RQ vs D&D

[Qizilbashwoman]

28 minutes ago, Crel said:

For what it's worth, I know of at least one system that uses D66-iles, though more for random generation off tables than for actual play. Forbidden Lands, by Fria Ligan.

B A S E S I X

[deleriad]

10 hours ago, styopa said:

d12centiles.  Woo...I rolled a twelvty-eleven!

I did spend a while back experimenting with something this. Using d120 (d12+d10) for "hard skill tests." A fumble was rolling over your skill and rolling 100+ or rolling a natural 120. 116-119 was a failure regardless of result. It might be interesting BRP variant where you modify dice rolled rather than skill value but you really needed a d16 as well. 

[styopa]

On 9/24/2019 at 6:50 AM, Jeff said:

That doesn't sound like a modern v. old-fashioned to me, but just an aesthetic preference.

Agreed, it's a subjective thing, sure.  

On 9/24/2019 at 6:50 AM, Jeff said:

The resistance table - which might as well be called the Magic Resistance Table given that almost all of its uses are for magic resistance - is there because it makes the likelihood of success immediately predictable.

... as long as you're within the sweet spot of the table, yes.  While I originally found it also quite appealing, over the years I've run into enough edge-cases to question how it resolves anything BUT the very middle-of the road conflicts.  Yes, I entirely embrace that a 12 vs an 11 should be a 55% chance to win, or that a 11 vs a 12 is 45%.  It's mechanically quite pleasing.  But ...is a 70 vs a 60 really as overwhelming a chance of victory as 11 vs a 1?  Should 1 vs a 2 really be a 45% chance of success?  There are real issues of scaling here.

Further, the idea of an entire table's real-estate dedicated (as you mention) to the solve function of resisting magic which could be equally presented as an algorithm is (again, "to me") as anachronistic as saving throws.

On 9/24/2019 at 6:50 AM, Jeff said:

Others have said RQG would have been more modern with some mechanics that let you Push results or Luck points as per CoC 7e. ...ultimately, I think that it is important for RQ that players can fail. They can and do die.

Entirely agree.   We had luck points in the campaign for when my sons were very young.  IMO they are anathema in a RQ game with adults.

On 9/24/2019 at 6:50 AM, Jeff said:

Then finally, there are those who liked the some of the mechanics in MRQ2 that were rejected for RQG.

I never even looked through the MRQ versions...I presume it was something like RQ6?  I liked their attempt at a new paradigm, honestly.  It was a good effort but I'd agree with you that it didn't ultimately work great (too cinematic for my taste), nor was it particularly RQ flavored.  Tangentially, I'd call it a more "modern" approach, but proof that modern isn't necessarily better.

22 hours ago, Jeff said:

The Opposed Roll used in RQG results in a lot of ties - by design.

Except the full opposed roll mechanic - that best-victory wins, OR HIGHEST ROLL WITHIN A VICTORY CATEGORY - ensures that ties are almost nonexistent.  That reduces ties to what, 1 in 10,000?  I find that aesthetically elegant.

EDIT: and reading further, I get your point about it being counter-intuitive and contrary to resolution systems used in the rest of the game...I guess I'd understand that more if mechanical consistency seemed to have been much of a priority in any other system in the game.  There are plenty of examples of tables, breakpoints, mechanics that could easily have been unified and systematized but instead (likely mainly to conform with RQ2's paradigms) remain their own little thing, unique and inconsistent.

Edited September 25, 2019 by styopa

[styopa]

14 hours ago, Crel said:

For what it's worth, I know of at least one system that uses D66-iles, though more for random generation off tables than for actual play. Forbidden Lands, by Fria Ligan.

Traveller did it back in 1980, iirc particularly in the bigger tables like planetary and system generation results.

[Jeff]

2 minutes ago, styopa said:

Agreed, it's a subjective thing, sure.  

