+100% skill

[mthomason]

In another thread, there's already talk about what a "merchant" will do in a combat when the rest of the party is made up of "warriors". I don't think it's unreasonable at all to assume that players are concerned by this and want even their "wimpy" characters to feel like they're at least doing "something useful".

I'd place the blame firmly on the GM if that happened.

If the GM allowed one player to be a merchant when the rest were combat-orientated, and then couldn't figure a way to make it work, they're at fault. Well, unless they already explained to the player beforehand "you do realise you're going to be sitting on your backside through half of every game session, don't you? If that's fine with you, it's fine with me."

Some GMs can find ways to make it work, some can't. If they don't know how they're going to make it work, they probably shouldn't have allowed it in the first place.

 

[Gnarsh]

If the GM allowed one player to be a merchant when the rest were combat-orientated, and then couldn't figure a way to make it work, they're at fault. Well, unless they already explained to the player beforehand "you do realise you're going to be sitting on your backside through half of every game session, don't you? If that's fine with you, it's fine with me."

Some GMs can find ways to make it work, some can't. If they don't know how they're going to make it work, they probably shouldn't have allowed it in the first place.

Absolutely correct (and pretty much the conclusion in that thread). But the point I was trying to get at is that if you use a skill system where you can only improve and maintain skills you focus on and start skills "low" so as to make a cap of 100% meaningful, then you seriously limit the options of a merchant who finds himself in combat. Not because of a choice by the player, but because the rules you've chosen to use make it hard for "anyone" to be moderately good at using weapons (you're either a merchant and are useless in combat, or you are a warrior and excell at combat).

One of the things I've always loved about RQ, and IMO what made it vastly superior to level and class based games like D&D was that you could be as good at something as you spent the time/effort to be. If I make a point of having my merchant pull out a weapon everytime my party gets into trouble and helping out, I'm going to get better, eventually to the point of being actually "quite good".

In a classic runequest game, what made the real difference between different types of characters was not their skill levels under 100%, but their skill level *over* 100% (you need far more increase chances over time for advancement past that point). That and magic. Your choice of cult defined what sorts of spells you got. The merchant character would *never* be as powerful in combat as the warrior, not because of any inherent skill disadavantage (he's got the same potential to learn to fight as the warrior), but because he's not going to have ready access to bladesharp, bludgeon, protection, shield, etc. He'll be able to trade spells, and create markets, always have a ready source of income (and a good cover for traveling/adventuring), but he's just not going to ever be a combat monster.

That aspect of the game really only works if you both allow skills to advance steadily over 100% (giving those who truely focus on combat a large range to work with) and you make those skills over 100% "meaningful".

 

[Adept]

Ok. But you're not really playing RQ. It's kinda interesting because you keep slamming on D&D, but it appears as though you want to play RQ as much like D&D as possible. There are no classes in RQ. There's no such thing as a "Weaponthane", much less a definition that says "Weaponthane's have about a 70% skill with their weapons". It just sounds like in your game you define characters by "concept" after discussing it with the GM, and that concept defines what the character is and can do.

It's called roleplaying, and it's about as far from D&D as you can get. D&D is all about gaining experience and boosting the character's competence. I was talking about getting the sort of character you envision, instead of a power gaming platform.

A weaponthane is a profession, a household warrior of a chieftain in a well known Gloranthan culture, I was just using it as an example for actual MRQ play.

As for defining skill levels, I sure hope mongoose will give some guidelines for skill levels in various professions and settings. It will be pretty hard for beginning GM:s if there are no guidelines for skills for things like healers, soldiers and knights.

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

I think a cap is a bit unrealist and counter to good play.

Me too. The only thing is that there's eventually going to come the point where one person is so far off the scale by comparison to the other that any higher score won't really matter. It's not much different if a 5 ton rock or if a 2000 ton rock falls on you, to use an unrelated but relevant example. You're still paste. Likewise, if Jimi Hendrix or a street busker tried to play better guitar than me, I'd lay odds that both of them would have a roughly equal chance of doing so. :lol:

What type of situation are you thinking about?

