Lloyd Dupont

I finished my RD100 campaign a while ago.. and this year I am a player.. though I am also working on a scifi settings.. and also keep thinking about some Magic spells that made me unhappy in all variation of BRP / Mythras / RD100....

I was firmly set on BRP this time, and I kind if solved the magic issue eventually, and I was also tailoring combat rules... when I got a RD100 moment... First I remembered how it has the quickest simplest character creation rules (once you understand them ) yet it also feel so much more meaningful! 😮 As in this stunt thing enable to smoothly put in all sort of "special powers" in a way no other D100 do quite as elegantly...

And then I thought of all the things I would "customise" if I went back to RD100 instead of BRP for my current setting in progress...
And I thought I could share here for discussion!
Please remember we are just talking about a game here... I might changes thing significantly... in a way that satisfy me more... If you don't like it, skip the rule. if you think it's interesting or badly worded, please pitch in with some feedback!  
Plus I thought I haven't posted here in a while, and Paolo is quite a nice guy, so would be nice to have a discussion going, perhaps?!  

- first... an advice (to self? to other?) be misery with XP! With RD100 you are good at your job straight away. Better score is not really needed and will really make character overpowered (as in: always succeed at so many things). I think RD100 is better for "one shots" (or "few shots")

- the magic problem. it's common in all D100 here IMHO... I would, and I feel I might be in the minority here, but I like it better that way so I'll GM that way, need 2 might for +1 with protection and damage boost. And elemental blast will do up to nD6 with a might 1 +(n-1)*3 (or something like that)(i.e. 1: 1D6, 4: 2D6, 7:3D6, ...).
I will also give a cost to spell: 5 exertion point, that can be reduced by spending levels (that cannot be used for might then!) (i.e lower intensity spell are easier)
And turn into a fireball might cast 2 might....
And Paolo once asked, "what about Dragon", well first one need to be good, and also armor doesn't protect much (only toughness) and then maybe get one of those newfangled +2D6 magic wand!

- save for spell / overcome: I might have done it wrong but the mental conflict in parallel.. gaaaah... I would just use good old BRP resistance roll willpower vs willpower. and give them both a bonus to their pow, defender: willpower/10% and attacker: spell/10%
(I also don't quite do the resistance table, but this is mathematically equivalent, I do Defender+D20 >= Attacker+11)

- magic and kilometres range.. make it an optional rule, which I won't use...

- would create a skill per "magic school" (some arbitrary grouping of some spell) (and for the scifi setting a science skill per science branch, where each tech is a speciality, I have like 100+ of them...). so for magic, more skill let the player learn more spells but not be good at all of them

- combat (my most controversial preference, I know!) I would definitely simplify it... toward more BRP like with a dash of effect, i.e. a very small select group of general combat effect and a longer list of damage type specific (i.e. weapon specific) and just use critical and normal instead of opposed rolls (I dunno if it's just me... but I am not big on opposed roll mechanic, even if mathematically sound, plus there is almost always a winner and few stalemate, I prefer more stalemate) (and also got rid of armor cover and use melee crit effect to bypass) and use BRP table as a guideline...
Some other minor tweak on engagement range, movement, etc.. not really worth mentioning...

-- oh yeah, most controversial, I might go only 1 attack per round, like BRP! (multiple attack might requires a stunt for each additional attack, i.e. better training)

- for HP... I guess this is one of those optional rule which has been use with great variation... I might go general HP = CON, and if a single strike does toughness x2 roll the location and see what's going on.
And also any damage below toughness will go as exertion point penalty.. it doesn't kill you, fine, but at least it will wear you down...

- one pitfall I had... one need to carefully study the armor, spell, weapon damage, toughness combination... it can easily go out of hand towards invulnerable or over squishy... (I had this problem  )

And now I wonder... should I go RD100?! 😮
Since I would keep weapon damage and effect the same as in my modified BRP, I only need to tweak Racial template (which are also quite easy in RD100).. mmmm....
Will see when I finish the spaceship device list!

Well, why not, I am sharing my work in progress magic revamp document. It might give you some ideas!

I got 70 more spells planned, some of them real cool enchantment or necromantic spells.. but hey, you'll get the idea!
And it might take a while, working more actively on my Master of Orion Scifi setting booklet!

