Non human playable races and encounter balancing

[shadythedevil]

25 minutes ago, Nozbat said:

While I agree with most that has been said here, you're all very focused on combat solutions and fighting opponents. There's much more to RPGs than combat.

I've just played a 3 hour session where no one had brought their melee weapons or thought of drawing their daggers (used for cutting their meat at table) but focused on plans to infiltrate, get information and look at ways of abducting a suspect who had murdered their Meister. The suspect is possibly the most dangerous opponent they have faced yet, and his bodyguard of whip-wielding thugs are worse than him (possibly). It was sneaking around, using communication skills, wheedling information out of Plum Brandy addled Customs Agents or card-playing, angry Bakers apprentices. They know they can't win a straight fight or even a crooked one. 

They have decided to try  'cherchez le jeune homme' as the best tactic... find his love interest and use that against him... that is of course assuming that the cruel, evil, sadistic opponent has the ability to feel love. He may not, given his penchant for savagery and upsetting the Bakers Guild by publicly flogging the Master Bakers because the price of bread was too high. 

As Bilbo Baggins's father once said "Every worm has its weak spot", though as Bilbo pointed out it was probably not from direct experience. 

 

of course, but thats a different game i will play some other time.

because im excited about my setting, i like talking about it. first of all, you would need to be familiar with numenera. if youre not, numenera is a setting based on earth 9 billion years in the future, with 9 previous civilizations having earth as their nexus, who have then left earth in a number of mysterious ways. the term numenera refers to technological scrap left behind from those previous civilization that people of the current world try and use for their own advantages.

but i had a big problem with the setting. it felt too alien. not enough analogs, not enough points of reference. it made me feel like i would have to do a lot of exposition for the players to understand what they are looking at, how they should feel about it, and what actions they should take. which is where my second inspiration comes from.

a graphic novel called manifest destiny is about the lewis and clark expedition, except they werent exploring the west for the rest to settle, no, they went to the west to clear out the west of the various monsters that are out there. they fight sasquatches, skinwalkers, plant zombies, windigos, etc. its a cool graphic novel in the same vein as abraham lincoln, vampire slayer (that one is cheesy tho, dont recommend).

so instead of totally alien and weird, like numenera, monsters will have a clear point of reference, but cooler. for example, if youve ever watched the cheesy bigfoot shows, sometimes they go on a tangent talking about not being able to track the bigfoot as it seemed like it was in one place, and then suddenly in another place and blah blah blah and the voice-over guy with the deep voice at the end of the tangent says "could it be that bigfoot... is from another dimension?" so ive got some dimensional bigfoots in my game. one of the previous 9 civilization will be the empire of eight legs, where spiders and octopi become sentient and thrive after the departure of humans from earth. the humans most likely got their butts kicked really bad after they expanded too far into space.

the game starts with a mysterious space ship coming out of who knows where, orbitting earth, full of hundreds of humans in cryo-sleep. the players all start as humans with the mission of resettling earth and finding out what the hell is down there and what happened. it will be a hexcrawl adventure, with very very little pc to npc interaction. almost all of the aliens they meet down on earth with be hostile. the aliens they meet that arent hostile, will become additional player races that the players can roll new characters for, if they want to. the main focus will be survival and the slowly discovering the intricate history of the previous civilizations that thrived on earth and why the ended up leaving earth.

thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about my game. im excited to play it. just having a bit of frustration as i am planning it.

[shadythedevil]

3 hours ago, Kloster said:

Let me talk about the game system I've played the most: It's not BRP (any iteration), but Hero System. With hero, all characters are built with points (150 for V1 to V4, 250 for V5 and 6 for supers, less points for hero or 'normal' characters). This applies to both PC and NPC.

Let's say you have a standard Champions (=4 color super comics) campaign wit 6 250 points characters (total 1500 points). If you build the opposition with 1 1500 5Dr Destroyer for Champions fans) points opponent, your team has absolutely not a single chance to survive the encounter. If you build the opposition on a 10 NPC of 150 points, the NPC ave very few chances to win, except if the are working as a team (and have according tactics) and PCs are not. If you build the opposition with a team of 15 100 points opponents, the PC will feel they fear nothing and the players will feel cheated and bored.

Thus, you will (as a GM) never be able to build opposition by counting the total of points used by PCs.. You have also to take in account their type of attacks (not how much damage they do, but if they are fire cold kinetic or psychic or other), their defenses, their skills and a lot of other factors. This is what @Atgxtg called the learning curve.

The problem is the same with BRP: you can not have a standardized way of comparing opposition to characters because all games are different, all players are different, all characters are different.

That's all folks.

so basically, what youre telling me, is you have a CR stat that floats around in your mind, which exists due to the experience you have with playing the game.

how do you not see that you are comparing stats anyways?

how do you not see that without a cr-like stat, you had to 'learn' the system so that you had a 'feel' for the challenge of encounters?

youre counting something, are you not? im assuming you dont want to bore your characters. even if you arent counting something specifically in your head, you should realize you are still doing a stat comparison and you understand whats too easy and what is deadly.

you shouldnt have had to learn a system, play test that sytem, etc etc to know that. which is my point lol. its time wasting and we are all going to do stat comparisons anyways. in one system, i can do it in a second flat. in this system, no way that i can do that lol. its taking significantly longer. several magnitudes, which obviously compound over time.

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Nozbat said:

While I agree with most that has been said here, you're all very focused on combat solutions and fighting opponents. There's much more to RPGs than combat.

Definitely, and that mostly because the OP was bringing up CR which is mostly combat focussed. 

In our Star Trek campaign where wea[pons can be really lethal (what happens when disintegrate is a thing) we often went multiple sessions without any of the PCs getting into combat. In part because none of the  player characters were all that good at it. I'm not saying the players, just that we had a scientist, an engineer, a doctor, and a helmsman, and no one had combat skills above their starting level. So no one wanted to pick a fight with a Klingon. 

 

Most of the adventures were not combat focused.

 

 

[Atgxtg]

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

this is a rude assumption. im trying to run a game using brp rules. im also trying to not waste a ton of time while prepping.

What you call wasting your time is what we call learning the system. THere really is no shortcut for that. 

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

is it just me, or has not a single person acknowledged this fact and instead, everybody is trying to talk to me about balance, when my idea about balance was actually about player races and the fairness of the starting stats of those player races.

Because BRPidoesn't have fairness between player races. It's not a thing. FOr instace if you play a troll your character is going to be twice as strong and twice as big as all the humans. THat's just the way it is. 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

can you just acknowledge this simple fact. reading a cr stat involves looking at between 3 and 4 letters and numbers. it takes about 1 second to look at two different cr stats. doing a line by line, stat block comparison, at the very least takes 30 seconds. please just acknowledge this lol.

Sure, but can you acknolege that CR doesn't actually tell you much about what you are using? 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

 i want deadly, with minimal tpk's, as i learn the system.

And that is impossible. You can't have deadly with minimal TPKs. Deadly in a BRP game is just that deadly. It's not, "ouch we got banged up a lot" or "we were all down below 5 hit points". Deadly in BRP means PCs start dropping and often they don;t get back up again.

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

the problem, as i have repeatedly stated, is that it wastes my time lol.

 

Then maybe it's not for you. I'm sorry but I've tried to explain to you that what you are atremtping to do isn't going to work. But you don't believe me so go ahead and set up a few encounters to be deadly but with minimal TPKs and tell us all how it worked out.

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

stat comparisons will ALWAYS happen. its inevitable. whether you are going to do that line by line or not, it doesnt matter it happens. when that happens, i would like for it to take a second or two, rather than half a minute.

Sorry but the comparison is not that simple. 

If you want to do things quickly I suggest looking at skill% and damage done. Those are probably the the two most dominant factors in combat. Armor is good but a higher skill of 130% is usually better than an extra point of armor..  

But in reality there is no one number that rules them all. There really ins't one in D&D either. I can build a CR appropriate challenge to rip apart most D&D groups. It's easy. Find out what they are bad at and throw it at them with good tactics. Horse Archers who shoot at the spellcasters for instance.

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

thats my problem with excluding a cr stat. my time is being wasted if there is not a cr-like stat that amalgamates or averages or does whatever to the numbers, to come up with one number than can be compared to another number, using the same system for generating that amalgamation or average or whatever.

*Sigh* But that one mumber you get doesn't mean anything because the games don't work the same. 

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

it can absolutely be done.

No it can't. Not without making some major changes to the game system. 

If you don't want to take my word for it ten,  then make what you considered to be such encounter and run them. See what your results are. 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

yeah this is nonsense. as i have explained countless times, i can easily flip to all of the monsters cr 11 or higher for my group of lvl 7 players. i cant do this in brp. and because i cant, im wasting time.

Yoiou can do that in D&D becuase D&D is an easier game system that runs softball encounters that are not all that dangerous. But I bet you didn't look at the math in my previous posts.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

its like i said the word balance once and thats all you can think about. can you please acknowledge the fact that it takes considerably more time to compare stats if you are doing it line by line, than if there is one summary stat, like the cr is.

