be quite effective. In BGB, the battle axe beats the blunt weapons (and probably all the other one handed weapons too) with its higher damage, so blunt weapons are kind of superflous.

This made me think of the unpublished so called "RuneQuest 4" from 1993, that I found as a pdf somewhere. Looking at it, it seems to really have a lot going for it. Instead of a damage bonus die, it starts with a simple +1 and increases by one for each step. The weapons do simple d6s and d8s without adds. You fall unconscious at 0 HP and die at negative total positive HP. Also, hit locations have three levels of injury, where it takes 3x HP to sever or maim a limb. Other nifty things include more tactical options like the ability to substitute a parry for an extra attack. Has anyone tried this version?

Interesting point (no pun intended). Is this why they lowered or removed the adds in later versions?

In theory, but it is my experience that it is rare for a character who is going to do any kind of melee fighting to wind up with a DEX lower than 9. The point would be that BGB as I understand it is supposed to be "the best of all worlds", for you as a player to pick and choose what suits you. In this instance, it doesn't seem to me that they chose the best option available and it surprises me, since they took other RQ3 stuff like eg. fatigue points and strike ranks, which are perhaps not the best or most versatile aspects of that game IMO (although fine as supplements to BGB in themselves). This is especially true since RQ3 is long out of print and hard to get a hold of. This is what I do. I use RQ3, and import stuff like multiple parries, varied special effects for crushing and slashing weapons, the attack/defence matrix, and such that I think are improvements. It would be nice though to have it all in one place, instead of having to flip between publications. Is there any likelihood of an updated version of BGB? It's been a few years.

I guess I'm trying to provoke a debate about what could be better in BRP. It has so much that's great, I really want to love it. But I'll quote what an art teacher once said to me, "it's so good it's strange it's not better". I am frustrated that when the designers had such a wide variety of systems to choose their ingredients from, it seems they in some cases didn't choose the best options, and I don't understand why. I feel that the things I'm pointing to in this thread aren't more cumbersome or incongrous with the system, on the contrary they fit better into the general balancing act that I feel lies at the core of BRP. The BRP system (not talking about BGB now) really is my favourite, it hits the sweet spot of simulationism and playability for me.

Just the higher minimum, really, that makes it more devastating against lighter armour, which seems to simulate the effect of a slicing weapon rather well, compared to a more chopping broadsword. But the variety is the main point.

One of my gripes with BRP is that I think they really botched the weapon system for historical melee weapons and shields (I haven't looked at the other categories). RQ3:s weapons, which are so similar, seem much more balanced and thought through. For exemple: Broadsword In BRP there is just no reason other than fluff to choose a broadsword over a battle axe. They have the same base chance, special effect, price and strike rank, but the sword does less damage and weighs more. The sword only requires a 7 DEX instead of a 9, but when will that ever make a difference? And it has 20 HP compared to the axe's 15, but since a) a parry deflects all damage (I'll get to that later) and b) if you want to damage a parrying weapon in BRP, you need to exceed its HP, and how often do you exceed even 15 points of damage? So the difference in HP is essentially meaningless. In RQ3, a sword can impale, which makes up for it doing less base damage, and makes it a good choice. Scimitar The scimitar in BRP is almost identical to the broadsword, boring! The scimitar in RQ3 does 1d6+2 damage compared to the broadsword's 1d8+1, so it is slightly less useful against heavier armour but (IMO) more devastating on an impale with its 2d6+4 (higher minimum damage) compared to 2d8+2 for the broadsword. Crushing weapons In BRP, crushing weapons do less damage than edged weapons. They have a higher base chance, but you can raise your starting skill with any weapon to 75% anyway, and a 10% savings in skill points isn't a significant benefit. Why would anyone choose a mace or a warhammer over a battle axe, except for fluff? In RQ3, crushing weapons halve the AP for flexible armours. Against chainmail, for example, it makes a huge difference and makes a crushing weapon totally worth it. And warhammers also have the option to impale, which makes it a really good choice against heavily armoured opponents despite a somewhat low base damage. These are just some examples. And then there's the parrying. In BRP, a parry deflects all damage. Doesn't matter if it's a short sword or a battle axe being parried by a hoplite shield or a dagger. So what happens if you're parrying the huge club of a troll? BRP suggests simply not allowing parries against someone twice your size. Bleh. The only exception to the invulnerability of parrying weapons seems to be when you directly attack a parrying weapon with a crushing weapon and score a special success, then you have a somewhat greater chance to break it. But that would be an extremely inefficient way to fight. In RQ3, the attacking weapon rolls damage against the parrying implement, and anything over carries into the defender. Since weapons' and shields' HP is about half that in BRP, one handed weapons usually bounce but great weapons, or attacks with a lot of damage bonus, have a decent chance of something getting through. I just wish they'd made BRP more like RQ3...

I'm highly simulationist, but even so, I wouldn't have someone roll for mundane everyday tasks. It's more that even during stressful situations, someone with a relatively higher skill would have a higher floor than a less skilled practicioner, barring fumble. It has three levels of success but only two for failure, complete failure and utter disaster, so in that sense it is kind of binary. What I'm looking for is a "partial failure" function. This is exactly what I'm talking about. My system would function just like this. With Research 60%, that would mean 60% chance of getting 100% of the information available, while a normal failure would net 60% of it. As some in this thread have mentioned, a "special failure" might add some attenuation to the scale. I would say if you roll above the highest 1/5 of the chance to fail (with a skill of 50% this would mean a roll of 90+) it's a total failure, while anything between your skill rating and that number would mean partial failure as per the above. Now, having to calculate the special failure range for each skill is just another computing headache, so a simpler solution would be to lift it straight from the brilliant Harnmaster and have any roll that ends on a 5 or a 0 being a special roll.

