Hacking Together My BRP System - Suggestions?

[Zenith Comics Presents...]

So the more I think about it, the more I realize I need to take what works for me from the various BRP iterations to make one that suits me, rather than just using one version (Gold Book, Magic World, CoC, RQx, etc...) for my purposes.

So for example I prefer the CoC 7e way of doing Attributes.

I like the Magic World armour dice absorption system (really love this)

Talents from Pulp Cthulhu

etc...

What are some stuff that you would recommend or would be "must haves" for you? Who knows you might inspire me!

BE HEROIC!

Edited November 4, 2021 by Zenith Comics Presents...
Typos and such

[Lloyd Dupont]

I dunno about other people, for example I know many Mythras players seems to be very particular about Mythras rules (which, ultimately, made me "leave" Mythras). However many BRP players on the other hand seems to adopt this approach, at least some prominent one on this forum! 🙂 

As for my personal feeling on the rule and what I want to tweaks... Even though rules are kind of nice, here is some things I keep tweaking:

- Magic strikes me as being overpowered. I mean I get it, it's Magic. But make a new Wizard vs a non Wizard with the same number of skill points and the difference is quite unfair to non wizard player... That bother me... Or sometimes the opposite, these elemental spell are both too expensive and too deadly.... And the cost doesn't compare well with the cumulative benefit of sharpen or protection... so tricky... anyway I did try a few things, I think I am getting somewhere....

- special/critic... I guess they are important, they open opportunity for better dice roll when 2 players both 100% or let you do a perfect hit. But 1/5 and 1/20 are not my favorite number for this... I would prefer 1/3 and 1/10 but too much maths... next time I play BRP (currently a player not a GM, and in Starfinder) I would use 0 as critical (success of fumble) i.e. 10%, 20%, 30%.... and 00% for fumble) and 1,2 as special (01%, 02%, 11% 12%, ...)

- trying  to make the character feeling unique without pilling on power like D&D

- trying to make the game both deadly (as is don't go to a sword, gun, knife fight without weapon) and not kill the players... Luck point (to change dice roll percentage roll) not good me think (was using them last game), going to use fate point now, player got like 5, each change success of any skill roll by 1 level of success or 3 negate all damage from 1 attack. Gain 1 or 2 each game

Edited November 5, 2021 by Lloyd Dupont

[DreadDomain]

On 11/5/2021 at 7:18 AM, Zenith Comics Presents... said:

So the more I think about it, the more I realize I need to take what works for me from the various BRP iterations to make one that suits me, rather than just using one version (Gold Book, Magic World, CoC, RQx, etc...) for my purposes.

So for example I prefer the CoC 7e way of doing Attributes.

I like the Magic World armour dice absorption system (really love this)

Talents from Pulp Cthulhu

etc...

What are some stuff that you would recommend or would be "must haves" for you? Who knows you might inspire me!

BE HEROIC!

Tough one! There are so many good sub-systems in BRP and it will greatly depends what games I want to play. As an example, I prefer Characteristics in the 1 to 20 range (almost all BRP games) as opposed to 0-100 range (à la CoC 7e) if only because when it gets outside of the human range, it becomes a bit wild with say a STR of 350 or 675. However, playing CoC, I am warming up to the 0-100 range but for CoC only.

In short, there is a lot of things I like about BRP and while there are things I generally prefer, I also like other options and could even prefer them in certain games.

Here is a stab at what I could choose:

• Characteristics on 1-20 with a constant SIZ progression (Superworld)
• Build and Move modified by characteristics (CoC )
• A smoother damage modifier progression instead of the lumpy +1d4, +1d6, +2d6 (inspired by Mythras)
• Skill sorted by categories each with its own skill category modifiers (RuneQuest)
• HP, damage, unconsciousness, major wounds and death managed (CoC)
• Major Wound Table (Stormbringer, Magic World) but where the tens are actually a location (all rolls between 30 and 39 are in the abdomen) so the table could easily be used for an aimed blow.
• Depending on the game, I would definitely add some personality traits, passions (KAP, RQ) pulp talents or background traits (CoC)
• I would be tempted by bonus, penalty and push dice (CoC) but I also like straight bonuses and penalties (KAP, RQ). 
• For combat, it highly depends. I like it smooth and easy in certain games (CoC, KAP) which I would use for a pulp or super game, but also like like when it gets more tactical (Magic World, Stormbringer) or super crunchy in others (RQ, Mythras) for a fantasy or sword and sorcery game.

