BRP Using a d20?

[Lloyd Dupont]

If we simply roll under.. I don't see the point of converting to D20... I am kind of traumatised by D&D and getting the D20 out makes me sad.. 😞 
The one good point about D20 conversion would be, I believe, to do D20 + bonus vs 10 + bonus / D20 + bonus

[svensson]

On 2/4/2021 at 7:44 AM, Zenith Comics Presents... said:

I know Pendragon does, and certainly the math is easy to adjust for that, it does reduce the granularity to be sure, but ultimately has anyone changed the d100 primary mechanic to a d20 one?

I see potential with in it, and certainly as I like to call my house engine "Bastard Sword", there is a certain amount of not puritan nature to my view of games, but I am curious if anyone has done this and if there are any pitfalls or triumphs to be shared from that experience?

I've looked at Classic Fantasy and several other DnD morphs of the BRP system and they just come across as 'neither fish nor fowl'. Worse, they miss the essential point of BRP... the adaptability of the system.

In BRP, EVERYBODY is a 'fighter'. Everybody is a 'skill monkey'. Everybody is a 'healer' at need. Whether you use RQ style cults or not, in BRP your character has the potential to become whatever you want them to be. You just have to put the time and effort into training those skills. And this is completely at odds with the rigid d20 model of fixed classes.

AFAIC, d20 and BRP are opposite ends of the gaming of a spectrum. You can try and moosh them together, but it'll end up gobbletigook.

[Lloyd Dupont]

which beg the question... what people are missing exactly when they look at D&D?

even though I am a D&D basher.. there are a few things that I dislike with BRP (particularly in contrast with how D&D handle those same thing) and slowly find my own ways to deal with them...

I have a problem with elemental magic in BRP... I think it's not fun and either too expensive or too deadly or too useless but never just right, and I have a problem making swordmasters duels (i.e. both with like 120% skill) interesting... Though I have some untested fix in progress... 🙂

Edited April 29, 2021 by Lloyd Dupont

[Questbird]

25 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

which beg the question... what people are missing exactly when they look at D&D?

 

I think what people miss about D&D is the blood-rush of 'levelling up'.

D&D characters are like superheroes in combat. They each have their special powers. When you level up you get even more powers.

25 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

 

even though I am a D&D basher.. there are a few things that I dislike with BRP (particularly in contrast with how D&D handle those same thing) and slowly find my own ways to deal with them...

I have a problem with elemental magic in BRP... I think it's not fun and either too expensive or too deadly or too useless but never just right, and I have a problem making swordmasters duels (i.e. both with like 120% skill) interesting... Though I have some untested fix in progress... 🙂

 

If you have a duel between masters you have a stalemate situation. Each has physical skills which match the other. But if you think about famous swashbuckling scenes (eg. The Princess Bride, Star Wars or Erol Flynn movies) there's a lot of dialogue as well as the flashing blades. There's also opportunistic use of terrain, maneuvers obstacles and hidden weapons to distract. Each combatant is trying to find a psychological weakness for his opponent, a chink in their armour even if it's not physical. The same is true in chess competitions between grandmasters. For masters the one to make a mistake first is the loser. In BRP this will come out mechanically but somewhat boringly if you just roll dice back and forth. It might be more interesting if you incorporate some kind of parallel psychological duel which affects the combat rolls from round to round. How well the duellists know each other would be a factor here, as well as their Passions (if you use those).

[Lloyd Dupont]

14 minutes ago, Questbird said:

I think what people miss about D&D is the blood-rush of 'levelling up'.

 

14 minutes ago, Questbird said:

D&D characters are like superheroes in combat. They each have their special powers. When you level up you get even more powers.

 

Yes.. levelling in D&D feels much better than few % in skills that we gain in BRP.....

In fact my Master of Orion setting (soon to be shared, yoohoo! 😄 ) I tweak and introduced a few special skills that give a better level up feeling, I reckon.....

And there are a few other things.. like for example Magic seems more "balanced" in D&D (although, this is a subjective and controversial topic, so I am agreeing to disagree right of the bat on that! 😅 )

[Lloyd Dupont]

23 minutes ago, Questbird said:

It might be more interesting if you incorporate some kind of parallel psychological duel which affects the combat rolls from round to round.