No situation. It's a descriptive example intended to illustrate the fact that (a) open ended scales can and do exist, and (b) comparisons at different levels of the scale do generate circumstances where differences are irrelevant.

OK, if Fred had a POW of 18 and Joe had a POW of 9, in old RQ2 Resistance Table terms, Fred's POW will have a 95% chance of overcoming Joe's. No matter how much Fred increases his POW by, he will always have this chance of overcoming Joe's POW of 9. That's because he's so far off the scale by comparison to Joe, that any increases won't matter.

This existed in RQ2, it should exist in MRQ but the halving rule breaks it, and it even exists in real life.

 

[atgxtg]

In another thread, there's already talk about what a "merchant" will do in a combat when the rest of the party is made up of "warriors". I don't think it's unreasonable at all to assume that players are concerned by this and want even their "wimpy" characters to feel like they're at least doing "something useful".

I'd place the blame firmly on the GM if that happened.

If the GM allowed one player to be a merchant when the rest were combat-orientated, and then couldn't figure a way to make it work, they're at fault. Well, unless they already explained to the player beforehand "you do realise you're going to be sitting on your backside through half of every game session, don't you? If that's fine with you, it's fine with me."

Some GMs can find ways to make it work, some can't. If they don't know how they're going to make it work, they probably shouldn't have allowed it in the first place.

I agree. THe problem is though, that a GM who is experienced enough to see the problem is one experienced enough to be able to handle it. I had a friend who GM'd hisemlf into exactly this situation (one merchant, two combat oriented characters). He just didn't realize it was a problem until he was in over his head.

Sadly, despite all the continually improve advice for GMS in RPGs, the postion of GM is still mostly a "trial by fire"/learn by doing sort of thing. You almost have to be a bad GM in order to learn how to be a good one. All of the really great GM's I've know had thier own horror stories of how they screwed up past campaigns.

That was how they learned what NOT to do.


What D&D DM hasn't handed out all those hi powered magic items and ruined at least one campaign?

It's a vicious learning curve. With witnessness built in.

 

[mthomason]

Yep, it is *very* easy to look back and say what people shouldn't be doing, having forgotten the only reason you can say it yourself is through making the same mistakes once

 

[atgxtg]

Yep, it is *very* easy to look back and say what people shouldn't be doing, having forgotten the only reason you can say it yourself is through making the same mistakes once

Or more than once...
ONe thing that used to discorage some of the other players from GMing was that I was "so good at it". I tried to explain that not only did I start off as bad (or worse) than they were, but that I still made lots of mistakes. Itis just that an experienced GM can handle/cover for mistakes much much better.

Proably the best way to gauge a GM, in my opinion, is to see how he or she acts when things don't go as planned. Some of the best adventures I've ever ran or played in occured when the group went left instead of right and the GM had to wing it.

 

[mthomason]

Some of the best adventures I've ever ran or played in occured when the group went left instead of right and the GM had to wing it.

Heh. This, again, is why I prefer not to be tied too much to a particular scenario. You can go grab a copy of The Worlds Largest Dungeon, incredibly detailed and enough material to last pretty much the entire lifetime of your campaign.

"We're not going in."

Now I look further through The Great Pendragon Campaign, it reminds me of the old OD&D module CM1-Test of the Warlords, which is quite possibly the best OD&D module ever - for those who don't know, it was a campaign setting with a calendar of what would happen over the next few years, a few specific adventures that could occur, and NPC stats. The DM would just run this thing and watch the characters create kingdoms, and could just slip other modules into the framework it gave you when they wanted something to do.

The only difference is TGPC goes on for *decades*.... I'm falling in love with this book.

And it has given me an idea...

 

[atgxtg]

"We're not going in."

Now I look further through The Great Pendragon Campaign, it reminds me of the old OD&D module CM1-Test of the Warlords, which is quite possibly the best OD&D module ever - for those who don't know, it was a campaign setting with a calendar of what would happen over the next few years, a few specific adventures that could occur, and NPC stats. The DM would just run this thing and watch the characters create kingdoms, and could just slip other modules into the framework it gave you when they wanted something to do.