Yes, and it takes even less time if you don't look at any stats at all. 

The points of a GM looking over stats is to make sure they can properly run the abilities of said character or creature and that they aren't deliberately setting up an overkill situation. There is no way to really do that without looking at the full stats. 

Again.,I'll point out that what works in D&D doesn't necessary port over to other games (and vice versa). CR works in D&D 3+ becuase the game system was rewritten from the ground up around it. Everything from opponents encounter, experienced earned and treasure awarded is all based around CR. 

You never have to worry about a 1HD monster with a +5 weapon in D&D becuase the game won't allow it since it would mess up the CR. In BRP you canget that sort of thing. You can have a starting PC in some BRP games with something like that. For instance in RQ it's possible to have a character join a cult and learn free magic or even raise a combat skill instantly to 90%. And yes, they won't be balanced with the other PCs.

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

the cr stat tells me the most crucial thing. avoid these monsters, they are too easy. pick these monsters, it will be fun. how do you not get that? its not about balance. its about managing my time while planning.

I get it. It just that you refuse to accept that that approach doesn't work in BRP. In D&D you have constant escaption. As the players go up in level the monsters also go up to compesate. 

You don't get that in BRP. That bandit with Sword 35% and Bow 30%  is always a threat to a PC. Give him speedart and he'll be able to one hit drop experienced PCs. No 1HD bandit can one hit drop a tenth level fighter in D&D who is at full hit points. The odds against doing so are like the odds for winning a lottery. 

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

again, youre getting stuck in the granularities of that specific system. i dont care about adventuring days. i dont care about resting. i dont care about all of that. i just want to quickly pick monsters that are on the edge of deadly and tpk.

Yes, and I;m saying you can't do that. 

There is no "edge of deadly" in BRP. There is no "almost deadly" There is no "could be deadly if it were a little tougher." There is just deadly. 

Anything approaching the spot you want is deadly enough to kill off a PC every few sessions.  

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

i feel like i stepped in a trap by saying cr, but its the best comparison. forget i ever said cr. i know it has a lot of implications for you. for me, the stat means that if my group of players is level 7, avoid anything with a cr of 10 or lower because its too easy, and that saves me A TON of time.

And I'm saying BRP won't be that easy. The deadliness you have now CR10 vs Level 7 PCs (how many PCs?) is still less deadly that a typical BRP combat. 

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

its a waste of time because on system allows me to compare quickly and the other doesnt? you can literally count the amount of characters. one comparison is done between literally 6 to 8 numbers and letters (and two of those letters are always the same). this is not possible in brp, and in comparison between the two systems, i feel like i am wasting time while prepping because there is not a cr-like stat

And you are wasting your time by just looking at CR.

If your Players are easily beating encounters 3CRs higher than what the game was designed around, maybe you're running things too easy?

 

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

this attitude keeps the system down and has implications for the people trying to make a buck off the game.

And you're the only person who has ever said so. 

Really you keep saying how the lack of CR is hurting BRP yet you ignore the fact that most RPGs don't use CR, only D&D based ones. 

 

BRP can do a lot of things well, but it can't be 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

yes, it has a learning curve. no, i dont think it should be there one and no i dont think i should have to waste time learning a 90% great system, just because fans and developers of the system hate the cr stat, for strange reasons.

You don't have to learn it because of the fans. We didn't go in and remove the CR from the game. 

 

You have to learn it because otherwise you won't understand how the game plays. And no number will teach you that. I wish you had access to some of the old RuneQuest 2 stuff beucase it would help to explain some of this. 

Tactics are killer in BRP. There were all sort of likttle tricks for optimizing combat that won't show up in a CR stat. Things like casting bladesharp 1 on an opponent weapon so they cant cast something better on it.  Or putting countermagic on a foe so they can't heal him. . 

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

this is just not true. most other systems have a singular stat that can be used as the comparison stat between monsters and characters, whether it be called cr, power level, level, treasure level, or whatever.

No, only level based games do. GURPS doesn't. HERO does. Vampire the Masqyerade doesn't. Savage Worlds doesnt. FUDGE doesn't. FATE doesn't. Harnmaster doesn't. 

Yes GURPS and HERO  have a point build system and the amount of points do matter, but it where you spend the points that counts. A 200 point accountant might get you a great return on your taxes but he won't last long in a fight against a 100 point warrior.

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

i think you are really getting stuck on the granularities of the specific cr system, when i use it very loosely and maybe not how others do. my players are skilled, and i need to pick deadly monsters for it to be fun. i cant quickly do that in brp.

How deadly are tose monsters if our players are bating them easily?

I don't think you understand. It not granuliarties it's orders of magintude. Deadly means deadly in BRP. 

A typical hit with a typical weapon against an unarmed man will drop them at least half the time. And that doesn't change. 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

i dont really frame it this way in my head.

one system respects my time, the other does not. i really wish the other one would respect my time, because they are both great systems with the major flaw of the other system being this imposed learning curve, play test so you know, we dont do cr-like stats, thing that most of this community has ascribed to. i do not.

Gee, too bad the designers of the game didn't consider your time forty years ago when they wrote it. 

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

both systems are great. one is a little bit better thought out in terms of how much time im using to prep, as a player that is also the GM.

Then if that is what you believe stick with it.

BTW have you ever read any BRP supplments and seen how adventures are set up? 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

i cant help but feel that someone smart at d&d recognized this and said "hey, we know this stat is wonky, easily messed up, malleable, not true in a lot of instances, but it saves the most critical player at the tables (the gm) time" and they were right.

No, what is was was they wanted to make D&D as easy as possible. The game used to be much harder. PCs used to die off and such. Now they throw softball encounters with increased XP awards. It;s designed to be easier.

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

it is a strange quirk that this community insists that a cr-like system should not be attempted, has many justifications about balance in the game, but not a single one about my time management as the only guy running the adventure? thats a quirk i guess. maybe there is a better word.

If you want to attempt to make one do so. We're saying it won't work becuase it;s impossible to balance off encounters the way you can in D&D. You just don't have as much control over things in BRP. Not unless you fudge. 

In D&D crits are infrequent and ususally don't drop character. In BRP special successes happen pretty much every other round and do drop characters. 

 

2 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

let me reframe my question.

 

how can i not waste so much time if i dont want to do line by line stat comparisons as other systems have spoiled me and made me lazy. it feels frustrating spending that much time looking at stats and i just dont want to, but im playing the game, no matter what. ive already written 47 pages for keyed hexes and whatnot, have everything else fleshed out. its all in place. how can i save some time if i dont want to bore my players with easy encounters? how can i save some time if i dont want to do an entire table reroll, as this is generally unfun, people like to keep their characters alive if they can and i generally agree with this notion, with the major caveat being that one shot death needs to be on the table for excitement purposes?

By not running BRP. It' simply won't work for you the way you want. 

 

There are no "easy encounters' the way there are in D&D. In D&D  a threat a few CRs below the PCs is no threat at all. In BRP they are almost always some sort of threat. Hand a 9 year old a .45 pistol in  (something I don''t reccomend in real life) and in BRP they will always have a chance of shooting a PC dead with one hit. It doesn';t matter if the kid is 1st level and the PC 20th level. A 7 point head or chest hit will pretty much drop any PC. So players can just shrug off the threat the way the can in D&D. 

Any competent threat will always be one. An enemy soldier with a rifle at 50% will always be dangerous to PCs no matter how experienced the PCs are. And I don't mean that it's a possiblity, I mean it's a good probability. THe average assult rifle hit will drop a PC.

So no matter what opponents you pick you are already presenting your player with a more deadly encounter than you are probably expecting.

 

 

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, radmonger said:

 

It doesn't exist naturally, but you can create it.

Sure. If the OP said they wanted to do that, I'd point out some of the ways people have done so in the past (double hit points, no hit location or major wounds). 

But the OP seems to want to make things deadly but not quite to the point of risking a TPK, and that you can't do. Any encounter that would deliberately fit the "we almost died" cateogry has a very good chance of becoming a "we all died" one instead.

 

3 hours ago, radmonger said:

The trick is to tone down the lethality of the system, so that noone actually dies instantly from a fatal wound.  Instead (as is arguably realistic, as per the link below), an untreated fatal wound leads to death minutes, hours or even days after the end of combat.

Exacly, But the OP doesn't seem to want to do that. They seem to believe that a GM can control the leathility of the oppoents to the extent you can in a game like D&D. 

3 hours ago, radmonger said:

With a few other changes, you can turn a TPK into a TPKO; an event within the story, not the end of it.

You just need to ensure that, a majority of the time, death is not on the line.

Yup. But that goes against the encounter "on the edge" philosophy. Any encounter designed to almost kill the group can kill the group, and constantly running such encounter will kill the group.

3 hours ago, radmonger said:

This is basically the approach taken by the most successful tactical-combat variants of BRP, RuneQuest and Mythras.

Yup but neither game sets up all their encounters to be that way. That's the point. In RQ there is always at least a 1% chance of the bad guys rolling a crit and spoiling a PCs day, usually higher. 

