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Alt Resistance Table


Harshax

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To tell the truth, the best way to work out Resistance is an Opposed Roll of Characteristic x 5%.

BRP could use one less chart. :rolleyes:

Seriously though, I think you're right.

You could also just roll on a 20-sided, and then you wouldn't have to multiple. Which may come in handy when dealing with scores above 20.

eg,

Strength 14 vs Size 28 rock = Str 6 vs. Size 20.

Wow. kind of felt dirty suggesting the use of a d20, but in my defense, I did play Hero Wars. :innocent:

And don't forget Realism Rule # 1 "If you can do it in real life you should be able to do it in BRP". - Simon Phipp

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kind of felt dirty suggesting the use of a d20, but in my defense, I did play Hero Wars.

Yeah but just as a dirty hero, I'll bet. ;)

BRP could use one less chart.

And something about the wording in BRP0 just gave me an inkling that the Resistance Table was deprecated, ever so slightly (in favour of the underlying formula).

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...I'm sure I remember someone in the playtest (possibly even Jason) talking about a variant they'd looked at where everything was resolved via the resistance table...

That was actually from around 1997-8 when Thaddeus Rice and I were in talks with Chaosium about optioning Superworld and doing a new version.

One option we'd considered was rating everything in such a fashion that it could be utilized on the Resistance Table.

Some of that made its way into the first (and unsuccessful) first draft of the super powers system, though it was subsequently abandoned due to playtester feedback.

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You could also just roll on a 20-sided, and then you wouldn't have to multiple. Which may come in handy when dealing with scores above 20.

eg,

Strength 14 vs Size 28 rock = Str 6 vs. Size 20.

Wow. kind of felt dirty suggesting the use of a d20, but in my defense, I did play Hero Wars. :innocent:

Bad idea. Using a d20 for an opposed roll does not allow for criticals/specials based on your actual skill. No success roll in a true BRP game should be rolled on anything other than a d100.

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Criticals and Specials on the Resistance Table? I've never played such a way.

But thank you. I now don't feel so dirty, just wrong. ;)

And don't forget Realism Rule # 1 "If you can do it in real life you should be able to do it in BRP". - Simon Phipp

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Bad idea. Using a d20 for an opposed roll does not allow for criticals/specials based on your actual skill. No success roll in a true BRP game should be rolled on anything other than a d100.

d20 for a characteristic based resistance rolls works good. No need for a table at all, just a simple formula:

Success = 10+active stat-defending stat or below on a d20.

So for a POW vs. POW roll, with pow 15 and pow 18, where pow 15 would be the active one you'd get a success on 10+15-18=7 or below on the d20. Simpler than the old resistance table.

SGL.

Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!
b1.gif 116/420. High Priest.

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Not quite, Trif. Some spells work differently if the roll to overcome the target resistance is a special of critical success (Fear, Madness, etc.). Other resistance rolls have additional effects if the roll is a special success, for example the intentional knockback is (or used to be) STR+SIZ vs. SIZ+DEX, and it allows specials or critical successes like all other attack rolls. If you use a d20, you have no simple way to find out what is a critical and what is a special success.

As for skipping the table, you can do it with d100, too. I have never used the table in twenty years: 50+(Active-Passive)x5%.

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Not quite, Trif. Some spells work differently if the roll to overcome the target resistance is a special of critical success (Fear, Madness, etc.). Other resistance rolls have additional effects if the roll is a special success, for example the intentional knockback is (or used to be) STR+SIZ vs. SIZ+DEX, and it allows specials or critical successes like all other attack rolls. If you use a d20, you have no simple way to find out what is a critical and what is a special success.

As for skipping the table, you can do it with d100, too. I have never used the table in twenty years: 50+(Active-Passive)x5%.

1=Critical

Special is just 20% of your score, rounded up or down or mathematically for taste.

2-4 usually.

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Well, on the subject of criticals and d20's, there is a game out there that represents a 5% critical with a d20. It is a roll high system, so on a roll of 20 you roll against your skill again to see if it is a critical. The name of the system escapes me...

In a roll low system you could roll against your skill again on a 1 for a 5% critical. A 20% special could be represented by rolling against your skill again on a 2-4 to check for a special.

I am not in favor of converting BRP to use a d20, but if one wanted to you can still represent criticals at thresholds such as 5%, 10%, and 20%.

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1=Critical

Special is just 20% of your score, rounded up or down or mathematically for taste.

2-4 usually.

Lemme see, I use my STR 11 vs a resistance of 20, yielding a result of 1. This means that I can either fail, or critical. And in any case criticals are 5% of all rolls, not 5% of successful rolls, i.e. the characteristic you are using has no effect whatsoever on criticals.

You may like it but this will never happen in my games. Isn't it multiplying by 5 easier than fumbling with numbers to adapt to d20 what was developed for d100?

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Lemme see, I use my STR 11 vs a resistance of 20, yielding a result of 1. This means that I can either fail, or critical. And in any case criticals are 5% of all rolls, not 5% of successful rolls, i.e. the characteristic you are using has no effect whatsoever on criticals.

You may like it but this will never happen in my games. Isn't it multiplying by 5 easier than fumbling with numbers to adapt to d20 what was developed for d100?

