Advantages and Disadvantages (flaws, faults, etc)

[atgxtg]

On expanded Int
What I was trying to say, INT itself is the ability to grasp abstracts, so if you want to be better at (Expanded INT) things then you should have rolled a better score in INT or if the ref allows you, swap the scores of that outrageous DEX and INT

Any subset of understanding should be a specialised Lore.

In otherwords I cant see the point in the Expanded INT roll.

If the Intellect is allien... i.e Vulcans, Dragonewts, that is a roleplaying issue and shouldn't be bogged down with rules only guidelines, if you know what I mean

Cheers
Paul

BUt since INT has nothing to do with improvment anymore, just taking a high INT in the forst place won't help with learning anything, abstract concept of otherwise. TA guy with an 8 INT learns just as quickly as one with a 18 INT.

 

[Exubae]

BUt since INT has nothing to do with improvment anymore, just taking a high INT in the forst place won't help with learning anything, abstract concept of otherwise. TA guy with an 8 INT learns just as quickly as one with a 18 INT.

You've missed the point, the default level for Skills such as Lore, Mechanism, (I assume sciences), and Engineering is based on INT; thus high INT gives a potential for greater understanding of abstract concepts.

Cheers
Paul

 

[algauble]

I think the idea of adding advantages and disadvantages to rq is something that should be approached with great care. In general, if there is a way to accomplish the same effect with skills, wouldn't it be better to use skills?

The same thing occurs to me when I look at most of the legendary abilities - dead eye increases range, adds to damage and reduces precise shot penalty. Wouldn't it be better to just allow the pc to trade skill %'s to increase range and damage, maybe with a prereq. of skill being over 90/100 or whatever?

Sure, this doesn't apply to all the effects of all the LAs as written, but with some tweaking, it could.
Could someone who has Land of Ninja explain how high skill/powers were handled there?

On the other hand, some sort of mechanical benefit for certain types of advantages seems reasonable.
Examples:
Attractive Advantage - allows pc a free reroll on all Influence rolls against targets of the appropriate sexual orientation. (or +25%, or flip-flop 1's and 10's of the d100 roll, or whatever)
Born to the Saddle - allows player to spend more than 30 free skill points on riding skills in chargen, and allows free reroll (or whatever as above) on riding rolls. (Makes more sense to me as an advantage than as an LA since, well, it says "BORN to the Saddle"

The only problem I have is that once you open the door to ads and disads, you inevitably end up with a few in each supplement, and then there are so many they have to be collected in another, and before you know it you (as I said before) might as well be playing GURPS rather than recreating it.

But I guess you need to put something in those supplements. We should be prepared for a steady diet of LAs.

 

[atgxtg]

Could someone who has Land of Ninja explain how high skill/powers were handled there?

Sure. For stasrts there was the general advantages for high skills in RQ3. That being:
1) Improved chances of critical and special success results
2) Ability to soak more in penalties before it actually reduced your chance of syucess.

The second adbvantage was Ki skills. KI skills were very powerful. THe idea was that a person could channel hi Ki into one sudden burst of energy to perform perfectly. In the game this meant:

1) Mastering the skill (i,.e. 90%+)
2) Spend 1 or more POW points (Magic Points) when using Ki.
3) Ki skill started off at equal to your chance of a critical success (5% at 90% skill).


THe way it worked was that if you spent the POW and the roll was under the Ki skill %, the result was a crtiical success. Depending of the skill being used there may be addtional effects. Using Yadomejustu to cut arrows, aKi result could allow one to contineu cutting more than one arrow. Use Ki to conceal something actually make it invisible, and so forth (there are 5 pages of rules for Ki skills and effects, so this only a couple of examples, if someone wants more info, just ask).


What made Ki skills powerful was that once you had a Ki skill you could improve it just like a normal skill (experience checks, practice, or even training). The differences were that:

1) The training time was based on the main skill rather than the Ki skill. So if someone had Kenjutsu skill at 92% but Kenjutsu Ki at 17%, he would have to train for 92 hours rather than 17 to get a chance for improvement. In MRQ terms this would mean 9 days rather than 2.

2)THe roll to improve the Ki skill was also done against the main skill rather than the ki skill. So in the example above, a character would need to roll above a 92, rathe rthan a 17 to improve.

Im MRQ terms this works except for the fact that we don't knpw how skills over 100% improve. THat is is it an automatic 1%, or does any roll of 96-00 give 1d4+1%



Hope that helps.

