PhilHibbs

What are you multiplying by 5? How do you refactor the rules to use multiplication instead of division, and why is that any simpler? *Edit* And no, not trolling, dead serious.

Yes, I mean MRQ2. Dropping the RQ name isn't ideal, but if they're pouring good money after bad into the RQ/Glorantha licence hole, I don't blame them for ending it. Sub-licencing the RQ brand to 3rd party vendors must have been a tricky prospect given that it isn't their trademark, and the 3rd party vendors must have known that. If they wanted to hitch a ride on the goodwill of the RuneQuest name, then they must have realised the ground on which they were treading.

Good grief that's hideous. Why would anyone agree to that licence?

They produced what I consider to be the best incarnation of the RQ/BRP system so far, and a cracking set of Gloranthan publications that I'm having a great time running. I accept that they also produced some stinkers, though, and made a lot of enemies early on. I wasn't burned by an early negative experience, I bought into Mongoose RuneQuest after they put their house in order. I can understand that some people are skeptical about whether they might revert to their earlier form.

Fine. You go play with your elite genius friends. I have friends who aren't that good at maths, and I am having a lot of fun roleplaying with my friends. Your insinuation that they aren't worthy of the fine art of roleplaying is grotesquely insulting. Maybe that isn't what you intended to say, but it is what you said. Nope. No smileys at my end.

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=47648 http://blog.mongoosepublishing.co.uk/ RuneQuest is now going to be republished as "Legend" in October, and Mongoose will be helping publish a new edition of Ye Olde Gaming Companye's "Wayfarers".

Unless the weapon was a pilum thrown specifically to disable your shield.

Nope. I have a player in my group who would quit roleplaying if there were any more complex calculation that addition and subtraction, even the 10% crits in MRQ2 make him nervous.

That's awful. Fine for you, if you find that easy to remember, then great. I think it's a ridiculous thing to ask players to do.

If I have a skill of 75% with a 4% crit chance, and I take a -10% penalty, what is my crit chance? If I have 33% skill with a 2% crit chance, and I double it to 66%, then do I have 4% crit chance?

So what would you do if someone rolled those? Increase their SIZ to realistically balance their strength? Because I can see a mutiny coming if you take someone's rolled 18 away. Of course, I may be maligning your group, not all roleplayers obsess over big numbers, but plenty do.

The fact that the table is grained at 5% intervals means that it must be rounding up. If it were rounding down it would have to be 0-4, 5-9, 10-14 etc., but as it's 1-5, 6-10, 11-15 then it must be rounding up. If it were rounding to nearest, it would have to be split like the AHRQ3 chart which is 1-7, 8-10, 11-12, 13-17, 18-22, 23-27, 28-29, 30, 31-32, etc. because the crit and special chances change at different points. And in case you think it's only a small change, when comparing a mixed skill range of people using different methods, half of the people using the chart have a higher crit chance than they should have, which is a huge advantage. What would you pay to increase your crit chance by 1?

Indeed - in the MRQ2 weapons table, the Bastard Sword does a little more damage than a Broadsword, is a little cheaper, a little easier to use on the STR requirement, and in all other ways exactly the same. Well, it has 2 fewer Hit Points, but that's rarely relevant. In other words, anyone that chooses a Broadsword over a Bastard Sword is doing so purely for aesthetic or cultural reasons.

Yes, I know that. I'm not sure what I'm failing to get across, but I do understand how the chart is built. What I'm trying to ascertain is, why do you think it is deliberately wrong rather than just a mistake?

Calculated what way? Specials and crits are all calculated rounding up on the BRP chart. Are you saying it isn't a mistake because all of it is wrong rather than just part of it? It would be very bizarre indeed if they changed the method of calculation for part of the chart, so consistency is not evidence of deliberation.

A summary chart that is "a tad more generous" than the rules are should at least point that out. Otherwise, you'll have some players calculating it in their heads using the old RQ3 chart they have lying around because they noticed the BRP chart is wrong, and others using the more generous BRP chart without noticing it. When they notice, the ones using the proper rules will feel cheated, especially if they've been in conflict with the other player. An incorrect chart about something so fundamental to the game system is a bit of a catastrophic error. If Mongoose had made that mistake, they'd never hear the last of it.

Are attack and parry combined into a single skill in BRP? In RQ3 they were always separate skills, so it was better to have sword attack and shield parry. Combining the two into one skill for a single weapon changes the balance so you're better off with just a sword as that's just a single skill. MRQ goes one step further so you can have one combined "Sword & Shield" skill. If you don't want that, I think you might need to boost the effectiveness of shields somehow to compensate. Are there any problems in BRP with using a one-handed weapon to both attack and parry in the same round? If so, would you still be better off using two swords just to get away with a single skill, or are offhand parries with a sword subject to an offhand penalty?

I want to be called Loretta. I want to have babies.

I think the RQ3 creatures section said to use 2d6+4 for STR and SIZ for human females, but that adventurers should not use different rolls. Most people who are playing non-warrior female characters tend to assign lower rolls to those stats anyway when using elective systems.

Does it matter that it isn't RuneQuest? Lots of people seem happy with BRP, and that isn't RuneQuest either.

The original release had the declaration, but someone removed it.

It isn't "penalising both" really, because you are already penalised by having your skill over 100 largely wasted in an opposed contest. The winner is the person who succeeds with the highest die roll, which means if you don't do something about it, people with skills over 100 have no relative advantage other than their crit chance. By reducing both, you let the highest skilled person keep their advantage, whilst the lower skill person loses out. For example, if I have 150% and you have 100%, the only difference is in my higher crit chance. However, if we reduce you to 50% and me to 100%, I'm now guaranteed a win if I roll between 51 and 95 (and you don't crit). So I'm not being penalised at all. Except, I suppose, if it's a combat then my chance of getting an "Ignore Armour" CM is reduced, as that only happens on a crit. Still, you're defending yourself so that's how it works out. 10% chance is still ok.

Yes, that's a nice simple mechanism for opposed rolls. It has always been a tradition in RuneQuest, though, that the mightiest hero can be felled by a single trollkin. Everyone's vulnerable to the "lucky crit" (except the character in an old campaign of mine who had so many Hit Points from strengthening enchantments that he survived a 01 crit to the head with a heavy crossbow). Still, that 01 is still a crit, and even if you have 500% skill, you only have a 50-50 chance of beating it. Hm, that raises an interesting point. If you have 50% skill and I have 500%, what happens? You are always going to have a 5% chance, I think, and a 1% crit chance, so what does my skill get reduced by? The reduction should be capped at 45%, I think, your-skill-minus-5.

I'm not actively pursuing any alternatives, just talking about them. Someone mentioned rolling a parallel d20 to indicate crit, special, and fumbles. I pointed out that that doesn't scale above 100%, and neither does the "bump". So you're trying to answer a question that I'm not asking, I'm not sure anyone really is.

Easier calculation for levels of success. I was extolling the virtues of the MRQ/Wayfarer system of divide-by-ten-and-round-up, as it is trivial to calculate the critical chance for any skill, as compared to RQ3/BRP.