... as long as you're within the sweet spot of the table, yes.  While I originally found it also quite appealing, over the years I've run into enough edge-cases to question how it resolves anything BUT the very middle-of the road conflicts.  Yes, I entirely embrace that a 12 vs an 11 should be a 55% chance to win, or that a 11 vs a 12 is 45%.  It's mechanically quite pleasing.  But ...is a 70 vs a 60 really as overwhelming a chance of victory as 11 vs a 1?  Should 1 vs a 2 really be a 45% chance of success?  There are real issues of scaling here.

Further, the idea of an entire table's real-estate dedicated (as you mention) to the solve function of resisting magic which could be equally presented as an algorithm is (again, "to me") as anachronistic as saving throws.

Entirely agree.   We had luck points in the campaign for when my sons were very young.  IMO they are anathema in a RQ game with adults.

I never even looked through the MRQ versions...I presume it was something like RQ6?  I liked their attempt at a new paradigm, honestly.  It was a good effort but I'd agree with you that it didn't ultimately work great (too cinematic for my taste), nor was it particularly RQ flavored.  Tangentially, I'd call it a more "modern" approach, but proof that modern isn't necessarily better.

Except the full opposed roll mechanic - that best-victory wins, OR HIGHEST ROLL WITHIN A VICTORY CATEGORY - ensures that ties are almost nonexistent.  That reduces ties to what, 1 in 10,000?  I find that aesthetically elegant.

 

So always roll low on the D100 except when in this specific type of contest, and even then, certain types of low rolls are better than high rolls except when they aren't? 

We didn't think that was elegant at all and rejected it.

[styopa]

1 minute ago, Jeff said:

So always roll low on the D100 except when in this specific type of contest, and even then, certain types of low rolls are better than high rolls except when they aren't? 

We didn't think that was elegant at all and rejected it.

cf my edit above:

I get your point about it being counter-intuitive and contrary to resolution systems used in the rest of the game...I guess I'd understand that more if mechanical consistency seemed to have been much of a priority in any other system in the game.  There are plenty of examples of tables, breakpoints, mechanics that could easily have been unified and systematized but instead (likely mainly to conform with RQ2's paradigms) remain their own little thing, unique and inconsistent.

[Lordabdul]

15 hours ago, Crel said:

For what it's worth, I know of at least one system that uses D66-iles

The old In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas game (at least the French version) used D666 (3 D6s)... if you roll 666, Satan, or God, might appear!

[Lordabdul]

1 hour ago, styopa said:

But ...is a 70 vs a 60 really as overwhelming a chance of victory as 11 vs a 1?  Should 1 vs a 2 really be a 45% chance of success?  There are real issues of scaling here.

Sounds like a task for... HOUSE RULES!

But really, when do you ever need to roll with such stats? Sounds to me like an NPC vs NPC situation, which I wouldn't really roll for as a GM (at best, a fake roll behind the screen!). Unless you're letting your players have God-like characters or something, in which case you're definitely outside of what RQG is about.

[Crel]

Just now, lordabdul said:

But really, when do you ever need to roll with such stats? Sounds to me like an NPC vs NPC situation, which I wouldn't really roll for as a GM (at best, a fake roll behind the screen!). Unless you're letting your players have God-like characters or something, in which case you're definitely outside of what RQG is about.

But a 25 versus a 21 is very probable, or a 30 or 40 v. 21. And hitting 30-ish yourself as a shaman feels very viable, with time. Although, I think @styopa's point here is more about considering how the resistance table models the world's magic, rather than (or perhaps in addition to) rolls at table.

1 hour ago, styopa said:

There are plenty of examples of tables, breakpoints, mechanics that could easily have been unified and systematized but instead (likely mainly to conform with RQ2's paradigms) remain their own little thing, unique and inconsistent.

Characteristic breakpoints are the bane of my existence.

Okay, hyperbole, but yeah they're the perfect example of table weirdness I wish RQG didn't have. And the current opposed skill resolution feels... odd, when it's compounded with the opposed skills over 100% roll. 150% v. 80% turns into 100% v. 30%. If both roll 30% (normally the 150%'s special) that's a tie, instead of the 150% skill winning.

