Everything that's wrong with BRP:s historic medieval weapons and shields

[Barak Shathur]

One of my gripes with BRP is that I think they really botched the weapon system for historical melee weapons and shields (I haven't looked at the other categories). RQ3:s weapons, which are so similar, seem much more balanced and thought through. For exemple:

Broadsword

In BRP there is just no reason other than fluff to choose a broadsword over a battle axe. They have the same base chance, special effect, price and strike rank, but the sword does less damage and weighs more. The sword only requires a 7 DEX instead of a 9, but when will that ever make a difference? And it has 20 HP compared to the axe's 15, but since a) a parry deflects all damage (I'll get to that later) and b) if you want to damage a parrying weapon in BRP, you need to exceed its HP, and how often do you exceed even 15 points of damage? So the difference in HP is essentially meaningless. 

In RQ3, a sword can impale, which makes up for it doing less base damage, and makes it a good choice.

Scimitar

The scimitar in BRP is almost identical to the broadsword, boring! The scimitar in RQ3 does 1d6+2 damage compared to the broadsword's 1d8+1, so it is slightly less useful against heavier armour but (IMO) more devastating on an impale with its 2d6+4 (higher minimum damage) compared to 2d8+2 for the broadsword. 

Crushing weapons

In BRP, crushing weapons do less damage than edged weapons. They have a higher base chance, but you can raise your starting skill with any weapon to 75% anyway, and a 10% savings in skill points isn't a significant benefit. Why would anyone choose a mace or a warhammer over a battle axe, except for fluff? In RQ3, crushing weapons halve the AP for flexible armours. Against chainmail, for example, it makes a huge difference and makes a crushing weapon totally worth it. And warhammers also have the option to impale, which makes it a really good choice against heavily armoured opponents despite a somewhat low base damage.

These are just some examples.

And then there's the parrying. In BRP, a parry deflects all damage. Doesn't matter if it's a short sword or a battle axe being parried by a hoplite shield or a dagger. So what happens if you're parrying the huge club of a troll? BRP suggests simply not allowing parries against someone twice your size. Bleh.

The only exception to the invulnerability of parrying weapons seems to be when you directly attack a parrying weapon with a crushing weapon and score a special success, then you have a somewhat greater chance to break it. But that would be an extremely inefficient way to fight.

In RQ3, the attacking weapon rolls damage against the parrying implement, and anything over carries into the defender. Since weapons' and shields' HP is about half that in BRP, one handed weapons usually bounce but great weapons, or attacks with a lot of damage bonus, have a decent chance of something getting through.

I just wish they'd made BRP more like RQ3...

[Mugen]

2 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Scimitar

The scimitar in BRP is almost identical to the broadsword, boring! The scimitar in RQ3 does 1d6+2 damage compared to the broadsword's 1d8+1, so it is slightly less useful against heavier armour but (IMO) more devastating on an impale with its 2d6+4 (higher minimum damage) compared to 2d8+2 for the broadsword.

I don't get your point. Sure, Scimitar has higher minimum impale damage, but identical average and lower maximum.

[Barak Shathur]

31 minutes ago, Mugen said:

I don't get your point. Sure, Scimitar has higher minimum impale damage, but identical average and lower maximum.

Just the higher minimum, really, that makes it more devastating against lighter armour, which seems to simulate the effect of a slicing weapon rather well, compared to a more chopping broadsword. But the variety is the main point.

[Barak Shathur]

I guess I'm trying to provoke a debate about what could be better in BRP. It has so much that's great, I really want to love it. But I'll quote what an art teacher once said to me, "it's so good it's strange it's not better". I am frustrated that when the designers had such a wide variety of systems to choose their ingredients from, it seems they in some cases didn't choose the best options, and I don't understand why. I feel that the things I'm pointing to in this thread aren't more cumbersome or incongrous with the system, on the contrary they fit better into the general balancing act that I feel lies at the core of BRP. The BRP system (not talking about BGB now) really is my favourite, it hits the sweet spot of simulationism and playability for me. 

[Atgxtg]

7 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

One of my gripes with BRP is that I think they really botched the weapon system for historical melee weapons and shields (I haven't looked at the other categories). RQ3:s weapons, which are so similar, seem much more balanced and thought through. For exemple:

Broadsword

In BRP there is just no reason other than fluff to choose a broadsword over a battle axe. They have the same base chance, special effect, price and strike rank, but the sword does less damage and weighs more. The sword only requires a 7 DEX instead of a 9, but when will that ever make a difference?