I'm not saying you can't make BRP safer. I'm saying you can't run it at the edge of wiping out the party every encounter, and expect to have a campaign. 

[shadythedevil]

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

But if you were running those characters you would have to figure out what sort of encounter would be right for them? So what does your method say.

 

BTW, in BRP skill, damage  and magic are usually more important than armor and hit points. An unarmored guy with 8 hit points with Sword at 90% will ususally take apart a guy with Sword 40% with 8 point armor and 18 hit points. 

well, my method is still in the works and has not been play tested yet.

ive taken chance to hit and weapon damage and turned it into average damage per round. obviously, there is a lot of variability here. when determining a how difficult an encounter may be chances to hit are compared with chances to dodge in order to figure out an average dmg per round that the combatants will have versus each other.

hp is the most important stat, and armor is better than hp. chances to hit dont matter if youre dead. armor, as long as it hasnt broken yet, serves as a permanent hp bubble. its like hp that regens between each attack, which is why its weighted heaviest, along with hp. the game ends with no hp, so its what the my whole system revolves around. both groups are trying to get the other group to 0 hp, or at least make them flee because of threat of death is imminent.

the chance to hit is really about the ability to do enough damage to threaten death, otherwise its not as consequential in the earlier rounds of combat as it is in the later rounds of combat. thats why its weighted less important in my attempt to make a cr system for brp.

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It's not a moot point because:

1. If they are at range or in melee then they will have to use ranged or melee weapons, which might not be their best weapons. They also might want to shoot arrows at a big dumb monster at a distance that get in close where it can attack them back.
2.  If they get disarmed or injured they might not be able to wield the weapon they want to. In BRP if you injure one of you opponent's arms they can't wield a two handed weapon anymore and will have to switch to a backup.
3. If they get disarmed or their weapon breaks they might have go to their backup

this is all extra that doesnt need to be added into a raw stat comparison. i am aware of these factors and plan for them and around them. i still want a raw stat comparison in order to determine baseline deadliness in order to plan efficiently and not bore my players and not also constantly tpk them.

 

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

And here is where we disagree. In D&D the chances of the monster one-shooting the PC are remote. The monster would either have to roll max damage (a 10%) chance or get a critical (a 5% chance) and roll 5 or better for damage (a 60% chance). So you got a 12.5% chance of the one-shot drop happening.

To one shot kill a PC in D&D the monster would have to reduce the PC to -10 hit points, which would require the monster to roll max critical damage, a 0.5% chance. At that rate you can pretty much ignore it. 

 

Now in BRP it's very different. , and varies a bit depending on which rules you are running.

• To start with that PC with 10 hit points is dead at 0 hit points not -10. So all those one shot drops above become one shot kills in BRP.  
• A character at 1-2 hit points is unconscious.
• In BRP Most  weapons and attacks can get a special effect. At 50% skill this works out to a 10% chance of a special. An impale does double damage (like a D&D crtical) but is twice as likely to happen in BRP than in D&D. A slash does 1 point of bleeding per round, until successful resisted/treated (which takes a roll) so high damage (7+) attacks can one shot kill a PC.

 BRP does have armor take off damage and parries which will reduce the deadliness. At 50% skill this will cut the fatalities in half. But BRP also has  major wounds, or hit locations, one of which is used in every published BRP game.

Major Wounds: A character who takes half or more of their total hit points in a single hit is out of the fight, and they might suffer stat loss that can cause a fatality. At 10 hit points and 1D10 damage, there is a 60% chance of that happening, and one shot dropping the character, each round.  Assuming the PC can parry half the attacks (50% skill) then that drops to 30%, which is 60 times the chances of a one shot drop in D&D. Thats without specials or verticals. 

Hit Locations: At 10 hit points the character has 3-5 hit points in each location. That means that the PC can be one shot dropped and killed much easier. If you use hit locations then the chances of disabling a location. If it's a chest of head hit the PC will die without getting the proper medical attention in time or making a stamina roll. Note that this means another player rolling a successful first aid skill attempt (or magical healing). Head and abdomen hits that take twice the locations hit points in damage disable the character and having them bleeding out at one hit point per round. Again a successful first aid or stamina roll is required to survive.

BRP also doesn't use intitive rolls and uses either DEX or Strike Rank to determine when a character can act, which means a fast monster can probably attack and do damage before the players can do anything about it. 

 

Now as far as the other characters go, in the case of a one shot kill, they probably won't matter much if at all. If the monster gets an attack and rolls a kill there isn't much the other players can do about it. The exception is if the PC suffers a bleeding wound,, in which case first aid can save them, if it is applied successful in time. 

 

So the chances of one shot killing the PC in BRP are greater than the chances of one-shot dropping the PC in D&D. The chances of one shot dropping the PC are also much higher. 

 

Now consider the after effects of the fight. In BRP if the PC got dropped, even if they didn't get killed, they probably have taken a major wound, or have a disabled hit location, are low on hit points, and will take several weeks to heal up. In D&D they are just a long rest from being back at full.

In BRP they might have permanently lost the use of a limb or suffered permanent stat loss. In D&D they are just a long rest from being back at full.

Yes, magic provide bounce backi n both systems but magic is much more plentiful in D&D and comes back faster. In D&D, as long as the PC didn't die, then two or three cure light wounds will bring them back up to full hit points. In BRP magical healing in on a point per point basis, and healing someone back to full won't offset stat loss or restore mained or severed limbs. Furthermore even if they can heal the PC back to full, the caster will be low on magic points for several hours.

So it's not the same.It's not proportional. It two very different games. 

this is way too much rule minutiae. can you agree that with my hypothetical players and monsters, both at 10hp, both with 50% chance to hit (not making considerations towards dodges/ parries or crits and specials) and 1d10 dmg... that there is a 50% chance to have a 10% chance to one shot a character? considering that this player will not be solo, is apart of a very skilled/ clever group of players and given the parameters of my hypothetical situation, i feel that there is a very low chance of threat and fun to be had. my players will eviscerate that situation if the only environmental factors are distance and range.

im realizing after typing this, that the hypothetical is too simple. i would like to illustrate my point, but i think i would need make special considerations to hp totals and crit totals. we can do another hypothetical in another post.

i think you missed my point tho. RAW, the games are different. yes. i run a much deadlier version of d&d because its more fun for me and my players. for example, out of my group of players, the highest amount of hp is 60. when i design my encounters, there are definitely monsters in there that do 6d10 damage, probably more. when i roll for damage, lets say ive thrown some monsters in there that can do 8d10 dmg, i want the player with 60 hp to literally think "oh shit, if that monster rolls really well for damage after hitting me, i can be dead and if they crit i am most likely dead."

thats where the proportion is the same. ive always designed my encounters to have one shot potential. i understand that on the cr scale, youre not seeing that in anything less than deadly encounters. anything less than deadly is just going to be too easy for my players and boring, unfun.

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

A monster with 75% skill that did 2d10 damage would probably kill one of the PCs before the fight is over.

Now what sort of monster it is, how smart it is, and who attack first all play a big factor here. Let's say it is a predator that jumps the PCs. Well with 75% skill and 2d10 damage it has about a one in three chance of killing a PC outright in the first round. As in dead.  And an over 70% chance of dropping the PC with a major wound or disabled location. 

If the PCs get a chance to go first, say they are some distance away, and got bows or something, then with four of them, they will probably be able to drop it before it gets to them. 

That's why how you set up the situation is far more important in BRP than in D&D.

im wanting a raw stat comparison without other complicating factors, such as whats going on in the environment. who attacks first is also tossed out, we are assuming both players and monsters strike at the same time for raw stat comparison purpose.

my players will be smart enough to figure this out pretty quickly with static hp. because of static hp and because of the setting i am playing in, all players are being provided with ranged weapons from the very beginning with warnings about wading into melee. ranged weapons are significantly more powerful in brp and i understand that.

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That sweet spot you are looking for doesn't exist.

i disagree. whats with all of the people that have a feel for the system and know the sweet spot? im definitely trying to find it lol. im sure it exists.

 

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Any encounter that is designed to be dangerous enough to fit your "we almost died" criteria in BRP is one in which the actual odds of a PC dying as so high that a few such encounters will kill a PC. An encounter with a 25% chance of killing a PC will probably kill a PC in four or five encounter. It's playing Russian roulette with your PCs

ok this needs to be spelled out and quantified in the published rules. with a single stat. similar to the cr. lol.

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

The big defense thing in BRP is defensive skills like parry and dodge, and they can't be relied upon work reliably. That 50% PC will only block about half the attacks. So that 75% 2d10 monster you want to use has about a 35% chance of dropping a PC in one round, and about a 15% chance of killing them outright. And that is much higher than in D&D.

again. why is this not spelled out in the published rules? it should be. youre literally talking about the system that i want (and making it a bit more complicated than i think it needs to be). why have you done the work for the designers of the game in this regard? i know you love the system and thats probably why, but you should know that it is something that is possible and can be included in the rules. it would really help ease the point of entry and the overall learning curve that the game has.

