fmitchell

Air elementals may not need it, but for creatures with wings "Fly" could be the equivalent of Dodge in three dimensions. Winged creatures need to deal with air currents, maintaining lift, counteracting drag, making sharp turns without going into a tailspin, and so forth. That said, I'd probably only introduce it if player characters or their steeds had wings. For NPC monsters I'd probably just go with a Dodge or DEX roll, particularly if they fly using magic. (The "NPCs statted like PCs" philosophy has its merits, but increasingly I admire the simplicity of NPCs in old-school D&D and Numenera.)

You could make healing potions/poultices more common in the game world. (Instead of magic, assume they're some sort of wondrous herbal concoction.) Thus you're not dependent on a magical healer or his MP. Parties would still have to manage their potions like any other resource. To remove any further stink of magic, maybe they're useful in stabilizing downed heroes, but they only accelerate natural healing (bonus to CON rolls and/or points of healing per day).

My last comment might have been a bit too pointed, but ... The reason I started this thread was to cut through the cloud of negativity, often from the same few but insistent voices, and concentrate on what's actually in the game. In particular, I'm tired of hearing stuff like "they're trying to be D&D Next", "they're dumbing it down and making it more like a pulp game", "they're adding more action for young people", and so forth. All of which is less about the new rules themselves and more about what people think the designers were thinking. For example, a common criticism of 4th edition D&D was "it's like a MMORPG". Granted, I never played a MMORPG, so I don't know if that's true. Certainly nobody ever explained how it was like an MMORPG; it just was one. Now I loathe that version with a fiery passion, but not because it resembled something else. I loathed it because I had to stop my fun if somewhat light-weight roleplaying experience to chug through a skirmish board game. At least board games provide tokens to keep track of modifiers and other conditions ... in which case D&D 4 would have made WFRP 3 look like Candyland. So if CoC 7 has a core mechanic that resembles a D&D Next core mechanic, I'll assume the designers saw it there or elsewhere and thought it solved a problem for them ... not that they thought "we'll throw that in so D&D players will feel at home in our game", especially since they wouldn't. If CoC 7 has a chapter on Combat whereas CoC 6 described combat in the Skills chapter with numerous side bars, I'll assume the designers thought they'd collect and extend combat rules, especially with regard to rules changes and existing BRP/RQ conventions. If they add a chapter on Chases, I'll assume they noticed how many Lovecraft stories ended with chases and thought it high time they provided rules for them. If they pull a chapter on Mythos connections in history, I'll assume they cut it for space or (especially in light of making the Independent/Servitor/Great Old One/Outer God classifications optional) they wanted Keepers to make their own connections. Above all, if Chaosium takes their flagship product in a new direction, I'll assume they're trying to attract a broader audience, not cynically and ineffectively trying to lure a few narrow segments. Will this new version succeeds in the marketplace? Who knows? D&D and Pathfinder steal everyone's oxygen. Retailers used to like hefty hardbacks, and a volume each for GMs and players is a time-tested strategy. Maybe the rules themselves don't appeal to a new base, for whatever reason, and the old audience clings tightly to 6th Edition. Maybe the new volumes attract enough new and existing players that the naysayers are no big loss. Time will tell. My only point -- and I do have one -- is that we evaluate this version based on its own merits, not on what kind of unwashed riff-raff it might attract.

And that's the insult, to both design teams: that one "plagiarized" the other in choosing an (uncopyrightable) mechanic older than both games, and that a design team chose a central mechanic because another popular game uses it. You might as well say Monte Cook chose d20 roll-over tests for Numenera because D&D uses it (as opposed to him being most familiar with it, which he states up front), or that you chose RuneQuest/BRP mechanics for your products because Mongoose RuneQuest was trendy* (as opposed to you liking the system and having OGL content to speed up development). * Yes, I know, it was never trendy.

