Anyone good at math?

[AKAmra]

I'm working up a rule set for Conan RQ/BRP (while waiting for MRQ Hyborian Adventures) and I'm trying different rules to empower the PCs, to increase the chance for survial/success.
One of the rules I'm considering is the flip-flop rule from Unknown Armies, the player picks the "tens" die after the roll. The reason for this is two-fold, to increase the odds in the PC's favor, and to mitigate the liner roll of a d100.
What I'm wondering is if someone has the math skills to actually figure the odds if using this rule.

 

[AKAmra]

BTW, I'd use a doubles rule for criticals so that's not a factor.

 

[Rurik]

We need to know the odds of what? Simple skill rolls vs. a target percentage or opposed rolls for example.

There are a number of ways of doing what you want without flipping. MRQ is potentially less deadly than other BRP systems. You have hero points for one, and the GM is in total control of how many of these get handed out.

Also allow for more experienced starting characters. A high Resilience will allow a character to take a LOT of punishment. If the foes are of a common variety a good character should be able to handle a few of them with ease.

Lastly, and this is tied to Hero Points, how readily available you make Legendary Abilities. They can give characters a huge advantage. There have been a number of posts with ideas on special abilities that are less legendary as well that may fit well with what you have in mind. LA's aren't exactly my cup of tea, so I haven't followed those threads too closely - I think Utgardloki has had a lot of ideas in that area, and he seems pretty helpful. Of course he is supposed to watch Sin City before he does any more work on RQ. :wink:

I think it should be pretty easy to adapt MRQ to a more Heroic feeling game. (I personally am focused on making it a bit more lethal, but it seems to be pretty malleable).

 

[Utgardloki]

Linear rolls are your best friend, if you want to know your odds. That is a big advantage of D20 and D% systems over other systems, for which knowing your exact chances are more, well, dicey.

I think if you want to help the PCs survive, then give them more hero points. Or, what I was thinking of doing, is offering Fate Points which can not be used to improve the character, but can be used to help make critical die rolls.

One concept is to offer fate chips (using real poker chips). A fate chip can be cashed in before making a die roll, to add a bonus to that die roll. Pretty good if you want to avoid getting killed by that greatsword.

If you want to know the odds, then you have to ask, the odds of what? If you're married to this idea, the best bet is to just list out the 100 possibilities and count how often a roll succeeds or fails.

I was thinking of doing something similar for NPC skill scores of rolling 1D10 and then another 1D10, and multiplying the values together to figure out an NPC's skill rank. (Or I could use 1D6 x 1D10, or 1D12, etc, etc, etc. There are just so many variants I can think of.) If I ever get time, I mean to set up a simple spreadsheet to figure things out.

Another way to estimate probabilities is called "The Monte Carlo Method." This is just rolling again and again, and recording how many times you succeed or fail. You can run a test game, and see if you are satisfied with the results.

 

[Utgardloki]

Of course he is supposed to watch Sin City before he does any more work on RQ.

And who was going to send me a copy?

 

[Rurik]

Of course he is supposed to watch Sin City before he does any more work on RQ.

And who was going to send me a copy?

I think Tim was going to take care of that.

 

[are]

Assumptions:
1) Straight success or failure
2) not resisted roll
3) 99 and 100 are not automatic failures
(if they are, any skill above 89 is meaningless if unmodified, ie. 89 is the new 98)

skill chance of success
1 2
2 4
3 6
4 8
5 10
6 12
7 14
8 16
9 18
10 18
11 19
12 21
13 23
14 25
15 27
16 29
17 31
18 33
19 35
20 35
21 35
22 36
23 38
24 40
25 42
26 44
27 46
28 48
29 50
30 50
31 50
32 50
33 51
34 53
35 55
36 57
37 59
38 61
39 63
40 63
41 63
42 63
43 63
44 64
45 66
46 68
47 70
48 72
49 74
50 74
51 74
52 74
53 74
54 74
55 75
56 77
57 79
58 81
59 83
60 83
61 83
62 83
63 83
64 83
65 83
66 84
67 86
68 88
69 90
70 90
71 90
72 90
73 90
74 90
75 90
76 90
77 91
78 93
79 95
80 95
81 95
82 95
83 95
84 95
85 95
86 95
87 95
88 96
89 98
90 98
91 98
92 98
93 98
94 98
95 98
96 98
97 98
98 98
99 99
100 100

With this system, as your skill increases, there are bigger and bigger "gaps" where your skill crosses into a new ten, where the skill increase is meaningless. If increasing the skill does not increase either the tens digit or brings the ones digit above the tens digit, the increase is meaningless.

 

[AKAmra]

are - Thanks for the numbers, that's exactly what I wanted, RPG forums are such a great resource!

I've got a number of different rules to empower the PCs, I just came across the flip-flop rule and am taking it into consideration.

Hero Points: I'll probably use Hero Points, although I like the game engine to run without them. Sometimes its a problem with players using them too fast, being afraid of using them at all or simply ignoring that they exist. My oldsters gaming group just isn't used to using Hero/Drama/Confidence Points.

