From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #275 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Monday, 10 June 1996 Volume 02 : Number 275 TABLE OF CONTENTS Steven R Lieb Steve Lieb ending the resistance table controversy Hasni Mubarak SIZ in ENC Steven J. Pierce RQ Rules Digest: V2 #274 Carl-Johan Lundell Strengthening enchantments Lewis Jardine ENC, SIZ the Universe and everything... David Cake Strengthening enchantments Colin Watson SIZ in ENC David Cake SIZ in ENC David Lodge ending the resistance table controversy Allan Henderson Non Linear POW ian i. gorlick re:RQ Rules Digest: V2 #273 SimonPhipp@aol.com Strengthening enchantments 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: Steven R Lieb (Steve Lieb) Date: Sun, 9 Jun 96 22:55:17 -0500 Subject: ending the resistance table controversy For computer users anyway- I have a small applet that i have written in VB4 for RQ. enter value A. tab. enter value B. tab every time you tab, it recalc's & shows % fumble, success, special, and critical by comparing the two numbers. if anyone has a site, i'll upload it asap. Steve Lieb liebx004@maroon.tc.umn.edu "Brevity is" ------------------------------ From: Hasni Mubarak Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 00:18:45 -0400 Subject: Re: SIZ in ENC SimonPhipp@aol.com wrote: > > > I would contend that SIZ should not be a factor when working out > fatigue/ENC limits. > So, what you are saying is that a duck with SIZ 3, STR 13, CON 18 (ENC 31 > capacity) can carry approx. 3 times as much as a Dark Troll SIZ 25, STR 8, > CON 3 (ENC 11 or 9 if using the rules for non-human ENC). > Interesting. From what I have seen, large, unfit people can carry more than > small, fit people. Perhaps they cannot carry on for long journeys, and may > tire more easily, but they can certainly carry more. > > Perhaps we need two systems, one to measure the carrying capacity of a > creature, the other to measure fatigue and endurance. It's kind of a moot point, since the con3 troll would be dead within seven years, but yeah, I'd say the little duck would be able to run circles around him. ------------------------------ From: "Steven J. Pierce" Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 00:23:26 +0000 Subject: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #274 Simon wrote: > . From what I have seen, large, unfit people can > carry more than small, fit people. Perhaps they cannot carry on for > long journeys, and may tire more easily, but they can certainly > carry more. I would point out that, in general, size and physical strength are correlated positively in the real world. The reason for that is that strength is required to move and maintain body posture for large creatures. The example with a duck being stronger than a troll is fairly unrealistic - a duck with a strength score that far in excess of it's size would probably snap it's own bones when it contracted it's muscles fully. Likewise a troll with such a large size wouldn't be in much shape to move if it had such low strength. Steven J. Pierce ------------------------------ From: cjl@carmenta.se (Carl-Johan Lundell) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:32:07 +0200 Subject: Strengthening enchantments Hello all, I would like to know what you think about strengthening enchantments for raising total HPs. I think they are a bit to powerful. For 1 POW you get 1d6, without any limits. It seems a bit absurd when PCs for a "small" (compared to one-use divine spells) cost of 4-5 POW can raise their HPs to about 30. Especially since you very rarely see this in published NPC stats. Also, compared to raising HPs of locations, 1d3 per POW, raising total HPs seems way too "cheap". Eg. if you spend 7 POW you can raise every location HP by an average of 2. If you raise total HPs instead you will get about 8 points extra in all locations! As well as getting a higher total amount of damage sustainable. Has anyone else had a problem with this? Any suggestions for changes? I think it would be more appropriate to get 1 total HP per POW, which would give you about 2 extra in locations for 7 POW. Perhaps there should be a max limit as well, eg. 1.5*HP. Regards, Carl-Johan Lundell Gothenburg, Sweden. ------------------------------ From: Lewis Jardine Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:06:39 +0100 (BST) Subject: ENC, SIZ the Universe and everything... Hi All WRT Simon Phipp & others on ENC. 1) Bigger people can generally carry more, but why. Is it because biggered people, even if unfit, are generally stronger because the get all that training lugging themselves arround. Thus even if they are proportionally weaker compared to their SIZ they may be stronger in absolute terms. Is it because they have less trouble carrying bigger items because of their SIZ (note I refer to bigger bulkier items here not Heavier.)