Lloyd Dupont

Ah, basically the old "skill check hunting" argument.Interesting, except that RQ and BRP games always noted that skills had to be used in stress situations and that the GM was the abriter of what merited a skill check or not. So someone going around making a bunch of frivolous jumps wouldn't work, so no check. Since we are debating it.. Another 3 problems I fear from skill check marks, and I am curious to read your repartee: - 1. Most players will increase all their combat skills... And almost no player will increase any other skills... and most player will end up looking the same - 2. most of the other skill will rarely if ever increase - 3. I find it a bit too easy to make a warrior-mage-thief-alchemist with skillmark. Whereas with XP, one can do it too, but it takes a bit more effort This doesn't seem to add much to the conversation but, just out of curiosity, I wouldn't mind a plain English version!

Question for Atgxtg or like minded people. Would make an exception on the 20% flat skill value start for Influence. And make it 2xAPP% instead be a... more satisfactory change? Nevermind, not going to do it...

Well... Mugen, while I don't disagree with you, in fact I even prefer XP too! I think you might have missed one of the core message of Atgxtg: is that XP vs in game skill check mark is ultimately a matter if taste! Stress on GM's taste here.... Other than that I am not all disagreement, thanks for illustrating how the 2 system differs I do believe the XP system is not as bad as Atgxtg make is sound! In fact I think it's quite good.. pacing progress and letting player increase what they want, and also "as realistic" as progress system goes... For example: a sport student and a science student both attend a LARP tournament and do their study. One month later: even though both have increased their wooden sword fighting skills, I am pretty sure the sport student would have increased sword skill and physical skill more, while the science student will have continue to increase science topic as well!

mm.... I see.... well it does say whether or not the character looks good!

Well, characteristics do do a lot of things in BRP apart from (slightly) influencing skills, and have done so in other games long before skills were a thing. Damage bonus, ability to wield heavy or tricky weapons, strike rank, hit points, resisting poison, etc., etc. That's one of the reasons I've moved away from skill category bonuses or characteristic-derived base chances for skills. In some ways, their most important feature IMO is simply helping players visualise characters (PCs and NPCs alike). Nobody missed out the little overlooked fact that STR and SIZ influence damage bonus, SIZ and CON influence HP and poison resistance, INT and DEX influence initiative and spell known. For example. But you seem to have overlooked that APP does..... little! 😮 All I settled for was a big impact on improving social skills. Much bigger than default BRP. That is what Atgxt was pointing out reproachedly.... But you know what? I think it's probably enough...

I do prefer XP. However you made me pause and unravel the evolution of my preferences. It has been a while I haven't used check mark and I couldn't remember why I disliked them. I thought about it some more. And then I remembered Oblivion, Skyrim.. and how one spend the whole game jumping just in the hope of augmenting Athlectics and how some skill are hard to increase and that create contrived behavior. And that is my main reason to use XP. I let the player augment whatever they want to augment for the same effort: 1xp. I personally believe the opposite of you, that it is much less class like that the generic adventurer everyone becomes using skill check mark... Anyway, I could accept it being a short coming of my GMing style (that it is hard to get some check mark on some skill), but hey, Xp compensate my shortcoming well enough for me! mmm, yes... I hope it's good enough.. though it could be argued 90% in influence is good enough, no need to go over 100% and one could get that at character creation by passing the APP help.. Anyhow I am rolling characteristic in order without tweak, not using point buy or swapping dice, so it's not too bad whether APP is more or less important. (I do give player a final bonus though to add anywhere, just for feel good) so, to circle back, yea APP might be the least usefull characteristic.. and I would ditch it if I were using point buy.... (but point buy don't work for aliens! ) but it does have an (significant but indirect) impact on social skill that way! You might want to keep the door open for the low tech approach. You never know when someone might have something done the old way. In a recent game I ran, the PC were going to check out a warehouse. One of the characters is a IT specilaist, and managed to dig up all sorts of information on the warehouse online, including building plans, and access to the warehouse's inventory program via WIFI. Then, their "intrusion specialist" got past the door,...and nearly stepped into the dog's water dish. I was a great moment to play out. THey group were all confident in thier high tech, but overlooked the idea of a guard dog. Turned out the dog was just a pet and went home with it's owner after hours, but that water dish completely altered how the players handled the warehouse. I mean I am not against low tech, but for pick lock, they just don't produce picklock repair and electronic skill will be used As for trap.... mmm.... I think it's because I prefer to use crafting or survival roll...

Brilliant! You got the job for teaching at the school for evil geniuses!

