From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #174 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Saturday, 3 February 1996 Volume 02 : Number 174 TABLE OF CONTENTS Trent Smith "High-level" RQ Steve Lieb Skills over 100%... Steve Lieb Thrown weapons & multimissile PCs William C. Corbett The old Att% vs Par% again William C. Corbett Sky-high percentages David Dunham Experience; Specials; Firearrow; Dorastor Kevin Rose Skills and familiars SPerrin@aol.com Experience; Specials; Fir... ANDOVER@delphi.com Skills over 100%... Trent Smith Specials, Dorastor, etc. RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to add "Yeah, I agree" or "No, I disagree." Or be excoriated. If someone writes something good and you want to say "good show" please do. But don't include the whole message you praise. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. 3. Learn the art of paraphrasing: Don't just quote and comment on a point-by-point basis. When paraphrasing you demonstrate exactly how well you understand the point someone was trying to make. 4. There is no number 4. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Trent Smith Date: Sat, 03 Feb 1996 13:00:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: "High-level" RQ Both Andrew (?) and Jim Chapin wonder how people are able to get such high-level RQ characters and Jim, at least, suspects many of Monty-Haulism: I know that in my personal campaign, which has been running sporadically for close to two years, there's been exactly one character with ANY skill over 90% (Broadsword Attack @ 99) and I'm pretty sure he started out somewhere in the 80s. Everybody else seems to have their "best" skills in the 60-70 range and improvements come VERY slowly (they're too poor to "buy" training, and they always fail their improvement rolls-- I'm frequently shocked that PCs will acquire 8 or so checks and yet the only thing that increases is "Devise" from 23 to 25). Nevertheless, I'm still concerned about Illuminated RL/P characters with skills in the 200 range and how the rules apply to them for two reasons: 1) I'm optimistic and hope that someday I'll have a campaign run long enough that there will actually be some of these monstrosities running around; and 2) Even if it doesn't directly affect my game, I still think it's a problem that needs to be addressed if the rules (seemingly) completely break down at higher levels. Glorantha, through the Heroes and monstrosities like the Crimson Bat, seems to allow room for such obscenely high-level play, and I think that at the very least the rules should also allow it, even if most of us will never actually get to that level. Trent Smith ------------------------------ From: liebx004@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Steve Lieb) Date: Sat, 03 Feb 1996 15:02:11 -0600 Subject: Re: Skills over 100%... >One thing I have yet to resolve satisfactorily is that "battle between titans problem" or even "battle against a guy with kickass armor" problem. In either case, the only way to DAMAGE the guy is to do a critical, which kills him. That just doesn't seem right. (Yeah, i know, there are a lot of things like healing spirits and stuff which can mitigate this, but I'm talking about the REALISM issue, not a solve-the-puzzle-using-rules issue.) Steve Lieb (liebx004@maroon.tc.umn.edu) (Who continues to suffer from .sig bloat - and therefore has clipped the whole thing. Wait . . .) ------------------------------ From: liebx004@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Steve Lieb) Date: Sat, 03 Feb 1996 15:05:41 -0600 Subject: Re: Thrown weapons & multimissile PCs >Will Johnson asks whether >>... a giant who knows >> Multimissile 9 can cast it on one of the player characters that he has picked >> up and throw four flailing warriors at one of their teammates... I've simply ruled (it HAS come up) that Multimissile cannot be used on objects with POW. Note it CAN be used on objects with MPs, but the duplicates do NOT have the magical bonuses - they are mundane versions of the original. Steve Lieb (liebx004@maroon.tc.umn.edu) (Who continues to suffer from .sig bloat - and therefore has clipped the whole thing. Wait . . .) ------------------------------ From: "William C. Corbett" <101524.442@compuserve.com> Date: 03 Feb 96 16:44:58 EST Subject: The old Att% vs Par% again From Martin Laurie: >the attack is so >acute that you don't know what the hell is happening half the time, never mind >parrying it. Agreed, but is that skill Vs. skill, or speed vs. speed? As I said, the better fighter should go first. Maybe we could meet in the middle of this argument if there were more success levelscompared like Steve Perrin's tables? And doesn't >line, feint, angulate, disengage, cut over, beat etc sound like multiple attacks to you? Maybe the poor guy's just running out of parries trying to throw his sword all over the place against multiple blows. I have to admit, though, I'm used to much heavier, slower weapons than epees and fencing techniques. You