PhilHibbs

If chance of special= 1/5 chance of success

Then roll dice and if its a success multiply RESULT by 5

If new value is still a success then the roll is a special success...

So if I roll a 17, then I have scored a special if my skill is 85 or more? No, I only need 83 for 17 to be a special.

To me it looks it is nearly impossible to have a short & compact table for it, as you cannot group the results into a meaningful table. You end up with a table showing all numbers from 1 to 100 to show the different values for each success rating.

No, you only need 28 entries for 1-100. On your table, given that special and crit have a minimum chance of 1, the first 7 entries are all the same. This is the Avalon Hill table:

It isn't ideal having to use a table, but it's better than doing the maths in your head. If you are going to have crits and specials on 1/20 and 1/5, then I think the new BRP table is better, and the rules need to be errata'd to say "round up" to match the table.

If I don't like the guy, I don't care whether he can do nine digit division in his head, I'd rather not play with him. If I do like him and want him to play, it's not much skin off my back to do some of the bookkeeping for him if it keeps him in the game.

Which I do. Every time he rolls his dice and gets a low number, I figure out the 10%-rounded-up for him, which I can do almost instantaneously. 83%? That's 9%. Having to do the RQ3 crit and special calculations for that gives me the heebies, let alone him. And writing down the crit chances is no use as the chances keep changing with modifiers.

You trolling rite?

I dont know a single person that can't do a x5...

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.

You think MRQ is the best version of RQ/BRP!

Oh, maybe you mean MRQII?

As for reverting to eariler form, I think the current form is bad enough. Tick off RQ fans with the RQII name, then drop the name and leave fans and 3rd party vendors in the lurch.

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.

One thing I don't particularly like about the HQ Gateway license is the effect of 10.1, which gives MD the right to terminate the license, and 10.3, which requires the terminated licensee to destroy any remaining stock after only 30 days.

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

Does anyone still think Mongoose Publishing is a good thing for BRP?

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.

In my experience, the great story tellers and roleplayers are not the ones who are "math impaired". Or "tactcially impaired" either.

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.

Smiley when you say that.

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".

"Sacrifice" indeed. Not much of a sacrifice to trade your shield for his weapon!

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

Snort.

Just use 10% critical and write stat roll percentages down.

Math? Anybody can do grammar school arithmetic. Can't they?

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.

To calculate CRITS "the BRP WAY":

1- Divide your skill by 2 (add 1 if you got an even number, is "easier" -i would even say way easier- for math challenged people and wields the same result)

2- Discard your units if they are 0-4. Discard the units and add 1 to the result if they are 5-9

3- THERE YOU HAVE!!! Your crit rate!!! Now go amaze your players!!!

THERE YOU HAVE IT!!!

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.

Yeah but those modifiers are usually things like -10, -20 etc which is easy to figure out on the fly. Certainly easier than dividing 73 by 5.

Or for Difficult and Easy rolls it's just halfing and doubling your numbers which is piss easy.

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?

I've been thinking of tying STR more closely to SIZ. There probably shouldn't be characters with STR 18, SIZ 8.

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.

I haven't done the calculations to check but it seems to me the ranges for crits and special successes are a bit too liberal than if you did the exact calculation yourself for a given skill level. This is somewhat implied due to the fact the table doesn't list a single number and give its exact calculations for crit/special/fumble but rather uses ranges of numbers instead.

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?

They suffer the same problem as "light revolver". What the heck is a broadsword? A real broadsword is like... XVII-XVIII century!!! Then again, it may be a spatha, a viking sword, a knight sword... Maybe the bastard is the knight sword and the greatsword is the longsword? Or is the bastard the longsword (and every sword from the celts 500bc to 1200 ad is 1D8+1) and the greatsword is a zweilhander or claymore?

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.

Look at the chart in the book. I believe the last time I looked at it the calculations were not as precise than if you did it by calculator for special success, etc. They do indeed mention they use normal rounding in the book. The chart works off ranges of numbers. For example, let's say you have a 45 in a skill. You roll a 23 on the percentile dice. You look the result up on the chart. The chart says you score a crit on a roll of 01-03, a special success on a result of 01-09, a fumble on a result of 98-00. In this example you rolled a result of 23, thus giving you a success only.

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?

You get no argument from me there. I don't think it is a mistake because every entry on it for Special Success is calculated this way.

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.

I don't think the chart is a typo at all of that entire column would have to be wrong. I think the chart is simply intentionally not as pinpoint accurate and a tad more generous. That is ok with me.

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?

In my game females get -2 to STR but gain the gender-specific ability to bear children.

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.

*Yes, I know Mongoose say they're going to turn it into Wayfarer(not 's'), and they're going to produce something even better than an OGL. But it won't be RuneQuest.

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

Oh, brother. So they released the SRD with the OGL license, but never formally declared any Open Content? Yeah, that's kind of a mess.

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

RQII had something similar in just one skill, lock picking. But in that case the amount over 100% of the locksmith's skill was simply deducted from the lock picker's chance. I think I prefer that approach, penalising both seems like a game device more than a measure of what 100%+ skills can do (unless there's more to it than that, I haven't read MRQ2).

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.