That's an interesting and novel (to me) idea I never had before... Food for thought.... 🙂 
But I did introduce various manoeuver to spice up things.... (increase the chance of failure of both party, increase damage, etc...)

[Jaeger]

On 4/28/2021 at 5:30 PM, Lloyd Dupont said:

If we simply roll under.. I don't see the point of converting to D20... I am kind of traumatised by D&D and getting the D20 out makes me sad.. 😞 
The one good point about D20 conversion would be, I believe, to do D20 + bonus vs 10 + bonus / D20 + bonus

Mechanically, there is no real reason to not be d20 roll-under for most "d100" games.

 

23 hours ago, svensson said:

I've looked at Classic Fantasy and several other DnD morphs of the BRP system and they just come across as 'neither fish nor fowl'. Worse, they miss the essential point of BRP... the adaptability of the system.

Because they cling to much to the standard BRP paradigm of doing things instead of re-evaluating legacy systems and changing them to make them more closely match the genre they are trying to emulate in play.

 

23 hours ago, svensson said:

AFAIC, d20 and BRP are opposite ends of the gaming of a spectrum. You can try and moosh them together, but it'll end up gobbletigook.

There is nothing inherent about the d20 roll high mechanic that was introduced in 3e D&D that keeps it from being used in a skill based game.

One is roll high, one is roll under. They do some things differently enough mechanically that they have a different feel at the table.

But neither is inherently tied to levels, HP inflation, skill lists, raising skills by using them, insanity points, etc. All those things are add-ons that can be changed.

[Lloyd Dupont]

6 minutes ago, Jaeger said:

Mechanically, there is no real reason to not be d20 roll-under for most "d100" games.

yes, yes. but this change absolutely nothing, so what is even the point to roll D20 instead of a D%?

Which beg the question, why do you even need to roll D20 I wonder?

[svensson]

@Jaeger OK, yes, we could flip the d100 mechanic to a 100 result being a crit instead of a fumble. But to what actual benefit? Exactly why is this necessary?

I guess my question is this: what precisely are people looking for in a 'd120' hybrid?

- Classes and the 'ding' factor? IMO character classes are something to avoid not include. Classes form a rigidity in character development that BRP /RQ was specifically designed to avoid.

- Utility in WotC milieux? Well, if you want to put the work into it, you could adapt BRP to the Forgotten Realms I suppose. I personally prefer no to adventure in a milieu that goes through a once-in-a-lifetime apocalypse every time WotC changes the rules, but YMMV

[Questbird]

Ray Turney decided that the advantage of d20 over d100 came down to just the number of dice to roll. I mentioned Fire and Sword (an offshoot of RQ1 and RQ2) as a d20 adaptation of BRP earlier in this thread.

From his Fire and Sword designer's commentary (which is gold BTW, whether or not you play Fire and Sword.)

Quote

The first controversial issue is the choice of dice to roll. There are three major categories of system: D20; D100; and D6. The strength of D20 based systems is that a player or GM only has to roll one die to resolve a skill test. At first sight, this is a very minor advantage. But a large fight may involve 300 attacks and parries. It is easier to read 300 dice than to read 600 and remember that the dark die is the higher when interpreting them each time. This advantage is even greater when compared to a D6 game. D100 Systems have the advantage of greater granularity.This has a lot of appeal for some people, because their intuition tells them that there are many more than 20 different levels of skill in doing almost anything. Finally, D6 systems have the advantage of producing a normal distribution {when you roll 3D6 on a skill test you’re most likely to get 10, 11, or 12}. This is very important in a system like D&D, where parrying is just a modifier to skill, less so in a system like Pendragon, where a skill versus skill mechanic is used.

I decided that I wanted skill tests to be resolved by a single die roll, which left me with D20 as the best option.

 

 

 

Fire and Sword uses d10 for easy tasks, d20 for normal tasks and d30 for extremely hard tasks. Roll under, of course.

Edited April 30, 2021 by Questbird

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

yes, yes. but this change absolutely nothing, so what is even the point to roll D20 instead of a D%?