Quite, often in games where the players roll their attributes. About 25% of humans don't have a 9 DEX on a 3d6 roll. Conversely , over 90% of humans have a 7 DEX or better on a 3d6 roll. 

7 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

In RQ3, a sword can impale, which makes up for it doing less base damage, and makes it a good choice.

Yup, and I'd say RQ3 is a better game system than BRP, too. In large part becuase BRP is more of a toolkit for building your own game system. 

 

7 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

I just wish they'd made BRP more like RQ3...

But then what would be the reason for BRP? 

Orginally BRP was a trimmed down version of RQ used an an introduction to The Chaosium's house system, with core components that were the foundation for all of Chasoium's RPGs. The BBG,on the other hand, is most of the rules and variants from those systems combined into one book that can be customized to fit a particular setting or genre. 

But if you really prefer the rules from RQ3 over BRP (and I do), then just use RQ3. Even if there are some things about BRP that you prefer to RQ3, port over whatever it is that you like. 

I used to run a Young Kingdoms campaign with RQ3 rules because RQ3 had things that I wanted that Stormbringer lacked. It was easy enough to convert over to RQ3.  That is the nice thing about the similarity between the rules in old Chasoium games. Thy are all about 90% the same, so it's easy to mix 'n match what you want. 

 

[Mugen]

5 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Just the higher minimum, really, that makes it more devastating against lighter armour, which seems to simulate the effect of a slicing weapon rather well, compared to a more chopping broadsword. But the variety is the main point.

I see. In fact, It's also interesting to have a higher minimum against heavy armor because your chance to deal 0 damage is less important.

Against a scimitar, you need at least 6 points armor to have a chance to nullify an impale, not counting the damage bonus.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

I see. In fact, It's also interesting to have a higher minimum against heavy armor because your chance to deal 0 damage is less important.

Against a scimitar, you need at least 6 points armor to have a chance to nullify an impale, not counting the damage bonus.

That's kinda why I don't like adds for weapons. You reach a point where it becomes impossible to nick someone or for armor to stop a hit. There are no one or two point dagger hits; leather will never stop a dagger, etc. 

[Barak Shathur]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Quite, often in games where the players roll their attributes. About 25% of humans don't have a 9 DEX on a 3d6 roll. Conversely , over 90% of humans have a 7 DEX or better on a 3d6 roll. 

In theory, but it is my experience that it is rare for a character who is going to do any kind of melee fighting to wind up with a DEX lower than 9.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

But then what would be the reason for BRP? 

Orginally BRP was a trimmed down version of RQ used an an introduction to The Chaosium's house system, with core components that were the foundation for all of Chasoium's RPGs. The BBG,on the other hand, is most of the rules and variants from those systems combined into one book that can be customized to fit a particular setting or genre. 

The point would be that BGB as I understand it is supposed to be "the best of all worlds", for you as a player to pick and choose what suits you. In this instance, it doesn't seem to me that they chose the best option available and it surprises me, since they took other RQ3 stuff like eg. fatigue points and strike ranks, which are perhaps not the best or most versatile aspects of that game IMO (although fine as supplements to BGB in themselves). This is especially true since RQ3 is long out of print and hard to get a hold of.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

But if you really prefer the rules from RQ3 over BRP (and I do), then just use RQ3. Even if there are some things about BRP that you prefer to RQ3, port over whatever it is that you like. 

I used to run a Young Kingdoms campaign with RQ3 rules because RQ3 had things that I wanted that Stormbringer lacked. It was easy enough to convert over to RQ3.  That is the nice thing about the similarity between the rules in old Chasoium games. Thy are all about 90% the same, so it's easy to mix 'n match what you want. 

This is what I do. I use RQ3, and import stuff like multiple parries, varied special effects for crushing and slashing weapons, the attack/defence matrix, and such that I think are improvements. It would be nice though to have it all in one place, instead of having to flip between publications.

Is there any likelihood of an updated version of BGB? It's been a few years.

[Barak Shathur]

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

That's kinda why I don't like adds for weapons. You reach a point where it becomes impossible to nick someone or for armor to stop a hit. There are no one or two point dagger hits; leather will never stop a dagger, etc. 

Interesting point (no pun intended). Is this why they lowered or removed the adds in later versions?

[SDLeary]

9 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Interesting point (no pun intended). Is this why they lowered or removed the adds in later versions?

I believe that was part of it. Its also why I think some of the "extended family" altered the Damage Bonus in their systems as well.

Don't discount ease though. Some seem to feel that adds to the dice make things too complicated.

SDLeary

Edited May 19, 2021 by SDLeary

[Mugen]

2 hours ago, SDLeary said:

I believe that was part of it. Its also why I think some of the "extended family" altered the Damage Bonus in their systems as well.