Well I finished my skill revamp. It's all in my draft document text file, yet to go my word document / rule booklet! just sharing here for feedback since we are talking about it 😛 (and you shall soon see how it helps APP to somewhat shine in some case, at the very least be critical in maxing out skills) - 1st I am using XP (1XP = 1 improvement skill check) and to avoid spending XP on skill not in character I went the Mythras way, standard skill that everybody knows and professional skill that one must learn (moderate effort, at creation or 5XP + 1month part time learning) before being able to spend XP on them. - 2nd, all skill start at a flat 20%. Unknown professional skill 5% and jump to 20% once learnt. - 3rd every skill has a leading characteristic which is use for improvement roll. Giving (Characteristic-10%) bonus to the roll, somewhat like RQ3. 11 or more in the leading characteristic is needed to unlock skill percentage over 100%, otherwise skill limited to 90+characteristic (this will help high APP shine a bit.. amongst top performers at least) - 4th in Character creation ------ chose a race, roll characteristic, get skill bonus (including possible bonus professional skill) ------ chose a profession (10 skill), pick optional professional skill, and add 1skill+50%, 2skill +40%, 3skill+30%, 4skill+20% ------ chose 1 hobby professional skill ------ hobbies: add +20% to 8 standard and known professional skill once and +30% once ------ also (scifi) chose 4 common transhumanist augments At any rate, I hope this creation procedure is simple enough to not confuse anyone! To go into more details... since I like POW vs POW more than power skill vs willpower kind of resistance test, but I like to have a little bit of skill based improvement, I do have Willpower and Endurance. But one doesn't roll them. Instead Willpower/10% is added to POW for POW save. Same with endurance and CON. Conversely the power skill% / 10% is added to the attacker's power. And here is my (semi-final) skill list (might have to tweak a few) Standard Skills DEX Evade CON Endurance skill/10% added to CON save roll POW Willpower skill/10% added to POW save roll STR Unharmed STR Wrestle STR Melee Weapon Exotic (all the others..) Axe (scythe), Club, Dagger, Flail, Hammer, Polearm, Spear, Sword, Unharmed (blackjack) Shield DEX Range Weapon Axe, Blowgun, Bola, Boomerang, Bow, Crossbow, Throw, Dart, Javelin/Spear, Throw Knife, Sling Pistol (&Revolver), Rifle, Shotgun, Other (flamethrow, taser), Energy Pistol, Energy Rifle INT Appraise (&customs) APP Bargain STR Climb DEX Dance INT First Aid DEX Hide APP Influence (deception, persuasion, command) POW Insight STR Jump CON Listen INT Research (use with another skill for diagnostic, or alone for fact and data) DEX Repair (used in conjunction with other skill) CON Spot APP Sing DEX Stealth STR Swim Professional Skills INT Cooking DEX Craft Painting, Stonecraft, Woodcraft, Metalwork, APP Disguise DEX Drive / Pilot type 1, type 2, type 3... TODO INT Electronic INT Engineering Appliance, Chemistry, Construction, Forcefields, Programming, Vehicle, DEX Gaming INT Hacking DEX Juggle INT Language\Culture (Bulrathi, Elerian, etc......) INT Medicine INT Media Production APP Oratory APP Play [Instrument] APP Ride Mount APP Teach INT Track APP Seduction DEX Sleightof Hand POW Meditation (only native psioinic) INT Science Biology, Economy, History, Law, Mathematic, Planetology, Physics POW Psionic Power (each) BTW I don't have pick lock or make trap intentionally, this is all electronic these days....

You are absolutely right Seneshal. What I was thinking as well though, there might be way to validate that someone is not a Darlok. Like blood test or psionic probe. But now that I think of it, there are valid in character reason for an oligarch to refuse a psionic probe or avoid or cheat a blood test. Beside it's far fetched to suspect that, the Darlok are all dead, as everybody knows!

Working on my Master of Orion settings In master of Orion there is a race that can polymorph as anything and make redoutable spies. I made one galaxy background plot based on that and I got second thoughts. That Darlok plot is as follow: Long ago the Bulrathi almost made a xenocide of the Darlok. Very few survived hidden. Much later, i.e. during player's campaign, the Bulrathi empire will fall to civil war. It will start with a coup, followed by 2 noble houses staking a claim to the power of the defunct emperor. So far so good. Unbeknown to all though, one of the house leader has been, in fact, replaced by a Darlok that will do its best to make the civil war as long and bloody as possible, as a sort of posthumous revenge of the Darlok race. Now I wonder how powerful and convincing the Darlok power of metamorphosis should be. To pull this stunt off... one could argue either that: - it doesn't need to be much, few could submit an absolute dictatorial elite to some background / personality check. - it's madness.That will never go undetected, unless the Darlok are absolute perfect undetectable by any mean OP mimicry. - also, they can't be too good.. otherwise, they will never have been obliterated in the first place As a side note the players know about the Darlok. The Darlok are described in my settings booklet as an extinct non playable race. With a short history of its demise.