Now for a superhero game, I am interested to see how Destined (Mythras) will work and compare it with Elder Goldike and Superworld but I would also be tempted to extrapolate (a lot) pulp talents into superpowers.

Edited November 7, 2021 by DreadDomain

[Mugen]

9 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

- Magic strikes me as being overpowered. I mean I get it, it's Magic. But make a new Wizard vs a non Wizard with the same number of skill points and the difference is quite unfair to non wizard player... That bother me... Or sometimes the opposite, these elemental spell are both too expensive and too deadly.... And the cost doesn't compare well with the cumulative benefit of sharpen or protection... so tricky... anyway I did try a few things, I think I am getting somewhere....

I think it's vastly due to the fact there's no "niche protection" whatsoever in BRP (or very limited one), and nothing prevents a "magician" to also be a very good "fighter". But it's a feature, and not a bug, definitely.

I think a good solution to this would be to treat most magic as a different way to deal with problems, not better or worse than non-magic. For instance, shooting a magic missile could be fundamentally the same as shooting an arrow with a bow, just with different skills, tools and resources.

9 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

- special/critic... I guess they are important, they open opportunity for better dice roll when 2 players both 100% or let you do a perfect hit. But 1/5 and 1/20 are not my favorite number for this... I would prefer 1/3 and 1/10 but too much maths... next time I play BRP (currently a player not a GM, and in Starfinder) I would use 0 as critical (success of fumble) i.e. 10%, 20%, 30%.... and 00% for fumble) and 1,2 as special (01%, 02%, 11% 12%, ...)

IMHO, Skill/2 and Skill/10 are quite simple.

I really don't like "dice tricks" as they usually don't scale well with skills above 100%. I really don't like when someone with skill 200% doesn't have an edge over another one with 95%.

[Lloyd Dupont]

16 minutes ago, Mugen said:

IMHO, Skill/2 and Skill/10 are quite simple.

I really don't like "dice tricks" as they usually don't scale well with skills above 100%. I really don't like when someone with skill 200% doesn't have an edge over another one with 95%.

skill/10 is 1/5th of skill/2... progression is not... "regular" for lack of a better word. where as 1/5 & 1/20  is 1/5 and 1/5 * 1/4 more... homogeneous...  (same for 1/3 and 1/10, 1/10 = 1/3 * 1/3.3333) anyway it's not too important... just to explain explain my thinking

as to 95% vs 200% I paraphrase one rule somewhere that I use, to let skill point higher than 100 be used % as a malus to the opponent. Hence 200% vs 95% becomes 105% vs 0% pretty crushing margin of comfort...

other than that, I am not a big fan of dice trick meself.. but this is a simple one I suspect I'll get over... after all I did use something vaguely similar for Revolution D100 and it was .. acceptable.... I think...

Edited November 5, 2021 by Lloyd Dupont

[Mugen]

5 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

as to 95% vs 200% I paraphrase one rule somewhere that I use, to let skill point higher than 100 be used % as a malus to the opponent. Hence 200% vs 95% becomes 105% vs 0% pretty crushing margin of comfort...

My comment was not specifically about skill oppositions. I also think someone with 200% should have better crit and special success chance than someone with 95%.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Mugen

[Kloster]

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

My comment was not specifically about skill oppositions. I also think someone with 200% should have better crit and special success chance than someone with 95%.

Same for me. This is why I don't like the reduction of skill over 100%.

[SDLeary]

Masteries guys... its all about Masteries.

SDLeary

[Jakob]

One element from a non-Chaosium d100 game I really like is Advantage from Revolution D100. It's basically a kind of special sucess, but you get it when your tens die on a succesful roll is higher than your units die. Success with a rolled 53 is with advante, sucess with a rolled 49 is not. That way, you don't have a flat curve for success with Advantage, but a very steep one - the chances are pretty low with low skill values, but rise much more rapidly.

If you need a "true crit" in addition, you can add a "doubles are crits" rule to that.

[Chaot]

On 11/5/2021 at 11:02 AM, Mugen said:

My comment was not specifically about skill oppositions. I also think someone with 200% should have better crit and special success chance than someone with 95%.

Exactly, Skills at this level are dicing for crits. I personally enjoy it and take the advice from Elric! that a beginning character who is skilled in combat should look to begin in the Combat 101%.