BRP-Magic2.pdf BRP-Magic2.docx

indeed!
A slow death though.. one you can advert by just pressing your hand on the wound.. (if you were not fighting)...

Also.. impale (in the BGB rule) do double damage! Cutting need some love!

Plenty of good ideas in there, thanks yall!

After consideration, I just did the following changes:

- 1 luck immediately roll to bleed or not (it's easier to apply bleed with my custom combat rules, so adding this luck roll to see whether it's a bad cut or not)
- 1 endurance roll every 5 minutes / turns to check whether the bleed stops or not

Excerpt from the BGB

"At the end of each round, the target may attempt a Stamina roll to determine if the bleeding stops. If successful, the wound has closed and the target will not suffer any more bleeding damage. If unsuccessful, the bleeding will continue the moment the target’s hand and the pressure is removed from the injury.
The easiest way to stop bleeding damage is to make a successful First Aid check on the injury."

Mmm.. for a healthy adventurer with, say, CON 15, they have 75% of stopping the bleeding.. seems  Stamina roll is the easiest way to stop the bleeding, not aid roll!
Also, compared to damage x2 in the base rule for impale, seems lacklustre.

Did I misunderstood the rule somehow...
I am tempted to allow only 1 Stamina roll, if failed first aid become mandatory....

So... what replace the resistance table?

I haven't done chases yet (not in CoC but in other games) but I will need to for my upcoming scifi campaign... but I was not appealed with the rule in the book... 😕 

5 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Which leads us to the infamous Hivers from Traveller

Is that them over there?
https://kenshi.fandom.com/wiki/Hive

On 10/21/2020 at 10:04 AM, GothmogIV said:

I have been working with the idea that each MP expended is a point of effect, like you cast a fireball--it costs 1MP to initiate, then each MP spent is a point of damage and increased radius. So a wizard with 18 MP could blast off a fireball that does 17 HP of damage in the area of effect. Same with sleep: 1 MP to cast, 17 MP of sleepy-sleepy to go around, beginning with the wizard's target, or an area of effect. Or something. Magic is hard. 

There is a problem with that.. you need more that 15 MP to kill someone with a fireball, meanwhile you can teleport them, polymorph them, mind control them with 3~4 MP...

Also.. I don't want player to be super powerful just because they chose magician as their starting career.... 😕 

In the end, in my custom in progress magic revamp.... I did a few significant things...

I limited the MP of a spell, not its level, while also reducing the cost of elemental attacks. This make elemental attacks cheaper, yet more limited.

And the limit is not just INT/2, it's also limited by Arcane Knowledge/10%, which add additional XP requirement to become a good wizard.

Also change costing.. it's not N * Level, it's A + N * Level (if the spell even have level!)(for example I have a ball spell, that turn single target spell into area effect, it adds 4MP to the overall cost, limiting what you can do)

7 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I'd strongly suggest factoring in success level (or whatever variation of it you use) into the equation, and going with a  fixed value rather than a die roll. Otherwise parrying becomes too unreliable. It's similar to how the random armor method isn't all that great- a wide linear distribution, with the average damage being about half of the fixed value leads to armor not being much of a factor.

If an average parry can't stop an average attack, then people will look to some other defense. 

don't you worry, with damage reduction value of 8 for a broad sword or 6 for a mace (or even 20 for an energy sword, if it's your thing!), I think we fine!
and I am going, as suggested, to add a parry bonus as a function of damage bonus. Me think along the lines of: D4 => 3, nD6 => n x4 

Fun fact I realised that in the right environment, i.e. outdoor and heart of city, or in a spaceship, a tech level 15+ fighter can "teleport at will" (directing the urban teleport network with his brain implant), and with the efficacy of level 15 energy field, one might see a resurgence of (energy) sword fighting!  
I probably give them a "skill" chance of success each round, due to network congestion.

Anyway, this will be a (bad) surprise for my players, should they chose to attack some Psilon fighter ship, their tech is not there yet! 😛 

Thanks for the history lesson...  

With that insight I think I can give a go to my idea without much worry...

As for damage reduction values: I decided to use the weapon damage as a guideline, minus a little if I deemed the weapon not very good at parrying...

I am writing my custom scifi setting along with my own custom rules, so far so good...

I am currently editing the weapon table and combat section. I did change combat effects a bit as well... but this is not the topic at hand...