Which beg the question, why do you even need to roll D20 I wonder?

I think the advantages, if any, are:

1. Simpler math for adding up values. It much easier to add or subtract modifiers, especially a string of modfiers if the numbers are smaller. Thiu figuring out the effects of category modifiers, height modifier, darkness modifier tend to be simpler to apply with d20.
2. Wasier opposed opposed rolls. With a simple D20 it's easy to do a high roll wins, or even a low roll wins. With D100 you typically have opposed values and critical success and special success categories, so it gets more complicated. 

Another question might be what are D100's advantages over D20? I think the answer to that is in the finer granularity with success chances, specials and criticals. But, just how useful that is in another question. In game play the differences between a 49% skill and a 50% probably aren't worth switch to D100 for, but the shift in crtical and special chances probably would be. 

 

 

But it does all come down to what someone expects to gain by changing things, one way or the other. 

 

[Mugen]

6 hours ago, Jaeger said:

There is nothing inherent about the d20 roll high mechanic that was introduced in 3e D&D that keeps it from being used in a skill based game.

One is roll high, one is roll under. They do some things differently enough mechanically that they have a different feel at the table.

Yes. Games like Talislanta or Age of Atlantis have a base system which looks a lot like D&D 3e, or a simplified and d20-ified RoleMaster, but has no classes nor levels.

RuneQuest originally looked a lot like a level-less and class-less D&D variant, where everything was based on thieves skills. Even the way characteristics influenced skills was reminiscent of how DEX changed thieves skills (if your DEX was between X and Y, some skills got +5%, and if it was over Y, those skills got +10%, while others got +5%).

[Mugen]

7 hours ago, svensson said:

@Jaeger OK, yes, we could flip the d100 mechanic to a 100 result being a crit instead of a fumble. But to what actual benefit? Exactly why is this necessary?

Opposed rolls would be my reason to use dX+skill instead of dX roll-under.

I like the simplicity of just having to compare both rolls. Oppositions in roll-under tend to rely on more complex or less intuitive systems.

Edit : it could be possible to make skills as a threshold to beat in a roll-over system (for instance, if your skill is 4, you need to roll 4+ with a d20). But it seems to me it would be a solution worse than either roll-under or roll dX+skill.

Edited April 30, 2021 by Mugen

[Zenith Comics Presents...]

Just to point out, as I've seen it come up a couple of times, I wasn't proposing D&D Classes and Levels, I was merely looking for experience and input on using a single 20 sided die vs. a percentile die in the game. 🙂

Great discussion thus far, I am seeing the passion and the interest.

[Jaeger]

21 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

so what is even the point to roll D20 instead of a D%?

Others have since answered this well enough that the question could easily be reversed.

 

On 4/28/2021 at 11:10 PM, Questbird said:

The same is true in chess competitions between grandmasters. For masters the one to make a mistake first is the loser.

There is a very famous quote in chess circles: "The winner is the one who makes the next to last mistake..."

Which is usually prefaced with the saying about the starting position in chess: "The mistakes are all there, ready to be made."

 

21 hours ago, svensson said:

- Utility in WotC milieux? Well, if you want to put the work into it, you could adapt BRP to the Forgotten Realms I suppose.

For D&D with BRP people, it is about the genre and setting IMHO.

The D&D system induces a very specific play style. And with its constant HP inflation you are essentially playing through 2-3 different heroic genres with the same PC.

People like themselves their Forgotten Realms setting!   But they dislike the direction the game takes around levels 7-10. Hence BRP. A system that keeps things in a much narrower power band than RAW D&D. And BRP has the pre-packaged material to do this without much work.

Yes you could Mod D&D to do this... But not one published d20 game does!

They all have HP inflation! 5e, TSR, OSR, you name it. Show me a d20 based game, and we can flip right to the part in the book that has HP increasing every level.

It's like there is this permanent mental block that happens when people sit down to make d20 OGL based games; they turn into game design robots: "Must have HP increase with level!"  Absolutely unbelievable.

Especially when there is no inherent reason to.

