Combining the BRP system with PF 2e/DnD 5e?

[Grivenger]

I love the idea of what the Basic Roleplaying System has to offer. From what I've read in Call of Cthulhu and Runequest: Glorantha, I like the open character development in the form of experience checks at the end of a session together with the straightforward math. I'm also quite a fan of the new Pathfinder 2nd edition when it comes to their feat system, combat type, magic spells, and the dungeoncrawling part of it.

Recently, I've been wondering if my favourite system would incorporate both the BRP D100 system mechanics with the dungeoncrawl nature of Pathfinder 2e and D&D 5e. I was wondering if there's a system in the BRP family that already attempts to sort of meld the two styles together? I guess I'm looking for a simulationist type game without simulationist combat.

[Mugen]

Well, there is Classic Fantasy, for Mythras.

It's exactly what you seek : BRP-like mechanisms for D&D like games.

[MacDhomnuill]

Magic world plus classic fantasy gets you damn close to what you want and Magic world is like $2 on drive thru RPG DT RPG Link  classic fantasy for BRP is all the old school DnD spells and other non copy write stuff, its $11.36 on DT now link . 

Edited November 26, 2021 by MacDhomnuill

[Lloyd Dupont]

I would add my voice to choir, Classic Fantasy for Mythras (latest version) for the win! 🙂

[Grivenger]

Thanks for the responses everyone. It's clear that I have to take a look at Classic Fantasy!

[g33k]

12 hours ago, Grivenger said:

Thanks for the responses everyone. It's clear that I have to take a look at Classic Fantasy!

n.b. -- "Classic Fantasy" began as a BRP monograph, still available as such.

The current version of CF -- and supplements for it -- is now running on Mythras (formerly RQ6), a closely-related but NOT identical system from The Design Mechanism.

[Lloyd Dupont]

The Mythras version of classic fantasy adds a leveling and classes.
And while I consider it a bad thing at first sight.. after a year of thinking about, I think it's one of the best feature.

The classes itself are not very restrictive. It's just a list of skill that you need to augment to level up. Skill being available to all as usual, and unlike BRP no special per class bonus is given. Beyond Mythras concept of professional skills. BTW, since it's mostly a matter of skill, multiclassing is peanut.

The level is where the magic happens, it does 2 things, first it give small bonus abilities (include, the major ability to cast more powerful spells, I really really like that one), and it give +1 luck point (up to 5 since there are 5 levels).

Edited December 2, 2021 by Lloyd Dupont

[Raleel]

A little late to this discussion but there are some clear similarities between pf2e and Mythras that should make it feel a little more familiar. Pf2e is more bonus focused, I think, but there are lots of options. 

[Alex]

On 11/26/2021 at 3:40 PM, Grivenger said:

I was wondering if there's a system in the BRP family that already attempts to sort of meld the two styles together? I guess I'm looking for a simulationist type game without simulationist combat.

Not entirely sure what you're looking for here, but several BRP games are definitely less crunchy/simmy than RQ.  Almost all of them, in fact!  CoC itself for example, or potentially Pendragon (if we ignore it being the non-D100 black sheep -- just multiply through by five!) might be worth a look at for inspiration.  I'm not familiar with either incarnation of Classic Fantasy, though on the face of it it does sound like more of a one-stop shop.

But if you're comfortable with kitbashing, a toolkit approach combining the best of each of the things you like seems very doable.

[g33k]

17 hours ago, Alex said:

...

But if you're comfortable with kitbashing, a toolkit approach combining the best of each of the things you like seems very doable.

Oh, absolutely!  People have been  FrankenBRP'ing  the different BRP/d100 & related games for several decades now; it's quite smooth and easy to do !

No reason you couldn't use Classic Fantasy as the core chassis -- for the class/level features -- and slap in some CoC content, and/or Stormbringer, and/or any other d100 game you'd like to run under the CF rubric.

###

HOWEVER...
Honestly, having just gone back to re-read the OP, I'm less clear that CF has what he wants:

On 11/26/2021 at 7:40 AM, Grivenger said:

... quite a fan of the new Pathfinder 2nd edition when it comes to their feat system, combat type, magic spells, and the dungeoncrawling part of it.

Recently, I've been wondering if my favourite system would incorporate both the BRP D100 system mechanics with the dungeoncrawl nature of Pathfinder 2e and D&D 5e. I was wondering if there's a system in the BRP family that already attempts to sort of meld the two styles together? I guess I'm looking for a simulationist type game without simulationist combat.

So... dungeoncrawling, yeah CF got that covered.  Honestly, that's just a matter of HOW you run, what kind of modules/adventures/campaigns (you could do a mostly-dungeoncrawling RuneQuest, or Stormbringer or Magic World, for example, just by running mostly dungeons), but CF makes it easy to grab the innumerable old AD&D modules and run them in all their old-school dungeon-crawly glory.