? I suspect a combination of the above. Note that in RQ3 there is a distinction between carrying capacity and long term fatigue. You can carry STR*5 (or is it 10) Kg, but your effective ENC limit is much lower (normally). Also WRT armour SIZ affecting ENC if you examine the armour ENC table you will find that there is a non-linearity in the ENC table and that armour for bigger sizes is proportionally lighter. Now, if we couple that with logarithmic SIZ scale we definately have a situation where bigger people can carry more armour. OK I know that armour mass goes up with the square of the dimension and Body mass goes up with the cube so I have skimmed a few bits here. I suggest that some saint with time on their hands does an analysis of armour mass verses the square of the cube root of mass (obtained from SIZ & using the logarithmic relationship). However, all the above seems horribly complicated and way too hard for any sensible system. It seems to me that the way to go is to distinguish between ENC and mass. Most of the time ENC is the important factor, but occassionally mass becomes important for heavy lifts. Having do that include SIZ in the ENC equation (at half weighting or whatever), then fix the ENC of armour so it becomes SIZ independent! This is by no means an exact fix but it does mean that the game mechanics become MUCH simpler and it still allows bigger people to wear more armour, but now they also find pikes and hoplite shields easier to carry that SIZ 8 baboons do! Finally, all the above is carried out while simplifying the rules system (which as you know is my personal fetish!). Thus all the above is definately the BODGERS will go. After all if chainmail ALWAYS has an ENC of 20 then it will make both my & my players' lives much simpler and gets rid of another damn table from the rulesystem. Cheers Lewis ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 17:10:59 +0800 Subject: Re: Strengthening enchantments >Hello all, > >I would like to know what you think about strengthening enchantments for >raising total HPs. I think they are a bit to powerful. For 1 POW you get >1d6, without any limits. I kind of like them, actually - it gives a way for people to push their hit points up into a heroic arena without handwaving. But it might be a little too cheap. Maybe 1d3 is better. But it unlikely to happen often enough in my campaigns that its going to become unbalancing. Anyway, I thought it was always 1d6 hit points for 1 POW strengthening, 1d3 Armour points for 1 POW armouring? I tend to discourage them simply by making their use scary. Enchanting yourself is weird and unpleasant, and requires things like eating hearts, replacing your blood, replacing your organs, etc. Also, the consequences of failure can be very unpleasant. I do have one PC who has done it, though. Stealing an idea from Paul Reilly, he had to have his heart taken out and a new heart of darkness put in. He is very pleased with it, and he claims he doesn't feel much different. Everyone else thinks its kind of creepy.... Cheers David ------------------------------ From: Colin Watson Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:41:47 +0100 (BST) Subject: Re: SIZ in ENC ___________ Simon Phipp: > > I would contend that SIZ should not be a factor when working out > > fatigue/ENC limits. > > So, what you are saying is that a duck with SIZ 3, STR 13, CON 18 (ENC > 31 capacity) can carry approx. 3 times as much as a Dark Troll SIZ 25, > STR 8, CON 3 (ENC 11 or 9 if using the rules for non-human ENC). > Interesting. Large people are generally stronger. In RQ species which have large SIZ invariably have high STR too. You don't have to give a bonus for SIZ because there is already a bonus for STR. > From what I have seen, large, unfit people can carry more > than small, fit people. If a large person can lift more than a small person then they are, de facto, stronger. In RQ they have a higher STR characteristic. The problem is that you have never seen a SIZ 3 STR 13 person; nor a SIZ 25 STR 8 person. If you did then the former would be a tremendous powerlifter and the latter would barely be able to roll out of bed. If you fall into the trap of assuming that creatures with large SIZ should automatically be able to carry a lot then you're missing the point that, in RQ, there is a separate stat for measuring