 

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

A "near death" experience in BRP is actually a "near death" experience for the PCs. With even a slight bit of bad luck it can become an actual death experience. 

 

So you see what I mean about the math?

yes thats what i want, and i cant plan for it without doing line by line stat block comparisons in order to avoid boring encounters and to avoid definite tpk encounters. thats my whole problem lol.

[shadythedevil]

40 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

 

What you call wasting your time is what we call learning the system. THere really is no shortcut for that. 

 

Because BRPidoesn't have fairness between player races. It's not a thing. FOr instace if you play a troll your character is going to be twice as strong and twice as big as all the humans. THat's just the way it is. 

Sure, but can you acknolege that CR doesn't actually tell you much about what you are using? 

And that is impossible. You can't have deadly with minimal TPKs. Deadly in a BRP game is just that deadly. It's not, "ouch we got banged up a lot" or "we were all down below 5 hit points". Deadly in BRP means PCs start dropping and often they don;t get back up again.

 

 

Then maybe it's not for you. I'm sorry but I've tried to explain to you that what you are atremtping to do isn't going to work. But you don't believe me so go ahead and set up a few encounters to be deadly but with minimal TPKs and tell us all how it worked out.

Sorry but the comparison is not that simple. 

If you want to do things quickly I suggest looking at skill% and damage done. Those are probably the the two most dominant factors in combat. Armor is good but a higher skill of 130% is usually better than an extra point of armor..  

But in reality there is no one number that rules them all. There really ins't one in D&D either. I can build a CR appropriate challenge to rip apart most D&D groups. It's easy. Find out what they are bad at and throw it at them with good tactics. Horse Archers who shoot at the spellcasters for instance.

*Sigh* But that one mumber you get doesn't mean anything because the games don't work the same. 

 

No it can't. Not without making some major changes to the game system. 

If you don't want to take my word for it ten,  then make what you considered to be such encounter and run them. See what your results are. 

Yoiou can do that in D&D becuase D&D is an easier game system that runs softball encounters that are not all that dangerous. But I bet you didn't look at the math in my previous posts.

 

 

 

Yes, and it takes even less time if you don't look at any stats at all. 

The points of a GM looking over stats is to make sure they can properly run the abilities of said character or creature and that they aren't deliberately setting up an overkill situation. There is no way to really do that without looking at the full stats. 

Again.,I'll point out that what works in D&D doesn't necessary port over to other games (and vice versa). CR works in D&D 3+ becuase the game system was rewritten from the ground up around it. Everything from opponents encounter, experienced earned and treasure awarded is all based around CR. 

You never have to worry about a 1HD monster with a +5 weapon in D&D becuase the game won't allow it since it would mess up the CR. In BRP you canget that sort of thing. You can have a starting PC in some BRP games with something like that. For instance in RQ it's possible to have a character join a cult and learn free magic or even raise a combat skill instantly to 90%. And yes, they won't be balanced with the other PCs.

I get it. It just that you refuse to accept that that approach doesn't work in BRP. In D&D you have constant escaption. As the players go up in level the monsters also go up to compesate. 

You don't get that in BRP. That bandit with Sword 35% and Bow 30%  is always a threat to a PC. Give him speedart and he'll be able to one hit drop experienced PCs. No 1HD bandit can one hit drop a tenth level fighter in D&D who is at full hit points. The odds against doing so are like the odds for winning a lottery. 

 

Yes, and I;m saying you can't do that. 

There is no "edge of deadly" in BRP. There is no "almost deadly" There is no "could be deadly if it were a little tougher." There is just deadly. 

Anything approaching the spot you want is deadly enough to kill off a PC every few sessions.  

And I'm saying BRP won't be that easy. The deadliness you have now CR10 vs Level 7 PCs (how many PCs?) is still less deadly that a typical BRP combat. 

 

And you are wasting your time by just looking at CR.

If your Players are easily beating encounters 3CRs higher than what the game was designed around, maybe you're running things too easy?

 

 

And you're the only person who has ever said so. 

Really you keep saying how the lack of CR is hurting BRP yet you ignore the fact that most RPGs don't use CR, only D&D based ones. 

 

BRP can do a lot of things well, but it can't be 

You don't have to learn it because of the fans. We didn't go in and remove the CR from the game. 

 

You have to learn it because otherwise you won't understand how the game plays. And no number will teach you that. I wish you had access to some of the old RuneQuest 2 stuff beucase it would help to explain some of this. 

Tactics are killer in BRP. There were all sort of likttle tricks for optimizing combat that won't show up in a CR stat. Things like casting bladesharp 1 on an opponent weapon so they cant cast something better on it.  Or putting countermagic on a foe so they can't heal him. . 

 

No, only level based games do. GURPS doesn't. HERO does. Vampire the Masqyerade doesn't. Savage Worlds doesnt. FUDGE doesn't. FATE doesn't. Harnmaster doesn't. 

Yes GURPS and HERO  have a point build system and the amount of points do matter, but it where you spend the points that counts. A 200 point accountant might get you a great return on your taxes but he won't last long in a fight against a 100 point warrior.

How deadly are tose monsters if our players are bating them easily?

I don't think you understand. It not granuliarties it's orders of magintude. Deadly means deadly in BRP. 

A typical hit with a typical weapon against an unarmed man will drop them at least half the time. And that doesn't change. 

Gee, too bad the designers of the game didn't consider your time forty years ago when they wrote it. 

 

Then if that is what you believe stick with it.

BTW have you ever read any BRP supplments and seen how adventures are set up? 

No, what is was was they wanted to make D&D as easy as possible. The game used to be much harder. PCs used to die off and such. Now they throw softball encounters with increased XP awards. It;s designed to be easier.

If you want to attempt to make one do so. We're saying it won't work becuase it;s impossible to balance off encounters the way you can in D&D. You just don't have as much control over things in BRP. Not unless you fudge. 

In D&D crits are infrequent and ususally don't drop character. In BRP special successes happen pretty much every other round and do drop characters. 

 

By not running BRP. It' simply won't work for you the way you want. 

 

There are no "easy encounters' the way there are in D&D. In D&D  a threat a few CRs below the PCs is no threat at all. In BRP they are almost always some sort of threat. Hand a 9 year old a .45 pistol in  (something I don''t reccomend in real life) and in BRP they will always have a chance of shooting a PC dead with one hit. It doesn';t matter if the kid is 1st level and the PC 20th level. A 7 point head or chest hit will pretty much drop any PC. So players can just shrug off the threat the way the can in D&D. 

Any competent threat will always be one. An enemy soldier with a rifle at 50% will always be dangerous to PCs no matter how experienced the PCs are. And I don't mean that it's a possiblity, I mean it's a good probability. THe average assult rifle hit will drop a PC.

So no matter what opponents you pick you are already presenting your player with a more deadly encounter than you are probably expecting.

 

 

my god dude, im not this fast lol. im thinking i will read this tomorrow.

[el_octogono]

To keep it short... The CR in BRP is "realism" and or "plausibility". You may have a guy with no armor, just a dagger but with 80% stealth/move silently/hide an he'll probably kill anyone he approaches. In BRP skill IS more important than anything because a crit can override armor in many of it's versions and maybe even double the damage done. You don't need to study stat blocks, just imagine the situation as if you'd be there. That's why BRP is better for "realistic" settings. You don't need a CR category, you just need a change in perspective and another mind set. Your players should understand that also... Else they're either going to get bored or killed soon.

[Susimetsa]

12 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

basically, its a flexible table with armor and hp being weighed heaviest, and dmg per round being second heaviest, and all other stats factoring in but to a lesser degree. if the player and the monster are even on the big 3 stats, its considered to be "average" or "human" encounter. Each other ranking is a 25% increase or decrease from being evenly matched across the big three stats. if a monster is about 25% better in the big 3 skills, the encounter would be considered challenging. 50% better, very challenging. 51- 100%, deadly and very deadly. Going the opposite way, if the players are about 25% better stated than the monster, the fight is considered easy, the next step up ( 26 - 50%) is very easy and the last category is "too easy," essentially meaning, dont give players this fight, its boring.

Yup, sounds pretty much what I do when I eyeball my player characters' skills and figure out what kind of opposition to throw at them. However, you should also account for the player skill and the characters themselves: the players themselves may be less tactically oriented and make foolish decisions - or the characters they play are not the smartest tools in the box and the players play them accordingly, making poor decisions for them.

Of course, if your players are always playing as "themselves" and do not consider their characters' background and tactical thinking skills, it is easier to use the same solution even if the characters are replaced by new ones every so often...

How does the system account for the number of enemies vs. the number of player characters? For example, when four swordsmen (c. 75-95% skill, no armour) are attacked by 10 swordsmen (c. 40-50% skill, no armour)? The 10 guys would be hard pressed, if not for their numbers, which allows them more chances to score a critical hit.

[Kloster]

8 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

so basically, what youre telling me, is you have a CR stat that floats around in your mind, which exists due to the experience you have with playing the game.

No, I don't.

8 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

how do you not see that you are comparing stats anyways?