It is sometimes remarked that the binary pass/fail dynamic of BRP skills can be problematic. In some circumstances a more graduted scale of success/failure might be desirable. One case may be when some skill needs to be passed in order to move an adventure forward. If the skill check fails, you're stuck and the GM needs to Deus ex Machina or fudge it. Or when you have a knowledge skill, e.g.when researching something in a library, or performing music or something like that. Having only pass/fail as options is a pretty blunt instrument for measuring these kinds of activities. For example, a chemist with 60% in chemistry would be a pretty incompetent, not to say hazardous, scientist if he/she failed utterly 40% of the time in the lab. One alternative way of using skills in these circumstances could be to view the skill rating both as the chance of total success, as per the rules, but also the minimum level of success in case of failure (barring fumble). So the scientist rolls over 60%, does not achieve the goal but maybe 60% of it, rather than failing utterly. In some situations, the character might even be allowed to roll again until succeding or fumbling, perhaps even adding up the successive "minimum levels of success" until reaching 100% (so the 60% chemist might succeed with two failed rolls, since 60% + 60% exceeds 100%, a bit like in MERP). This is of course not suitable for all skills or situations, maybe mostly for certain knowledge and communication skills. Thoughts?

I don't know, it certainly hasn't happened that way in my games (and my players recently held off a mob of 40 orcs!). Again, NPC grunts have lower skill values so will special less often. And the PCs will special on their parries sometimes, more often than the NPCs. Totally agree, which is why I use the Fate Point rule from BGB. But the stance of the attacker is not that relevant to the discussion. Empirically, as gleaned from a semester or two of karate, a kick tends to move you, much more so than a punch. A punch could do it, but much more seldom. And especially with regard to combat with weapons, the stability of the attacker is not that important once the weapon has started moving. The mass of the weapon makes a huge difference. No. The great weapon continues further into whatever it hits, because of its higher inertia compared to a lighter weapon. Your woodsman's axe will cleave that log more easily than your hand axe, no matter how big and strong you are. The greatsword will cut deeper into your opponent than the broadsword, it has much higher mass and it just stands to reason it has higher impact. This force is also what generates the chance of knocking someone off balance. I'll use my empirical experience as an SCA fighter as an example. It's not an exact equivalence to actual combat, but it has relevance. It's full contact and we use weapons that approximate the weight of real medieval weapons. I'm a pretty small guy, but even those 250 lbs monsters couldn't move me with a one handed weapon. Not a chance. And they can hit hard! Now with a pole arm it's a completely different story. Even a small fighter armed with one might move me a step or two if they connect, say while I'm closing with them. There's just no comparison. And Steve Perrin is a SCAdian, so go figure. As the thread title implies, we're discussing RQ3 and BRP, and neither of these games have that rule stated anywhere. So I can't speak to this. For me, the BRP rules work well. The higher damage from impales is balanced by the fact that your weapon will likely get stuck and thus lost. Basically, we're a bunch of nerds arguing about something we've never experienced. A condottieri would laugh until he choked on his grappa. Enjoy RuneQuest the way you prefer to play it, I certainly will.

It's exactly the other way round. Since most hits are going to be parried, this rule allows a few more in, reducing the endless ping pong. Since players tend to have higher skill and better armour, it favours them slightly. And no, I don't use random armour (anathema!) No. A really hard punch is not likely to knock someone over, while a half decent kick might. It's not speed, it's momentum that matters with this issue. A one handed weapon might hit really hard and break something, but then it stops. A great weapon hits and then keeps going, and has a much greater chance to move your center of balance. Not in BRP they don't. Both roll damage as normal, but edged weapons cause bleeding if they get through armour, while crushing weapons increase the damage bonus one die step. I meant that figuratively. If you have a weapon that has a realistic chance of exceeding the shield's AP, it might be worth it. But most onehanded will rarely exceed the 12 AP of a target shield, not to mention the 16 of a kite. Against a parrying weapon it's more feasible, sure. Magic could make a difference, sure, but your example is a bit extreme.

Matter of taste I guess. I prefer fights ending sooner by someone actually getting hit. Even a big guy with a mace is going to have an extremely hard time knocking an 80 kg person (SIZ 13 I believe) over. There’s just not enough mass in the mace to create the momentum needed. A two handed weapon on the other hand is probably at least 3-4 times heavier and has more of the follow through to get the job done . How so? It will still bounce off the shield. I guess that could be useful if you have a big enough weapon, e.g. a great axe, to make a dent in the shield.

I’d be curious to see this. I use ”Basic Bestiary” for elves, dwarves, hobbits and orcs, and the BRP MERP ”Free peoples” for humans and ”Creatures” for the rest pretty much. Sorry, I might not have been clear enough. I do drop the MERP lists, but check what actual spells would have been available to a particular character and try to find equivalents in the BRP MERP Magic supplement.

No, that’s not how it works. A normal parry reduces a special hit to a normal hit that however bypasses the shield, striking the defendant. Which is as it should be. It’s not easy to knock someone over with a one handed weapon. With a great weapon though it’s a different matter. Impaling weapons yes, maybe. Blunt and edged weapons not so much. What does this mean? Why would you attack someone’s shield?