+100% skill

[atgxtg]

No, RQ was not linear. Neither was the success table. Neither was the Armor and weapon values. Or do you think that wearing 3 or 4 leather coats provides as much pprotection as steel plate.

Look at the masses that go with the SIZes and you will see what I mean. THe differences in STR/SIZ is about a 10% increase per point, although only a 5% shift in the resistance table.

The whole point is to take a non-linear approach both to keep the numbers small, and to give players an somewhat better chance of doing things than they would have in real life.


As for the linear apporach in the game-not really. One average man (STR 10) in RQ can't lift 10 tons, but ten men (STR 100) can lift 100 tons (SIZ 98)!

Pretty much every RPG out there uses some sort of non-linear progresssion to make everything fit into a small range of easily usalbe numbers. THat doesn't mean that a SIZ 80 oject is the same as two SIZ 40 objects, or that a STR 70 dragon is as strong as seven men.


THe problem with the 275 beating the 125 is that how do you use such characters in play?


If a PC is 125 and you as GM throw a 275% up against him, you are essentially killing his character by GM fiat.

On the other hand if a PC is at 275% and only those in the 275% can challenge him, you eoither have very few opponents for him to face, or you game is going to loose it's believeability with all the new 300%ers that suddenly appear.


And as far as the 275 vs the 5 125's then yeah, I expect the 275 to cloober the 5 125%. Especially is you make him 100% and reduce the others to 25%. THe greater skilled fighter has such a significant edge this way that he will probably be able to cut the fight down to a 4-1 or even 3-1 quickly, and then just slapp the other three around fairly easily.




The probelm with fencing is that it disregards attacks in facor of right of way. In real combat, you might both end up dead. Likewise, some of the discounted attacks would be real hits and would certaiinly affect the outcome of the fight.

When RQ was designed, it wan't intended for the guy with a 100% edge to get an autowin. That was why things leveled off at the upper levels, with critcs and sepcials becomming so important.

If you change it to "high guy wins" then you are always going to have to thrwo balanced encounted against your group.

 

[Lord Twig]

No, RQ was not linear. Neither was the success table. Neither was the Armor and weapon values. Or do you think that wearing 3 or 4 leather coats provides as much pprotection as steel plate.

Look at the masses that go with the SIZes and you will see what I mean. THe differences in STR/SIZ is about a 10% increase per point, although only a 5% shift in the resistance table.

The whole point is to take a non-linear approach both to keep the numbers small, and to give players an somewhat better chance of doing things than they would have in real life.


As for the linear apporach in the game-not really. One average man (STR 10) in RQ can't lift 10 tons, but ten men (STR 100) can lift 100 tons (SIZ 98)!

Pretty much every RPG out there uses some sort of non-linear progresssion to make everything fit into a small range of easily usalbe numbers. THat doesn't mean that a SIZ 80 oject is the same as two SIZ 40 objects, or that a STR 70 dragon is as strong as seven men.

Okay, this has absolutely no relevance at all. Regardless of the lifting capacity that STR represents, an increase of 5 STR improves your chance by 25%. It doesn't matter if that increase equals 100kg or 100ktons, you get +5% per 1 STR. That is linear. So "real world" lifting capacity, not linear; game system percentages, linear.

THe problem with the 275 beating the 125 is that how do you use such characters in play?


If a PC is 125 and you as GM throw a 275% up against him, you are essentially killing his character by GM fiat.

Yep, kinda like throwing a level 20 D&D villian against a level 10 hero. Same difference.

On the other hand if a PC is at 275% and only those in the 275% can challenge him, you eoither have very few opponents for him to face, or you game is going to loose it's believeability with all the new 300%ers that suddenly appear.

Or you throw 10 or 20 125% guys at a party of 4 or 5 250%+ characters. Or even one 125% guy ambushing the 275% guy can do some serious damage.

Or how about a 50% monster that hits for crap loads of damage. Claw+Claw+Bite=Dead Adventurer

And as far as the 275 vs the 5 125's then yeah, I expect the 275 to cloober the 5 125%. Especially is you make him 100% and reduce the others to 25%. THe greater skilled fighter has such a significant edge this way that he will probably be able to cut the fight down to a 4-1 or even 3-1 quickly, and then just slapp the other three around fairly easily.

Okay, once again combat is a bad example for the halving rule since it doesn't apply. But even if it did you have something like 15 attacks at 25% vs. 3 or 4 attacks at 75%. There is a good chance that 275% guy will not make it through the first round.

The probelm with fencing is that it disregards attacks in facor of right of way. In real combat, you might both end up dead. Likewise, some of the discounted attacks would be real hits and would certaiinly affect the outcome of the fight.

And this is exactly the point. Fencing is a skill, it is not combat. Although disregarding right of way it does teach a lot of combat basics. Accuracy, distance and mobility are universal in HtH combat.

When RQ was designed, it wan't intended for the guy with a 100% edge to get an autowin. That was why things leveled off at the upper levels, with critcs and sepcials becomming so important.

If you change it to "high guy wins" then you are always going to have to thrwo balanced encounted against your group.

This I pretty much agree with. You can argue over which is more "realistic" but old RQ did kind of level off after 100%. Although a guy with 275% would be splitting attacks like crazy and the 125% guy would be hard pressed to defend himself.

I think it is pretty much expected that the majority of encounters you run into will be reasonably balanced for your characters. If not you are going to die quick, regardless of the system.

 

[atgxtg]

Okay, this has absolutely no relevance at all. Regardless of the lifting capacity that STR represents, an increase of 5 STR improves your chance by 25%. It doesn't matter if that increase equals 100kg or 100ktons, you get +5% per 1 STR. That is linear. So "real world" lifting capacity, not linear; game system percentages, linear.

I beg to differ. The reason why someone makes a STR vs. SIZ roll is to move something. When the adventure is written or the situation comes up, and a player tries to move an object, we find a SIZ for the object that get's used. If someone wants to move a 50 pound sack of flour, or a barrel full of ale, the GM assigns a SIZ based upon how much he things the item masses.

Several RQ products in the past-most notable Superworld, make a mention that you just can't add SIZes up, you addd up the total mass and use that. 20 SIZ 1 objects do not equal a SIZ 20 object.


Liesweise, the skill desciptions in RQ give more evidence. Someone with a 30% speak language skill doesn't get one out of every three words correct. Nor do you need a 100% skill to speak a complete sentence.

THe problem with the 275 beating the 125 is that how do you use such characters in play?


If a PC is 125 and you as GM throw a 275% up against him, you are essentially killing his character by GM fiat.

Yep, kinda like throwing a level 20 D&D villian against a level 10 hero.
Same difference.

Same game. If you want things to run D&Dish.

But why stop there? Why not have to 100% beat the 50% or the 75% or even the 99% character?

The skills % gives a rating. It was never used as an opposed system in the past, and the vales might not mean the same thing.