But the PF "feat" system (haven't looked at PF2e, but I presume it remains an evolution of the D&D3/3.5/d20 OGL, with similar "Feats"?) will be more work to incorporate...  It might be worth grabbing "Blood Tide" just for the "Stunts" mechanics, as a leg up on adapting PF2 Feats.

I'm a bit unclear what the OP means by "combat type."  One of the things I *dislike* about the D&D/PF combat is how at medium level & higher it really just becomes an attritional slog through the huge HP-reservoir of the Bad Guys; if that's what the OP means by liking the PF2 "combat type" ... can't help ya, Sundance, because the BRP/d100 extended-family of games mostly avoids that mechanic; crits, major wounds, combat-effects, these are what mostly end the fight.
 

Edited December 12, 2021 by g33k
combat type, & CF/PF typos

[Mugen]

As for myself, one thing I'll take from d20 is the d20+skill roll-over mechanism, or perhaps a d10+skill one. With time, I've became more and more unhappy with roll-under resolutions, especially when considering skill oppositions.

But I know it's not up to everyone's tastes. 🙂

[Lloyd Dupont]

yea, I am planning to do a D20 version of my Master of Orion setting, just because the opposed roll mechanism in D100 is... frustrating me as well! 😮

[Raleel]

15 hours ago, Mugen said:

As for myself, one thing I'll take from d20 is the d20+skill roll-over mechanism, or perhaps a d10+skill one. With time, I've became more and more unhappy with roll-under resolutions, especially when considering skill oppositions.

But I know it's not up to everyone's tastes. 🙂

 

15 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

yea, I am planning to do a D20 version of my Master of Orion setting, just because the opposed roll mechanism in D100 is... frustrating me as well! 😮

No picking of fights here, but I’m curious as to the unhappiness and frustration. I have some suspicions, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth 

[Lloyd Dupont]

7 hours ago, Raleel said:

22 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

yea, I am planning to do a D20 version of my Master of Orion setting, just because the opposed roll mechanism in D100 is... frustrating me as well! 😮

No picking of fights here, but I’m curious as to the unhappiness and frustration. I have some suspicions, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth 

If found the D20 version of saves less cognitively involved, and also less frustrating (funnily enough since I am sure one can tweak the math for the probability to be equals, but I am talking feeling and reduced amount of calculations here, not probability)

Well for example, 
- 1) in Mythras if your 130% in magic users roll 94% forget about rolling willpower if you are peasant with less than 95% yourself no need to roll, you already lost. That is frustrating. Plus how could I tweak that a little with the POW of each characters?

- 2) BRP when your beginner adventurer with 13 POW must save against the wizard with 20 in POW, let's look up the table, mmm... looking...15% (also why look up a table when it's D20+POW>POW+10, too much work), but what if I want to tweak that value base on the spell skill as well, a little bit tricky

- 3) In D&D, you got a DC 22 to overcome when this top tier magic user cast a spell... it's a hard save but you always get a chance, and no need to lookup a table. Also adding a host of +1(2?3?) bonuses on both side add little to no complication

- 4) I know 1) and 4) are similar. In one, after the wizard made his roll, you got no chance of winning, in the other, you always get like... 5%! yeah! but it feels better to roll those 5% than just not roll, me think... Let's say it's a personal matter... I mean it's debatable, you have more chance to save against a Mythras wizard ultimately, because if he rolls low the save is easy, but I find it frustrating you just can't roll sometimes. And also hard to tweak the number based on the POW of each protagonist.

 

Anyway it's not a very hard transition. All I have to do is replaced percentage skill with +bonus and give a XP cost to gain +1. I can keep other thing similar! (though I have a few more simplification in mind)

Edited December 14, 2021 by Lloyd Dupont

[Mugen]

7 hours ago, Raleel said:

 

No picking of fights here, but I’m curious as to the unhappiness and frustration. I have some suspicions, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth 

It's simply because I think the various skill opposition rules that actually work in roll-under are very convoluted when compared to roll-over ones.

In roll-over, you don't need anything more complex than both roll and add their skill (or roll their skill in success-based systems), the highest roll wins.

No roll-under system I know is as simple and elegant as that:

-Simply comparing success level gives too many ties,
-Comparing success level and using skill value to break ties is a joke
-Roll-under blackjack is counter-intuitive, requires to make 2 comparison steps, and needs special rules for high skills (less so with HQ-like resolution),
-Roll-under with margin of success requires too many computations.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Mugen

[Lloyd Dupont]

1 minute ago, Mugen said:

It's simply because I think the various skill opposition rules that actually work in roll-under are very convoluted when compared to roll-over ones.