The stat that you are telling I am comparing (and I am telling you I am NOT comparing because it is almost useless) is not CR, it is the number of points on which each character is built. What I am telling is that the way you are spending points is more important than the number of points. Not only, as Atgxtg is telling,

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

A 200 point accountant might get you a great return on your taxes but he won't last long in a fight against a 100 point warrior.

but this goes further. If I build a 100 point super (a real weakling) with a 10D6 (below par for a super game) fire attack and your 450 point super has a vulnerability on fire damage, he is dead.

8 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

how do you not see that without a cr-like stat, you had to 'learn' the system so that you had a 'feel' for the challenge of encounters?

I agree, I had to learn that. And this is the same for BRP, because there is no CR, because a CR (or CR equivalent) is not possible.

8 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

youre counting something, are you not? im assuming you dont want to bore your characters. even if you arent counting something specifically in your head, you should realize you are still doing a stat comparison and you understand whats too easy and what is deadly.

I am not comparing stats, I am comparing strength and weaknesses, powers and disadvantages, tactics (very important, for Hero as for BRP), localisation of the encounters, what I know of the players (not the characters) and how they play their characters (how they plan encounters, what are their tactics, how much research they do, how they react to an ambush,...). The total of point of both PC and NPC is part of the comparison, but a very small part.

8 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

you shouldnt have had to learn a system, play test that sytem, etc etc to know that. which is my point lol.

We definitely disagree on that point. I am happy to do that. Perhaps is this one of the reasons I like Champions and Runequest.

8 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

its time wasting and we are all going to do stat comparisons anyways. in one system, i can do it in a second flat. in this system, no way that i can do that lol. its taking significantly longer. several magnitudes, which obviously compound over time.

If you call that time wasting, I think Atgxtg is right: BRP is not for you, and I would add, neither is Hero. I call that adventure (when a GM) or Character (when a player) preparation. For me, not time wasting, but part of the pleasure of a game.

[radmonger]

 

8 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

lets say ive thrown some monsters in there that can do 8d10 dmg, i want the player with 60 hp to literally think "oh shit, if that monster rolls really well for damage after hitting me, i can be dead and if they crit i am most likely dead."

8D10 has a ~2% chance of doing 60+ hp of damage.

I'd assume that is your sweet spot for risk; you dropped the D&D death save rules that would have made that 0%. That is playable, as its generally a tactical failure to let such a monster get in a melee attack.

2D10 + D4 + 1 (long spear special hit) has a ~25% chance of doing 18 hp in damage, which will kill most characters even without the hit location or major wound rules. To get a comparable risk level, you would need monsters doing ~11D10. And this is not special flagged dangerous monsters, but a typical guard armed with a spear

BRP starts from a place of realism. Which means, without changing something, you can't keep getting into challenging fights but near-inevitably winning without loss. 

People who play combat heavy-BRP games generally do one of two things:

- adopt house rules or options that make combat less deadly

- play in an 'old-school' style where PC death is actually routine

As the rules actually say:

Generally, if your character is killed during the course of play, you should begin choosing and rolling up a new character while play continues

 

https://tadeohepperle.com/dice-calculator-frontend/?d1=max(d20, d20)%2B3d4

 

Edited June 25 by radmonger

[shadythedevil]

11 hours ago, Kloster said:

BRP is not for you

im sorry but i am 100% certain that the creators of the system disdain people that make this exact comment.

it feels bad. it feels bad to hear it. it should feel bad to say it. it definitely feels bad for the people making money off of the product. if i ran an LGS, nerds doing this nerd condescending thing that they do would be banned on the spot, as its also antithetical to business in a capitalist environment. ease up my dude, these are fantasy games, people can play them however they want and they can pick whatever system they want, whether they struggle with the implementation of the rules or not. customers are allowed to bitch about the product they bought without the other nerds in the room sneering with comments like "its not for you." (if you can feel my eyes rolling, they are rolling out of my head).

it really makes me cringe and its the worst aspect of this specific community.

and just straight up no and if you cant tell, im insulted by the suggestion. as an expert in psychiatry, i always find it funny when people use this tactic as a way to convince. in the future, you should expect that strategy to result in the exact opposite lol.

heels dug in, entrenched in my opinion. some other cultures get down like that but im assuming we are all at the very least in western countries and probably America. what do you expect from me? lol. this is how we were raised. shouldve known better to say something like that, imo. shame on you.

[shadythedevil]

and to everybody else here, i think the discussion is over.

im not seeing anything new coming from it.

i do believe there is a mathematical formula or approach to the stat blocks which can generate a singular stat which would be indicative of its relative threat. i also believe there is a sweet spot between very challenging and TPK, whether that "sweet spot" is big or small compared to other systems. its what i always plan for and i wont be changing my GMing habits in that regard just because the system wasnt designed to specifically do what i want it to do. (thats actually why im here, but alas, its turned into a conversation of why it shouldnt be done or why its better to not do it. yeah thats yall opinion, not mine).

i also dont feel entirely welcome here. ive mentioned in previous posts that i find tribalism strange. im not trying to put your guys system down. passionate nerds of this system should recognize that there is a literal quantitative difference in efforts to compare stats which directly relates to total time spent prepping and they should be open to the notion that this particular aspect of the system will be viewed negatively by new players or non die-hard fans.

thats all and peace

[g33k]

26 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

... i do believe there is a mathematical formula or approach to the stat blocks which can generate a singular stat which would be indicative of its relative threat ...

I gather -- from incidentals I think I've seen you presume along the way -- that this is mainly going to be a stand-up-and-fight melee-combat sort of singular stat.

Do you consider cases such as "skirmishers with missile weapons and speed, vs. powerful but slow heavy-infantry" and/or "Spirit attacks (POW-v-POW & hp's irrelevant)" and/or other combats than the "stand-up-fight" in your CR system?

These can completely flip the combat outcomes when using an "(armor and HP) vs. (armor and HP)" based consideration.

I think you discard all such considerations; above, I see you wrote:

Quote

this is all extra that doesnt need to be added into a raw stat comparison ...

But in my experience, these "extra" bits can dominate a combat, and are much more common in  BRP-based games than in D&D.

I hope you end up satisfied with your CR-oriented explorations into BRP.

Edited June 25 by g33k

[el_octogono]

5 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

I also dont feel entirely welcome here. ive mentioned in previous posts that i find tribalism strange. im not trying to put your guys system down. passionate nerds of this system should recognize that there is a literal quantitative difference in efforts to compare stats which directly relates to total time spent prepping and they should be open to the notion that this particular aspect of the system will be viewed negatively by new players or non die-hard fans.

thats all and peace

 

I'm way past being a fanboy, in fact BRP is no longer my go-to system for around 15 years. What you feel as tribalism is years of experience from many around here. Don't forget BRP has remained practically unchanged since it's birth, more than 40 years ago. Others have shared their wisdom but you just stuck with your stubborn view, which is alright except you're accusing the BRP community as hostile fanboys. Sooner or later you will experience what many said here first hand.

 

 

[Atgxtg]

19 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

it really makes me cringe and its the worst aspect of this specific community.

You're completely missing the point.

This is not a bunch of fans of the system say, "No you can't do that because we don't like it." 

It's people say" No you can't do that, because it won't work."

We're are talking about how the game mechanics will play out. For instance  6 points of damage through armor will drop most BRP characters. 9 points almost certainly will.  

 

Every time you say you don''t want to waste your time you are not realizsing that you are trying to skip learing something important.

 

Now if you do continue to run BRP and run it the way you claim, according to the rules and without any fudging you will start to kill off PCs on a regualr basis. That is what will happen. That is how the dice will play out. 

Now if you are your players don't mind rolling up a new PC every three or four sessions fine. Some campaigns are that grtty. But based on what you've said about your D&D games, I don't think that is what you want, and that is what we all all trying to help you to avoid. 

We are doing it for your benefit not ours. We have no skin in this game. We're not the ones who will have to face your players.

 

 

19 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

and just straight up no and if you cant tell, im insulted by the suggestion. as an expert in psychiatry, i always find it funny when people use this tactic as a way to convince. in the future, you should expect that strategy to result in the exact opposite lol.

Well if you are "an expert in psychology" why are you getting offended so easily?

You started a thread asking questions about playable races and encounter balancing in BRP and then get offended when you don't like the answers you get. 

That's all on you. You're shooting the messenger.

 

19 hours ago, shadythedevil said:

heels dug in, entrenched in my opinion. some other cultures get down like that but im assuming we are all at the very least in western countries and probably America. what do you expect from me? lol. this is how we were raised. shouldve known better to say something like that, imo. shame on you.

Whooa! It's thier fault that thay you are entenched in your opinion? But you are the one who asked all of us!

If you were entrenched in your thinking and didn't want to listen to the options of others, why did you ask in the first place? Your a self proclaimed  "expert in psychology" , why would somebody ask questions if they have already made up their mind about something?

[Atgxtg]

On 6/25/2024 at 7:04 AM, radmonger said:

 

8D10 has a ~2% chance of doing 60+ hp of damage.

Thanks for posting that. I starting to think nobody understood probabilities anymore.  The standard deviation rule of 68/95/99.7 certainly applies to dice.