A game design specifically intended to entice players of another game even though other similar attempts have failed seems like the very definition of "dumb". Which is why it's a motive I wouldn't attribute to game designers without proof. There are also a few differences between CoC7 Penalty/Bonus dice and the D&D 5 equivalent: It's possible, if rare, to gain 2 bonus or 2 penalty dice. 3 or more in either direction is equivalent to "automatic" or "impossible", respectively. Bonus and penalty dice cancel out one-to-one, which is more significant given the previous point. The full rulebook lists explicit combat conditions worthy of Bonus or Penalty dice. I haven't seen the recent PHB or DMG, but my impression was that Advantage/Disadvantage was completely at the whim of the DM. It's also worth noting Newt Newport et. al. devised the OQ +/-25% rule precisely because players will grab for as many modifiers as they can get, often slowing down play to do so. If every "cool maneuver" gave a combat bonus, some players would do every attack swinging from a chandelier, then backflip away while sliding down a bannister. It's up to DMs/Referees/Keepers/etc. to reward only creative, plausible, and appropriate maneuvers. It seems to me, then, that CoC7 Bonus/Penalty dice are more analogous to OQ's +/-25% increments, only the dice are doing the math.

I'm aware how it's done. As far as probabilities go, though, there's little difference between rolling two tens dice and a ones die and rolling one tens and one ones twice, and no difference if you only care about being at or below a specific number. The designers probably realized that the extra ones dice didn't really matter, and rolling three or four dice at once is easier than four or six. You could theoretically roll a d100 by rolling a single d10 twice; two dice at once are just faster. EDIT: This demonstrates bonus and penalty dice probabilities, including the equivalence of highest(2d100) and highest(2d10)*10 + d10 : http://anydice.com/program/4f98... and yes, I know that in the latter expression a roll of 0-0 would actually mean 10% and 9-0 would be 100%, but it still generates values from 1 to 100 at the right frequencies and I really didn't want to write Anydice code for d{0..9}*10 + d{0..9} with a special case to interpret 00 values as 100. EDIT 2: Since the URL above will eventually (soon?) expire, here's the AnyDice script: output d100 named "Regular" output ([lowest 1 of 2d10]-1)*10 + 1d10 named "Bonus (as written)" output ([highest 1 of 2d10]-1)*10 + 1d10 named "Penalty (as written)" output [lowest 1 of 2d100] named "Bonus" output [highest 1 of 2d100] named "Penalty" output [lowest 1 of 3d100] named "Bonus x 2" output [highest 1 of 3d100] named "Penalty x 2"

That wasn't nice. Seriously, attributing a dumb reason to 7e's designers and then calling them dumb for that reason ... it's probably one of the classic logical fallacies, but I can't remember which. I would like to see some of this criticism of the Bonus/Penalty Dice mechanism, though, because rolling twice and picking the better/worse result is older than D&D 5e. Granted, I'm more familiar with adding multiple d6 and removing low/high dice. Compared to that d20/d100 loses some granularity. On the other hand adding and removing straight modifiers doesn't mimic how probabilities work. With the CoC 7e Bonus Die, a skill roll at 10% only jumps to 19%, and a roll at 90% jumps only to 99%. The Penalty die works similarly, and by the same amount in the other direction. (The biggest change is at 50%, with +/-25%.) Intuitively it makes sense that an amateur with a bonus wouldn't get dramatically more lucky, and an expert with a penalty would still hit nearly as often. Note also that the authors of RuneQuest 6 encourage using multipliers to represent levels of difficulty, perhaps because probabilities are ratios. Also, using Bonus/Penalty dice we can determine Hard/Extreme/Fumble results simply by reading the appropriate die. In BRP if we just add 25% directly, we must remember to add to the +5% to the Special success threshold and +1% to the Critical success threshold. In the heat of battle it's sometimes hard to remember. Treating a bonus as a second chance of success, and a penalty is a second chance of failure, is coarse-grained and probably unrealistic but at least it's quick. Finally, Bonus/Penalty dice aren't the sole mechanic for calibrating levels of difficulty. Out of combat, skill rolls are almost exclusively unopposed, and ranked Regular, Hard, or Extreme for the three corresponding levels of success. Bonus/Penalty Dice mostly apply in the heat of combat or chases to represent circumstantial advantages or disadvantages. (Sometimes the Penalty Die applies to unopposed skill rolls when the character is impaired in some way.) In any case, I'd like to see the new mechanics in action before I pass final judgement. Hopefully I can interest my regular group (or someone) to help me give CoC 7 a spin.