There is a big problem in implentinting this into a game where players are supposed to be heroic. Consider:

Luke shoot at the stormtroopers and misses (Luke is a farmboy and only has a 35% skill). The stormtrooper, geneetically engineer and professional soldiers shoot and kill Luke.

It is what should have happened. It doesn't becuase the Hero gets the breask written into the script. In an RPG the players need the same sort of edge, or else the game gets boring pretty quick.

On the other hand if a PC is at 275% and only those in the 275% can challenge him, you eoither have very few opponents for him to face, or you game is going to loose it's believeability with all the new 300%ers that suddenly appear.

Or you throw 10 or 20 125% guys at a party of 4 or 5 250%+ characters. Or even one 125% guy ambushing the 275% guy can do some serious damage.

Not if you are subtracting 175% from thier skill to pin the 200%er at 100%. THe 200%er is just going to pick them apart.

Or how about a 50% monster that hits for crap loads of damage. Claw+Claw+Bite=Dead Adventurer

Maybe. It depnds on if you kill the monster's attack chance to 0%. Even with a 50/50 (like the old RQ dragon) a lot depends on the creatures ability to take damage too.

And as far as the 275 vs the 5 125's then yeah, I expect the 275 to cloober the 5 125%. Especially is you make him 100% and reduce the others to 25%. THe greater skilled fighter has such a significant edge this way that he will probably be able to cut the fight down to a 4-1 or even 3-1 quickly, and then just slapp the other three around fairly easily.

Okay, once again combat is a bad example for the halving rule since it doesn't apply. But even if it did you have something like 15 attacks at 25% vs. 3 or 4 attacks at 75%. There is a good chance that 275% guy will not make it through the first round.

Halving rule? I'm talking about Empeze's subtraction rule here, and why I don't think pinning the higher character at 100% and reducing the lower character by a like amount is a good idea.

The probelm with fencing is that it disregards attacks in facor of right of way. In real combat, you might both end up dead. Likewise, some of the discounted attacks would be real hits and would certaiinly affect the outcome of the fight.

And this is exactly the point. Fencing is a skill, it is not combat. Although disregarding right of way it does teach a lot of combat basics. Accuracy, distance and mobility are universal in HtH combat.

But in any application of ability it is more than just raw skill that determines the outcome. Othwerise the best sports team would win every game.

When RQ was designed, it wan't intended for the guy with a 100% edge to get an autowin. That was why things leveled off at the upper levels, with critcs and sepcials becomming so important.

If you change it to "high guy wins" then you are always going to have to thrwo balanced encounted against your group.

This I pretty much agree with. You can argue over which is more "realistic" but old RQ did kind of level off after 100%. Although a guy with 275% would be splitting attacks like crazy and the 125% guy would be hard pressed to defend himself.

Go rereaed you RQ3 rules. THe 275% guy can't split attacks against a single foe. THe idea of an "attack" was that it reprsented a combination of moves and strikes, and so by concentrating or one foe you didn't get more attacks, simply that you fought him more effectively.

Going to non combat, RQ3 had a rule to handle skill vs skill too.

I think it is pretty much expected that the majority of encounters you run into will be reasonably balanced for your characters. If not you are going to die quick, regardless of the system.

Yes and no. A lot of encounters have the potential to be dealt with in more ways than one. D&D has a lot of combat encounters where the group "beats up" an ecounter at around 25% of the party strength.

One of the problem with the "all balanced encounters' approach is that why bother to learn anything or raise anything? What's the point of imrpoving your sneak by 20% if the guards all get +20% to Perception to offset it? On the flip side, if a PC gets Perception up to 110%, every sneak thief should not have ninja level stealth abilty!

That is why I prefer games with benchmark ratings of ability. If someone is better than average, he will have an edge against an "average" foe. There is still some risk, so the game tays exciting. Being good means that some of your encounters get a lot easier.

 

[Enpeze]

I think its important to say that with "linearity" a certain degree of abstraction has to be calculated in, so ist not an absolute linearity. It is limited, but it is there and it dominates the mechanics and the game universe. Any rule which violates the linearity should have a good reason to be there.

But the basic idea in RQ is the above kind of linearity.

BTW: Gurps do have multipliers for armor and weapon damages. It makes the game not better, iMO, just more complicated.

atgxtg - THe problem with the 275 beating the 125 is that how do you use such characters in play?

Well if I ever use such a 275% monster in a play then probably the characters should seek for other ways to defeat it than fighting it with their miserable 125% weapon skills.

atgxtg - If a PC is 125 and you as GM throw a 275% up against him, you are essentially killing his character by GM fiat.

simple answer dont throw it against the players. Any GM who does this has to take the responsibilty for this deed.

 

[zanshin]

All this talk of 275% skill...

I have been running a (RQ2) Runequest campaign on and off since 1988. The strongest character is Runelord/Priest of Storm Bull. He has heroquested, he has bested Fiends of Cacodemon and he is currently up against the Coders, but his best attack skill is 125% before spell modifiers, due to how long it takes to advance skills at the highest level.

Even 90% skill is not easily acquired unless you are very generous with improvement rolls, and does represent mastery of the skill in all systems of RQ to date - in MRQ its when you can start to learn the devastating legendary moves. An opponent with 90% skill is a deadly veteran opponent. 275% is heroic- superheroic, look at the stats for Ralzakark in the Dorastor supplement, he is the kind of opponent at that level. If you have let PC's get that powerful, send them heroquesting.

If skills over 100% become an issue in my new campaign I will work out a fix, but for the moment routinely bypassing armour at up to 140% seems quite strong enough for the power levels i am likely to be running for the forseeable future.

With regards to opposed test rolls if you dont like halving - how about someone with more than 100% gets 2 rolls, one in the 1-100 range, one in the 1- total ability less 100 range , they then choose which roll they want to use, with both rolls having the full crit chance.

 

[Gnarsh]

I beg to differ. The reason why someone makes a STR vs. SIZ roll is to move something. When the adventure is written or the situation comes up, and a player tries to move an object, we find a SIZ for the object that get's used. If someone wants to move a 50 pound sack of flour, or a barrel full of ale, the GM assigns a SIZ based upon how much he things the item masses.

You are confusing two totally different concepts. The fact that the correlation between RQ stats and "real world values" are not linear does not in anyway affect the linearity of the game rules themselves.

We're talking about how two skills or stats interact. You have to think modularly. I don't give a flying fig *how* someone obtained a value in the game. I don't care what a "20 strength" means. I don't care particularly what exactly in real terms having a "120% skill" means. What I care about are the game rules that generate those values, and the game rules that compare those values to eachother and how they work.

And they are most definately linear. Always have been. As I stated earlier, you'd be incredibly hard-pressed to find any successful RPG out there that uses anything other then linear comparisons of stats and skills to resolve conflicts in the game ("conflict" taken in a very broad sense here).