The only difference is TGPC goes on for *decades*.... I'm falling in love with this book.

With Pendragon, it sort of goes with the territory. THey have a very detailed setting with certain well know people and events. So you have a players alterting the timeline thing. One of the best ways to avoid that problem without making your character feel straightjackedet is the approach used in the game. In general theplayers do really interact much with the famous persoanges.

Of course, that being said, I had one PC who was on pretty good terms with Gawaine, and actually a friend of Modred.

Oh, and decades in Pendragon isn't quite so long as in other games, with the 1 year/adventure guideline.

And it has given me an idea...

Like posting Pnedragon stuff in the Arthurian thread?

 

[mthomason]

And it has given me an idea...

Like posting Pnedragon stuff in the Arthurian thread?

Of course not, what sense would that make?

 

[Adept]

OK, if Fred had a POW of 18 and Joe had a POW of 9, in old RQ2 Resistance Table terms, Fred's POW will have a 95% chance of overcoming Joe's. No matter how much Fred increases his POW by, he will always have this chance of overcoming Joe's POW of 9. That's because he's so far off the scale by comparison to Joe, that any increases won't matter.

This existed in RQ2, it should exist in MRQ but the halving rule breaks it, and it even exists in real life.

The resistance table was simple, but only because it was basically broken. Pow 10 vs. 15 was the same situation as POW 25 vs. 30. Not exactly the best example you could have chosen to use.

I guess you are thinking about something like a skill 150 swordsman squaring off against a skill 50 swordsman, and being untouchable. In RQ 2 the poor skill 50 fellow would still have a 5% chanse to hit, and the 150 fellow a similar chanse to miss his/her parry. Not quite untouchable even then.

But hey, if the open ended skills make you happy, go with them. They spoil some RQ products for me pretty badly (Dorastor - Land of Doom is full of terrible super RQ tripe, where the system dosen't work at all. In comparison the Lords of Terror book was brilliant, with well written rune level baddies without resorting to skills in the multiple hundeads).

 

[simonh]

The resistance table was simple, but only because it was basically broken. Pow 10 vs. 15 was the same situation as POW 25 vs. 30. Not exactly the best example you could have chosen to use.

That was a conciously chosen feature, not a bug. The stat scale in old RQ was logarithmic, not linear. Logarithmic scales are often the best way of handling scaling issues because you can do proportional modifications using simple additon and subtraction rather than complex multiplications and divisions. But then I deal with log scales all the time as I work with radio signal propagation modeling software.

Simon Hibbs

 

[atgxtg]

The resistance table was simple, but only because it was basically broken. Pow 10 vs. 15 was the same situation as POW 25 vs. 30. Not exactly the best example you could have chosen to use.

That was a conciously chosen feature, not a bug. The stat scale in old RQ was logarithmic, not linear. Logarithmic scales are often the best way of handling scaling issues because you can do proportional modifications using simple additon and subtraction rather than complex multiplications and divisions. But then I deal with log scales all the time as I work with radio signal propagation modeling software.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Adept]

The resistance table was simple, but only because it was basically broken. Pow 10 vs. 15 was the same situation as POW 25 vs. 30. Not exactly the best example you could have chosen to use.

That was a conciously chosen feature, not a bug. The stat scale in old RQ was logarithmic, not linear. Logarithmic scales are often the best way of handling scaling issues because you can do proportional modifications using simple additon and subtraction rather than complex multiplications and divisions. But then I deal with log scales all the time as I work with radio signal propagation modeling software.

Simon Hibbs

In that case several spells were very badly designed. Spirit screen and the like had sensible effects with normal human POW levels, but if you take the scale as logarithmic then the few MP spells effect scales up all the time.

You are assuming a rediculous amount of forward planning. The resistance table is a simple mechanism put into the game in the late seventies. They most surely didn't think about, and decide that this is the mechanism that will give just the results we want when a tribal spirit of POW 30 faces off against a more powerful spirit of POW 40.

Get real...