SIZ 100 was a number off the top of my head. That said, the density of lead is 11.34 g/cm^3; the density of water, which humans are mostly made of, is about 1.0 g/cm^3. Average human weight is, let's say, 180 lbs. Therefore, a statue (or golem) made of lead, taking up the same volume as that human would be 2041.2 lbs. That's about the weight of a car, which p 277 of the BGB lists as SIZ 50. So atgxtg is closer, and I was off by about a factor of two. BTW, is there a formula for calculating SIZ based on weight? Is SIZ logarithmic? How does volume/height/reach factor in? Is it all just guesstimates?

Thanks for the offer, atgxtg, but I thinks I've got a handle on it. Here's what I have in my notes so far. Assuming living beings are mostly water, it's trivial to create a density factor from the material's density, assuming the golem is solid. Hollow constructs would probably not need split SIZ: they're roughly equivalent to a man wearing armor. Likewise, high-tech constructs are composed of a lot of materials, so if they had a split SIZ at all the difference would probably only be a factor of 2 or 3. Engineers would probably use lighter, cheaper materials or simply leave empty space to reduce power requirements and improve handling. I might also borrow and refine the rule from CoC7 that MOV depends on the relationship between STR, DEX, and SIZ. If I'm really ambitious, I might even whip up a Robot Construction Kit where SIZ and MOV depends on STR, DEX, shape, selected form of locomotion, armor, and ENC of built-in tools/weapons. INT and EDU may also contribute to SIZ since (1) an electronic/photonic/quantum processor has some mass, (2) a large enough database will also weigh something, and (3) if the device is a shell for a full-conversion cyborg the brain and life support will definitely weigh something. OTOH, I don't want to write a full book, so I'll try to keep the relationships simple.

While (re)reading Call of Cthulhu, I came across this mechanic for Skeletons: Constructs are most like Skeletons, especially in BRP and Magic World. The above rule also makes Skeletons more suitable as mooks: no HP to track. With some modifications, this could be a way to handle magical constructs like Golems and mad science automatons. Said modifications might include: Armor that subtracts damage before multiplying by 4. Tweaking the multiplier to reflect the construct's sturdiness. Iron golems might have x1, while the Robots of Doctor Satan might have (EDIT:) x5 or more. Instead of destroying the thing outright, a solid hit could disable a hit location or prompt a roll on the Major Malfunction Table. Different armor/multiplier damage based on the source. A clay golem might be highly resistant to fire and piercing or slashing attacks, but vulnerable to blunt force. Or, golems could just build on the Abomination in Advanced Sorcery: HP = AP, and only a sufficiently strong single blow can harm it. How golem's "work" is anyone's guess, because they actually don't, so it's a matter of how unstoppable one wants to make them. I've also thought about borrowing approaches from robots and vehicles in Traveller: increments of 5 HP take away structural integrity points or specific systems, excess damage lost. BTW, I've been picking at a revised version of "Constructs in BRP". Changes I plan to incorporate include: A complete overhaul for magical constructs (if it's not a separate document with a little repetition). A fuller explanation why I dropped CON, and why and how someone can add it back. A fuller explanation why I up AP rather than increase HP (short answer: metal is more resistant to damage than flesh and bone). Formal rules for "split SIZ", where one number represents weight and the other height/width/reach. A larger "bestiary", including the aforementioned mad science automatons. Anyone interested? Or am I exceeding everyone's Fun:Work ratio? Because, really, I want damaging a thing of metal or stone to feel different from hitting flesh and blood. Maybe even simpler, if I can swing it.