such things and it's called STR. > Perhaps they cannot carry on for long journeys, > and may tire more easily, but they can certainly carry more. > Perhaps we need two systems, one to measure the carrying capacity of a > creature, the other to measure fatigue and endurance. Here's the bones of an alternative fatigue/ENC system which has be bandied around the list. (I think you missed it - check the archives for full details) Each character has a Fatigue Threshold which is a relatively high percentage number, say, 75%+CON. Any time that the charcter rolls over this threshold when rolling *any* of his physical skills he loses a Fatigue Level. The first two Fatigue Levels incur no penalty. After that you lose -10% on skills for every Fatigue Level. Use check-boxes to keep track. If you're carrying ENC then you automatically start off missing some fatigue levels. For each multiple of your STR which you're carrying, you check-off a fatigue level before you start. So if you're carrying more than STR*3 (but less than STR*4) you check-off 3 fatigue levels (which effectively means you start the combat at -10% : the first 2 fatigue levels are 'free'; subsequent levels incur -10% penalty each). There's a bit more to it than this, but you get the idea. STR governs how much you can carry; CON governs how fast you get tired. ___ CW. ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 18:10:43 +0800 Subject: Re: SIZ in ENC >If you fall into the trap of assuming that creatures with large SIZ >should automatically be able to carry a lot then you're missing the >point that, in RQ, there is a separate stat for measuring such things >and it's called STR. > But RQ Enc is not simply mass. It is how encumbering things are. Some things are difficult not because of their mass, but their volume. People with a high SIZ are able to carry more of these sort of things. For example, polearms. Large feather beds. They have a relatively high enc for their weight because they are encumbering. Which is why SIZ might be a factor. But then again, it might not. RQ rules cannot hope to have a really realistic representation of this sort of issue. Because if the rules did take it into account, they would be stupidly complex, with far too much effort put into a simulation of something that is really incidental to play. Fatigue rules exist partly for a little bit of realism, but mostly to stop the abscence of fatigue rules from being exploited. If your rules are simple and enforceable and not noticably awful, they are doing pretty well. Cheers Dave ------------------------------ From: David Lodge Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 12:04:19 +0100 (BST) Subject: Re: ending the resistance table controversy > I have a small applet that i have written in VB4 for RQ. > > enter value A. tab. enter value B. tab > > every time you tab, it recalc's & shows % fumble, success, special, and > critical by comparing the two numbers. erm what's the point - it takes about 3 seconds to work out the chances, (how I do it:) say, 67% success = 67/10 =6.7/2 = 3.3 = 3% crit 6.7*2 = 13.4 = 13% special 100-(5-3) = 2% fumble = 98% or above What's hard about that? dave - -- David 'I Just Get These Headaches' Lodge, se4dl@dmu.ac.uk "Somebody save me from From myself, I need help" - - g//z/r "House of Clouds" g//z/r homepage: http://www.cms.dmu.ac.uk/~se4dl/gzr.html ------------------------------ From: Allan Henderson Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 12:31:06 +0100 Subject: Re: Non Linear POW James Griffith says: >Maybe I'm missing the point but I would like to hear your comment's. I don't think your missing the point at all. You play a power game and "good on you" for that. (On the Glorantha list I would get flamed for saying that.) The important thing for Runequest is that the GM and the players have a good time. Nothing more. > I feel that maybe you have lost the > fun part of roleplaying Runequest and are caught up in triffles. I agree that this list can get bogged down in trivia. I am guilty of this myself, with my posting about probability of success in spirit combat (yawn). But, most people that contribute to this list enjoy pouring over the rules and sharing enhancements/critisisms of the existing rules. >What, I would like to hear from is the people who have >interesting (sorcery and other) spells to share. Hear, hear. Why don't people post new spells, new items, new skills, scenarios or plot lines that you have just come up with or have run. I would be keen to see this type of stuff and it is probably more applicable to the Rules digest than the Glorantha