Liesweise, the skill desciptions in RQ give more evidence. Someone with a 30% speak language skill doesn't get one out of every three words correct. Nor do you need a 100% skill to speak a complete sentence.

Again. Totally irrelevant. All I need to know to play the game is that a guy with a 50% language skill is has 20 more numbers on a D100 that he can roll which will allow him to understand something he hears in that language then someone with a 30% skill. What real world skill level that actually equates to is up to the GM to determine and is utterly irrelevant to any discussion of game rules to handle skill comparisons.

Not if you are subtracting 175% from thier skill to pin the 200%er at 100%. THe 200%er is just going to pick them apart.

Here's where you completely missed the "other components of conflict" that I spent all that time talking about earlier.

How many combat actions does the 275% skilled guy have? Can he actually parry 5 guys at the same time? No? Then he's going to get slaughtered. This has *nothing* to do with direct skill comparison. It has to do with the fact that mutliple opponents have a benefit beyond just their raw skill. As a GM I have quite successfully overwhelmed 200+ skill characters with massive magic and armor by just throwing hordes of Trollkin at them. Sure. He'll kill every single one he hits. But he can only hit so many of them a round, and there's more of them there. And they can grapple him, and immobilize locations. And pretty soon, he's lying flat on his back with a pile of little guys with no more then 60 or so skills totaly defeating him.

You're trying to expand one thing into the whole thing. Game rules are the sume of their rules, not one thing magnified to infinity. A single skill versus skill comparison should be just that. And it should always favor the guy with the higher skill in direct relation to how much more skill he's got. We're talking about one aspect of the game rules. And that one aspect should work properly. If it does, then you can add additional factors to it and they will work properly as well. If your starting point is "broken", then nothing you add on to that will fix it.

Maybe. It depnds on if you kill the monster's attack chance to 0%. Even with a 50/50 (like the old RQ dragon) a lot depends on the creatures ability to take damage too.

Ok. But now you're adding yet another aspect to the issue. How much damage can someone take? That has *nothing* to do with the skills being used. Are you seriously suggesting that we should make a change to skill comparison rules based on the fact that some people might have enough armor to shrug off a dragon's attack? Isn't that a bit ridiculous?

And as far as the 275 vs the 5 125's then yeah, I expect the 275 to cloober the 5 125%. Especially is you make him 100% and reduce the others to 25%. THe greater skilled fighter has such a significant edge this way that he will probably be able to cut the fight down to a 4-1 or even 3-1 quickly, and then just slapp the other three around fairly easily.

Again. Combat actions. First action. HIgh skill guy goes. He whacks one guy. The other four guys attack him. He parries *one*. The other three go on to hit him. Everything else being equal (equivalent damage and armor and hps), he's going to get absolutely owned by those 5 guys. You need to realize that the skill rules are only part of the total rules. In a one on one fight, a 275% guy should totally destroy a 125% guy. Period. No questions asked. But when you add in other factors, it's not so guaranteed. But you should not break the basic skill comparison process just because it might allow one guy to outmatch someone else. IMO, that's the point of a skill based system. If I've spent the time and effort to get to a 275% skill in something, I *should* totally overwhelm someone who's 150% lower. Because (I'm going to go back to the top here), the game rules for skills are *linear*. 150% skill represents a set amount of time. In fact, past 100% skill, it's a pretty even amount of time. If I'm that much higher then you, then that represents a direct linear amount that I am "better" then you. It should be resolved in a similar manner.

Interestingly enough, if we actually want to look at relative time, a 275% character has spent a *greater* amount of time building a 150% lead on a 125% character then a 200% might have over a 50% (or a 155% versus a 5% which is what the subtraction might roll it down to). It does not take much time to gain a 100% skill. It takes a dramatically greater amount of time past that point. In the example above, the first character has gained 100% of "fast" experience, and 175% of "slow" experience. The second character has gained 100% of "fast" experience, and 25% of "slow" experience. So yeah. I have absolutely no problem with the first character totally overcoming the second. He's earned the right to do that IMO.

But in any application of ability it is more than just raw skill that determines the outcome. Othwerise the best sports team would win every game.

No one said to eliminate the die roll. Presumably two sports teams in the same division would be (in RQ terms) within 100% of eachother (and likely far closer then that). In sports we only pit teams against eachother that are close in terms of ability. Toss a high school football team against an NFL team sometime and then tell me that it's wrong or in any way inaccurate for a dramatically higher skilled team to win every time. Two teams in the same league/division will be of similar skill. It would be like pitting that 275% guy against other people in the 250-300% range. Guess I'm just not seeing what the problem is. It's a very accurate, simple, and workable way to compare skills.

When RQ was designed, it wan't intended for the guy with a 100% edge to get an autowin. That was why things leveled off at the upper levels, with critcs and sepcials becomming so important.

If you change it to "high guy wins" then you are always going to have to thrwo balanced encounted against your group.

You're tossing in a straw man though. No one's saying "high guy always wins". We're saying "significantly higher skilled guy wins 95% of the time". There's plenty of range to play here. You have an accurately scaling chance against any opponent with a skill that is +/- 100% of your own. That's "huge" IMO. If a GM can't figure out how to make that work, then maybe he should go back to running a My Little Pony game or something?

This is a doubly silly complaint, since the majority of character's skills will be in the 200% or lower range. That automatically puts them in the "this works perfectly" catagory. And if you have lots of skills beyond that? Then you scale things to that skill level. It's just not that hard.

Go rereaed you RQ3 rules. THe 275% guy can't split attacks against a single foe. THe idea of an "attack" was that it reprsented a combination of moves and strikes, and so by concentrating or one foe you didn't get more attacks, simply that you fought him more effectively.

Going to non combat, RQ3 had a rule to handle skill vs skill too.

First off. You're correct. And most people *hated* that RQ3 removed the older RQ1/2 "subtract skill over 100% rule". It made skills over 100% pretty worthless in terms of point for point value. If you go back to RQ2, there were two differences. First off, only RuneLords could get skill over 100%. Secondly, they could choose to subtract that skill from themselves and their foe, effectively doing *exactly* what several people have suggested. It's a rule that I use in my campaign (and have for a very very long time). It works perfectly. I've never once had a problem with it.

In non-combat, RQ3s rules actually mirrored the old RQ2 method (sorta). You subtract how much you make your skill by from the opposing skill. It's a pretty simple system. You have a 90% sneak. The guard you're trying to sneak by has a 50% scan. You roll a 45. You then subtract the difference (45% in this case) from the guard's scan chance. He can still succeed on a 1-5, but otherwise, you succeed.

RQ3 skills also tended to work in terms of "by how much did you succeed". Specials and criticals were noted, but it was more important to say "I succeeded by X points". Because the GM might apply minuses for different factors (difficult terrain to sneak across, harder lock to pick then normal, etc). The player wont know this. He'll just roll and do some subtraction. The GM then tells him what happened.