Finally I read through the 7th Edition PDFs. While there are many vocal members of this board that regard 7th edition as a wrong turn, I'm eager to take it out for a spin. I've always regarded percentile characteristics, the three success/difficulty levels (Regular/Hard/Extreme), and Bonus/Penalty dice as worthwhile changes. The first two simplify some rules and erase some atavisms in BRP. Bonus/Penalty Dice provide a simpler mechanism for modifying base chances, akin to RuneQuest 6's difficulty ladder and OpenQuest's removal of any modifiers less than +/-25%. All three have the potential to streamline the game, especially for new players who aren't wedded to traditional BRP. The full rules gave me more things to like: Players roll against Regular/Hard/Extreme scores in most situations outside combat or chases. For the past several months I've been playing Numenera and The Strange, and as a player I like rolling against a static difficulty rather than dice-dueling against the GM. As a potential Keeper, I also like being able to choose a difficulty factor rather than guesstimate specific NPC skill levels. By allowing players to push their roles, the Keeper has license to make the Investigators' lives more ... interesting. Again, I'm reminded of GM intrusions in the Cypher System, which gives the GM permission to make bad luck even worse. Optionally, players can spend luck points to succeed at skill tests ... and diminish their Luck for the rest of the adventure. Like pushing rolls, this is another Faustian bargain that gets Investigators into more trouble. New Sanity rules sharpen the consequences of madness. "Temporary insanity" is yet another mechanic to get Investigators into deeper sewage, and is closer to Lovecraft's original treatment of losing one's mind. Roll-a-phobia is still there when needed, but playing with the Investigators' perceptions -- including blackouts -- can make CoC sessions more unsettling. Chases are now a thing. As the rules point out, Lovecraft's stories contain several chases -- far more chases than gun-battles, in fact -- and now we have tools to represent them. I'm not sure how the rules as written will work in practice; chase rules in Fate for example merely track relative distance between pursuers and pursued. Still, I'd like to run one chase the CoC7 way before passing judgement. The Core Rulebook offers hints on making magic magical and monsters monstrous. A frequent criticism of Lovecraftian RPGs and fiction alike is that writers recycle creatures that are familiar and unthreatening enough to make into stuffed animals, and magical tomes and spells that have become long-running jokes. The book includes spells from previous editions, but prefaces it with ways to make spells unfamiliar, unpredictable, and dangerous to the caster. Experienced Keepers have figured this out already, but, along with long-standing advice to describe creatures rather than name them, explicit mentions give new Keepers a leg up. That's mainly what I gleaned from one read-through. I'll probably want to drill down into specific combat and chase rules before I try to gather a group to search Amidst the Ancient Trees (or something else). Anyone else want to chip in? Say something nice.

In my head and my PDF hoard I call it the "Chaosium System", since that's where it started. Really, though, I don't think there's a point in drawing lines and inventing brand names. Everything outside the D&D sphere is nigh-invisible to those in the D&D sphere and the world at large. It's probably more practical to lure people in with specific titles -- RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Magic World(?) -- and then point out that there's a whole family of extraordinarily similar games one can borrow from.

You could also tap Mutations and Super Powers for additional abilities. That said, I tend to shy away from aliens that are functionally human with a few quirks or kewl powerz; I'm not producing a show with human actors and a low CGI budget. I have a preference for the really exotic, usually created by random generator or tailored for a specific purpose. So, fewer Vulcans, Narn, and Time Lords, more Vorlons and Elder Things. Sine Nomine's Dead Names: Lost Races and Forgotten Ruins (for Stars Without Number, but generally stat-free) starts with determining the aliens' Madness -- the feature that makes a species alien -- and then fills in appearance and biology as needed. Which is not to say they all have to be mysterious ancients; some of my favorite aliens in RPGs include the Dralasites of Star Frontiers, Hivers and Nunclees of Traveller, and Traders of GURPS Aliens, most of which can be (very odd) PCs.