can't do much fancy work with a battleax (more than some folk would think though...Hur Hur Hur...evil chuckle). Incidently, on another line of inquiry, we at the Vike (Viking re-enactment) don't throw a lot of 5-pound axes at one another (if we want to stay), but in practice found it _quite_ easy (about 25%-30% after 10 minutes) to hit a barrel at 10 metres or so with the blade. The axes didn't rotate much, being naturally weighted to fly blade first. I wouldn't call it an exhaustive test, but considering the size of a battleax was certainly a crowd-pleaser, and would have had considerable psychological effect in combat! Wulf Corbett ------------------------------ From: "William C. Corbett" <101524.442@compuserve.com> Date: 03 Feb 96 16:45:06 EST Subject: Sky-high percentages >I'm just curious as to how characters get to Rune Lord or skills over >100% ? from Barbara Braun. Good question. We have some Rune Levels (four or five out of 20 over 5 years), but most of those had extensive previous experience. If you want a Rune Lord, start a Humakti with soldiering experience from the RQ3 previous experience rules. Considering you only get one experience roll (which will fail more and more often as skill increases) a week on each skill, how old are these 300%+ types some people discuss? Any Pratchett fans start to recognize a type here? Cohen the barbarian, a lifetime in his own legend... I can't take this level of RQ seriously any more than I could the sort of AD&D campaign that starts with 10th levelers. Carry on by all means, those who enjoy it - you obviously have a campaign balanced for it. Me, I like all of life to be an adventure fraught with worry (I have some very nervous players). Wulf Corbett ------------------------------ From: dunham@pensee.com (David Dunham) Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:10:58 -0800 Subject: Re: Experience; Specials; Firearrow; Dorastor Note: Along with Andrew and Jim, I wonder how people are getting mega-high skill characters, and hope the game won't get distorted in order to handle them. (It's my belief that many of the RQ3 rules changes were in response to high-level characters; perhaps Steve can confirm this.) I agree that the game doesn't handle them well, but I am far more concerned that it handle the normal case cleanly. Steve Perrin wrote >George MacDonald, author of the Hero System which uses probably the most >rational experience point system in the industry, Can someone summarize it? (My favorite experience system is Pendragon's, in that the same system is used for previous experience.) >Seriously, I favor a system where a player can, rather than roll to see how >much of a gain he gets (which can, in some cases, result in a reduction), can >just take a 1% increase and not bother with the rolls. Isn't that how RQ3 works? Or do you mean, rather than rolling to see if you go up at all, take the 1%? >Thought folks might like to see my special success table and how it works... It's kind of a shame you can't pick from a single success. Frex, you can't disarm someone without also rolling normal damage. > * Full possible damage > * Normal damage, no armor (magic, however, is still effective) > * Normal damage, pick hit location > * Normal damage + 5 points > * Knockout (if target makes CONx5 roll, is stunned, instead) > * Disarm So you can never get the current Special (double rolled damage)? All these are in addition to the normal rolled damage, I assume. Thomas Michael Cantine > Speaking of which, one of my favourite tricks is to get a bunch of >characters who know Firearrow to cast it on as many pebbles as possible, >CAREFULLY placing each one into a loose bag, and firing the lot out of a >seige engine (or just dumping it off the battlements onto the beseiging >forces). Cluster bomblet munitions for RQ! Very clever (and perfectly legal) though it feels wrong. As to the various Fire Rock comments, the latest RQ4 used the term "Transient" for spells (like the missile spells) that you cast and then are in effect activated later (i.e. when the missile is fired). Frederic J-M Moulin >Dorastor were Sandy had a sudden recurrence of the AD&D syndrome >while writting the NPCs stats Not at all. Unlike AD&D, you're SUPPOSED to be trashed by Dorastor. GMs should NEVER force people to go there. I think it secretly amuses Greg and Sandy (and probably Steve?) that PCs go there of their own free will. David Dunham Pensee Corporation dunham@pensee.com Voice/Fax: 206 783 7404 http://www.pensee.com/dunham/ "I say we should listen to the customers and give them what they want." "What they want is better products for free." --Scott Adams ------------------------------ From: Kevin Rose Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 17:24:40 -0600 (CST) Subject: Re: Skills and familiars > > I'm just curious as to how characters get to Rune Lord or skills over > 100% ? Most of the people I play with have been playing for years and > once you get to 75% in a skill you really slow down in advancement. > Experience