[Bill the barbarian]

1 hour ago, Crel said:

Okay, hyperbole, but yeah they're the perfect example of table weirdness I wish RQG didn't have. And the current opposed skill resolution feels... odd, when it's compounded with the opposed skills over 100% roll. 150% v. 80% turns into 100% v. 30%. If both roll 30% (normally the 150%'s special) that's a tie, instead of the 150% skill winning.

nicely stated this has been troubling be for a while but I was having a hard time stating it succinctly.

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Crel said:

But a 25 versus a 21 is very probable, or a 30 or 40 v. 21. And hitting 30-ish yourself as a shaman feels very viable, with time. Although, I think @styopa's point here is more about considering how the resistance table models the world's magic, rather than (or perhaps in addition to) rolls at table.

Characteristic breakpoints are the bane of my existence.

Okay, hyperbole, but yeah they're the perfect example of table weirdness I wish RQG didn't have. And the current opposed skill resolution feels... odd, when it's compounded with the opposed skills over 100% roll. 150% v. 80% turns into 100% v. 30%. If both roll 30% (normally the 150%'s special) that's a tie, instead of the 150% skill winning.

Why is that problematic? All it means is no resolution. You both succeeded, so it is a tie. No resolution. Retry later when the GM thinks appropriate.

[Crel]

33 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Why is that problematic? All it means is no resolution. You both succeeded, so it is a tie. No resolution. Retry later when the GM thinks appropriate.

For me, I think there's multiple struggles at play.

1. In the example I provided, it feels weird to me that what would normally be a special success is instead a standard success—which then turns into a tie upon the opponent's identical roll. This feels weird to me because the primary benefit I associate with over-100 skills is increased special and critical chances. It feels strange to me that RAW skills over 100, when used opposing another skill, never have higher than 20% chance to special.
2. In my experience game resolution systems are typically based around a Success/Failure concept. If you roll under your skill%, you succeed. If you roll X number of 6s, you succeed. If your D20+numbers exceeds the opposed skill's D20+X, you succeed. Adding a tie as a concept—which also seems to be the most frequent result—throws my GM's brain for a loop. It's neither Success but Complication, nor Failure but Opportunity, to ad hoc some paradigms of conflict resolution in plot terms. In situations of stress, the notion of a tie feels strange to me. What is a tie when hiding from a guard? It feels far simpler to me to have success/fail. The guard doesn't see you, and you can sneak into the palace. The guard catches you, so now you have to decide how to respond. As a GM I don't have a default answer for what a tie means.

As an aside, perhaps Special v. Special on the resistance table could be a way to handle opposed skill resolution. Musings for later.

[styopa]

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

But really, when do you ever need to roll with such stats? 

Because extraordinary, unusual, exceptional things NEVER happen in a game with magic and heroes, right?  

[Atgxtg]

20 minutes ago, Crel said:

Adding a tie as a concept—which also seems to be the most frequent result

..and is is a major game design flaw. All it does is to stop the game from progressing. The occasional tie is okay, but too many ties just stops the game dead. It why a lot of newer RPGs try to avoid the "Wiff" result because nothing happens. 

[Jeff]

19 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

..and is is a major game design flaw. All it does is to stop the game from progressing. The occasional tie is okay, but too many ties just stops the game dead. It why a lot of newer RPGs try to avoid the "Wiff" result because nothing happens. 

Sometime contests don't resolve. They stalemate. And that's perfectly fine and that stalemate moves the story along. The opposed skill resolution is not used for combat, they are used for things like a test of Runes ("hey you seem to be equally strong in the Air Rune!"), opposed communication ("both of you are persuasive, and there is no clear winner of the debate"), conflicting loyalties ("you don't know what to do - both loyalties tug equally at you and renders you indecisive"), etc.

A tie is not "nothing" - a tie is no clear-cut winner. And something that happens in stories and in life.