5E replaced previous editions' many fiddly modifiers with an Advantage/Disadvantage system. IIRC, if a character has Advantage, she rolls 2 d20 and uses the higher result; conversely, a character with Disadvantage rolls 2 d20 and uses the lower result. Note that there's no "double advantage" or "double disadvantage", to discourage players from piling in as many advantages / disadvantages as they can think of; one sufficiently strong one will do. Note that CoC 7 does a similar thing with two tens dice and a ones die on d% rolls.

IIRC Legend and RuneQuest 6 compare die rolls if both the attack and parry achieve equivalent levels of success. One useful side-effect is that the more skilled character has a slight edge, due to having higher values and larger ranges at each level. An alternative, used in some systems I've seen, is to use exchange-based contests rather than attack/parry. That is, each character rolls his single weapon skill and designates a target. If his level of success or die roll exceeds his designated target, he hits; otherwise, the target parries. (Granted, I've seen this only in roll-over systems, but adapting to a roll under system requires the "Price is Right" algorithm of highest without going over.) Or, one can use the whole HeroQuest major/minor/marginal success/failure framework. I'd rather use opposed rolls than the Resistance Table, simply because the Resistance Table is far too linear for my tastes. With opposed rolls and tiered success levels the differences between skill levels makes much more than a +/-5% difference.

I believe those other books use some of the other Powers from the Big Gold Book, notably Magic (spells as skills), Psychic Abilities (also skills) and Super Powers (point-buy powers). You could run"Devils Gulch" with Sorcery only, though, and improvise the few Super Powers and Psychic Abilities referenced in CoFE, but you'd cut off some character options.

After years of playing GURPS, I find the lack of point-buy or advantages/disadvantages in BRP quite refreshing. Which isn't to say it's a bad idea, but one can take it too far. I'd recommend borrowing from elsewhere: Mini Six has a very coarse-grained advantage/disadvantage system, which is what I would prefer. In a system with Fate Points, Hero Points, or the like the Mutants & Masterminds 3e approach, in which disadvantages earn Fate Points when they come into play works far better than the "free" character points provided in GURPS, Unisystem, or HERO. Note that all three restrict the number of points earned through disadvantages, and GURPS has an oft-ignored adage that a disadvantage that isn't actually a disadvantage should be worth no points.) In Airship Pirates disadvantages provide "free points" depending on how many you take: 5 for one disad, 3 for the next, 2 for the third, and nothing for further disadvantages. Savage Worlds and Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space divide Edges and Flaws into Major and Minor, with two Minor equivalent(?) to one Major, and limits on both Edges and Flaws one can take. Barbarians of Lemuria matches Boons and Flaws one-to-one. The expansion Barbarians of the Aftermath, in order to represent mutants, aliens, and supernatural beings, defines some Boons worth 2 or 3 Flaws and vice versa, plus random mutations. What I would definitely not use is a spreadsheet or computer program to work out each species ... or, Malkion help us, each character. Been there, done that, bought the hair shirt. If anything, I'd like to see some sort of adaptive self-balancing system where special (dis)abilities cost (or yield benefits) based exclusively on how often they come into play. Short of borrowing Aspects and its Fate Point economy wholesale, I don't know what that would look like.

"The Horror of Fang Rock" is closer to standard gothic horror, but it does have very Lovecraftian elements. Really, a fair number of DW episodes, old and new, have cosmic horror elements. The Mandragora Helix? The Great Vampire? The competing monsters from "Ghost Light"? The Gelth? The Family of Blood? Vashta Nerada? Weeping Angels? The Saturninians (a.k.a. the Vampires of Venice)? The Silence? Whatever's behind tonight's episode "Flatline"? The classic covert alien invasion scenario lies behind both classic Lovecraft stories (e.g. "The Whisperer in Darkness", "The Shadow Out Of Time") and about half of Doctor Who episodes (and the vast majority in the UNIT era). The main difference is tone and atmosphere ... and whether humanity has an alien expert on its side.