I don't think the OP has actually run BRP at all. Most of the stuff we've been raising is pretty self evident after one or two game sessions. 

I mentioned Tunnels & Trolls in regards to encounter balance, and I think it's exactly what we need to get the point across. 10D6+40 will usually beat 20D6 in a fight Just because 20D6 could roll 120 and 10D6+40 could roll 50, with 20D6 beating their opponent by 70 points, doesn't mean it's something to worry about. But you already know that, and thank you for restoring my faith in logical thinking.

 

 

[shadythedevil]

15 hours ago, el_octogono said:

 

I'm way past being a fanboy, in fact BRP is no longer my go-to system for around 15 years. What you feel as tribalism is years of experience from many around here. Don't forget BRP has remained practically unchanged since it's birth, more than 40 years ago. Others have shared their wisdom but you just stuck with your stubborn view, which is alright except you're accusing the BRP community as hostile fanboys. Sooner or later you will experience what many said here first hand.

 

 

there are plenty hostile fanboys lol. who tf ever says "its not for you," to a person holding a purchased copy of the book? hostile fan boys, usually upset that you dont like something about their beloved product, exist in your LGS and in online forums.

who is stuck in a stubborn view, a player whos played literally 95% of the systems out there since the mid 90s or a rule set and its community that havent changed for 40 years?

think about that.

Edited June 26 by shadythedevil

[shadythedevil]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

It's people say" No you can't do that, because it won't work."

its simply not true.

 

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Every time you say you don''t want to waste your time you are not realizsing that you are trying to skip learing something important.

thats not a problem with me, its a problem with the system. (and also the vehement defenders of the system).

i get it, you dont feel like time was wasted. i know the rules and ive read the book. you have straight up never acknowledge that there is a quantified difference in the total amount of characters being compared. you think thats great and a feature of the system, i think its dumb and keeps the system away from mass consumption.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Now if you are your players don't mind rolling up a new PC every three or four sessions fine. Some campaigns are that grtty. But based on what you've said about your D&D games, I don't think that is what you want, and that is what we all all trying to help you to avoid.

youve done this to me several times and youve gotta stop with condescending attitude towards people that have played d&d. its like i mentioned the cr stat and now thats all you can see. its also like you havent read what ive said multiple times. i want to design encounters to be between very challenging and tpk, as anything less than that will probably be too boring. you do a lot of assuming about me in a condescending type of way that is not cool. in general, i dont think frequent TPK's are fun for any group. that being said, ive run several games where a player death was occurring every session or every other session and thats totally fine if thats how the the dice landed. that doesnt take away from the fact of how i want to plan encounters. sometimes the players die frequently, sometimes they survive by the skin of their teeth for many sessions in a row, and thats the sweet spot i am looking for.

 

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

We are doing it for your benefit not ours. We have no skin in this game. We're not the ones who will have to face your players

i am not so sure. it feels like there is an dog in the fight from the community that comes to respond to my type of post with pitch forks and torches. i think the dog is "our system is great being unchanged," and im over here like "ehhh, not so much. there is a lot of room for improvement." i know its offensive to people who love the system but as a paying customer, i dont care for this sentiment.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Well if you are "an expert in psychology" why are you getting offended so easily?

You started a thread asking questions about playable races and encounter balancing in BRP and then get offended when you don't like the answers you get. 

That's all on you. You're shooting the messenger.

offended easily? i dont really grade my level of offense. i am a paying customer. telling people to go play another system because they dont like my questions, is offensive. full stop. dont do that shit. normal people will get offended by those situations and that should be expected. also, being an expert in psychology has nothing to do with an individuals capacity to respond appropriately to offensive shit being said. people respond how they respond?

jfc dude. the cr was about time management. non human player races was about being fair, or 'balance' for player races. get it straight. ive said it dozens of times. its really like you cant hear or read what im saying, and you insist on reframing the question to suit your needs so you can talk about how great the system is and condescend people that dont want to waste time because they dont appreciate the system being incomplete. stop it.

the messengers are annoying and arent really answering the question. they go "oh you dumb dumb newb, thats not the right question, let me re-educate you," and i cant help but feel the way i feel.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Whooa! It's thier fault that thay you are entenched in your opinion? But you are the one who asked all of us!

If you were entrenched in your thinking and didn't want to listen to the options of others, why did you ask in the first place? Your a self proclaimed  "expert in psychology" , why would somebody ask questions if they have already made up their mind about something?

yes, it is their fault that my opinion has not conformed to their own. part of the reason it is that way is because of the approach from the community, many of which saying it cant be done or shouldnt be done. this is a normal human reaction. if you guys wanted me up outta here, the best approach would have been "check these rules out from this system," and not, "brp is not for you." i already bought the book. im going to be playing it how i want. the notion is not incorrect, in the sense that there is probably some obscure system out there that is the exact system i want, and perhaps i could stumble upon those rules one day by a friendly nerd but at this point in time, i have this new book and im going to be using it and to come along and say what the both of you have said, will typically result in exactly the opposite of the comment being made.

not only is BRP for me, its for everybody that i might play some nerd games with. i will tell them its a really great system and we will have fun playing. and then i will warn them that the developers of the game didnt seem to have a thought about time management in regards to the people running the game and the community REALLY LOVES it how it is, even though many advancements in the ttrpg realm have been made over the past few decades and its a huge barrier for entry and really makes it not easily accesible. its still great tho.

i am an expert in psychiatry. its not a claim lol. please go back to my first post and reread it. youll find that indeed, my mind has been made up. why ask the community? because i hoped there was someone that could help. thats all. i literally wanted help in developing a cr-like system, with a singular stat and flexible tables. it is 100% possible, whether the results are widely variable or on the consistent side of things. i was also trying to figure out how to add non human races in a way that would be balanced and fair for all players. go re-read it. my mind was already made up. you tried to change it. it didnt work. i will no longer be asking for help in the way that i want help, from this community.

im entrenched, and so are you, as are many on here.

[Atgxtg]

8 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

there are plenty hostile fanboys lol. who tf ever says "its not for you," to a person holding a purchased copy of the book? hostile fan boys, usually upset that you dont like something about their beloved product, exist in your LGS and in online forums.

No. They are not hostile fanboys, they are people trying to tell you that BRP doesn't fit your style of play.

The key point here, and the one you refuse to even acknowledge is that in D&D a DM has a level of control over the deadilier of an ecnounter that a GM doesn't have in BRP. 

Yes a monster in D&D might be able to one shot drop or kill a PC, but it's not all that likely to happen, and if it does, there are easy fixed for it. In BRP the odds are higher, high enough so that, statistically,  it will happen over the course of a few encounters. And it will happen again a few sessions later, and again a few session after that.

 

8 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

who is stuck in a stubborn view, a player whos played literally 95% of the systems out there since the mid 90s or a rule set and its community that havent changed for 40 years?

think about that.

What makes you think the people here haven't played other RPGs? 

Off the top of my head, and with a quick look at what's handy I have experience either running or playing:

2300,2300 AD, Action System, Aftermath, Amber (diceless RPG), Arduin, Ars Magica (multiple edtions), Behind Enemy Lines, BESM, Boot Hill (multiple edtions), Bushido, Chivarly & Sorcery (multiple edtions), Castle Falkenstein, Chill, Call of Cthulhu, Corps Cybergeneration (both edtions), Cyberpunk (multiple editions), D&D (AD&D, OD&D, Basic D&D, D&D 3.0, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder), d6 Stystem (including Ghost Buster, Star Wars D6, Hercules & Zena, and DC Heroes), d20 Modern, Dangerous Journies,  Delta Force. Doctor Who RPG (FASA), Doctor Who Adventures In Time And Space (C7), Dragon Lord of Melnibone (mostly just to try it out), DragonQuest (all 3.5 or so edtions), Dragonlance (SAGA cars based RPG),Dream Park, ElfQuest, Elizabethan Adventures, Flashing Blades, FATE, FUDGE, Fury Pirates, Gamma World (multiple edtions going back to Metamorphosis Alpha), Gangbusters, Golden Heroes, GURPS (from Man to Man on), Harnmaster, Hawkmoon, Hero System (inclduing Champions, Danger International and Fantasy Hero), HeroWars/HeroQuest, Honor & Intriduge, Hyperborean Mice, Indinaina Jones (both the TSR "thing" and the game for Masterbook), James Bond 007 RPG, KABAL, Kult, Land of Og, Land of the Rising Sun (A C&S variant), Legend of the Five Rings (Multiple Editions), Lords of Creation, Lord of the Rings RPG (Decipher), Mand, Myth & Magic, Marvel Superheroes RPG (TSR FASERIP version and their later SAGA version),  Mekton (Mekton I, II, and Zeta), Middle Earth Role Player (MERP a trimmed down Romelmaster), Morrow Project (multiple edtions), Mongoose RuneQuest (ouch), Mercenaries Spies & Private Eyes, Mutant Chronicles, Palldium RPG, Paranoia, Pendragon (multiple edtions), Phoenix Command, Prince Valiant, Princess Bridge (a FUDGE variant), Privateers & Gentelemn, Recon, Ringworld, Robotech (the Palladium version although I have both newer versions, but haven't played them), Rocket Age, Rolemaster, RuneQuest (RQ2 and RQ3), Skull & Crossbones, Space 1889, Star Ace, Star Frontiers, Star Trek (FASA, LUG and Decipher systems; have some Morphdius stuff but haven't played it), Star Wars (both the D6 and D20 versions, got some FFG stuff buut haven't played it), Stargate SG-1, Strombringer (pretty much every edtion including Elric!), Street Fighter RPG, Superworld, Swordbearer,Thieves Guild, Tunnels & Trolls, Talislanta, The Fantasy Trip (from the Melee microgame on), The One Ring (both edtions), Timemaster, Time Lord (a Doctor Who RPG), Time Lords (BTRC),Toon, Top Secret, Top Secret S.I., Traveller (mutiple edtions from the 3 book set through to Mongose 2nd edtion. Btw, Mongoose does a decent Traveller.), Twilight 2000 (at least two edtions), Universe, Usagi Yojimo (the GOld Rush Games Fusion Version and the first anguine version), Vilians & Vigilantes (the first two edtions), Warp World, World of Darkness (various from Vampire the Masqurade onwards. Haven't run or played any nWoD though), Year of the Phoenix.