I am also thinking to tweak and differentiate parry/evade as follow:
- Evade evade all damage but give you a disadvantage on your next attack and also automatically fail closing distance movement.
- Whereas parry only parry a given amount of damage (depending in the parry device), but has no further special effect.

Now I wonder.. In the old times parry used to work like that I believe, but then the mechanic was changed into parry all damage. I wonder what was the problem that lead to that change?
I suspect that it was just evade being too good by comparison, was it?

Which is no longer the case with my tweaks....

Also... any place I can the parry values that were used before?
Never mind, it's just max weapon damage, save for shield of course...

9 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Read Eye by my fave sci fi dude, Frank Herbert,

Damn you Bill!
You are making me buy my first paper book in a while (can't find ebook)! 😮 

Mmm... after some googling.. those seems to be a major race where they came from, hahah...

While I do not find that race very appealing or believable, I was impressed and pleased by the large amount of alien psychology on puppeteer I could find on Wikipedia! 😮 
Almost to the point of making them an actor in this space fantasy! 😮 

Although.. their Wikipedia history story wouldn't merge very with the multual MoO conflicts.. unless they are outsider, or if it in their early time....

Thanks Bill gotta check that out!

As for the races, while I do plan to add a few "minor race", basically "primitive race" that don't even have spaceships (My first one is well known as mindflyer or illithid!  ) it will be mostly limited to those:

https://masteroforion.gamepedia.com/Races

And in my booklet one can play, for now, Bulrathi, Elerian, Gnolam, Human, Mrrshan, Psilon

As I work on my scifi settings, and as I also am a player in what is a D&D group at the moment (though the current GM is looking forward to me GM again, this time my work in progress Master of Orion based settings) I wonder...

I believe that fights provide an easy and pleasurable moment of excitement in RPG...
However, while I plan to have some space battle and space ship boarding, most of the time fighting will clearly be better avoided... (in fact, one might be better off avoiding space battle too, if they could), because scifi weapon are meant to be quite even deadlier than even modern ones...

Not thinking I am a best GM myself.. I am looking for suggestion about the best scifi scenario to read for inspiration!
Please, suggest some that are also an easy read as well.... It's hard to comprehend what is fun about an adventure when it comes as 192 pages booklet....

and also avoid topic like "ancient mystery" .. or "mysterious alien race".. not really my vibe... (even though, yeah there are some ancient Orion ruins, actually I need to give some thoughts to those... ) 

4 hours ago, weasel fierce said:

Something that will never cease to amaze me is that RPG's will try to numerically quantify almost everything from "Charisma" to "willpower" but things that are actually numerically quantified (like money and weight) we'll try to abstract away

 

There is some rationale to it though... we try to limit ourselves to some small and positive integer numbers!

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I though you were just using for initiative, not for the success chance. If so I suggest just putting skill on a 1-20 scale instead of percentiles, and maybe coverting the whole game to work that way. You get a good deal of flexibility that way. 

Using that for initiative was an idea that only come to me in a thread barely a few hours ago! (and not quite sure about it yet)
My plan was, so far before that, only to use that for modified resistance rolls.  

4 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay. It works.

Glad you see it too now!

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Ah, okay. Basically the AC formula. Although I'd be tempted to let both sides roll and let the higher roll win. I'd even drop initiative and go with that for melee combat too. It really simplifies a lot of stuff. 

Mm... my current idea is just to replace the resistance table. Yeah it does look like AC in D&D but resistance already works like this!
As far as I understood it, only the defender roll on the resistance table... which usually happen after a successful attack skill...

Was not planning to replace normal skills contest, like sword fighting, with it. one big difference is that at equal skill it's always 50% chance of success, whereas with attack and parry both say at 100%, it's a lot of stalemates...

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay, still a bit confused, as there have been multiple ways to handle opposed rolls. . For iFor instance is is DEX 10 vs. DEX 15 on the resistance table (so 25/75%) with 1/10th the skill thrown in i.e so 90% vs 20% would be (10+9) =19 vs (15+2) =17 on the resistance table ), or 25vs 75 with a 7% shift for the difference in skill, or  is it something like an opposed 50%+10th skill vs 75%+1/10% skill roll.

