From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #265 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, 30 May 1996 Volume 02 : Number 265 TABLE OF CONTENTS Alain RAMEAU Resistance Table Colin Watson fatigue; spirit combat; BODGERS David Dunham spirit combat ian i. gorlick RQ rules in general ian i. gorlick Resistance table stuff Jesper Wahrner Spirit combat simulation David Cake Spirit combat 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: Alain_RAMEAU_at_03__paris__tep@internet.total.fr (Alain RAMEAU) Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 10:14:49 +0200 Subject: Resistance Table I found the new table proposed by Jesper Wahrner very interesting. Particularily at the light of the simulations made by Allan Henderson on the actual resistance table: the result of such calculations could result in a new rule : if you fight a spirit with POW higher than 10 point difference, no need to roll the dice : you are automatically possesed (as not even 1 chance on 1 million to win according to such calculations). As I am also shocked by this conclusion, I will certainly use now Jesper's table, in order to have heroic spirit combat between POW 20 Priest and POW 30 Temple Guardian. Alain. ------------------------------ From: Colin Watson Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 12:13:14 +0100 (BST) Subject: fatigue; spirit combat; BODGERS _______________ David Boatright wonders: > Maybe larger SIZ should not give bonuses. But what about penalties > for a low to STR to SIZ ratio or benifits for high STR to SIZ ratios. I assume you're talking about unarmoured individuals (since larger armour is heavier, obviously you have to have a STR on parity with your SIZ or you'll suffer more from fatigue - there's an implicit penalty for having a poor STR:SIZ ratio). In the unarmoured case I'd hesitatingly say that exessive STR shouldn't mean that you get tired any slower. A good STR:SIZ ratio should maybe let you move faster, but you should still get tired as quickly. At least that's the theory. In practice, as far as I know, powerlifters make neither good sprinters nor good marathon runners. _______________ Allan Henderson: The spirit combat results were highly illuminating. Thanks! _____________ Lewis Jardine on BODGERS: (I hope these comments don't sound too critical. In general I admire the simplicity of the system and especially its comptibility with RQ.) > Weapon damage conversion: compare the average RQ damage to 4.5 (the > mean BODGERS dice roll). Thus a broadsword d8+1 has an average damage > of 5.5. Thus in BODGERS it has a damage modifier of +1. Ah neat. But it does tend to marginalise the difference between weapons. The +1 difference between a dagger and a broadsword is rather insignificant when the dice range is 0-9. Especially when the roll is open-ended. BTW, does a negative damage result have any notable effect or is it just treated as 0? I'm not sure I like the severity of the open-ended damage result. A natural roll of 9 followed by an average re-roll (total 14) seems to do enough damage to kill an average unarmoured man outright (even using a dagger). Is the combat system meant to be this bloody, or I have I picked it up wrong? > 5) Combat uses one opposed dice roll per round (1 roll for each involved > character). The higher roll hits and causes damage (and depending on how > much it is above 10 might cause "special effects"). If the lower roll is > 10 or more the defender suceeds in parrying. So is there no separate parry skill? Do you just have a single weapon skill as in Pendragon? ___ CW. ------------------------------ From: dunham@pensee.com (David Dunham) Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 08:18:47 -0700 Subject: Re: spirit combat Allan Henderson did a numerical analysis and learned > So things that influence the outcome of any spirit combat seems to be the > difference in POW (not really surprising) but also on the starting size of a > spirit, presumable a couple of early successes don't count as much if you >have > to drive a spirit down from 30 MP. Many real-life spirit combats will also feature magic (almost always on the non-spirit's part) like Spirit Screen or Spirit Block. This somewhat mitigates from the "Rich Get Richer" aspect of multiple uses of the resistance table (or for that matter, opposed rolls). ------------------------------ From: "ian (i.) gorlick" Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 16:51:00 -0400 Subject: RQ rules in general A number of people have bitched that the RQ rules aren't very good. I disagree. Compared to all the other role-playing systems I have tried RQ strikes a pretty good balance between reasonable simulation and playability. I agree it has a number of weak spots, I prefer to fix those by good GMing rather than detailed rules fixes. I like having a rules system that fits in two slim volumes (much of which are occuppied by examples and explanation not just rules) rather than needing many, many large tomes full of rules and tables. Rules-rich games may give more accurate simulations but they aren't fun to play. I agree that combat is slow, we don't have great amounts of combat in our games anyway so I don't care. If you play a game with a lot of combat, then you will need to take some short-cuts. Yes, RQ can stand to be improved, but that is not the same as saying it is bad. ------------------------------ From: "ian (i.) gorlick" Date: Thu, 30 May 1996 16:54:00 -0400 Subject: Resistance table stuff Jesper Wahrner: Yes, if you insist upon viewing STR as a linear factor then the current Resistance table is not going to be satisfactory. But it ISN'T linear. If you want to make it linear then start planning a very massive rules rewrite. I don't think it is worth it just to make this factor linear. Each increase in SIZ is not an arbitrary value. In most of the table you will find that each increase in SIZ means the mass has been multiplied by 1.0905 with some round-off. That is the eighth root of 2. Mass will double when SIZ increases by 8. There are some funny bits at