 

[Rurik]

Im MRQ terms this works except for the fact that we don't knpw how skills over 100% improve. THat is is it an automatic 1%, or does any roll of 96-00 give 1d4+1%

I really think once your skill is 100+ you only go up in 1% increments unless you have a mentor.

The automatic sucess rule is only mentioned for skill checks in the skills chapter. The improvement roll is not a skill check. I would think it would vave mentioned an automatic sucess range in the improvement section if there was supposed to be one.

 

[atgxtg]

Im MRQ terms this works except for the fact that we don't knpw how skills over 100% improve. THat is is it an automatic 1%, or does any roll of 96-00 give 1d4+1%

I really think once your skill is 100+ you only go up in 1% increments unless you have a mentor.

The automatic sucess rule is only mentioned for skill checks in the skills chapter. The improvement roll is not a skill check. I would think it would vave mentioned an automatic sucess range in the improvement section if there was supposed to be one.

Could be. I'm just being open minded until we get more info. It might also be that we are going back to RQ2 and only Rune Level characters can go above 100%. THat would sort of help to explain what you are getting for your Hero Points when you become a Rune Lord.

Even if it is a automatic 1% it is still much faster than improvement in RQ3. Well unless you had a 29% or better category modifer. :wink:

 

[algauble]

Could someone who has Land of Ninja explain how high skill/powers were handled there?

Sure. For stasrts there was the general advantages for high skills in RQ3. ...
Hope that helps.

Thanks. But I still have more questions... Did you have to do anything to 'get' the ki skill, or did they just occur as a result of having high enough skill %? Would I be correct to infer from your response that a given skill would have one and only one ki counterpart, but that not all skills had a ki version? Could you improve them past the regular skill?

I wonder how something like this would work to use as the basis for legendary abilities, since I like the idea of taking Hero Points out of character improvement, and just using them for rerolls and surviving would-have-been-deadly injuries etc... then you could use your MPs to power your legendary abilities... I'd probably have to rewrite them all though...

 

[Utgardloki]

Well, I suppose it is possible to take a lot of advantages and convert them to skills. CPR could be an advanced skill specialization of First Aid, for example. Expanded Intellect could be an Intellect Expansion skill which helps you improve your other skills as a function of 1/10th your skill %. Virtuous could be a Virtue skill (which would be a specialization of Persistence). Etc.

The way I decided to handle things like Stage Magic was that a Stage Magic skill can be used, and there is no limit to the number of magic tricks you can know. You can roll your Stage Magic % to try to figure out a trick that you've observed, but many of them are very difficult, and a critical success is required. Many magic tricks are well known, and many are closely guarded secrets. Only tricks that are known may be attempted, but other than the time taken to learn a trick, there is no other cost.

Sometimes an advantage seems the easiest way to go, and sometimes an advanced skill seems to be the way to go. Atgxtg is usually pretty good at finding ways to replace an advantage with a skill.

 

[atgxtg]

And I juat put the box away in the closet too... :wink:

Okay. Got the book out.
FOr starters the very nature of the Ki ability was an acceptanace of a martial arts concept of Ki (Chi in chinese). Basically this is focusing and channeling your own life force to great effect. In part, a requiement, although not listed in the book, was a knowedlge and acceptance of the concept. In LotN everyone was Japanese and grew up in the proer envirnment. THat mike be worth noting depending on what you wanted to use Ki skills for.



The rwequirements for a Ki skill were:

1) Meditiation ability (in RQ3 this was abstracted as part of the Ceremony skill). We will have to see in the companion if that is still around.
In fact, a cjharacter could use Ceremony to augment his Ki skill (in RQ3 if you spent time meditiating you could increase you effective skill up to a total of your meditation score. Ki skills can only be brought up to double ability.). Typically this would be something like a master calligrapher meditating over a blank sheet og papper and then suddenly writing out a master piece is a short burst of energy.

Naturally you couldn't do that in combat.


2) POW (basically you needed the Ki)

3) Great ability (90%).

4) The character with the above requirements had to seek out a Ki Master (someone with 90%+ in the appropraite Ki). A kami or ancestral spirit can substitue for a master if it has the requistie ability.

5) 50 hours (1 week in RQ3, probably 5 days in mRQ) of training by said Master.


When you used a KI skill it was like a normal skill use. If you used ki, and the result was under your ki skill, it was a critical, if not, but under the main skill score, it was treated as a normal.

Using a Ki skill also required an expediture of magic points or POW points (permanent POW) depending on the Ki skill being used. Craft skills, for instance made permanent idemts so they required POW.

