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Noob needs some pointers!


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Greetings! Your friendly neighborhood Knightwolf here with some quick questions! I recently acquired a copy of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying System. I'm very excited to have obtained it and I'm looking forward to applying it to a number of settings for use with my friends who are also aspiring tabletop gamers. However...in the process of filling out my first character sheet I've run into some items that were not gone over very well (if at all) in the rule-book.

1. WTF are Character Points?! And for a matter of fact what is supposed to go/how do you figure out what is supposed to go in the "Character Points" box????

2. For powers, how do you determine the "energy type", "active levels", "total levels", "range", etc. etc.?

(So basically to sum up, HOW DO YOU FILL OUT THE BACK OF THE CHARACTER SHEET!?!)

3. How do you determine a weapon's "attack/parry", "damage", "range", etc. etc.? (Same for Armor)

I'm currently working on applying Chaosium's BRP System to a setting that I've already created for a group of my friends and I to play and obviously things like weapons and armor (and, since there's magic in my setting, that too!) are fairly crucial to things like character creation and combat! If anyone could help clarify these points for me I would be ever so grateful! Thanks!

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Greetings! Your friendly neighborhood Knightwolf here with some quick questions! I recently acquired a copy of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying System. I'm very excited to have obtained it and I'm looking forward to applying it to a number of settings for use with my friends who are also aspiring tabletop gamers. However...in the process of filling out my first character sheet I've run into some items that were not gone over very well (if at all) in the rule-book.

Hi, I agree it's not clearly spelled out but looking at the sheet again I hazard these answers...

1. WTF are Character Points?! And for a matter of fact what is supposed to go/how do you figure out what is supposed to go in the "Character Points" box????

If you look at the box on page 19, "Point-based character creation", it shows how many points are made available for the approach to characteristic generation. It also has a section on how many points are made available for different "power levels" of campaign from "normal" to "superhuman".

2. For powers, how do you determine the "energy type", "active levels", "total levels", "range", etc. etc.?

These are referring to the various "Powers" systems that may be available to characters in the campaign and are intended to be interpreted/used in light of the specific rules for each Powers type. Slightly different for each system of magic/psionics/superpowers/sorcery etc.

(So basically to sum up, HOW DO YOU FILL OUT THE BACK OF THE CHARACTER SHEET!?!)

3. How do you determine a weapon's "attack/parry", "damage", "range", etc. etc.? (Same for Armor)

Go to the Equipment chapter for this information, including the base skill ratings for the individual weapons, which characters can increase, same as any other skill.

I hope that helps a bit.

Clearly, "what I like" is awesome, and a well-considered, educated opinion. While "what other people like" is stupid, and just a bunch of made up gobbledygoook. - zomben

Victor of the "I Bought, We Won"

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Hi, I agree it's not clearly spelled out but looking at the sheet again I hazard these answers...

1. WTF are Character Points?! And for a matter of fact what is supposed to go/how do you figure out what is supposed to go in the "Character Points" box????

If you look at the box on page 19, "Point-based character creation", it shows how many points are made available for the approach to characteristic generation. It also has a section on how many points are made available for different "power levels" of campaign from "normal" to "superhuman".

2. For powers, how do you determine the "energy type", "active levels", "total levels", "range", etc. etc.?

These are referring to the various "Powers" systems that may be available to characters in the campaign and are intended to be interpreted/used in light of the specific rules for each Powers type. Slightly different for each system of magic/psionics/superpowers/sorcery etc.

(So basically to sum up, HOW DO YOU FILL OUT THE BACK OF THE CHARACTER SHEET!?!)

3. How do you determine a weapon's "attack/parry", "damage", "range", etc. etc.? (Same for Armor)

Go to the Equipment chapter for this information, including the base skill ratings for the individual weapons, which characters can increase, same as any other skill.

I hope that helps a bit.

I'm afraid it does not :( All of this information I already had, I'm looking for more specific information. I've included some images referencing exactly what on the CS I'm talking about. RED=How in the #@$% do you determine this value/info? GREEN = What's the bloody difference?

CP&Powers.png

Weapons&Armor.png

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Hold the phone! Re-reading the sheet and Psychman's answer I just facepalmed on the Character Points bit, however the character failings piece still eludes me.

Reading through the Powers chapters afresh, I came across character failings in the chapter on Super Powers, pg142.

The Box on page 19 includes spending character points on powers, as well as on stats, and energy type is also from Super Powers, in a box on page 150. Weapon stats such as starting skill levels, HP, armour types and values, as I said, can be found in the equipment chapter, and the skill levels would have been increased as part of previous experience spends in building the character, so those spaces are for the current skill. If you look at Brawl and Grapple, it shows the starting skill ratings, with space for current skill, same as any skill on the first page.

As to Power's active levels and total levels, this is mainly for Sorcery, where many spells have a variable rating, say 1-4 re how many points can be cast together. As the number of points of spells that can be ready for casting is limited and the character's "loadout" can vary, showing what is prepared, and what the capacity of each spell is is appropriate. For Example, while Sorcerer's Armour can be cast from levels 1-4, the sorcerer may also need to prepare a wide range of other spells so can only spare 3 INT points of memory to Sorcerer's Armour. He could cast it at levels 1-3 but not at 4 until he suppressed a point of another spell from his mind and dedicated that INT point to Sorcerer's Armour.

Does this make things a little clearer?

Edited by Psychman
After clarifying how Sorcery worked

Clearly, "what I like" is awesome, and a well-considered, educated opinion. While "what other people like" is stupid, and just a bunch of made up gobbledygoook. - zomben

Victor of the "I Bought, We Won"

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