the low end. (I think the designers couldn't quite make traditional role-playing values in the 1 to 18 range fit a log scale and make sense so they 'fiddled' the bottom end.) And they chickened out at the top end and went linear there. (I just continue in the log scale myself for the large values, they don't come up much anyway.) Harley Patterson: The advantage of logarithmic STR and the current resistance table is that you use exactly the same calculation for Gog and Magog at STR 50 and 45 that you do for a match between Bill and Tom at STR 15 and 10. That 5 point STR difference means that Gog is 1.54 times stronger than Magog just as Bill is 1.54 times stronger than Tom. So in each case the stronger has a 75% chance to overcome the weaker. Allan Henderson simulated spirit combats: Nice work. Please clarify: with a 10 point POW difference the lower value had absolutely no victories in 1 million trials, or had less than 0.05% victories so it rounded off to 0.0. ------------------------------ From: jewahr@hts.calypso.net (Jesper Wahrner) Date: 30 May 96 15:19:44 +0100 Subject: Spirit combat simulation Allan: AH> There has been a lot of discussion going on about who to bet on in a AH> spirit combat, and that set me thinking. I tired to work out the AH> probabilities using statistics but realised I didn't have the expertise AH> so I wrote a program to run trial combats. It would be quite interesting to see your program work out the probabilities for a few combats where the difference in POW gradually increases. Such as 13 POW vs 14 POW, 13 POW vs 15 POW, 13 POW vs 16 POW etc. AH> Hopefully, this will provide some help to those of you who design your AH> own modules about the placing of huge temple spirits or large spirits AH> commanded by enemy shamen. i.e. don't be surprised when the spirit of AH> POW 24 proves more of a challenge than you expected. Help and Warning. Spirits are bad news. If they're stronger than you they'll almost always beat you and there are no way to run from them unless they're bound to an area. In fact, the only time I can recall right now when the entire party I played in has been wiped out was by a spirit. It wasn't particularly strong, but everyone were low on mp. AH> Notice that a 10 point difference results in NO victories in 1,000,000 AH> trials. That is a bit of a shocker (to me at least). Not to me. In fact I was surprised to see the weaker spirit in the 11 vs 15 contest win as often as about 5% of the time. Yours, Jesper - --- Blue Wave/386 v2.21 [NR] - -- -> E-mailadress: jewahr@hts.calypso.net -> User of the internetgateway at HeathTech Systems/2. ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Fri, 31 May 1996 11:17:37 +0800 Subject: Spirit combat While I am a little surprised to see the disparity as high as it is for spirit combat between say, 11 and 15, I am not surprised that 10 point advantages amount to a nearly automatic win. The ideas for spirit combat 'reform' in this one generally made it worse (ie higher spirit often does more damage), though adding a little bit of tactics. I was thinking about heroquest rules recently, and it occurred to me that in a heroquest type scenario, with lots of high POW ratings around (ie often a high disparity in POW), spirit combat usually can be approximated by a) divide both opponents POW by 10 b) higher rating will eventually win. Of course, add in Spirit Block and fetches and so on, and things get slightly more complicated, but only because you add the option of a stalemate. I actually have mixed feelings about this. My previous complaints about spirit magic where generally that it was very dull. This rough approximation is not dull in play, as it takes no time at all, thus leaping directly to having to roleplay or think the situation out (and not playing out dull combats for which the result is effectively predetermined). But I am as yet unsure of the implications for the style of play I am interested in. I think the net result in play will probably be everyone has Spirit Block, in most spirit combats it is cast, and then you get a stalemate. Then you either resort to a duel of magic (which is at least more interesting than spirit combat) or you roleplay. The complications are that Spirit Block is incompatible with Shield, and people will run out of Spirit Block. So basically, you are either vulnerable or not. Shamans are a special case. If they are not discorporate, then they are almost always going to be in a 'stalemate' situation, so they must generally roleplay it out or use fancy magic. Which suits me fine. I am actually not that disatisfied with this state of affairs. My conception was that spirit combat was the spiritual equivalent of wrestling, and used to actually settle things between spiritual powers about as often. After thinking about it quite a lot during the RQ4 era, I think to make spirit combat interesting for the average person would require a radical overhaul of the system. The attempts to overhaul the system made in RQAIG introduced a host of problems - some people may recall the problems of a horde of small spirits being super effective under the RQAIG rules, for example. Of course, you might want to make other additions to the spirit combat rules to make spirit combat a bit more interesting for your heroes and shamans and other specialist spirit fighters. Spells (the Hrestoli Drain Soul, for example), other commanded spirits (passion spirits, for example, attack Int not Pow so can be very effective against a powerful spirit), are a start. And for your minor heroes there is stuff like spiritual weapons that damage mps rather than hps (these show up in several supplements in the hands of opposing spirits), spirit combat enhancing items, powerful spirit allies, etc. When someone comes up with a decent set of shaman rules there will probably be some enhancements in there. Cheers David ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V2 #265 ******************************* 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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