 

 Not does that cover the stuff I've read or watched, and probably have,  but never got around to playing like Jovian Chronicles, Savage Worlds, Argon, Thrilling Tales, Tiny D6, Top Secret N.W.O., Torchebearer, etc.

 

 

So just becuase I'm familar with and like BRP doesn't me that I am not familiar with other, newer games. And that's not just me either.

 

 

 

[shadythedevil]

22 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

No. They are not hostile fanboys, they are people trying to tell you that BRP doesn't fit your style of play.

we are talking about rules for a fantasy game my dude. my style of play is whatever style of play i want it to be. suggesting anything along the lines of 'its not for you' is nerd tribalism, and i refuse to see it any other way. these are RP games. everything is made up. the setting. the rules. its all made up. i do not ascribe to this weird ass conform to the box you picked mentality.

 

43 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

What makes you think the people here haven't played other RPGs?

i didnt say that?

i asked who was stuck in a stubborn view. is it me, a person with vast experience at the LGS? or is the rule set and community, that havent changed for 40 years and get mad when you suggest changing it?

its obvious lol.

[radmonger]

On 6/25/2024 at 12:33 AM, shadythedevil said:

the aliens they meet that arent hostile, will become additional player races that the players can roll new characters for, if they want to.

To answer your question, then do do this, assign each race met a 'power budget' according to the superpower rules on p141. This can increase as the campaign goes on, say 10 for the first race met, 15 for the second, and so on. It is then up to the players to spend those points in a way compatible with the nature of the species as established.

So a Gloranthan Green elf is a 12 point species:

• super characteristics (+6  INT, +3 DEX, +2 POW)  at a cost of 11.
• vulnerabilty to iron (+ D6 damage), -2 points
• super sense (feel health and emotion of plants and soil by touch), 3 points

For a CR-like number, use a base of 1 per combatant, and add:

• +1 if an average hit from their attack will one-shot an average PC
• +1 if it has sufficient armour and hp to effectively ignore a maximum normal PC damage roll
• +1 per additional target it can attack at full effectiveness
• -0.5 if it has a 40% or less chance of succeeding at a combat skill roll.

This produces a number in the range 0.5 to perhaps 5. This is a much tighter range than D&D; that is the nature of the BRP system. It is just not the case that the re are such things as CR 7 monsters that are meaningfully different in play than CR 13 ones.

 

 

 

 

[radmonger]

On 6/25/2024 at 12:33 AM, shadythedevil said:

the game starts with a mysterious space ship coming out of who knows where, orbitting earth, full of hundreds of humans in cryo-sleep.

Given that setup, it makes sense that the ship contains medical facilities at the very least equivalent to a modern hospital, and likely well in advance of it. As such:

• anyone who makes it back to the ship can be expected to survive, and return healthy in weeks to months
• anyone cryo-stabilised after combat by a trained medic (or perhaps even automated equipment) can be safely returned to the ship

This should allow frequent challenging combats, with realistic levels of lethality, without making long-term PC survival unlikely.

Edited June 26 by radmonger

[Atgxtg]

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

its simply not true.

Do the math. 

You come here new to the game and can't figure out how to balance an encounter and you're telling all of us experienced gamers that we are wrong when we tell you that what you are trying to do cannot be done.

If we were really just a bunch of guys who have been playing the same game for 40 years don't you think we would understand how it works by now.

 

The thing is in BRP the bad guys always have a much higher chance of killing a PC than they do in D&D and you just can't account for that the way you can in D&D.

 

For instance, any archer has a chance of getting an impale that does double damage. That chance is one fifth their chance to hit, so one in five hits will do double damage. That in a game with fixed hit points. That one thing right there prevents you from doing what you are trying to do. Any archer good enough to qualify as a "near death" encounter will kill a PC 20% of the time. Tht's just the math of it.

 

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

 

thats not a problem with me, its a problem with the system. (and also the vehement defenders of the system).

When you are the only one having a problem, it's by definition your problem. 

Doesn't the fact that nobody else has that problem make you question your views on this, even a little?

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

i get it, you dont feel like time was wasted. i know the rules and ive read the book.

You might have read the book, but your statements show that you do not understand the rules. If you did them you would be aware that what you are attemtping to do is impossible with the rules as written, in any version of BRP.

It's just a basic undersatanding of how dice roll and how combat works in BRP. 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

 

you have straight up never acknowledge that there is a quantified difference in the total amount of characters being compared.

What do you mean. THat you ave to compare more characters in BRP? Becuase you don't.

In BRP the GM gets to write up the opponents and not just copy them over from a Monster Manual. So you shouldn't have to pour over tons of stats to find a worthy oppoent. You should just be able to take something and adjust it's skill scores.

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

 

you think thats great and a feature of the system, i think its dumb and keeps the system away from mass consumption.

And you are wrong.

 

Basically what you want is for BRP to work like D&D. It doesn't. Niether do most of the RPGs I read off earlier on my impromtu gaming resume. They all run differenrtly and there are things you can sdo in some games that you can't do in others. For instace the old Marvel Super Hoeroes RPG is a lot more forgiving that the James Bond RPG. That's without any superpowers. Becuase MArvel tries to emulate the world of four color comics where a character can get smacked by the Hulk and still be walking while Bond emulates the world of James Bond, where a single .25 ACP bullet from a Beretta can kill someone. 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

youve done this to me several times and youve gotta stop with condescending attitude towards people that have played d&d. its like i mentioned the cr stat and now thats all you can see. its also like you havent read what ive said multiple times. i want to design encounters to be between very challenging and tpk, as anything less than that will probably be too boring.

I've read what you said. It's just that what you are trying to do is impossible to do in the BRP game system.

 

To put it bluntly, there is no "between" very challenging and TPK with BRP. Any encounter that qualified as very challenging in BRP can be a TPK encounter, and statistically will be if a GM tires to do that consistently. 

Now I don't have a psychology degree, my degree is in electronics where I had to do some math, and what I know about math, with the laws of probability, with games, and with BRP in particular all show that you can't do what you want to with BRP. Any very chalenging encounter is going to have damage rolls that will be within two standard deviations of killing a PC. Again, that is just the math of it.

It's can't be done. And the game wasn't designed so that it could be. 

This isn't about hostility. No one is being hostile to you. Quite the opposite. We are spending our time trying to explains something to you that you don't understand.

But if you still don't believe me, then I say prove your point. 

Design an encounter that fits your crtieria. Write up a foe that provides a near death challenge for four PCs in the 50-60% skill range with no armor that I mentioned previously, that doesn't have a good chance of killing a PC in four tor five encounters. And try to do that with multiple opponents.

Do it. Then post it here. I for 0one would love to see it, becuase if you do manage it, and it is somehow very challging but not deadly, then you will have managed to pull off something no one else have ever been able to do with BRP, including the games creators.  

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

you do a lot of assuming about me in a condescending type of way that is not cool.

Such as?

Look I'm not trying to be condescending, I'm trying to explain to a self confessed new GM how the game mechanics work in play, because they asked about it.

 

Now you claim to know the rules but then post things that show that you don't seem to understand them very well, by saying stuff like why the game doesn't have something =like CR. As someone experienced with BRP I know a CR type stat wouldn't work. In fact, every experienced BRP GM knows that.  Every single person here is saying that the game as written is just too deadly for a CR system to work. 

 

I really wonder how many game sessions of BRP you've run becuase what I'm saying the dice should show you fairly quickly.

I know that with fixed hit points, special succes  and magical spells the frequncy of implaes and such make that impossible. An impaling arrow can potentially drop or kill any standard fantasy PC and impales happen far to frequently to be discounted. I know that a guy wielding a halberd doing 3D6+1D4 damage can killed an unarmored man on a hit with an average damage roll, and will almost certainly drop him with any damage roll. And that right there is why you have no sweet spot between very challenging and a dead PC. 