You got that right, so I am not sure what confuses you... although.. some of the thing you typed are confusing too....

let's have 2 examples:
Young Swordsman: DEX 16, Sword: 45%, against old master: DEX 9, Sword: 113%.
If the young swordsman tries to disarm the master (luckily succeed attack and master fail defence) then it's Attacker: 16+4 = 20, Defender 9+13 = 22. i.e. Defender has 60% chance (or 22+D20 >= 31)
(mm.. I wonder if the skill should really be used there as a bonus.. there was already a skill contest to get an attempt)

Powerful Wizard vs Experienced Adventurer
Wizard: POW: 20, not so well know spell: 60%, against Experienced Adventurer: POW: 15, Willpower: 85%
Wizard succeed at spell, Adventurer should save, i.e. roll on the resistance table with Defence 15+8=23 vs Attack: 20+6=26
i.e. defender has 35% to resist (or 23+D20 >= 37)

 

I am doing a Master of Orion ruleset for all tech levels... it's slow going...  But yeah I will definitely share!
I have most on my draft idea.. 
Except no idea yet on drug, drones and vehicles list.... 

For slot I will give them a size each.... (like arm: 3, but little belt thingy: 0.5 each) so I'll keep the enc and half enc values... 
only 1 item per slot of size less than the value...

19 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

That kinda depends on how important you want each factor to be. DEX+d10 makes DEX about twice as important as the random factor, since the average DEX is twice what the average roll in a 1D10. DEX+Skill./10+1d10 puts skill somewhere in the middle, as while it is lower than DEX will be, it is still a constant. But there are a gazllion (technical term) ways to handle it. You might be a bit concerned with ultra high skills though Bladesharp/Sharpen 6 would mean +3 to Initiative, and true sword would double the skill component. But that might not bother you. 

I am still using a single action per round (with the 100%+ split action bonus) and instead of always the highest DEX beng first.. That would enable other people, like less DEX but more skilled to go first.. no biggie, I reckon.. except it involved on the fly Maths,... (some of the player are not that good at additions 😮 )  
So... I might not do it.. due to the "added complexity" And, beside, RPGs do have a strike a balance between realism and simplicity....

22 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I'm curious. IS that straight +/10th increase to the % change or a 1/10% increase to the stat for the resistance table? 

It is a straight increase to the defender (and attacker) stats...

Instead of DEX vs DEX in disarm it's DEX+Sword/10% vs DEX+Sword/10%. So a dexterous young newby is less likely to disarm an old master!
Also it kind of advantage the defender when resisting spell... The defender get the same bonus to its POW when it increase the one skill Willpower, whereas the attacker has to have a good spell skill for each spell... (I know, I use XP, you don't, so that change things a bit for you)

As a side note, since it's totally equivalent but does not requires any lookup, I do not use the resistance table, instead the defender must roll
Defence Score + D20 >= Attack Score + 11

to successful defend.

MM.... I was thinking to use (DEX+D10) for initiative.. But perhaps I should do (DEX + Skill/10% + D10)?
I am already using Skill/10% bonus in few other places (like resistance rolls)

I am finally doing the equipment list...
I was thinking to go equipment slots (one has only 2 arms!) and have a carry capacity for backpack... (with malus to all dex/str/physical actions)

you gave me some fatigue and movement idea now as well, yeah, cheers!  

Just because!

Ho well.. I am interested by feedback indeed....  
mmm.. if you interested .. well.. gotta share now !
BRP-Magic2.docxBRP-Magic2.pdf
and the pdf 

My though process for fire, firebolt, fireball:

I made a skill that limit how much MP can be spend one 1 spell (arcane knowledge), and you are also limited with INT/2 in mos t case, and the costing is spell dependent not quite linear.

For example teleport and change kept verbatim from BGB
But fire became firebolt and costing is 1 = 1D6, additional D6 cost 2MP each (slightly different from level : it's not quite linear).. on one hand it's cheaper (I use general HP), on the other hand you are limited to 9MP in most case, which mean 5D6 top.
Also, since it is a bolt, I can combine it with ball (which cost 4) for 3D6 fireball at best, i.e. for 9MP. 
 

The important Spell in it (my 110 long list is for providing lots of fun effect and develop a blood magic villain society) are the enchant spells, they are meant to affect magic greatly
- Autonomous Spell: it's in, I want to have city elemental or flying ships or submarine... (this one doesn't use POW)
- Spell Booster spell, missing, it create enchantment that gives cost reduction on a small selection of spell (up to 3~4), that's a big power up