 

[svensson]

@Jaeger When converting the heathen to the One True Way of the Runes, I have several things I tell them:

- a] Don't become fixated on one role in the party. If you want to be a tank who can pick locks, BRP/RQ has rules that'll let you.

- b] Magic is common, being GOOD at magic is uncommon

- c] Face every single fight like it might be your last. There is no such thing as a 'warm up fight' and the lowest trollkin still has a 1% chance to spike your ass to a wall if you're not careful.

- d] 'Adventurer' is not a job in RQ. Characters are part of a community, often several communities [clan, cult, military unit maybe], and responsible to them your actions. And your community will NOT appreciate the 'Baldur's Gate' murder hobo routine. If you butcher a troll caravan just to loot it, don't be surprised if that troll clan doesn't visit your clan on some Dark Season night. And your clansmen will blame YOU for it.

[Atgxtg]

On 4/28/2021 at 10:47 PM, svensson said:

I've looked at Classic Fantasy and several other DnD morphs of the BRP system and they just come across as 'neither fish nor fowl'. Worse, they miss the essential point of BRP... the adaptability of the system.

I don't think they miss the point, it's just that by emulating D&D they have to downplay that point. If anything it highlights just how adaptable BRP really is, as you can remove some it its adaptablity.

On 4/28/2021 at 10:47 PM, svensson said:

In BRP, EVERYBODY is a 'fighter'. Everybody is a 'skill monkey'. Everybody is a 'healer' at need. Whether you use RQ style cults or not, in BRP your character has the potential to become whatever you want them to be. You just have to put the time and effort into training those skills. And this is completely at odds with the rigid d20 model of fixed classes.

Exactly. And that's why Classic Fantasy and similar RPGs are so different from core BRP. Basically they are trying to emulate a D&D style of play with BRP, and so adapt the BRP rules to give the game that old school D&D feel. 

On 4/28/2021 at 10:47 PM, svensson said:

AFAIC, d20 and BRP are opposite ends of the gaming of a spectrum.

As game systems, yes, but as dice and die mechanics, not so much. RQ1/2 was pretty much a D20 system with everything handled in 5% skill increments (except for crticals, specials and fumbles). 

On 4/28/2021 at 10:47 PM, svensson said:

You can try and moosh them together, but it'll end up gobbletigook.

Not necessarily. It depends on what your end goal is. Classic Fantasy seems to work for those who want to play a D&D style game with more BRPish game mechanics. I confess that I don't see the attraction of doing so, but Cf's success shows that there are many who do. 

[Atgxtg]

On 4/30/2021 at 10:04 PM, svensson said:

@Jaeger When converting the heathen to the One True Way of the Runes, I have several things I tell them:

- a] Don't become fixated on one role in the party. If you want to be a tank who can pick locks, BRP/RQ has rules that'll let you.

- b] Magic is common, being GOOD at magic is uncommon

- c] Face every single fight like it might be your last. There is no such thing as a 'warm up fight' and the lowest trollkin still has a 1% chance to spike your ass to a wall if you're not careful.

- d] 'Adventurer' is not a job in RQ. Characters are part of a community, often several communities [clan, cult, military unit maybe], and responsible to them your actions. And your community will NOT appreciate the 'Baldur's Gate' murder hobo routine. If you butcher a troll caravan just to loot it, don't be surprised if that troll clan doesn't visit your clan on some Dark Season night. And your clansmen will blame YOU for it.

I'd add e) figure out what your goals are and work towards them.

In D&D selecting your class essentially assures that you will eventually be good at the role you selected. As long as your character survives and earns experience points, you will level up and become a better fighter, wizard, cleric, etc. Yes, there are things a player can do to optimize this, but in general level is the key measure to success. But in BRP/RQ whatever role you select doesn't mean as much as what you do to press towards that goal. A warrior who doesn't work towards improving skill with weapons doesn't automatically become a better warrior. A warrior has to fight and (maybe train and practice) to improve in BRP. A so-called wizard who climbs a tree and shoots enemies with a crossbow justs gets better at climbing and shooting a crossbow, and doesn't improve with magic at all. 