[Lordabdul]

1 hour ago, styopa said:

Because extraordinary, unusual, exceptional things NEVER happen in a game with magic and heroes, right?

It does but, like I said, such stat scores are for NPCs, as far as I can tell -- I don't see these scores being reachable when the human max scores are around 21-ish, even with a few extra points granted by your deity somehow. And if we're talking about NPC vs NPC, I don't tend to roll, I just narrate. But sure, it could happen... just probably not in my games. The reality is that problems with RPG systems not scaling well down to insect level, or up to superhero/god level, is not exactly new... if anything it's vastly more common than not. Even generic systems have some problems scaling, so I bet that RQG rules don't really care about that because they assume the PCs are going to be humans (exceptional, heroic humans, yes, but still human), so one side of the equation is "always" going to be below mid-20s.

3 hours ago, Crel said:

Okay, hyperbole, but yeah they're the perfect example of table weirdness I wish RQG didn't have. And the current opposed skill resolution feels... odd, when it's compounded with the opposed skills over 100% roll. 150% v. 80% turns into 100% v. 30%. If both roll 30% (normally the 150%'s special) that's a tie, instead of the 150% skill winning.

A roll of 30% is a special success for 150%, but once you scale it down to a base-100, it's not anymore. That's not a bug, that's... math. The other character in the conflict also sees their thresholds go down. If you didn't offset the scores down, I think it would actually increase the chances of a tie (which, I would tend to agree, is a somewhat problematic outcome... but not necessarily because it lacks value, but more because, well, most RPG systems only have success/fail, so I don't necessarily know yet how to handle that... there was a similar problem for me with FFG's Star Wars system where the outcomes can also be variants like "success but with a negative side-effect" and then you need to figure out what that is in practice).

1 hour ago, Crel said:

What is a tie when hiding from a guard?

My first idea would be to make the guards suspicious -- like, they start looking around more, walking a few steps to look behind bushes and things, like they heard or saw something but they're not quite sure what it is. This would force the players to stop moving and hope the next roll goes well, while they waste potentially precious time.

Edited September 25, 2019 by lordabdul

[Crel]

14 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

A roll of 30% is a special success for 150%, but once you scale it down to a base-100, it's not anymore. That's not a bug, that's... math.

I'm aware. That's one of my frustrations--without the scale-down, the identical die rolls would resolve the conflict, instead of leaving it a tie. It feels odd to me.

I haven't done any math and, to be honest, I'm not currently inclined to try, so I'm not sure which reduces tie results. I think the more important factor is whether or not the resolution system should have tie results. Personally, I think Critical/Critical ties can be interesting, because then it becomes over-the-top showmanship nonsense, like a bad/good movie. But standard-success ties don't seem narratively interesting to me, and I've not yet seen counterexamples which persuade me otherwise.

FWIW, in my house game we've never implemented the Skills over 100% rule. On one hand it hasn't come up super often (main case would have been two Humakti dueling in Sword Trance at Tourney Altar, otherwise in corner cases w/ augments), and on the other it's adding an additional math step when trying to roll the die, which we don't really need. My instinct has been to maintain skill rolls in combat, etc. just with the default mechanics, where the primary benefit is increased special/crit chance, like in our old RQ3 game, and I've had no moment where I've felt "Gee, I really want to adopt that new rule."

Also RAW if you have Dodge 175% you can dodge the Crimson Bat's five-meter wide mouth 100% of the time while it has 0% to hit you after scale-down, and that just feels really weird.

[Sean_RDP]

1 hour ago, Crel said:

Success but Complication, nor Failure but Opportunity

Actually, that is exactly what a tie is: a complication or an opportunity. Story is derived from what happens and how we as GM's let the world react to the outcomes. Ties are valid results.