digest. Allan ------------------------------ From: "ian (i.) gorlick" Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 16:40:00 -0400 Subject: re:RQ Rules Digest: V2 #273 David B. Henderson: >CON: linear... CON 10 resists a POT 15 poison as well as CON 200 > resists a POT 205 poison. Sorry, but that actually indicates that CON is probably a logarithm of the actual physical toughness. If CON were linear then POT 15 vs CON 10 is very clearly in favour of the poison, it is 50% greater than the resisting CON, while POT 205 vs CON 200 is an equal contest with the POT being only 2.5% greater than the CON. On the other hand, if they are logarithms, then taking the difference of logarithms is the same as taking the ratio of the root values. If they are logarithms then 15 vs 10 or 205 vs 200 both indicate that the greater value is 1.54 times the lesser. See the end of the post for a few more comments. >DEX: linear, I think. DEX 21 goes just before DEX 20, but is not twice as fast. The standard scale seems to be that it takes an increase of 8 points in a stat to achieve a 2 times improvement in the actual root value. So DEX 21 would be twice as fast as DEX 13, but only 10% faster than DEX 20. - ------------------------------------------- POISON VS CON. Poisons should not just match POT vs CON. There has to be some correction for the size of the poison dose and for the SIZ of the target. For a common example consider alcohol, how much you can absorb without becoming drunk is very strongly correlated to your body mass. If you are big you can drink more. Many poisons act very similarly, their toxicity depends on their concentration in your body. It may be more appropriate for many toxins to compare POT vs the target's HP. It is certainly true that weak or wounded people are much more vulnerable to toxins, so if you have taken wounds you may succumb to a poison that you would normally resist. I've been trying to come up with poison rules that I found satisfactory for a long time. The existing ones just don't act at all like any real poisons. They act more like poisons in bad fiction, like Shakespeare's 'HAMLET'. So far though, I haven't come up with anything that is realistic and playable. Any ideas? ------------------------------ From: SimonPhipp@aol.com Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 18:54:22 -0400 Subject: Re: Strengthening enchantments > I would like to know what you think about strengthening enchantments forraising total HPs. We play that you can only double HP using strengthening enchantments and similarly can only double HP in any one location. We also play that any unused points will kick in if you cast Vigour or Berserker or any spell which increases CON or SIZ. Yes, it is fairly cheap to increase HP, approx 1 POW for 3 HP gain, but most players will prefer to increase Rune Magic if of Rune Level status, or to put armouring enchantments on shields etc. After all, it doesn't matter if you havce 30 HP, 10 points of damage in the head wikll still knock you out. Perhaps it is better to have low HPs and lots of Healing Magic with link conditions. > Especially since you very rarely see this in published NPC stats. NPC stats are usually a joke anyway. Anyone who has had to survive in a RQ environment must use some powergaming or optimisation techniques in order to become effective. However, most NPCs do not do this, probably for some "roleplaying" reason. Runemasters was pretty good, although it was full of errors. Strangers in Prax and Dorastor/Cults of Terror are OK too, but are not perfect. The only people who can write good stats are powergamers as namby-pamby roleplayers concentrate on what their character had for dinner, or what their third cousin's grandfather did twenty years ago rather than on how best to squeeze the extra few hit points out of the system :-) > Stealing an idea from Paul Reilly, he had to have his heart taken out and a new heart of darkness put in. > He is very pleased with it, and he claims he doesn't feel much different. Everyone else thinks its kind of > creepy.... Excellent idea. My characters, when I was playing, all had a tendency to replace their body parts at the drop of a hat. Other people thought it was strange too, I don't see why, although when someone got hold of a copy of Gray's Anatomy and came up with a god who was torn to pieces and whose body parts still worked, we drew a line. ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V2 #275 ******************************* This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. 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