Don't discount ease though. Some seem to feel that adds to the dice make things too complicated.

SDLeary

I think the modification of damage bonus was essentially done to have a more gradual increase. In MRQ and others, you start with 1d2, then 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, etc. Basically, for every 5 points in STR+SIZ, your average db increases by approximately 1 point.

In BRP, you start with 1d4, which is huge compared to the base damage of most weapons, followed by a relatively tiny step with 1d6, then again a huge step with a second d6, and then additional d6s.

As for the lower weapon damage values, I think the goal was to make the game less deadly. Hit locations also had increased hit points, each gaining 1 HP per 5 points in (CON+SIZ), mirroring damage bonus progression.

[Barak Shathur]

This made me think of the unpublished so called "RuneQuest 4" from 1993, that I found as a pdf somewhere. Looking at it, it seems to really have a lot going for it. Instead of a damage bonus die, it starts with a simple +1 and increases by one for each step. The weapons do simple d6s and d8s without adds. You fall unconscious at 0 HP and die at negative total positive HP. Also, hit locations have three levels of injury, where it takes 3x HP to sever or maim a limb. Other nifty things include more tactical options like the ability to substitute a parry for an extra attack. Has anyone tried this version?

[David Scott]

On 5/18/2021 at 10:44 AM, Barak Shathur said:

One of my gripes with BRP

Have a read of the Optional Rules & Basic Roleplaying (2010 Revised edition) box on page 10. Just treat the RQ3 rules you want to use as rules options and add them. Make BRP the way you want to play as the rules were designed to do that.

If you use the Optional Rule Checklist, just add in the RQ3 changes so your group understands whats different in your BRP game.

On 5/18/2021 at 10:44 AM, Barak Shathur said:

Broadsword

In BRP there is just no reason other than fluff to choose a broadsword over a battle axe. They have the same base chance, special effect, price and strike rank, but the sword does less damage and weighs more. The sword only requires a 7 DEX instead of a 9, but when will that ever make a difference? And it has 20 HP compared to the axe's 15, but since a) a parry deflects all damage (I'll get to that later) and b) if you want to damage a parrying weapon in BRP, you need to exceed its HP, and how often do you exceed even 15 points of damage? So the difference in HP is essentially meaningless. 

In RQ3, a sword can impale, which makes up for it doing less base damage, and makes it a good choice.

Add your RQ3 changes and additions to your BRP checklist

On 5/18/2021 at 10:44 AM, Barak Shathur said:

Scimitar

The scimitar in BRP is almost identical to the broadsword, boring! The scimitar in RQ3 does 1d6+2 damage compared to the broadsword's 1d8+1, so it is slightly less useful against heavier armour but (IMO) more devastating on an impale with its 2d6+4 (higher minimum damage) compared to 2d8+2 for the broadsword.

Add your RQ3 changes and additions to your BRP checklist

On 5/18/2021 at 10:44 AM, Barak Shathur said:

Crushing weapons

In BRP, crushing weapons do less damage than edged weapons. They have a higher base chance, but you can raise your starting skill with any weapon to 75% anyway, and a 10% savings in skill points isn't a significant benefit. Why would anyone choose a mace or a warhammer over a battle axe, except for fluff? In RQ3, crushing weapons halve the AP for flexible armours. Against chainmail, for example, it makes a huge difference and makes a crushing weapon totally worth it. And warhammers also have the option to impale, which makes it a really good choice against heavily armoured opponents despite a somewhat low base damage.

Add your RQ3 changes and additions to your BRP checklist

On 5/18/2021 at 10:44 AM, Barak Shathur said:

And then there's the parrying. In BRP, a parry deflects all damage. Doesn't matter if it's a short sword or a battle axe being parried by a hoplite shield or a dagger. So what happens if you're parrying the huge club of a troll? BRP suggests simply not allowing parries against someone twice your size. Bleh.

Add your changes and additions to your BRP checklist

On 5/18/2021 at 10:44 AM, Barak Shathur said:

In RQ3, the attacking weapon rolls damage against the parrying implement, and anything over carries into the defender. Since weapons' and shields' HP is about half that in BRP, one handed weapons usually bounce but great weapons, or attacks with a lot of damage bonus, have a decent chance of something getting through.

Add your RQ3 changes and additions to your BRP checklist

On 5/18/2021 at 10:44 AM, Barak Shathur said:

I just wish they'd made BRP more like RQ3...

Consider playing RQ3.

[Barak Shathur]

3 hours ago, David Scott said:

Consider playing RQ3.