rolls really take a lot of time to give you increases. Using the old RQ2 previous mercenary experiance it wasn't too tough. A couple of skills at 50%. Increase these a few times, then push a couple of characteristics up to 17+ and you get a 30% bounus. That plus map making got my RQ2 character to Wind Lord in less than 20 play sessions. Using RQ:aig character generation it is not hard to get characters who are on the edge of RL if you choose the expert level. If you choose the master level they do qualify for RL at the start. Mostly it has to do with how often the characters get a chance to make experiance rolls and what their skill bonus is. If the players tend to take a lot of week long breaks and have 15%+ bonuses they will increase fairly quickly. If you are using some of the assorted heroquest rules that are hanging around things can get fairly gross fairly quick. If you instead assume that they have only one adventure per year (with one set of experiance rolls) then you are going to have a lot of characters who increase in skill 20% during their entire career. I have a preference for skilled characters (75-100%, not 150%+ monsters) versus "Jim the goatboy" type of characters. None have ever managed to make priest of other such level, as they tend to not spend enough time on getting the political support nedeed for this. I've also carefully watched people succeed on experiance rolls in excess of 90% of the time, no matter whose dice they were using or what the chance was. Very frustrating indeed. An interesting thing happens with some monsters, like vampires. A vampire is a 90% weapon skill and journeyman sorcerer at the start. Since they will tend to have to deal with problems fairly often, and perform significant magic casting, I would expect them to have perhaps two checks per season in combat and three in magic. Given how a good sorcerer can significantly increase his DEX by magic and has double STR, we will assume a DEX of 30, INT of 15, POW of 15, and STR of 30. So they have an increase chance of about 30% for most skills. Given a 50 year old vampire, he will have increased in skill by about 360% in combat and 540% in his normal spells. Probably this would be divided amoung his skills, but still, it gets pretty sick. One such vampire can deal with an entire 60% skill adventuring party without much chance that they can even touch him, even if he doesn't do anything clever. > How about this: Two characters, deeply in love, at least one of whom > is a sorcerer. So, she casts Create Vampire on her willing beloved. As a > vampire lacking POW, he is no longer a complete creature. So, she casts > Create Familiar on him. Now he has POW again, and all the advantages > thereof, which means he does NOT need to suck MP from his victims to keep > moving. If she happens to know Immortality, they can indeed live Happily > Ever After. This is fairly clever, and should work according to the standard rules. I've always made the assumption (unsuported by any evidence) that the Gloranthan version of create vampire is actually an invoke Vivamort spell. As the spell requires that the caster not be in any sort of protective magic they get to have a short face to face talk with a powerful chaos demigod. Hence it has this nearly 100 percent morality rate amoung casters who are not themselves vampires. My preference for familiars has always been nymphs. A niad is stonger, smarter, faster and has much higher POW than the sorcerer (or any other possibility) and it requires only SIZ to create. The real trick with most of these sort of things is getting the critter to not mind being turned into a familiar. Kevin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 18:42:42 -0500 Subject: Re: Experience; Specials; Fir... David Dunham had some questions about my last post. The Hero System charges points to build a character. The Experience points gained in a run can run from 1 to 5 points. These points can be spent to increase or add powers, skills, and characteristics at the same rate as they were bought originally. A highly specialized character can get incredibly gross if played during lunch every day, as one monstrosity I've seen was, but in general it works out very well. Other game systems created after Hero use similar mechanics, GURPS for one, but Hero was the first. He also asked about my Extra Success system >>It's kind of a shame you can't pick from a single success. Frex, you can't disarm someone without also rolling normal damage. > * Full possible damage > * Normal damage, no armor (magic, however, is still effective) > * Normal damage, pick hit location > * Normal damage + 5 points > * Knockout (if target makes CONx5 roll, is stunned, instead) > * Disarm So you can never get the current Special (double rolled damage)? All these are in addition to the normal rolled damage, I assume.