 

On 11/5/2021 at 4:11 AM, DreadDomain said:

As an example, I prefer Characteristics in the 1 to 20 range (almost all BRP games) as opposed to 0-100 range (à la CoC 7e) if only because when it gets outside of the human range, it becomes a bit wild with say a STR of 350 or 675. However, playing CoC, I am warming up to the 0-100 range but for CoC only.

Personally, I keep the 'natural range for humans from 3-21 but I have no problem with magically/cybernetically altered humans or other creatures being way up there in the crazy high range, depending on the game.

[DreadDomain]

7 hours ago, Chaot said:

Personally, I keep the 'natural range for humans from 3-21 but I have no problem with magically/cybernetically altered humans or other creatures being way up there in the crazy high range, depending on the game.

Me neither. My point was in a BRP game where an average Joe has STR 10, Spider-Man would have STR 70. In CoC, they would respectively have 50 and 350. For games where characteristics get high, I prefer the former over the latter even if both are totally fine.

[Mugen]

9 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Me neither. My point was in a BRP game where an average Joe has STR 10, Spider-Man would have STR 70. In CoC, they would respectively have 50 and 350. For games where characteristics get high, I prefer the former over the latter even if both are totally fine.

Same for me.

I think too many people think BRP can't have such over-the-top characters simply because they played CoC, or beginners in older editions of StormBringer or RuneQuest, which are, by design, simple humans. But just having characteristics above 21, through magic or some "heroic virtue", can be a game changer.

It's possible that the apparent similarities between D&D and BRP abilities scale may fool them.  But a Str 20 human in D&D can be far stronger than a BRP character with STR and SIZ 20.

[Barak Shathur]

My BGB hack:

MOVE stat from RQIV: DEX + SIZ / 5, rounded up. Because it's more interesting with individualised move scores rather than the same for every member of each species regardless of DEX or SIZ.

Combat round structure from RQIV:

1. Initial move. Everyone gets to move their MOV score.

2. Declaration

3. Combat phase. In SR order.

4. Post-melee move. If you only did one attack or one parry in the combat phase, you can move your MOV score again. If you did nothing, you can move twice that.

Damage bonus from RQIV: STR + SIZ / 5, rounded up, minus 5. Because the standard BRP damage bonus on the one hand creates too abrupt a jump between no DB and DB +1d4, and on the other leads to damage inflation IMO. This solves both of those issues excellently.

Slash and crush attacks do max damage on a special hit. Because this compensates for the reduced DB, but only on specials and criticals, so it also rewards skill more than high stats. 

Weapons and armour from RQ3. Because I prefer the RQ versions where weapons and shields have AP of around 8-12, instead of around 20 which makes them indestructible and able to deflect almost any hit.

I adjust the multiple parries rule in the following way: if a weapon is used to attack and parry in the same round, the attack also counts towards the cumulative -30% for multiple parries. This makes twohanded weapons less overpowered.

I also use the knockback rule from RQIV: a hit of 10 - 19 points forces the recipient (even if the blow is parried) to roll DEX x 5 or fall down. 20 - 30 points DEX x 4 and forced back 1 m. Etc. Creatures of SIZ 20+ increase the knockback threshold by 10 points. 

 

Edited November 9, 2021 by Barak Shathur
clarity

[Chaot]

On 11/9/2021 at 10:01 AM, Barak Shathur said:

1. Initial move. Everyone gets to move their MOV score.

What does the MOV score actually represent? If I have a MOV of 6, how far can I go?

[Baron Wulfraed]

13 hours ago, Chaot said:

What does the MOV score actually represent? If I have a MOV of 6, how far can I go?

Well, in RQ:RiG, page 82, a MOV unit translates to 3 meters (~10 feet, a common grid size for D&D type dungeons as I recall) (No change from RQ2, so likely common to all variants)

[Barak Shathur]

On 1/9/2022 at 4:00 AM, Chaot said:

What does the MOV score actually represent? If I have a MOV of 6, how far can I go?

In RQ4/AiG, 1 MOV = 1 meter.

[hix]

Hit Locations: because Head Shots are cool

Strike Ranks: because movement has to matter, don't bring a knife to a gun fight

Movement: RQ3 style, happens over the round per strike rank

Chain of Being: no matter the setting, some variant of this exists that they have to learn form a weird secret society. love the players pooling their power points

Skills over 99: never cared for ratings over 99, instead I give a "super power" related to the skill on reaching 99, and then a 1% chance to get another each following improvement roll. For instance, the dude with the plasma claws has his SR reduced when he hit 99.

Encumbrance: I don't use the ENC points, instead we have a set number of items you can carry based on characteristics