Works perfectly. I've actually never been a big fan of the level of success being the largest determinant of success. It tailors too much to lucky die rolls. I want the players to feel that their 140% skill always makes them better at doing something, not only better if they roll low to begin with, and that roll is between a couple of pretty close numbers. For example: using the MRQ crit system alone (ignoring the halving stuff) only gives a benefit for going from 100% to 140% if you roll between 11 and 14. That's *four* numbers out of 100. I don't know about you, but that doesn't make me feel significantly better at my skill.

Level comparisons end up being "lucky guy wins" systems more often then not. I'd rather play a "guy with 100% better chance wins 95% of the time", then have luck play that great a roll in the odds of success.

One of the problem with the "all balanced encounters' approach is that why bother to learn anything or raise anything? What's the point of imrpoving your sneak by 20% if the guards all get +20% to Perception to offset it? On the flip side, if a PC gets Perception up to 110%, every sneak thief should not have ninja level stealth abilty!

You don't have to balance everything perfectly. Remember. The subtraction system(s) allow for a range of +/- 100% skill. That's plenty large enough for a GM to scale encounters to any level of difficulty. In fact, it ends up being exactly the same as scaling levels for groups in the sub-100% range.

And not all encounters and skill checks are going to be scenario specific. Perhaps my uber-powerful ninja character is hunting down a group of super-powerful bad guys, but there's some pesky town guard in my way. Clearly, I can trivially sneak right past him cause he's a peon in comparison to the types of guys at my level.

And *that's* certainly within the concept of a "heroic level campaign". High power level characters should not have to worry about a local guard. Nor should a bar fight with a few drunks concern them (but could be fun!). Not every encounter has to be "dangerous". I have no problem with a trivial encounter being trivial. In fact, it's a nice change of pace to allow the players to totally whomp on a group of "normal" level bad guys. They don't gain much for it, but it can be fun.


I remember a particular series of encounters in which a group of our very high power characters were traveling through some hills on the way to deal with an uber-powerful semi-godlike badguy. We ran into a series of traps set across the roads. In each case, we used some trivial magic to destroy/bypass the traps. A pit was spotted and filled in by a gnome in seconds. A deadweight log trap was spotted and trigged by arrow from a distance in seconds. The bandits that were going to ambush us just kinda saw this and figured it wasn't worth their time. The GM actually had them decide to *not* attack us (which was a smart move on their part). That had more "fun impact" then many more "forgettable" fights that were scaled to our level.

Same deal in reverse. We've got a largish powerful group. In actual fact, they're the vangaurd for a largish army that's been raised to clear some bad guys out of a kingdom nearby. A group of highwaymen pop out of the bushes to rob us! The fun was in the roleplaying of this event. We knew we could take them. We knew there were a few thousand more soldiers a mile or so behind us as well. But the bad guys didn't. Talking them into not attacking us ended up being more fun then most of the rest of that adventure (more because of the sheer ridiculousness of the situation). It's not just about killing people and taking their stuff. We don't play a "killstuff game". We play a "roleplaying game". Encounters involving vastly different power levels are opportunities for great roleplaying.

It's not always about die rolls.

 

[Rurik]

You are confusing two totally different concepts. The fact that the correlation between RQ stats and "real world values" are not linear does not in anyway affect the linearity of the game rules themselves.

Wow. Long post. And I thought I was bad. I didn't actually read the whole thing.

But I have posted on the linearity, or non linearity, of the MRQ system. Opposed rolls are not linear, and halving is not linear. I refer to them as relational. A 40 skill vs a 20 skill does not have a 20% more chance of winning - the math behind opposed rolls just doesn't work that way.

Proposed solutions are typically either linear, as in reducing both skills by an equal amount and bumping methods, or relational, such as halving.

There is nothing wrong with linear - I am probably using a linear solution (Subtract higher skill over 100 from both skills).

There are also valid arguments for relational solutions. They work well with very high skills. Should we reduce a 360 vs 320 contest to 60 vs 20 (linear) or 90 vs 80 (halving)? You can argue both sides, but the point is that the rules as written are not linear, nor do they need to be.

 

[atgxtg]

You are confusing two totally different concepts. The fact that the correlation between RQ stats and "real world values" are not linear does not in anyway affect the linearity of the game rules themselves.

We're talking about how two skills or stats interact. You have to think modularly. I don't give a flying fig *how* someone obtained a value in the game. I don't care what a "20 strength" means. I don't care particularly what exactly in real terms having a "120% skill" means. What I care about are the game rules that generate those values, and the game rules that compare those values to eachother and how they work.

Well I care. The whole point of the rules is to help model and resolve what the characters are actually trying to do.

And they are most definately linear. Always have been. As I stated earlier, you'd be incredibly hard-pressed to find any successful RPG out there that uses anything other then linear comparisons of stats and skills to resolve conflicts in the game ("conflict" taken in a very broad sense here).

Nope, they are not. Just take a loot at that resistance table. A guy with a 12 doesn't always havbe twice the chance of a guy with a 6 to do something. Why? Becuase the numbers are not linear.

Here is a list of "unsuccessful" games for you: DC Heroes, Timelords, James Bond RPG, CORPS, EABA.

Liesweise, the skill desciptions in RQ give more evidence. Someone with a 30% speak language skill doesn't get one out of every three words correct. Nor do you need a 100% skill to speak a complete sentence.

Again. Totally irrelevant. All I need to know to play the game is that a guy with a 50% language skill is has 20 more numbers on a D100 that he can roll which will allow him to understand something he hears in that language then someone with a 30% skill. What real world skill level that actually equates to is up to the GM to determine and is utterly irrelevant to any discussion of game rules to handle skill comparisons.

All I need to know is that a guy with 30$ can communicate.

Not if you are subtracting 175% from thier skill to pin the 200%er at 100%. THe 200%er is just going to pick them apart.

Here's where you completely missed the "other components of conflict" that I spent all that time talking about earlier.

How many combat actions does the 275% skilled guy have? Can he actually parry 5 guys at the same time? No? Then he's going to get slaughtered. This has *nothing* to do with direct skill comparison. It has to do with the fact that mutliple opponents have a benefit beyond just their raw skill. As a GM I have quite successfully overwhelmed 200+ skill characters with massive magic and armor by just throwing hordes of Trollkin at them. Sure. He'll kill every single one he hits. But he can only hit so many of them a round, and there's more of them there. And they can grapple him, and immobilize locations. And pretty soon, he's lying flat on his back with a pile of little guys with no more then 60 or so skills totaly defeating him.[/quote}


THe guy with the 275% does a flurry of precise attacks, takes out three guys, and can parry the other two guys. Next round he polishes off the other two. IF you use you 100% "pin" rule, it just got a lot easier for him to do so.

Maybe. It depnds on if you kill the monster's attack chance to 0%. Even with a 50/50 (like the old RQ dragon) a lot depends on the creatures ability to take damage too.