 

19 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

This is what I do. I use RQ3, and import stuff like multiple parries, varied special effects for crushing and slashing weapons, the attack/defence matrix, and such that I think are improvements. It would be nice though to have it all in one place, instead of having to flip between publications.

 

[David Scott]

5 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

This is what I do. I use RQ3, and import stuff like multiple parries, varied special effects for crushing and slashing weapons, the attack/defence matrix, and such that I think are improvements. It would be nice though to have it all in one place, instead of having to flip between publications.

Cut and paste the RQ3 material into a single document or use the Game Aids pages (depending on the RQ3 edition you have). The parts you are using aren't that much, so scan, cut & paste and print to make a reference sheet to refer to. Its very unlikely that a new version of BRP would be produced with the RQ3 parts you mention as optional rules, especially considering:

Quote

 RQ3 introduced a level of complexity that most of the writers involved now think was unnecessary, even counter-productive. 

https://www.chaosium.com/blog/designing-the-new-runequest-part-2/

You might even consider looking at Mythras, Openquest, Revolution, etc. as they may have all you want in one book. Others may be able to advise you on this.

Overall, RQ3 is long gone and unlikely to reappear anytime soon.

[Atgxtg]

20 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Interesting point (no pun intended). Is this why they lowered or removed the adds in later versions?

Possibly. I still wish daggers did 1d6 like  they did originally, rather than 1d4+2. I find it odd that a dagger can penetrate some armor all the time that a greatsword can't.

 

8 hours ago, Mugen said:

I think the modification of damage bonus was essentially done to have a more gradual increase. In MRQ and others, you start with 1d2, then 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, etc. Basically, for every 5 points in STR+SIZ, your average db increases by approximately 1 point.

Yeah, it's a smoother progression, and only slighter faster than the standard one.

Personally, I think I favor the idea of just upping the weapon's damage die. So rather than 1D8+1+1D4 it would look something like:

• 1D8+1 changed to 1D10 (to get rid of the add but keep the same average damage)
• 1D4 changed to a bump up to the damage die, to 2d6

 

But then I run a lot of Pendragon, and gotten used to the idea of the damage stat being based on the character, not the weapon. 

 

[Baron Wulfraed]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Possibly. I still wish daggers did 1d6 like  they did originally, rather than 1d4+2. I find it odd that a dagger can penetrate some armor all the time that a greatsword can't.

The dagger is most likely being used in a thrust, which means initial impact is all on a very small point. The greatsword is used in chopping motion, meaning the impact tends to be spread over a longer region of the blade -- and said impact is likely to just be moving a lot of armor (plate might get bent, various mail will flex [I do think there should be some mode of crushing damage with no armor penetration] and even wrap around the blade.

 

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay -- how does one delete part of a split-quote?

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

The dagger is most likely being used in a thrust, which means initial impact is all on a very small point.

But still doesn't justify it having a higher minimum damage than a spear. IMO, the old 1d6 damage for daggers in RQ1 is really a better way to go. 

3 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

The greatsword is used in chopping motion, meaning the impact tends to be spread over a longer region of the blade -- and said impact is likely to just be moving a lot of armor (plate might get bent, various mail will flex [I do think there should be some mode of crushing damage with no armor penetration] and even wrap around the blade.

Not always. Greatswords could be used to thrust, just look at half-swording technique. Part of what made the greatsword a formidable weapon was that it could be used in multiple ways, making it all the harder to defend against. With a spear or a mace you kinda know what sort of attack to expect. With a greatsword, it could be a slashing attack, a thrust, a smash with the pommel.  

3 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

 

Okay -- how does one delete part of a split-quote?

Usually by clicking on the quote box  to highlight it and then pressing delete.

 

But I think overall, we love to tweak things with RQ/BRP here and there. It's part of what attracts us to the game system in the first place. Plus the overall simplicity of the system makes such changes a bit easier than in some other RPGs, because we don't have things like "game balance" to worry about. We don't have to consider things like class limitations when we tweak a weapon's stats.  

[RosenMcStern]

The sad truth is that damage values in RQ3 are rather... wrong. Blunt weapons have the lowest possible minimum damage, and not just a lower average damage. This has two consequences:

• sharp weapons have a higher chance of penetrating armor, while blunt weapons are more likely to bounce off; it should be the opposite;
• a sharp weapon does more damage so it is more likely to overcome a parry; this is wrong, it should be the sheer impact of the blunt weapon to have higher chances

"Sharpness" is factored in the damage dice with a +1 or +2 for the sake of simplicity, but then this leads to the above inconsisencies. In general, sharp weapons are ineffective if they strike at the wrong angle, while this cannot happen to blunt weapons. The damage dice should reflect this, but in RQ3 they do not. The BGB is more consistent in this, as it is the blunt weapons that have the biggest minimum damage.