I've seen more than one player get frustrated when their character didn't somehow automatically morph into the sort of character they wanted them to be over time -especially in Pendragon. In BRP games, if you want your character to be a good swordsman, archer, hunter, plumber, whatever, you need to work on the appropriate skill set. 

[svensson]

@Atgxtg I guess I'm just opposed to the whole class based system thing. The rigidity of classes, even with the current 5e /PF2e liberal interpretations of 'multi-classing', is just to pigeon-holed for me when I consider that I once ran a Praxian Bison Rider heavy cavalryman with a Pick Lock of 75%... And yes, that skill started out at absolute 0% + Manipulation modifier 😂 It took a Hell of a lot of time and whole bunch of Lunars /Wheels /Clacks and the occasional ransom victim to get there, but the effort made that character one of my all time favorites.

What I love about BRP /RQ is this very thing... if you put the time and effort into it, your character can learn to do anything, no matter off the wall. And d20 systems generally don't allow for that.

As for flipping the d100 mechanic so that a 100 result is a critical success and a 01 result is a fumble... hey if that's what makes your table happy, Mazel Tov! and do your thing. But the last thing RQ needs at the stage of the resurrection is to box ourselves into the 'food groups' of Tank, Blaster, Healer, Skill Monkey that d20 games absolutely require.

Edited May 4, 2021 by svensson

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

@Atgxtg I guess I'm just opposed to the whole class bases system thing.

Me too. Ft I switched to Strombringer and RuneQuest years ago in part to get away from classes and level.

2 hours ago, svensson said:

The rigidity of classes, even with the current 5e /PF2e liberal interpretations of 'multi-classing', is just to pigeon-holed for me when I consider that I once ran a Praxian Bison Rider heavy cavalryman with a Pick Lock of 75%... And yes, that skill started out at absolute 0% + Manipulation modifier 😂 It took a Hell of a lot of time and whole bunch of Lunars /Wheels /Clacks and the occasional ransom victim to get there, but the effort made that character one of my all time favorites.

I know what you mean. Back in the old AD&D days you could often tell what class someone was by what gear they wore or carried. People in leather armor with shields were not to be trusted.

2 hours ago, svensson said:

What I love about BRP /RQ is this very thing... if you put the time and effort into it, your character can learn to do anything, no matter off the wall. And d20 systems generally don't allow for that.

Yup. I agree. I once ran an adventure where the PCs were put in charge of a fort, with the expectation that they were going to be attacked by the enemy. The PCs not only spent time working on the defenses, but also trained up the garrison over the winter, improving their weapon skills by 5-10%, and this ended up playing a factor in the eventual battle. Ten archers at 35% were significantly better than ten archers at 25%. You can do that sort of thing in BRP, but usually not in D20. 

2 hours ago, svensson said:

As for flipping the d100 mechanic so that a 100 result is a critical success and a 01 result is a fumble... hey if that's what makes your table happy, Mazel Tov! and do your thing. But the last thing RQ needs at the stage of the resurrection is to box ourselves into the 'food groups' of Tank, Blaster, Healer, Skill Monkey that d20 games absolutely require.

True. I mostly agree. Now I do play a lot of Pendragon, which is RQ/BRP based, but does use a d20 for task resolution, so there can be advantages to altering some of the game mechanics. Pendragon handles opposed rolls very well, and even manages to eliminate the alternating attacks of most RPGs for an opposed roll with the winner damaging the loser.  Even so, game mechanics in Pendragon are far closer to RuneQuest than to D&D. 

But I think you're mostly preaching to the choir here. Most of us are BRP fans already, that's why we're here. Those who favor d20 with classes and level probably prefer other games. That's okay too. 

[Mugen]

7 hours ago, svensson said:

@Atgxtg I guess I'm just opposed to the whole class bases system thing. The rigidity of classes, even with the current 5e /PF2e liberal interpretations of 'multi-classin', is just to pigeon-holed for me when I consider that I once ran a Praxian Bison Rider heavy cavalryman with a Pick Lock of 75%...

You can't really rely on multi-classing to learn individual skills in those games, to be honest, as it heavily slows your progression in your "main class", you better get them through feats or backgrounds.