Ok. But now you're adding yet another aspect to the issue. How much damage can someone take? That has *nothing* to do with the skills being used. Are you seriously suggesting that we should make a change to skill comparison rules based on the fact that some people might have enough armor to shrug off a dragon's attack? Isn't that a bit ridiculous? [/quote]


YO added the addtional factor in when you said, what about a monster with a 50% attack chance that does a lot of damage."

If you can bring in the damage done as a factor, I can certainly brinmg in armor to negate it.

When RQ was designed, it wan't intended for the guy with a 100% edge to get an autowin. That was why things leveled off at the upper levels, with critcs and sepcials becomming so important.

If you change it to "high guy wins" then you are always going to have to thrwo balanced encounted against your group.

You're tossing in a straw man though. No one's saying "high guy always wins". We're saying "significantly higher skilled guy wins 95% of the time". There's plenty of range to play here. You have an accurately scaling chance against any opponent with a skill that is +/- 100% of your own. That's "huge" IMO. If a GM can't figure out how to make that work, then maybe he should go back to running a My Little Pony game or something?

This is a doubly silly complaint, since the majority of character's skills will be in the 200% or lower range. That automatically puts them in the "this works perfectly" catagory. And if you have lots of skills beyond that? Then you scale things to that skill level. It's just not that hard.

Go rereaed you RQ3 rules. THe 275% guy can't split attacks against a single foe. THe idea of an "attack" was that it reprsented a combination of moves and strikes, and so by concentrating or one foe you didn't get more attacks, simply that you fought him more effectively.

Going to non combat, RQ3 had a rule to handle skill vs skill too.

First off. You're correct. And most people *hated* that RQ3 removed the older RQ1/2 "subtract skill over 100% rule". It made skills over 100% pretty worthless in terms of point for point value. If you go back to RQ2, there were two differences. First off, only RuneLords could get skill over 100%. Secondly, they could choose to subtract that skill from themselves and their foe, effectively doing *exactly* what several people have suggested. It's a rule that I use in my campaign (and have for a very very long time). It works perfectly. I've never once had a problem with it.

In non-combat, RQ3s rules actually mirrored the old RQ2 method (sorta). You subtract how much you make your skill by from the opposing skill. It's a pretty simple system. You have a 90% sneak. The guard you're trying to sneak by has a 50% scan. You roll a 45. You then subtract the difference (45% in this case) from the guard's scan chance. He can still succeed on a 1-5, but otherwise, you succeed.

RQ3 skills also tended to work in terms of "by how much did you succeed". Specials and criticals were noted, but it was more important to say "I succeeded by X points". Because the GM might apply minuses for different factors (difficult terrain to sneak across, harder lock to pick then normal, etc). The player wont know this. He'll just roll and do some subtraction. The GM then tells him what happened.

Works perfectly. I've actually never been a big fan of the level of success being the largest determinant of success. It tailors too much to lucky die rolls. I want the players to feel that their 140% skill always makes them better at doing something, not only better if they roll low to begin with, and that roll is between a couple of pretty close numbers. For example: using the MRQ crit system alone (ignoring the halving stuff) only gives a benefit for going from 100% to 140% if you roll between 11 and 14. That's *four* numbers out of 100. I don't know about you, but that doesn't make me feel significantly better at my skill.

Level comparisons end up being "lucky guy wins" systems more often then not. I'd rather play a "guy with 100% better chance wins 95% of the time", then have luck play that great a roll in the odds of success.

One of the problem with the "all balanced encounters' approach is that why bother to learn anything or raise anything? What's the point of imrpoving your sneak by 20% if the guards all get +20% to Perception to offset it? On the flip side, if a PC gets Perception up to 110%, every sneak thief should not have ninja level stealth abilty!

You don't have to balance everything perfectly. Remember. The subtraction system(s) allow for a range of +/- 100% skill. That's plenty large enough for a GM to scale encounters to any level of difficulty. In fact, it ends up being exactly the same as scaling levels for groups in the sub-100% range.

And not all encounters and skill checks are going to be scenario specific. Perhaps my uber-powerful ninja character is hunting down a group of super-powerful bad guys, but there's some pesky town guard in my way. Clearly, I can trivially sneak right past him cause he's a peon in comparison to the types of guys at my level.

And *that's* certainly within the concept of a "heroic level campaign". High power level characters should not have to worry about a local guard. Nor should a bar fight with a few drunks concern them (but could be fun!). Not every encounter has to be "dangerous". I have no problem with a trivial encounter being trivial. In fact, it's a nice change of pace to allow the players to totally whomp on a group of "normal" level bad guys. They don't gain much for it, but it can be fun. [/quote]

Then stick to D&D. That is the majoirty of the game right there. Big tough PCs beat up on wimpy encounters. Ands everything sclaes with the PCs. Boring, stupid, treasure hunting.

IMO it probably makes more sense to just ban the 200%+ category, anyway. THere is not much that players can really do at that level (gang up on the Crimson Bat? Go clean out Dorastor?), and throwing a bunch of 125% all over the place just to challenge to PCs is stupid.

 

[Rurik]

Perhaps if we just change the opposed position rule to be whoever makes their point with the lowest amount of words rather than highest this thread would work better. :twisted:

 

[atgxtg]

Success!

 

[Gnarsh]

There are also valid arguments for relational solutions. They work well with very high skills. Should we reduce a 360 vs 320 contest to 60 vs 20 (linear) or 90 vs 80 (halving)? You can argue both sides, but the point is that the rules as written are not linear, nor do they need to be.

First off. The relative/linear system would resolve those to 100% and 60%, not 60 and 20 (ok. Some would, but those involve bumping systems like Simon's). Secondly, the ratio based system is something that looks correct because it maintains the "ratio" of skills, but IMO falls apart due to scaling issues.

The problem is that you need to ask whether, once skill levels extend beyond 100%, it's the ratio or the difference in skills that matters the most? I mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. If you calculate the ratio of the two skills, then you automatically reduce the relative "value" of the higher skill level. That is because number lines scale upwards to infinity, but downwards to zero. Thus, the larger the numbers, the more "relational" difference is required to maintain the same "ratio" difference.

Let me give an example. You have two characters. One has a 50% skill. The other has a 100% skill. That's a 50% skill difference, and a 1/2 ratio. If we decide that it's the ratio that matters, then we must also argue that an identical amount of training/experience for both characters should cause them both to be equivalently matched. So, after X amount of time, the 50% character advances to 100%. In order to be "fair", the 100% character would need to have advanced to 200% in order to maintain the same ratio.

This would allow a ratio based system (which is effectively what the halving process is trying to do) to work. However, tragically, skill advancemnt is linear. You spend X amount of time gaining skill, you get Y amount of skill points on average. What this effectively means is that as the scale of the skills increases, the effective ratio value of any given number of skill points decreases. So a gain of 20% in a skill has less value when one has a high degree of skill, then when one has a low degree of skill. Yet the cost in time and effort to gain those 20 skill points remains the same (or is higher if we're comparing pre-100 to post-100 skills).