I don't know. Using the score that is written on your character sheet isn't really fumbling, is it?

For skills, I wouldn't use a d20, because you lose the granularity of experience checks and increases, but for Characteristic tests, I think a d20 is faster than multiplying by five. I wouldn't add anything to the scores, as others have suggesting. Just roll low, but higher than your opponent. If you roll exactly your score, that's a critical. If it is within 1 or 2, it's a special. Or something like that.

And don't forget Realism Rule # 1 "If you can do it in real life you should be able to do it in BRP". - Simon Phipp

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I don't know. Using the score that is written on your character sheet isn't really fumbling, is it?

No. But calculating 20% of 17 and rounding to the next integer is. Multiplying 17x5 is easier (special score is equal to your characteristic in this case).

Just roll low, but higher than your opponent. If you roll exactly your score, that's a critical. If it is within 1 or 2, it's a special. Or something like that.

Simple, but awfully unrealistic. STR 19 has the same chance of criticalling as STR 1. Like Rurik said, it is the same realism as That Other Game. I prefer a bit more math but critical chances going up as your characteristic score goes up.

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Multiplying 17x5 is easier (special score is equal to your characteristic in this case).

STATx5 also lets us side-step the old "roll low but high" opposed-roll problem, because it has 5 'Degrees of Success' built-in.

GM:"Make your STRx5" Player:"Made it... STRx3 in fact" GM: "Ha! The Winds made STRx2! You are blown to your DOOM!"

Britain has been infiltrated by soviet agents to the highest levels. They control the BBC, the main political party leaderships, NHS & local council executives, much of the police, most newspapers and the utility companies. Of course the EU is theirs, through-and-through. And they are among us - a pervasive evil, like Stasi.

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Specials and criticals come up in some resistance rolls, but those are few, and mostly for Gloranthan specific spells. Excepting those, d20 stat resistance rolls work well.

SGL.

Fear and Madness aren't really Glorantha-Specific and they traditionally used Specials and Criticals to determine effect.

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Fear and Madness aren't really Glorantha-Specific and they traditionally used Specials and Criticals to determine effect.

That's true. But we're still talking abouta very limited set of spells. You could for those very easy just do a d20 stat resistance roll, and then if overcome (e.g. spell goes in), have the defender roll a stat x5 roll and determine the outcome from that (for the above, pow and int probably).

SGL.

Ef plest master, this mighty fine grub!
b1.gif 116/420. High Priest.

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Lemme see, I use my STR 11 vs a resistance of 20, yielding a result of 1. This means that I can either fail, or critical. And in any case criticals are 5% of all rolls, not 5% of successful rolls, i.e. the characteristic you are using has no effect whatsoever on criticals.

You may like it but this will never happen in my games. Isn't it multiplying by 5 easier than fumbling with numbers to adapt to d20 what was developed for d100?

Considering Resistance Rolls almost never use specials and criticals (I've never seen an example of such in CoC or SB or Elric!) its a moot point. So, a d20 would work perfectly well for a table/rule that was created for RQ2 where-in every %tile roll was in 5% increments.

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Considering Resistance Rolls almost never use specials and criticals (I've never seen an example of such in CoC or SB or Elric!) its a moot point. So, a d20 would work perfectly well for a table/rule that was created for RQ2 where-in every %tile roll was in 5% increments.

You are referencing systems that do not use rules like grapple or intentional knockback, or spells like Fear or Madness. But the world of BRP has evolved a bit since RQ2 not for everyone, but it has evolved. Plus, the point is not that the rules specifically reference effects connected to criticals in the RT, but that the GM may want, and should want, to grant special benefit for special successes on a Resistance roll.

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You are referencing systems that do not use rules like grapple or intentional knockback, or spells like Fear or Madness. But the world of BRP has evolved a bit since RQ2 not for everyone, but it has evolved. Plus, the point is not that the rules specifically reference effects connected to criticals in the RT, but that the GM may want, and should want, to grant special benefit for special successes on a Resistance roll.

Elric! has grappling rules in it and intentional knockback, and barring BRP0, its one of the most recent versions of the BRP system.

And if the rules don't specifically reference effects connected to the criticals, then its quite debatable what the GM should 'want' to do with the system.

Since most resistance rolls are binary, not a lot of them will have much to benefit from special effects of the rolls.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Considering Resistance Rolls almost never use specials and criticals (I've never seen an example of such in CoC or SB or Elric!) its a moot point. So, a d20 would work perfectly well for a table/rule that was created for RQ2 where-in every %tile roll was in 5% increments.

Which is why the Swedish RQ off-shoot Drakar och Demoner switched to using a d20 after a couple editions.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Who knows, maybe the alternate table would be worth the effort with Superhero games or whatnot. I personally do not feel BRP scales as well as some other systems to handle super high characteristics.

Sounds like a great idea. The Keepers Compendium Alternate Resistance Table doesn't really come into play with stats that are scaled for normal human beings. I suppose if you wanted a resistance table result for something fantastically huge and strong versus something of equally terrifying proportions, you could use it, but how often does that come up? :lol:

Roll D100 and let the percentiles sort them out.

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