In roll-over, you don't need anything more complex than both roll and add their skill (or roll their skill in success-based systems), the highest roll wins.

No roll-under system I know is as simple and elegant as that:

-Simply comparing success level gives too many ties,
-Comparing success level and using skill value to break ties is a joke
-Roll-under blackjack is counter-intuitive, and needs special rules for high skills (less so with HQ-like resolution),
-Roll-under with margin of success requires too many computations.

I couldn't have say it more simply myself! 😄👍

In fact.. I certainly didn't... 😞😄

[lawrence.whitaker]

Quote

Well for example, 
- 1) in Mythras if your 130% in magic users roll 94% forget about rolling willpower if you are peasant with less than 95% yourself no need to roll, you already lost. That is frustrating.

No - it's not a foregone conclusion. The peasant should absolutely roll because a critical success will beat the magic user's roll of 95. The peasant may only have a slim chance of rolling a crit; but it's better than not rolling at all. Also, if the peasant is a player character, then he or she may well have Luck Points which can be used to help mitigate whatever has been rolled (perhaps forcing the magic user to re-roll; or swapping the dice on their own resistance roll).

Quote

Plus how could I tweak that a little with the POW of each characters?

POW already factors into the Willpower of all characters to give a higher base score for the skill. But if you think that a peasant's higher POW should provide an extra bonus for their resistance roll, then make it one grade easier (so a standard roll would bump to a roll of Easy, which increases the skill by half again).

But, as you've said, you don't like the 'blackjack' approach to opposed rolls, so it's all moot. My point is, that I think you've missed some of the nuances built into the opposed roll system for Mythras, so I wanted to correct the misinterpretation.

[Lloyd Dupont]

58 minutes ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

No - it's not a foregone conclusion. The peasant should absolutely roll because a critical success will beat the magic user's roll of 95. The peasant may only have a slim chance of rolling a crit; but it's better than not rolling at all. Also, if the peasant is a player character, then he or she may well have Luck Points which can be used to help mitigate whatever has been rolled (perhaps forcing the magic user to re-roll; or swapping the dice on their own resistance roll).

Ha yes I forgot that (that crit roll will overcome the result), which in fact turns the frustration into expectation, I have to say.

That said I still want to give a go to my cooked up D20+skill ruleset next year... 🙂
I have a bunch of understanding players! 😅

In fact, tell the whole story, I was planning to use my ruleset for scifi adventure (in the Master of Orion universe) and a relatively close to the book Classic Fantasy (Mythras edition) for fantasy (except change the action economy slightly, my player are completely traumatized by my previous attempt to use RAW Mythras action point handling... 😮 )

Edited December 14, 2021 by Lloyd Dupont

[Mugen]

43 minutes ago, lawrence.whitaker said:

POW already factors into the Willpower of all characters to give a higher base score for the skill. But if you think that a peasant's higher POW should provide an extra bonus for their resistance roll, then make it one grade easier (so a standard roll would bump to a roll of Easy, which increases the skill by half again).

But, as you've said, you don't like the 'blackjack' approach to opposed rolls, so it's all moot. My point is, that I think you've missed some of the nuances built into the opposed roll system for Mythras, so I wanted to correct the misinterpretation.

A way to give more importance to POW in this kind of resistance tests would be to take inspiration from Brawn skill, which is relative to Damage Bonus.

For instance, change the difficulty of the roll depending on the difference between the caster and the target POWs.

[lawrence.whitaker]

Quote

A way to give more importance to POW in this kind of resistance tests would be to take inspiration from Brawn skill, which is relative to Damage Bonus.

Yes, that would work too. Another way is to augment Willpower with another skill or a Passion.

[Raleel]

Thank you both, @Mugenand @Lloyd Dupont. I’ve also seen a bit of struggle with my group who came from years of roll over games adjusting to the blackjack style. They intuitively thing lowest under the skill is the best, but that is not correct 🙂

as for the tweaking, augments as Loz points out, are the choice I go with for small increases. The peasant may love his land, and his Passion augmenting it up by 12-20% may help a lot. 

[Mugen]

2 hours ago, Raleel said:

Thank you both, @Mugenand @Lloyd Dupont. I’ve also seen a bit of struggle with my group who came from years of roll over games adjusting to the blackjack style. They intuitively thing lowest under the skill is the best, but that is not correct 🙂

Yes, that's also the reaso why I started being dissatisfied by roll-under blackjack, as I had to remember one of my players (a very smart man, by the way) every time he rolled a "1" (in a homebrew system using a d20) that it was in fact not a very good result...