Once you used a KI ability you could not get an experience check in that skill for that adventure. So using KI a lot would mean that Ki would go up, but the main skill wouldn't.


Once you gained a Ki skill it was tracked and improved separately from the main skill. Technically is was possible to have a Kill skill higher than the skill is was tied to, but the nature of RQ3 made that a bit unlieky except in a long term high powered campaign. THe skill that the KI skill was based off of was already over 90% when KI was at 5%. Since RQ3 used an experience check system for improvement, the Ki skill remain lower for quite some time.


As to what skills had a Ki counterpart, well many did, but not all. The book gave Ki skills for:
Attack Ki (inclduing some special rules for nunchaku, jo-stick, missile weapons, and shiruken)
Parry Ki (attack & parry were separate skills in RQ3, although Kenjutsu the kjapanese sword skill was one skill)
Dodge Ki
Iaijutsu Ki
Yadomejutsu Ki
Craft Ki (bonsai, chokokujutsu, gano, kado, kenchiku, muscial instrument making, ningyojutsu, origami, orimodo, ryori, shodo, togai, washi, weapon making, youoi)
Performance Ki (axting, bunraku, buyo, cha-no-yu, kado, play Instrument, shi, uta)
Agility Ki (climb, jump, ride, swim, throw)
Knowledge Ki (Craft as above, First Aid, Shiphandling)
Manipulation Ki (conceal, Devise)
Perception Ki (Listen, Scan, Search, Track)
Stealth Ki (Disguise, Escape, Sneak)


The book also suggested that the GM coulds allow for other skills to have Ki counterparts.


Anything else?

 

[atgxtg]

Atgxtg is usually pretty good at finding ways to replace an advantage with a skill.

It is more of a case of having owned and read a lot of RPGs. Since all RPGs have certain similar key concepts (writing up a character, task resultion, combat, etc., it you look at a lot of RPGs you start to see some similar ideas popping up.Sort of like RPG deja vu. So when someone mentioons that they want to do something with an RPG, I probably can think of a half dozen different ways I've seen it done before.

 

[Utgardloki]

It is more of a case of having owned and read a lot of RPGs. Since all RPGs have certain similar key concepts (writing up a character, task resultion, combat, etc., it you look at a lot of RPGs you start to see some similar ideas popping up.Sort of like RPG deja vu. So when someone mentioons that they want to do something with an RPG, I probably can think of a half dozen different ways I've seen it done before.

Ah, but I've really liked some of your ideas, especially the specialization one. In fact, maybe I'll even make an advantage to allow PCs to have double-specializations for selected skills, such as Unarmed Combat + Martial Arts Strike + Roundhouse Kick.

 

[atgxtg]

It is more of a case of having owned and read a lot of RPGs. Since all RPGs have certain similar key concepts (writing up a character, task resultion, combat, etc., it you look at a lot of RPGs you start to see some similar ideas popping up.Sort of like RPG deja vu. So when someone mentioons that they want to do something with an RPG, I probably can think of a half dozen different ways I've seen it done before.

Ah, but I've really liked some of your ideas, especially the specialization one. In fact, maybe I'll even make an advantage to allow PCs to have double-specializations for selected skills, such as Unarmed Combat + Martial Arts Strike + Roundhouse Kick.

Case in point. Skill specialization and subskills comes fromn sseveral other games including a few RQ/BRP ones. THe version that I suggested, with the main skill and subskills that added to it came form an excellent RRPG, CORPS.

CORPS uses the subskil idea for everything and it works very well there. Generally the cost of as skill in corps is the rating, sqaured, so it is far more practical to have a skill ans secondary skill at 4 points, and +2 than it is to buy the main skill up to 6 (20 points as opposed to 36).

The martial arts rules are nice too. They give belt equvalencies for skill levels (they do something similar with other skills to give you and idea of what a master's degree of H.S. diploma equates to score wise).

THere is a free 4 page "lite" version of the game that is worth looking at. It is a very good game, very simile, yet it handles a lot of thingsvery well. In fact it has rules for doing everything you seem to be trying to do in MRQ. THe game is worth looking at just for the ideas it gives on how to do things.

 

[Exubae]

Theres a BRP derivative steam punk game by the name of A|state which has a pretty cool back ground - there are Merits/Flaws within it.. t may be worth while taking a look.
It also uses specialisation for skills
They have a light version of the rules on their site (free as well), 'Contested Ground' is the company.
A|state was a pretty funky game as well if you like the genre.

Paul