If we start with the assumption that the 5%-95% basic scale "works", and that this is what the game is based upon, then it behooves us to create a skill advancement system and skill comparison system that maintains that. In that first 100% range, each point of skill increase has a 1% "weight" on the chance of success. We assume this works properly for that first 100%, right?

What the "relational value" system does is maintain the same value for every single percentage point of skill over any range of skills. So each 1% of skill is equally valuable whether you are increasing from a 50% to a 51% or from a 537% to a 538%. It simply doesn't matter. We bound the top and bottom to 5% and 95% respectively, but within those relative ranges, a skill comparison works the same whether you are comparing someone with a 50% to someone with a 75% or someone with a 350% to someone with a 375%.


If you adopt a ratio based system, then you are effectively arguing that as time goes by and skill levels increase, that the difference in skill between two players makes less difference. It's workable if your objective is to allow for large ranges of skill levels to interact. You are effectively sacrificing granularity at the high range for wider interaction. And I'm really not sure if that's needed. As I've pointed out several times, the GM gets to decide the skill levels of the bad guys (or the difficulty that skills must overcome). I just think that granularity is more important. If for no other reason then spell interactions. A ratio based system is basically saying that a bladesharp is less powerful based on the skill level of the person using it.

You *can* use that sort of system, and it certainly will work. But I'm not sure that's the best way to handle high skill levels. In fact, I'm quite sure it's not the best way...

 

[Gnarsh]

Nope, they are not. Just take a loot at that resistance table. A guy with a 12 doesn't always havbe twice the chance of a guy with a 6 to do something. Why? Becuase the numbers are not linear.

Huh!? It's statements like this that really make me think you have a very different concept of what I mean when I say "linear". The very fact that you're talking about the 12 having "twice the chance" as 6 means you're not getting it. Twice is a "relative" statement (a ratio if you will). That's not what I'm talking about when I say linear.

Linear means that every single point of stat or skill is of equal weight, regardless of what the actual numbers are. It means that we calculate the difference between two numbers when figuring out the success/fail rate.

On the RQ3 resitance table, assuming our two numbers are within the bounds (+/- 9 points) each stat point has the same relative value. There is absolutely no difference between comparing a 15 and a 20, or a 5,195 and a 5,200. Both are "5 points different", which equates to a 75% chance of success for the higher guy and a 25% chance for the lower.

A ratio system would compare the ratio of the numbers in some way. It attempts to generate percentages of success based on that ratio. There's lots of ways to do this. The halving system included in MRQ is an example of one. By halving skills over 100% you maintain the ratio of those skills, while keeping both in the 1-100 range that a D100 system can handle.

That's the difference between the two methods. My method says to subtract an amount from both skills over 100, until both are <=100. This makes the numerical difference in skill points the deciding factor. The MRQ halving system divides them in half until both are <=100. This maintains the "ratio" of the skills, but destroys the value of a skill point.

THe guy with the 275% does a flurry of precise attacks, takes out three guys, and can parry the other two guys. Next round he polishes off the other two. IF you use you 100% "pin" rule, it just got a lot easier for him to do so.

How many skill points did he blow to do that though? He can likely pay to get a flurry of blows on 5 opponents, but he wont have a full 275% skill left when he's done. The skill comparison/subtraction is done *after* you've determined what special moves and abilities you want to use. The higher skill guy doesn't get to use his 150% skill advantage to eliminate his opponents skills *and* to do things like flurry and precise strike.

I don't have a MRQ rulebook in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that after subtracting sufficient skill to hit 5 opponents, he'll not have much left over. These guys do get parrys. They do have amor. You're treating this as though the higher skill means everything. It means everything if we assume a straight one on one skill-only comparison. But that's only one part of the whole equation though.

Then stick to D&D. That is the majoirty of the game right there. Big tough PCs beat up on wimpy encounters. Ands everything sclaes with the PCs. Boring, stupid, treasure hunting.

I've been playing in a single continous RQ2/3 campaign for 25 years. I've never had anyone think it's "like D&D". We've never had a problem with scaling adventures to characters. We've never had a problem with characters outpowering the game world (and we do have quite a large range of character power levels in this game). And most importantly, we've never had any problem keeping players entertained and having fun.

IMO it probably makes more sense to just ban the 200%+ category, anyway. THere is not much that players can really do at that level (gang up on the Crimson Bat? Go clean out Dorastor?), and throwing a bunch of 125% all over the place just to challenge to PCs is stupid.

You lack imagination. Nuff said...

 

[Rurik]

Let me give an example. You have two characters. One has a 50% skill. The other has a 100% skill. That's a 50% skill difference, and a 1/2 ratio. If we decide that it's the ratio that matters, then we must also argue that an identical amount of training/experience for both characters should cause them both to be equivalently matched. So, after X amount of time, the 50% character advances to 100%. In order to be "fair", the 100% character would need to have advanced to 200% in order to maintain the same ratio.

The skill training time to increase has never been linear in RQ. Lower skill characters have always improved faster than higher skilled characters because you make improvement rolls. If a 25 skill character and a 95 skill character train an equal amount of time, say 10 improvement rolls worth, the lower skilled character is goint to improve much faster than the higher skill character. High skills improve slower than low skills has been a RQ staple since day one.

If we start with the assumption that the 5%-95% basic scale "works", and that this is what the game is based upon, then it behooves us to create a skill advancement system and skill comparison system that maintains that. In that first 100% range, each point of skill increase has a 1% "weight" on the chance of success. We assume this works properly for that first 100%, right?

That assumption works right for skill ranges where 120 is a very good skill (well, it was, before it got halved...). RuneQuest rules didn't handle Heroic characters, a major part of Gloranthan Lore and flavor. We were promised HeroQuest for years, and when we finally got a game called HeroQuest it was not RQ at all.

With the new RQ we are getting our heroic rules within the first months. How I deal with very high skills depends on that release. My main motivation is I want a system that works without converting all the forthcoming material. If we are going to see skills like 350, 420, and 500 I want to use a system that handles them without me having to change any stats. To me it is easier to change a rule to my liking once than convert a bunch of published stats to my rule over and over again.

I had a system I liked a lot, where skill over 100 subtracted from your roll AND could cause you to crit. So a 120 skill would actually crit on a roll of 32 or less, and a 150 would crit on a 65 or less. Very Pendragon (Actually sounds like something you might like). I figured that if you took the time to get your skill that high, why not get a very improved chance of a critical. But that system hits a wall at 200. Once it became apparent that we would see skills over 200 in the system I dropped it like a rock.