IMHO, multi-class is a vestige of older d&d games, which didn't have the flexibility of skills. The only game in which it works well is the japanese game Sword World, but classes are in fact more akin to very broad skills in this game. It's not very different from Barbarians of Lemuria, but with a very limited seletction of professions.

[Jaeger]

On 4/30/2021 at 7:04 PM, svensson said:

- a] Don't become fixated on one role in the party. If you want to be a tank who can pick locks, BRP/RQ has rules that'll let you.

- b] Magic is common, being GOOD at magic is uncommon

- c] Face every single fight like it might be your last. There is no such thing as a 'warm up fight' and the lowest trollkin still has a 1% chance to spike your ass to a wall if you're not careful.

- d] 'Adventurer' is not a job in RQ. Characters are part of a community, often several communities [clan, cult, military unit maybe]

 

Most of This is not exclusive to any particular setting game. It is a function of setting tropes and the level of verisimilitude that a GM is willing to enforce.

The one thing that is prevalent in class and level a.k.a. D&D systems is the Hit Point bloat. This is the #1 thing that usually around levels 3-6 starts breaking verisimilitude for some people and leads them to look for other systems. This tends to be the #1 turn off for most people.

I think the first d20 fantasy game to break from this sacred paradigm that is well designed, with a good setting can attract its share of players.

 

 

On 5/4/2021 at 1:38 AM, Mugen said:

...

IMHO, multi-class is a vestige of older d&d games, which didn't have the flexibility of skills. The only game in which it works well is the japanese game Sword World, but classes are in fact more akin to very broad skills in this game. It's not very different from Barbarians of Lemuria, but with a very limited seletction of professions.

 

Backgrounds/careers as "skills" are one of the mechanics that have yet to really catch on, and they really should. They are so much more suited to class and level based games than a standard skill lists; they broaden what characters can do within their class without adding any additional complexity, and in most cases reducing it.

That being said, even in skill based games I have gotten to the point that I no longer see a need for more than 20 broad based skills depending on the genre. Let specializations take care of any edge cases.

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Jaeger

[Questbird]

I'm playing the computer RPG Divinity: Original Sin at the moment. It has an interesting system of professions as skills, with levels as @Jaeger mentions. There are eight of these large-scale skills: Scoundrel, Marksman, Man-at-arms; and (magical ones) Aerotheurgy, Hydrosophy, Geomancy, Pyromancy and Witchcraft. These skills are enablers for other skills or spells which you can learn (in the game by finding or buying 'skill books') which are separated into Novice, Adept and Master skills. Level 1 in one of the umbrella skills will let you learn up to 3 Novice skills in that category; level 2 will allow you 5 Novice and 2 Adept skills, and so on. There are also a few other skills (Bartering, Leadership, Crafting etc.) which are separate from those 8 categorised ones.

My character, a kind of sorcerer/thief started with lvl 1 of Aerotheurgy, lvl 1 of Scoundrel and lvl 1 of Witchcraft, with starting subskill from each (Thunder Jump, Walk In Shadows and Vampiric touch respectively) As the game progressed I found a few Geomancy skill books, which no one else in the party had, so I learned Geomancy lvl1 to acquire those skills. Later I put Scoundrel and Geomancy up to level 2 as I found more skills for those. But it was quite an opportunistic and organic process; quite a pleasant contrast to the rigid levelling of D&D*

* Although the most recent Dungeons and Dragons does allow characters to change profession when they level up, which allows for some flexibility.

[Lloyd Dupont]

In Revolution D100 (which has a forum section of its own right here!) I think one can pretty much say that each skill is akin to a class... 

[Mugen]

2 hours ago, Jaeger said:

That being said, even in skill based games I have gotten to the point that I no longer see a need for more than 20 broad based skills depending on the genre. Let specializations take care of any edge cases.

 

I agree.

2 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

In Revolution D100 (which has a forum section of its own right here!) I think one can pretty much say that each skill is akin to a class... 

If you use "atomic" classes that are dedicated to one area of expertise and leave "hybrids" (such as the Paladin), yes, definitely.