[Barak Shathur]

19 minutes ago, RosenMcStern said:

The sad truth is that damage values in RQ3 are rather... wrong. Blunt weapons have the lowest possible minimum damage, and not just a lower average damage. This has two consequences:

• sharp weapons have a higher chance of penetrating armor, while blunt weapons are more likely to bounce off; it should be the opposite;
• a sharp weapon does more damage so it is more likely to overcome a parry; this is wrong, it should be the sheer impact of the blunt weapon to have higher chances

"Sharpness" is factored in the damage dice with a +1 or +2 for the sake of simplicity, but then this leads to the above inconsisencies. In general, sharp weapons are ineffective if they strike at the wrong angle, while this cannot happen to blunt weapons. The damage dice should reflect this, but in RQ3 they do not. The BGB is more consistent in this, as it is the blunt weapons that have the biggest minimum damage.

In RQ3, blunt weapons halve the AP of flexible armour (like chainmail), so they can be quite effective.

In BGB, the battle axe beats the blunt weapons (and probably all the other one handed weapons too) with its higher damage, so blunt weapons are kind of superflous.

[Questbird]

1 hour ago, Barak Shathur said:

In RQ3, blunt weapons halve the AP of flexible armour (like chainmail), so they can be quite effective.

In BGB, the battle axe beats the blunt weapons (and probably all the other one handed weapons too) with its higher damage, so blunt weapons are kind of superflous.

 

Blunt weapons halve armour value of flexible armour. That's an easy houserule to remember.

[Lloyd Dupont]

58 minutes ago, Questbird said:

Blunt weapons halve armour value of flexible armour. That's an easy houserule to remember.

Funny that, I write a rule similar to that in my Master of Orion (in progress) booklet.. 
Though it is an option.. i.e. a merge between Mythras combat effect and BRP special fixed effect

[Bilharzia]

 

On 5/18/2021 at 4:54 PM, Barak Shathur said:

I guess I'm trying to provoke a debate about what could be better in BRP. 

If that is your main complaint you might want to look at Mythras. It is approaching a decade since it (RuneQuest 6) was first published (2012) so it might be time to update yourself. There are many more options which Mythras combat introduces, in my mind it radically changes RQ/BRP combat in favour of special effects, and weapon differences count. If you don't like some of the more complicated aspects of Mythras (Action Point differences, Turn cycles, Reach) they are pretty easy to ignore or houserule.

On the differences you start with between battle axe and broadsword, you are ignoring a few things. One is milieu - where is your setting? when? which cultures use what and why? cost differences? tactical differences? In Mythras the weapons are similar but have different special effects, both have bleed, but a broadsword also can use impale, and the axe has sunder. An impaling weapon is going to do more damage on average and can severely hamper an opponent's skill (an impaled broadsword will penalise combat skills by 50%). An axe will not impale, but using sunder can damage armour.

[Barak Shathur]

I've looked at Legend and Mythras, and there's a lot to like. For example, they fixed damage bonus progression which is great. I think I like the no total HP solution. But Action Points sound like a total nightmare for me as GM. So now each round contains up to three sub-rounds, though some NPCs will use up their actions quicker than others, and I have to keep track of all that? Also, a special effect with every hit? That makes the special effects seem less special somehow, IMO. I could play it if I houseruled it a lot, but then I'm houseruling again and might as well play a different game. 

Oh and with regards to action points, it just seems incredibly unbalancing to have a bunch of characters with extra attacks right out of the box. That should be reserved for bosses, and PCs at a really advanced stage.

Edited May 20, 2021 by Barak Shathur
added a point on action points

[Bilharzia]

As I said, easy to houserule, and in fact Mythras Imperative fixes action points at 2, which means for example one attack and one parry. Not difficult to track. Personally I got rid of Cycles in my own game as well. Getting hung up on that means you are missing out on a lot. I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to opine the lack of BRP innovation while at the same time not even trying a game that has done precisely that, and has been successfully publishing a growing range of supplements for nearly 10 years now. I think it's £6 (?) on Drivethrurpg at the moment.

On special effects - one is gained with every level of success, eg. a successful attack against a failed parry, you might gain, for example an opportunity to Trip your opponent, if successful you have gained a big advantage. It is typically these moments which prove decisive, not hacking everything up into pieces like most other combat systems, including BRP and RQ3.

Edited May 20, 2021 by Bilharzia