 

[Gnarsh]

The skill training time to increase has never been linear in RQ. Lower skill characters have always improved faster than higher skilled characters because you make improvement rolls. If a 25 skill character and a 95 skill character train an equal amount of time, say 10 improvement rolls worth, the lower skilled character is goint to improve much faster than the higher skill character. High skills improve slower than low skills has been a RQ staple since day one.

Correct. But this only strengthens my argument, not weakens it. The "it's easy to get to 100%" factor means that lower skilled characters have an inherent advantage "catching up" to higher skilled characters. That's fine. But once past 100%, every thing else being equal, every skill point costs the same amount.

A ratio system (like the halving process) gives the lower guy two advantages. First, it's fast and easy for him to "catch up" into the 100% range. Second, each point he gains during this catch up phase counts as two points against someone with a higher skill. The first is unavoidable (and reasonable IMO). The second advantage is just arbitrary and a result of a poorly thought out game mechanic (and that's beyond the lurches introduced by the halving process as written).

I think this is the component of my argument that many people are missing. I'm not so much looking at two static skill levels and asking the question "What's the best/simplest way to resolve these?". I'm also asking the question: "Across the range of skills that a character will have as he develops and grows, which skill resolution system will best represent the advantage he should gain over time as his skill increases?". Those are two radically different questions. The first is one that can be easily resolved by creating situations and generating results. The second requires that one think about how characters advance their skills within the rules, the time it's going to take, and the relative effect that has on their ability to succeed at tasks they attempt within the framework of the game rules. It's a much more complex question, but one that will affect a long running game over time.

That assumption works right for skill ranges where 120 is a very good skill (well, it was, before it got halved...). RuneQuest rules didn't handle Heroic characters, a major part of Gloranthan Lore and flavor. We were promised HeroQuest for years, and when we finally got a game called HeroQuest it was not RQ at all.

It did if you patched in the older rules for RuneLords (subtraction of skills over 100). We've been running a campaign with characters in the 200+ range for decades and have had no problems with it.

And it's "heroic" because a character at that skill level is always going to have that skill advantage. Not in spite of it.

With the new RQ we are getting our heroic rules within the first months. How I deal with very high skills depends on that release. My main motivation is I want a system that works without converting all the forthcoming material. If we are going to see skills like 350, 420, and 500 I want to use a system that handles them without me having to change any stats. To me it is easier to change a rule to my liking once than convert a bunch of published stats to my rule over and over again.

I've personally GMed scenarios that included characters with sub-100 skills and others that had skills in the 300+ range. Using nothing more complex then the "subtract over 100" rule. It works. In fact, RQ is arguably the best game system for handling large variations in relative power. You can't stick a level 1 D&D character into a party of level 15s. He'll just die. You can quite easily stick a beginning level RQ character into a group of "uber" characters in RQ and have it work.

I know this because I've done it. Hundreds of times.

I had a system I liked a lot, where skill over 100 subtracted from your roll AND could cause you to crit. So a 120 skill would actually crit on a roll of 32 or less, and a 150 would crit on a 65 or less. Very Pendragon (Actually sounds like something you might like). I figured that if you took the time to get your skill that high, why not get a very improved chance of a critical. But that system hits a wall at 200. Once it became apparent that we would see skills over 200 in the system I dropped it like a rock.

Yeah. I actually never liked the Pendragon rules. For exactly the reason that they very obviously didn't scale well. This also is going to be very dependant on exactly how much advantage a "critical" grants you. If it's too much of an advantage, then it can easily turn into the very "high skilled guy always wins" situation. By keeping crit/special chances the same across any skill level, you prevent the "auto-crit" issue. By allowing for skill subtraction (typically for combat skills in this case), you put characters in the position of choosing to have higher chances of critting/specialing, or an increased chance of avoiding the opponents parry/dodge. Which you choose might change based on what type of weapon you were using, how much max damage you could do, and what sort of armor the other guy was wearing.

It introduces additional combat options for characters with high skill, without "breaking" anything. A higher skilled character in my campaign can either handle single high-skilled opponents, or greater numbers of lower skilled opponents. Damage and armor factors are significant as well, and will affect the outcome. This gives you as the GM a lot of different "types" of encounters even within the realm of combat, and gives players options as to how to deal with those different combat situations.

It's something I do like about the MRQ rules. They have lists of combat options that you can spend skill points on (essentially). I'm not sure I agree with some of the costs and abilities, but I'll have to playtest for awhile to be sure. The basic idea is a good one though, and essentially mirrors something I've had in my campaign for a long time.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

The very fact that you're talking about the 12 having "twice the chance" as 6 means you're not getting it. Twice is a "relative" statement (a ratio if you will). That's not what I'm talking about when I say linear.

...

On the RQ3 resitance table, assuming our two numbers are within the bounds (+/- 9 points) each stat point has the same relative value. There is absolutely no difference between comparing a 15 and a 20, or a 5,195 and a 5,200. Both are "5 points different", which equates to a 75% chance of success for the higher guy and a 25% chance for the lower.

Stick to lower numbers, it makes it easier, and more like values that might genuinely turn up in play.

A score of 6 vs 12 has the same chance of success (on the RQ2/3 resistance table) as 3 vs 9, even though 12 is twice 6 and 9 is three times 3.

In a linear system 3 vs 9 is the same as 12 vs 18 (6 points different)
In a relational system 3 vs 9 is the same as 6 vs 18 (3x different(

 

[simonh]

1. Rate of Improvement

In MRQ (and previous versions of RQ), as your skill increases towards 100% your rate of advancement slows. Once your skill is 100% your rate of advancement stops changing and is consistent from then on.

In all previous versiosn of RQ, and also in MRQ, A 10% improvement from 50% to 60% was much less valuable than an improvement from say 85% to 95%. This is because the 85% guy is reducing his chance of a fail by one third, i.e. to one time in 6 rolls to one time in 20 rolls. The 50% guy is reducing his chance of a fail by one fifth, from one in 2 rolls to one in 2.5 rolls.

The upshot of this is that alhough your rate of advancement slows as you approach 100%, the rate of improvement in your combat effectiveness is just as fast, if not faster.

Linearity of improvement doesn't concern me much, so long as the improvement rate is reasonably smooth, and lacks the sudden leaps backwards in effectiveness of the current rules.


2. Adjusting higher skill to 100%, and lower guy by same ammount

e.g. Character A has 125%, B has 80%, so deduct 15% from both skills so A rolls against 100% and B rolls against 55%.

I think this is a viable approach. I don't like the idea of pretty much always having to do calculations on character's skills before you can roll against them, so it's not my first choice solution, but this system makes sense and doesn't immediately seem to have any undesirable effects on the progression of a character's effectiveness. It would be interesting to try in playtesting.


Simon Hibbs

 

[Gnarsh]

The upshot of this is that alhough your rate of advancement slows as you approach 100%, the rate of improvement in your combat effectiveness is just as fast, if not faster.

