From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #109 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Thursday, 23 February 1995 Volume 01 : Number 109 RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to say "Yeah, I agree." Those who do will be lynched. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. RQR: will be prepended to it. 3. Do not engage in a point-by-point analysis or rebuttal of another person's message. It is too confusing for others to follow, qualifies as nit-picking, and it usually leads to flame wars. 4. There is no number 4. TABLE OF CONTENTS SPerrin@aol.com Is One Parry roll too man... SPerrin@aol.com Needed Clarification SPerrin@aol.com Combat from Ray SPerrin@aol.com Cover art, Befuddle Paul Reilly RQ Rules Digest: V1 #108 CryptoMatt@aol.com RQ Cover Art ANDOVER@delphi.com [none] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 19:36:29 -0500 Subject: Re: Is One Parry roll too man... Steffan, You only take 15-30 minutes for 12 segments of a Hero System combat? How many people and at what Speeds? I've had entire evenings taken up with 12 segments of a combat! Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 19:36:20 -0500 Subject: Re: Needed Clarification I've missed something somewhere. What is "Sacked POW"? Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 19:36:49 -0500 Subject: Combat from Ray Ray Turney has some ideas on combat... From: rturney@netcom.com (Raymond D Turney) Optional rules for increasing the decisiveness of combat: a) explain in the rules that combat between people in plate armor takes forever to resolve, forcing resort to magic, but that since magical attack is a relatively good option that does not exist in reality, full plate armor is rarely made. The idea here is that protection against physical threats should be roughly comparable to that attainable against magic. In reality people stopped wearing extremely heavy armor when a means of defeating it was found ... and there is no reason it should not be true in a fantasy world as well. To that end, divide the weapons and armor tables into basic and optional ... things like mail and spears would be part of the basic rules and other armor would be listed as optional. As it now stands, the combat rules implicitly suggest to the GM that he should allow full plate armor and two handed swords into his game without thinking about it; b) allow an attacker in physical combat to take 5% off the defende's chance to parry for every 10% of attack percentage he gives up, down to a minimum of 50% to attack and parry. The idea here is that, given the RQ assumption that an attack consists of a series of moves designed to force the enemy to an offer an opening, not an individual blow, after a certain point attack skill *is* the ability to reduce the enemy's chance to parry or dodge. I'm assuming that there is a certain basic level of skill below which a competent character cannot be reduced. In the interests both of simplicity and of decisiveness, I suggest that special and crit chances not be reduced when this is done. Also, the ability to special and crit basically goes to how good the result is when you do fake your enemy out, not to the ability to get the enemy out of position so the blow can get through; c) make healing take time {at least until the fighting is over} to work. My motive here is to continue to allow healing to be available to prevent character death but to avoid allowing it to become a substitute for hit points... d) if you don't like b, allow second attacks and parries at (skill-50) 1 SR later, third attacks at {skill-100} 2 SR's later, etc. This to continue until the character misses or is reduced to 10% or below to hit. This is a simpler proposal, requiring fewer decisions and thus less likely to slow the game down than b. It does get at the issue of increasing the decisiveness of high level combat by making at least one fairly even 30% to 60% attack and parry occurs per round ... e) consider making specials say add 1D6 damage which automatically gets thru armor, and crits do max weapon damage {or 6, whichever is higher} thru armor. The idea here is simply to increase decisiveness by increasing lethality, but only against enemies who are wearing armor. Armor is still useful, but not as useful as it now is. This avoids the problem of specials being better than crits against lightly armored does, and the problems caused by the wide variation in the damage done by crits ... with the existing system it is hard to avoid a situation where greatsword crits are two effective and dagger crits almost worthless. These rules would put some value back into lucky hits by small weapons, and thus the reduce the urgency of carrying a big weapon {without eliminating the advantage a big weapon gets from in normal hits, or the legitmately fearsome results of a battle axe crit to the head}. Raymond Turney ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 20:15:52 -0500 Subject: Re: Cover art, Befuddle Jim Chapin has some interesting ideas for a cover, both of which I think might be a bit too busy. I passed them along to Oliver, anyway. As for Befuddle being too powerful for common magic, I'm certainly in agreement. But one has to stop and think a moment. This is a fantasy game. If the best way to handle anything is with a sword and armor (however enhanced), why aren't we just doing an historical game? It's a puzzlement. Magic (that doesn't take forever to do and have immense costs in materials and/or energies) unbalances things for the poor fighter. But what's the MGF point of having magic if it can't imbalance things? Just thinking... Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 20:19:04 +0500 Subject: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #108 Paul Reilly here, responding to Steve Perrin: >RQ already does this to some extent, but maybe >it needs to be more formalized and, as Nils suggests, a basic meta-system >developed that would allow for similar effects whether done by god, wizard, >or spirit, with rationales of why they actually come out differently. Good idea, IMO. I tried putting stuff along these lines on the list in 1993, some people liked it, some disagreed vehemently. ------------------------------ From: CryptoMatt@aol.com Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 20:28:12 -0500 Subject: Re: RQ Cover Art In response to Steve Perrin's questions about cover art in RQ Rules Digest #105... I feel that the cover art is very important to the success of game suppliments these days. Often times, it isn't necessarily the topic of the cover art that catches my eye, but the quality. Good examples of this are all the new RQ3 suppliments that feature covers by Stephen Langmead - - RoC, SC, SotBL and LoT*. The topics of each cover were related to the subject matter, but were not necessarily limited to exploration/combat scenes. Another thing that I enjoyed about the cover art for RoC, SC, and SotBL is that the same characters were featured on the covers. I enjoyed the sense of continuity from one suppliment to the next that the cover art supplied. My initial thoughts about the cover of Dorastor: Land of Doom were mixed until I read the interior and learned that it represented a stained glass window. After I learned that, I loved the cover. I'm currently away from my RQ materials, so I may have gotten the wrong artist's name associated with the books... If so, I apologize. - -Matt Thale * RoC - River of Cradles SC - Sun County SotBL - Shadows on the Borderlands ------------------------------ From: ANDOVER@delphi.com Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 22:31:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: [none] Subject: RQ Cover, Befuddle Stve Barnes perhaps misunderstood my point: the people should be in the foreground, looking at the creatures in the background. That gives the proper air of mystery. Perrin's point that they might be a bit busy is more on the point: on the other hand, I am looking for an information-heavy illustration! > As to befuddle, magicians can do plenty of things to fighters as it is, I'm just unhappy that (like D & D sleep) they can do one thing that is so overwhelming. And, in a way, befuddle is worse, because lots of fighters get it too! Jim Chapin ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #109 ******************************* This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. 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