<< Sorry, wrong assumption. These are all _instead_ of normal rolled damage. So the Knockout knocks someone unconscious, but they don't actually lose hit points. There should probably be a reference to the knockback rules here, too. Disarm, also, knocks the weapon out of the opponent's hand, but does not harm the opponent. Thus, to get the incredible effects of the old RQ critical and special hits, you have to roll a lot better than your target. Campaigns where characters normally wear 12 point armor and 8 points of magical shielding might want to make the Normal Damage +5 something like +8 or +10. The game I was running was fairly low defense. Have fun, Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: ANDOVER@delphi.com Date: Sat, 03 Feb 1996 21:39:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Skills over 100%... Steve's suggestion for high-powered POW combat makes sense to me, and we have used it even for low powered combat. Jim Chapin ------------------------------ From: Trent Smith Date: Sat, 03 Feb 1996 18:44:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: Specials, Dorastor, etc. [All included quotes are from David Dunham (ddunham@pensee.com)] > Note: Along with Andrew and Jim, I wonder how people are getting mega-high > skill characters, and hope the game won't get distorted in order to handle > them. (It's my belief that many of the RQ3 rules changes were in response > to high-level characters; perhaps Steve can confirm this.) I agree that the > game doesn't handle them well, but I am far more concerned that it handle > the normal case cleanly. I have to agree that, if it comes down to it I'd rather have effective rules for "normal" play at the expense of high-level play, but I feel that for the most part that's what we've already got in RQ3. Where I'm coming from is that, in future editions of RQ, where chances are a lot of things are going to be changed (for betteror worse) anyway, someone ought to at least TRY to come up with a system that can work at least as well as the current system for normal characters, but also can accomodate high-level types. My ideal vision of RQ is as the fantasy rpg Encyclopedic System, where the individual GM can, by adding or deleting various rules, systems, and options, customize his campaign to the precise level of detail, realism, and/or speed and simplicity that he wants, with the possibility of everything from ultra-realistic low fantasy all the way to Heroic level, with everything in-between. All of the pro and con arguments on this list have shown that people play and enjoy widely different types of RQ campaigns, and I think that the rules should allow, and even encourage, this. RE: Steve Perrin's Special Success system: > It's kind of a shame you can't pick from a single success. Frex, you can't > disarm someone without also rolling normal damage. I think you're misinterpreting the table. The way I read it a "normal" success can only do weapon damage, but this is not cumulative with the special effects from the table (except in the cases where the table specifically mentions "Normal Damage+"; thus, the Knockout and Disarm special effects are INSTEAD OF normal damage, not in addition to it. > So you can never get the current Special (double rolled damage)? If I remember correctly from an earlier discussion, one of the main reasons for developing such a table was that the current Special was both too minor (in the case of small weapons) and too gross (in the case of really large ones) and the idea was to come up with something that worked equally well with all weapons (that is, the fixed +5 damage bonus). Also, there's the long-standing complaint that under the current rules you can't bypass armor without also doing extra damage, leading to the all-or-nothing situation between highly-armored characters, which this system also fixes. That's why I like it so much. > Not at all. Unlike AD&D, you're SUPPOSED to be trashed by Dorastor. GMs > should NEVER force people to go there. I think it secretly amuses Greg and > Sandy (and probably Steve?) that PCs go there of their own free will. Except, of course, for Riskland (which, I suppose isn't really in Dorastor proper, but it's certainly close enough). That's one of the reasons that I like the idea of Riskland (and, until recently, used it as the home-base of my campaign). Unlike all these fanatical/stupid adventurers who come from all around to more-or-less go get killed, the Risklanders are mostly just simple farmers who were gullible enough to believe Lunar propaganda about Religious Freedom, etc. Now they're stuck right next door to this massive chaos nest and there's not much they can do about it; it certainly doesn't help that there's a regular stream of adventurers coming through, upsetting all of the monsters, and then leaving the poor Risklanders to deal with the long-term effects when all they really want to do is till their fields and worship Orlanth in peace. Trent Smith ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V2 #174 ******************************* This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark of Chaosium. 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