 

[atgxtg]

You are assuming a rediculous amount of forward planning. The resistance table is a simple mechanism put into the game in the late seventies. They most surely didn't think about, and decide that this is the mechanism that will give just the results we want when a tribal spirit of POW 30 faces off against a more powerful spirit of POW 40.

Get real...[/quote]

Yes they did. Take a look at the RQ2 book. The Spririt Table and other info in the shaman section has references and examples of rules with Spirits with POW abouve the nomral human scale. Examples in the book include POW 26 spriits, and the spriti table has POW scores up to unlimed (Deity) with a "typical" spirit having a POW Of 3D6+6.

 

[seanwalsh]

I just have a quick question. For opposed skill checks, what are the various rule mechanics for dealing with skill levels greater than 100%?

I've only seen these:
1. Do nothing
2. Halve both skills until both are under 100%
3. Subtract from both skills until both are under 100%

Are there any more?
I have started to weigh the various pros and cons to decide for myself which I like best. If there are other ideas, I would like to consider them as well.

 

[atgxtg]

The current offical rules are:

Combat-do nothing
Unopposed-do nothing
Opposed-Half when appropriate.

THere are lots of alternatives for the halving rule floating around though. Maybe we should compile a list of all the options?

 

[RMS]

That was a conciously chosen feature, not a bug. The stat scale in old RQ was logarithmic, not linear. Logarithmic scales are often the best way of handling scaling issues because you can do proportional modifications using simple additon and subtraction rather than complex multiplications and divisions. But then I deal with log scales all the time as I work with radio signal propagation modeling software.

I'll just second this. All you have to do is read through the SIZ tables to see that they consider most (if not all) of the stats in RQ2/3 to be log rathter than lingear. In which case, the table makes perfect sense. Since people were much more into mathematical justifications for what they designed things into games in the early days, I'd be very suprised if it was just thrown together. In fact, the whole resistance table is very well thought out, from where I sit, and is extremely robust in play. In fact, it's one of those mechanics that I can't fathom the reason for removing it from the game. It was quick, simple, elegant, and everyone can do the calculations in their head on the fly.

Btw, my M.S. work and early industry work was all radio propagation: mostly satellite and then military GPS in my case.

 

[RMS]

In that case several spells were very badly designed. Spirit screen and the like had sensible effects with normal human POW levels, but if you take the scale as logarithmic then the few MP spells effect scales up all the time.

Actually it makes perfect sense if the stats are indeed log. It just makes things consistent. Each MP dumped into such a spell adds a doubling affect to whichever stat it boosts.

You are assuming a rediculous amount of forward planning. The resistance table is a simple mechanism put into the game in the late seventies. They most surely didn't think about, and decide that this is the mechanism that will give just the results we want when a tribal spirit of POW 30 faces off against a more powerful spirit of POW 40.

Get real...

See my last post. People tried much harder in the early days to justify things than they do now. I can remember articles discussing these kinds of design decisions in many of the early games, so I'd be suprised if the RQ designers didn't think it through. Plus, we have the evidence that it's a very robust game mechanic that holds up very well to scaling, so at least give the credit since the evidence supports the design. As mentioned previously, there are all kinds of high POW creatures wandering around Glorantha from the beginning. Heck, every Orlanthi that has an allied spirit in an alynx has a creature with POW potential well beyond a human. All kinds of disease spirits, fetches, etc. that have POW well beyond the range that a human can deal with them. Very shortly thereafter, we have demons all over the Stormbringer game with POW in excess of 30 and frequently 50, with PC's easily able to reach that range. Everything still holds up very well. (Well, assuming your PC is one of those. The other PCs don't "hold up" so well in Stormbringer, but that's part of the charm of it and probably better for a different thread.)

 

[atgxtg]

Yeah, it is a base8 log. In other words +8 Stat = x2.

THis sort of system gives a Strong Human, boosted with a couple points of STR a good chance to out mucles a bear or horse. Something just not possible iif the stats were linear and those animals had 80 STR scores.

THis sort of compacting notonly makes the numbers easier to use, but also favors the PCs, as it keeps the monster's hit points lower. A Dragon only has around twice the hit points of an average PC rather than, say, 70 times the hit points.