We are not being hostile you you, or condescending or set in our ways, or opposed to change. We just know how the game works. Dice are unpredicable, and as PC get more experienced the game get more deadly, because the chances of critical and specials go way up. Especially wen combined with good tactics and magic. 

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

in general, i dont think frequent TPK's are fun for any group.

No good GM does. It's simply the price of having fun. If you don't have risk then it's no longer exciting combat.

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

that being said, ive run several games where a player death was occurring every session or every other session and thats totally fine if thats how the the dice landed. that doesnt take away from the fact of how i want to plan encounters. sometimes the players die frequently, sometimes they survive by the skin of their teeth for many sessions in a row, and thats the sweet spot i am looking for.

Yes, and that sweet spot doesn't really exist in BRP. Seriously. Take your PCs and just use Bandits with 30% skill, no armor or magic, and you;'ll still have a dangerous encounter. Because with fixed hit points, and good damage roll is life threatenting.

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

i am not so sure. it feels like there is an dog in the fight from the community that comes to respond to my type of post with pitch forks and torches.

Nope. We're not coming atfter you. We are trying to warn you that you're steering towards the iceberg.

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

i think the dog is "our system is great being unchanged," and im over here like "ehhh, not so much.

Uh, our dog has been changed so many times, we ususally have to start a thread by telling everyone what breed we are talking about. 

Seriously, BRP comes in many differnt variantions, each of which has differerrnt rules. All of the various optional rules in the the BRP rulebook orginated from previous games. 

So we don't mind change (mostly. Mongoose RuneQuest in another thing, but that's mostly because the rule changes didn't fit the game world it was set in).

What we are concered about is that they way you are used to running in D&D will just butcher your PCs. Even that sample 75% 2d10 damage example you gave will do enough damage to drop a PC most of the time, and kill a PC half the time if the player fails to parry. Oh, and change wise, that guy is tougher to deal with in RQ2 or 3 than in Strombringer or current BRP due to the way parries work in those games. 

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

there is a lot of room for improvement." i know its offensive to people who love the system but as a paying customer, i dont care for this sentiment.

Sure there is. But that doesn't mean that adding CR would be an improvement.

Again, you come from a D&D background and seem to expect BRP to work like D&D, and when everyone tries to tell you that it doesn't, you refuse to believe us and accuse of of fanboy tribalism. 

 

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

offended easily? i dont really grade my level of offense. i am a paying customer. telling people to go play another system because they dont like my questions, is offensive.

No they are telling you to go play another game because the one you bought doesn't fit the style you want to play. They aren't doing it to keep you away, they are doing it so you won't be disappointed.

You want to see what having a challenging encounter all the time is like in BRP go play Call of Cthulhu. It';s a game where livving long enough to go permanently insame is a mark of achievement. And it's BRP.

 

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

full stop. dont do that shit. normal people will get offended by those situations and that should be expected. also, being an expert in psychology has nothing to do with an individuals capacity to respond appropriately to offensive shit being said. people respond how they respond?

But is not offensive $**t being thrown at you. It's people who understand how the game works trying to explain to you why what you want to do won't work, and you consistently saying' No, you're all wrong, I know better. It's just that this game is so much harder to balance."

But if our advice isn't helpful to you, then don't bother aksing for it anymore. Just do what you want to do. 

If you really want BRP to have a CR stat then go tell the Chasoium. They get to decide what's in the rulebook not any of us.  

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

jfc dude. the cr was about time management. non human player races was about being fair, or 'balance' for player races. get it straight.

And I'm saying player character races in BRP are supposed to be fair. They were never balanced, nor were they ever supposed to be. For instance if someone is playing a Melnibonean then they will, on average,  have better stats than a human. Same with a most trolls.  Or dragonewts (although such dragonewts are mostly NPCs).

The game isn't balanced and isn't supposed to be balanced. By design. That's the point. That was the intention when the games were written.

 

If you are okay with an unbalanced game, then jump in. Now if you not okay with an unbalanced game, fine. You can balance them off however you wish to, in your campaigns. But you act like you expect things to be balanced, and  want to force everyone else to balance them off the same way too, because you think that it is better, and that we are all just being difficult about it.

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

ive said it dozens of times.

Yes you have, but you haven't seen to read or understand the responses. You take them as some sort of personal attack when they are all about how the game works. 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

its really like you cant hear or read what im saying, and you insist on reframing the question to suit your needs so you can talk about how great the system is and condescend people that dont want to waste time because they dont appreciate the system being incomplete. stop it.

I never said the system was great. I said it was different.

In D&D everything is carefully controlled (i.e. balanced) to help ensure a long fruitful, fun campaign. That is what D&D players want and expect. And that's all good.

In BRP, you can never balance an encounter or player character the same way you can in D&D. Too many things are outside of the GMs control to do that. In Chaosium BRP games, you can't even control the rate of character improvement. 

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

the messengers are annoying and arent really answering the question. they go "oh you dumb dumb newb, thats not the right question, let me re-educate you," and i cant help but feel the way i feel.

No we answered the question. The answer is you can't do that in BRP.

The problem is that you refuse to accept thaat as an answer ands instead view it as a personal attack on some sort.

 

But if you think you can balance BRP to work the want you want to then do it. Show us a balanced encounter that will be very challenging but won't threaten a TPK.

 

 

5 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

yes, it is their fault that my opinion has not conformed to their own. part of the reason it is that way is because of the approach from the community,

Uh no. It's you who have blamed the community for not conforming to your wishes. Your the one who claims the game needs a CR and would be better if it had one, that it could work, and that the game is suffering for lack of it.

 

Those are all your opinions and you are the one who is calling other fanboys and tribal for not agreeing with you. 

 

[Atgxtg]

37 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

we are talking about rules for a fantasy game my dude. my style of play is whatever style of play i want it to be. suggesting anything along the lines of 'its not for you' is nerd tribalism, and i refuse to see it any other way. these are RP games. everything is made up. the setting. the rules. its all made up. i do not ascribe to this weird ass conform to the box you picked mentality.

 

i didnt say that?

i asked who was stuck in a stubborn view. is it me, a person with vast experience at the LGS? or is the rule set and community, that havent changed for 40 years and get mad when you suggest changing it?

 

Wll you're the one assuming that the ruleset and community hasn't changed in 40 years. It has.

RuneQuest 2 was basically the same as RuneQuest but with better table layout and edting, but it had a few changes (a friend got blidesided by the change in Ward at a convention).

Strombringer wasn't the same as RQ, used a different hit point system, critical system, parry system, armor system, magic system and other stuff.

Call of Cthuhlu had a simplfied hybrid system that was mostly RQ2 with a touch of Strobmriger plus a lot of freaky new stuff.

Pendragon is a radicalldy differnt version of the game based on d20s instead of % dice, and where traits and passions can be more important that attributes or skills.

Runequest 3 is not the same as RQ2. 

Worlds of Wonder was BRP, but lacked a lot of stuff that normally went into a BRP game.

Strombringer 2 was mostly the same as Strombringer. Same with and 4, except for the Sorcery.

Ringworld is even more changed.

ElfQuest is basically RuneQuest 3 with some minor adaptions to fit the ElfQuest Comics.

Superworld sure aint like RuneQuest or Cthulhu.

Nephelim was different, but it was still BRP.

RQ4 didn't come officially, but if you'd seen it you spot that it had more changes.

Elric! was what followed Strombringer but it had major differences.

Privateers & Gentlemen technically wasn't BRP but any RQ2 player would have felt quite a home playing it. 

Same goes for Other Suns.

Mongoose RuneQuest was technically BRP, sadly. Lots of changes, most of them bad.

Mongoose RuneQuest 2nd Edition (Legend) was also technically BRP, aand technically better.

Mongoose Elric wasn't the same as Chasoium Elric! or Strombringer. 

RuneQuest 6 was technically RuneQuest and BRP, and not it's Mythras.

Mythras II.

Oh, and OpenQuest. Not to mention Revolution. Or Renaissance. And probably a dozen or so games I've forgotten or don't know about, like the role playing expansion for Morrow Project. 

 

Basically all of these use what is recognizably the same underlying game system (expect for the ones that don't for legal reasons) but they are all diffident in one way or another. In fact no two version of BRP are exactly the same. The game gets a makeover of some type with every new release. So the community isn't getting mad about change.  

We've gotten used to so much change that we have multiple sup section on the boards and usually have to ask "what edition of... are you referring to"  before answering a question about the rules.

 

37 minutes ago, shadythedevil said:

its obvious lol.

To you. To the rest of us iit appears that that you don't understand the game and don't really know what you are talking about. Or that you are just being a troll.

 

Look I understand what you want. You;d like to look at some number that would tel you how C stands up to Y the way CR appears to in D&D. I understand that's what you want. You don't seem to understand that that is something you can't get in BRP.  THe community is preventing that. Chasoium isn't preventing that. The way the game works does. Now you can acuused us all of being hostile but it doesn't change how the game will play.