As a side and tangential note (I am not even trying to disprove infinitely powerful and miniaturised laser gun here) perfectly straight laser ray do not exist. And by the time the ray has travelled barely 1 second (i.e. 300,000km) it is much larger (and weaker) (like some kilometres wide) hence these are safer to use in space. I.e. they weakened to nothing in barely a million kilometres! Handy! 😮 Whereas your average slugger in space can leave dangerous shrapnels all over a system so as to make further space travel if not impractical, at least hasardous.. 😮

Fascinating thread!

There is a design flaw in this discussion, which is... "this thing has limitless power", anything has limitless power if you the GM decide so. there is no reason that laser are more limitless that sluggers. To make unlimitedly dangerous hand portable laser you need incredibly energy dense batteries, in which case you could just as well make incredibly hand railgun... At any rate I am not interest in this path (and I doubt it).. will go with the damage as they are in BRP. Where handlaser guns do D8 damage and hand rifle laser do 2D8 (except I will switch damage type from empaling to light, which effeclively reduce their lethality further, light damage being like fire but with forceshield bypass) Basically I don't like 1 shotting weapons... Explosives and Fireballs give me endless grief there... one one hand I want them, on the other hand.. I dont like them...

I admit to overthink it... It started with "Fireball", whichever way I approached it (trying to give Fireball to my Dark Elves) I was always unhappy with the game mechanic one way and another (it was not BRP though, I think I can make it work in BRP now). And then 8D6 of instant pure elemental Fire started to also hurt my physics training and memories on heat diffusion equation.... Anyway, written on my draft now: Modern Weapon with Advanced Bullet (additional Fire, Cold, Shock, Acid damage, like Borderland, just increase dice 2 step for an average +2 damage and more special damage option), Laser (bypass forcefield), Plasma (space only), Disintegrator (Antarian only), Stun weapon (bypass armor, stop by shield, non lethal damage, i.e.using CoC Critical Wound mechanic, they never cause one). Anyway you make me think about Blaster again... They do set a nice scifi tone.. and your sounds almost convincing.. plus I got idea for propulsion! How about a gas gun? The magazine contains many sliver which have 2 part, the phosphorous head and a tail of an unstable chemical substance. Which got vaporised by the propulsion mechanic (need an internal battery too), and push the head. It would have shorter range, but still good enough... And it wouldn't be 100 ammo per magazine either (more like 20?).

I am reading Magic World diagonally, not sure my understanding is correct... But once again Magic World will inspire me! I like their simplified skill category modifier, and plan to also use it as the bonus to experience roll. Instead of INT/2 for all skill as in the BRP. APP/2 is the communication skill modifier and will be the experience roll bonus. Hence APP will have an impact. Even though, arguably, between 18 and 10 that is +5 to +9 modifier, not that big a deal.. although.. twice as much chance to succeed over 100%..... Also, I am using XP instead of skill mark. And I was wondering if you always gain +1 when you spend a XP.. but this diminish the impact of skill bonus for skill over 100%, if I don't allow that, high APP become all the more critical! 😮 I am thinking about it become some transhumanist augmentation (doing my setting) do not much more than boosting APP (and vaguely helping for disguise) so I try to make sure they are good value for money! And also trying to come up with a simplified skill list and character creation procedure (BRP, noob friendly edition!)

I mean.. 23! With humans maxing out at 18.... It's way past talking ability, actually the mule should work in a research facility!

INT 23? Are we talking about an animal here?! 😮 APP 16? Are the women swooning at his glorious presence?! 😮 Mmm... that last one might be true, women do love furries!

mmm... this almost sounds convincing.. 🤔

I am going the smart bullet / Borderland way! Thanks for reminding me some of them have auto aim! haha! And also they explode and fire behind cover, last I heard... Well.. time to write it down now!

Anyway, after 1 week mulling over it, I am edging towards... - Laser weapon: Yes, light damage is like fire damage, and they ignore forcefield - Plasma weapon, only in space (i.e. no range in athmosphere) - gauss rifle, like conventional weapon but only rifle (because need battery and long accelerating rail) and "more silent" (electromagnetic propulsion instead of gun powder, but the bullet still breaks the sound barrier) - usual modern guns - disintegrator (only for the big bad Antarians, basically turn solid matter to gas) (also ignore forcefield) the scifi flair here (in case or normal gun, and even gauss rifle) would come with a Borderland twist, where they have special bullet that would inflict an additional D6 of fire / cold / acid / shock damage (and special effect) mmm.. just checked the BGB (at work, oops) flechette should be fine shock? mmmmm.... probably not stun? yea, oldskoll make good argument! blaster? no sonic? ye, oldskoll againt make good argument (same argument)

Good point and argumentation! Bonus (optional) question: What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

+1 for Puffins, they are not nearly as recognised as they should! I think Geese could be in too! 😮

A few great answers here! 😮 Thanks guys, I feel inspired now!

It's an interesting idea....

Hahah! I had to google that! IT all become clear now! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundam_Universal_Century_technology