An example: Jurok and Ren jump in a river one night to see who can swim better. Best of three opposed swim rolls wins. Well each swimmer takes one of the first two 'legs' and the final one is a tie. The GM can

• Declare a tie OR
• (Complication) tell the players that three trolkin who had been moon bathing near the river notice the frenzy of their fight to the finish  OR
• (Opportunity) describe a shiny item in the moonlight just beneath the water. The characters can stop and investigate or try another swim roll to win the race but might not be able to find the shiny object again

Non-combat skill checks offer a great way to tell small stories and add complications. And IMO ties in combat only add to the verisimilitude, not detract from it. It adds tension to the situation, especially between unequal foes. Every round the trolkin dodges your hammer blow, is another round that it might take your head off with that bone handle shovel. Exciting. 

[Lordabdul]

2 hours ago, Crel said:

I think the more important factor is whether or not the resolution system should have tie results.

That's a fair question.

2 hours ago, Crel said:

FWIW, in my house game we've never implemented the Skills over 100% rule.

That's fair. While it's easy to recompute the special/critical success of the character that gets their skill offset down to 100% (it's always 20%/5%), recomputing (or looking up on the table) the special/critical thresholds of the other characters involved in the scene is annoying. But without it, you'd end up fighting, say, Cwim (RQG Bestiary p191) and his Claw attacks (200%) would always be a least special successes (except for when he fumbles with a 95+ roll). I'd say that it's probably a good call to selectively implement that "over 100%" rule.

2 hours ago, Crel said:

Also RAW if you have Dodge 175% you can dodge the Crimson Bat's five-meter wide mouth 100% of the time while it has 0% to hit you after scale-down, and that just feels really weird.

While that's potentially a candidate for either another instance of "RPG systems generally don't scale well" or for a new issue of Murphy's Rules, I'd say that it's a fucking amazing Dodge ability, and I could go with it:

• First, the character is so fast and skilled that yes, that big giant mouth is too slow and not precise enough to catch it.
• However, remember that it's not a 0%/100% of the time: you can still do a fumble 5% of the time, and the Bat can still succeed 5% of the time, with a 1% chance of critical against which you'd have to get a critical yourself to dodge. It's still very unlikely though.
• Also, watch out for the 3 tongues, each offset down to 25% (yes it has nothing to do with the point you were trying to make, but I felt bad for good ol' Crimsie there)

Edited September 25, 2019 by lordabdul

[HreshtIronBorne]

I thought you needed 500% for all specials. 

[Bill the barbarian]

18 minutes ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

I thought you needed 500% for all specials. 

Oh kind and good sir, if I might... I would like one of those... you know a duck with a 500% all specials, please. He or she could be rich or poor, no worries but if you could see your way... (flutter of eyelashes above big beautiful brown eyes!)... hmm?

Thank you in advance

[HreshtIronBorne]

Lol. 

1 duck humakti

+ ~40 MP in matrices

Sword Trance

Just gotta keep him safe til he is in Deathgod mode. 40 SRs or so. Lol

[Bill the barbarian]

 

 

1 minute ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

1 duck humakti

+ ~40 MP in matrices

Sword Trance

Just gotta keep him safe til he is in Deathgod mode. 40 SRs or so. Lol

Lor’ bless you and keep you safe guv!

[HreshtIronBorne]

I have already used Sword Trance plus some mp in matrices to really throw some wrenches at my DM. Lol. We have never used the rules for skills over 100%. We like when we can see characters get crazy special and crit rates. I feel it isn't as interesting if the humakti just cannot be parried. I prefer the rules and 'feel' of the humakti killing people EVEN IF they parry. Lol. 

[Bill the barbarian]

Just now, HreshtIronBorne said:

I have already used Sword Trance plus some mp in matrices to really throw some wrenches at my DM. Lol. We have never used the rules for skills over 100%. We like when we can see characters get crazy special and crit rates. I feel it isn't as interesting if the humakti just cannot be parried. I prefer the rules and 'feel' of the humakti killing people EVEN IF they parry. Lol. 

Leave us not forget fighting at disadvantage,  believe the darkness mod is still -75%, no?