Actually, that's not strictly true, but is certainly the relevant experience players will see. Technically, what's happening is that you are bounding a linear value (a number line if you will) by looking only at a specific range of that line (1-100). Within that range, you are treating them as a percentage scale. Thus, you actually have a change of effectiveness at both ends of the scale. Just as going from 90% to 95% represents a halving of the chance to fail, going from 5% to 10% represents a doubling of the chance to succeed. Of course, due to the way skills start in RQ, you tend to notice the high values more then the low.

The range itself resembles a bell curve in terms of relative gain per point. We could theoretically normalize on the 50% value (which is *kinda* what the halving process tries to do), but that results in a reduction of apparent skill value. As much as it maximizes the "value" of points, it makes more sense to normalize on the top of the scale in this case, since that means we never penalize a character for gaining skill. It certainly gives the higher skilled character the advantage, but IMO that's acceptable. Certainly more acceptable then giving the lower skilled the advantage which tends to occur in almost all other systems.

e.g. Character A has 125%, B has 80%, so deduct 15% from both skills so A rolls against 100% and B rolls against 55%.

I think this is a viable approach. I don't like the idea of pretty much always having to do calculations on character's skills before you can roll against them, so it's not my first choice solution, but this system makes sense and doesn't immediately seem to have any undesirable effects on the progression of a character's effectiveness. It would be interesting to try in playtesting.

I've always liked it. Also. Please note that I use a different mechanism for resolving non-combat skills and combat skills in RQ3. The "subtract to make the highest skill 100" is optional and only used for combat skills. The assumption is that as you gain skill with your weapons, you are better able to avoid the parry/dodge of your opponent and may spend skill points to do so (this is somewhat similar to the MRQ concept of skill reduction to gain special combat advantages). It's ok to lose the "normal" skill value in this case because combat skills are always about overcoming someone else (wouldn't be "combat" otherwise, right?).

For non-combat skills, I use a different system. The thinking here is that it's valuable to capture the "real" skill value being used for purposes of crit/special. Also, non-combat skills are often dual effect skills, or even "universal effect" skills. By that I mean you don't just succeed against one opponent, but your skill in total may apply in a single instance to multiple things.

For example. You're trying to sneak up on an outpost of bandits. You have a relevant stealth skill (hide or sneak), and the bandits are going to catch you with an opposing skill (scan or listen). For MRQ convention, we could just use stealth and perception. The point is that you have a "stealth" skill which represents in general how stealthy you are. If you succeed, without any comparison to any other skill, we assume you are stealthy enough not to be spotted/heard by someone who's not particularly trying to catch you. Why this matters is that most of the guys in that outpost are likely not on watch, right? There might be one lookout, and a bunch of guys sitting around playing poker or something. If you succeed at a basic stealth skill, the poker players will not know you are coming, but the lookout might spot you. Additionally, there may be other people around you aren't even aware of (perhaps a wandering broo raiding party is approaching the same outpost from a different direction, perhaps with their own agenda in mind).

Using skill subtraction in this case is cumbersome, and not terribly accurate. The method we use in this case is to have the person roll against their normal skill. The player reports to the GM how much he made his skill by (or failed it by if he failed). In this case, not subtracting to normalize to 100, but simply subtracting his roll from his skill. Note also, that we do this regardless of whether the skill is over 100%. It's a similar process, but basically tells us "how successful was he?" without getting into large calculations, and without relying on the relatively non-granular crit/special convention. The GM may also apply plusses or minuses based on conditions and then rules whether the player succeeded or failed, not just in general, but also against any particular opponent. Perhaps there's a ton of underbrush between the character and the broos, so he's got plusses to avoid being seen by them, but not as much between him and the outpost. In this case, the lookout (or anyone else actively using a perception skill) will roll his perception skill, but use the amount the player made it by (adjusted by whatever values the GM tosses in) as a subtraction to his skill.

This method is quite simple and allows for a single roll to resolve multiple questions. The player rolls once. Based on that the GM can determine if the broos on the other side of the outpost (and not specifically looking that direction) spotted the player, whether the bandits playing poker (also not specifically looking for him, but perhaps with a clearer view) spotted him, and whether the lookout (who's actively using his perception skill) spotted him.

It does require that the players subtract. But that's not too hard, and honestly players get very used to doing this quickly. In no time, they'll just automatically say "Made my stealth by 23%", and you as the GM will go from there. You'll know instantly that if there are fewer then 23% of minuses that he "succeeded" at the skill. You'll then also know very easily how much minuses (or plusses) to apply to any opposed rolls you want to make for your NPCs. IMO, this is a very simple method to use, covers a whole lot of different situations quickly, and "makes sense".


And most importantly, you use the exact same method regardless of skill level. I tend to try to avoid "rule by exception" rules. The halving system (and most others) are exceptions. You say "If one or more skills are over 100%, do this instead of that". In my system, the player uses the exact same mechanic everytime he rolls a non-combat skill. There is no variation or exception to the process he uses. And that's a good thing IMO...

 

[Adept]

No, I disagree with you. The 90-100% is what constitutes "mastery" in RQ. In real life terms, this is the level of master craftmen and you master swordmen or martial artists. According to most people at that level, it is really just the beginng step.

Gah!

That way lies super-RQ, madness and bad game design.

The biggest saving grace of Hârnmaster is that it has an absolute maximum in all skills. 100+ the average of three stats. Joe average would, in theory, have a maximum skill of 110 in every skill.

That, coupled with reasonably competent characters, and slow skill development (special success gives a skill check (like in RQ), and a successful skill check gives +1 to skill) gives the game a skill range that actually means something.

40-50 is beginning skill levels. 50 is a young professional. For weapons skills think average (green) soldiers.

60 is starting to a proper professional. Veteran soldiers. Parhaps a good benchmark for a journeyman smith, or the like.

70 is the sort of skill you expect from knights and other elites.

80 is excellent, a fencing instructor or the horsemaster at your stables.

90 is renowned skill. If it's swordplay, you are propably the finest blade in the realm, or at least in the running for that.

100+ This is heroic, you are well beyond the skills of ordinary mortals. This is the sword skill of a hero that has dedicated his/her life to the martial arts. Propably impossible to achieve before the age of fourty, or without gifts from gods or similar miracles.

///

Now that's a good system where the numbers mean something. Save me from the skill 300 vs skill 400 contests :O

 

[mthomason]

I have to admit here:

The main reason I'm not too worried about the halfing rule is that I didn't envisage skills of over 100 in my campaign...

Now I'm being forced to think about it some more

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

Wow, loads of long posts.

All I'll add is that I've written a program to do a brute force approach (testing for every possible value of 2 d100 rolls vs. 2 skill scores) using a few different resolution mechanics, and it appears that the Relative/Linear combo works, and works well.

As we all knew it would.

So reduce the highest to 100, and reduce the lowest by the amount that the highest is above 100.

The only breaking point is where the difference between the 2 is over 100. To resolve this, just use a straight 95% for highest to win, and it works out beautifully.