Apart from the Artificing rules from the out-of-print Corum supplement, there's no pre-existing rules. Then again, Artificing was closer to non-human technology than magic. You might also raid the clockworks section from Clockworks & Chivalry, also a steampunk magical technology, but I haven't read it yet. In most Magic Worlds, the magic to enchant entire castles definitely belongs among the Lost Secrets of the Ancients. As a GM you can create whatever you want, but PCs should be aware that castles are generally not portable. (Maybe they can relocate or steer a floating castle.) Enchanted vehicles should likewise be Artifacts from a Lost Age. If you want to let PCs create such things, I would send them on a quest to find the aforementioned Lost Secrets. They they must build the vehicle/structure according to very specific, and usually expensive, ritual requirements.

(You weren't addressing me, but I had to chime in ... if only because of the Mitchell & Webb reference.) Mathematical balancing is a poor substitute for what players really want: equal spotlight. (Well, some want all spotlight.) If every character has his or her own role in the adventure -- the investigator investigates, the ninja sneaks in, the gun bunny shoots, the mystic mystifies, the hulk smashes -- then most players won't care whether Alice's Angel Summoner is more or less powerful in absolute terms than Bill's BMX Bandit. Granted, one doesn't want to create egregiously more powerful options. For example, in a real game Angel Summoning would have limitiations: ritual time, materials, requirements for a sacred space, uses per day, etc. Also, if BMX Banditry is essentially meaningless in the campaign, the GM might either eliminate it entirely or redefine it as Parkour (specialty: Bicycles). Some balancing is good, but complex mathematical schemes can become more trouble than they're worth ... or turn the game from an adventure into a bland die-rolling and accounting exercise. Spotlight-balancing depends heavily on the type of campaign / adventures. In a heavily investigative campaign skills like Persuade, Streetwise, Fast Talk, and Intimidation will be vital, whereas combat skills will at best be a fallback if everything goes pear-shaped; in dungeon-delving or action-movie campaigns combat is paramount. Building a combat monster is reasonable in the latter genres, but largely counterproductive in the former. (There's always the guy who'll solve every mystery with swords drawn or guns blazing; in any realistic society, such a person would become a menace, feared by civilians and hunted by authorities.) Conversely, without someone who can gather information -- preferably everyone -- investigation scenarios will grind to a halt. So, back to the original point: you could have a party of one human, one elf, one troll, and one vampire. Assuming humans are the majority, the human can mediate between other party members and the non-adventuring world; the elf can hunt and track, the troll can explore caves and bash anything nasty, and the vampire can use her spooky powers and inhuman strength against other children of the night. On the other hand, the human will be second-best (or worse) at everything else, the elf will prove useless in urban environments, the troll will scare away allies as well as enemies, and the vampire will leave a trail of bloodless corpses and attract Van Helsings in droves. If the GM is down with that, great. If the GM can't generate interesting adventures for this traveling freak show, he should encourage less extreme characters.

I came in just as RQ3 came out, and there's a lot to be said for the RQ2 years. (TrollPak? Pavis and Big Rubble?) On the other hand, all that Glorantha material was and is really hard to transplant to another world. But yes, the RQ3/Elric!/SB5 years were most notable for exposing RQ/BRP mechanics to a more diverse audience. So, thanks for rescuing all that stuff from limbo for us.

IIRC Clockwork & Cthulhu is a supplement for Clockwork & Chivalry. Dark Streets is a nearly* standalone game that pits the Bow Street Runners against the Cthulhu Mythos. 18th Century + Cthulhu might make for a cleaner port than 17th Century + Clockwork + Cthulhu. * DS requires Renaissance Deluxe, which is pretty cheap.

Although to increase the confusion, Magic World Sorcery is mechanically more similar to OpenQuest Battle Magic and Legend Common Magic than those systems' "Sorcery".

From OpenQuest 2: So presumably any spell available to Priests or Initiates is also available to them.

I'm pretty sure it's additive: Initiate spells are available to all higher ranks, including Holy Warrior. For that matter, I think they can also take Priest spells; they're essentially priest-equivalents with martial duties. Also, OpenQuest is loosely based on older RuneQuest rules in which Rune Lords slightly outranked Rune Priests.