Legendary Abilites: I have mixed feelings on these, they add a whole new level of complication to the game. A few years back I picked-up D&D 3e and the whole Feat thing just irritated me to no end. I had to expend too much energy thinking about the system instead of running the game. The players felt overwhelmed having to read all the Feats and keep-up on prereqs and the new feats constantly coming out to make sure they didn't miss out on "cool power x" - which would be perfect for thier PC.

 

[soltakss]

My current RQ group uses Hero Points, although not RQM, but they have played HeroQuest and so they knew how they worked. When I suggested we didn't use them for RQ, I was shouted down in quite an emphatic manner.

They seem to like Hero Points.

 

[Utgardloki]

Hero Points

I think hero points are one of the major selling points for my Runequest Modern idea -- these help to control the dramatic flow of the adventure. If the problem is PCs using hero points too fast, a solution is to not give the hero points out until they reach certain story points. If PCs don't use their hero points, oh well.

I am a little bit leary about hero points being required to both save their character and to improve their character. I'll probably make these separate from Improvement Points, so that players don't have to worry about not being able to advance because they've used up their hero points.

Legendary Abilities

As I've been thinking of various "Heroic Advantages", I have found that a lot of them could be modelled as advanced specialized skills. For example:

CPR Training

This is not much of a Heroic Advantage, only costing about 2 Hero Points, but it does differentiate those who have CPR Training from those who just watch Baywatch. (Note to GMs: I just heard on the radio how relying on what you see on TV to make First Aid checks can be dangerous. I would probably rule that a character who only relies on First Aid should have to make a "botch check", e.g. INT * 5 or less on D%, to avoid causing damage.) An alternative to having a CPR Heroic Advantage would be to have an advanced CPR skill, which is to First Aid what the Martial Arts skill is to Unarmed Combat.

Improved Martial Arts Strike

The intent of this was to allow martial artists to do increased damage with unarmed attacks and/or martial arts weapon. But then someone suggested ranking this with the characters Martial Arts skill, e.g., for every x points of skill, damage in improved. The system I settled on was adding 1/5 your Martial Arts Strike skill (note the new name) to the sum of your STR + SIZ, in order to determine your base damage. (Note also, we're not adding this to your base damage, but to the number used to determine your base damage.)

Two Weapon Fighting Training

The intent of this was to distinguish fighters trained in dual weapon use. But this could also be modelled with an advanced specialization skill. The idea is that your Dual <weapon> Fighting Technique advanced skill % could be added to your chance to hit when using two weapons.

Hero points, I think, are optional. I like them because they can help to control dramatic flow of the adventure without resorting to fudging. Perhaps most Legendary Abilities could be converted to advanced skills.

 

[Cowboy]

Note that the odds you get from flip-flopping are very nearly the same as you get by just rolling the dice twice and taking the best result. And the latter method has the advantage that every increase will be at least a little meaningful.

Both of these options give the greatest benefit to characters whose chance of success is exactly 50%. (OK, for flip-flopping it's 49% but it's close enough)

 

[Utgardloki]

If it is a matter of giving the PCs an advantage, it's better to give them bonuses or make the difficulties easier. For example, who says that the modifier to keep a bus running at 51 miles an hour while you are losing gasoline rapidly is a -30%?

I have the same philosophy in the D&D games I run. Sure, I can start the PCs out at 12th level, but that just means they're going up against 15th level opponents. So it does not really matter, really.

If you want your players' PCs to have a better chance, the best way is to give them more free points to spend on skills. Who said they get 100 free skill points? Why not 50? Why not 150? Even the MRQ rulebook has guidelines for creating characters more skilled than the novices you usually encounter.

If you want to do the Unknown Armies system, of course, it is up to you, but I'd suggest just giving the players bonuses.

 

[Adept]

I'm working up a rule set for Conan RQ/BRP (while waiting for MRQ Hyborian Adventures) and I'm trying different rules to empower the PCs, to increase the chance for survial/success.
One of the rules I'm considering is the flip-flop rule from Unknown Armies, the player picks the "tens" die after the roll. The reason for this is two-fold, to increase the odds in the PC's favor, and to mitigate the liner roll of a d100.
What I'm wondering is if someone has the math skills to actually figure the odds if using this rule.

As somebody who is decent at math (as a natural sciense major, I have to be) I have to say I hate Unknown Armies with a passion. The stoopid mechanics (like the flipflop, or reading d100 as 2d10) are even worse than the setting that is based on the premise that banality is a source of enlightenment and strength.

Use the flipflop at your peril, mathematically it's really flawed and rediculous thinking.

 

[AKAmra]

Adept - Don't hold back, tell me how you really feel :lol:

I don't have an opinion on the Unknown Armies system or world as a whole, I just picked out the flip-flop rule from the free system intro. I tend to check-out any BRP flavored games looking for any interesting new ideas I can use. CoC with houserules tends to be my default favorite due to simplicity and gritty feel. I like 100%, or 100 + (characterisc skill bonus) caps so I can have a handle on human max skill for example, but that's whole 'nother can of worms.

Looking at dice pool systems is what got me thinking about the flip-flop rule. A dice pool gives a bell curve vs. the d100 or d20 liner result (I say this as a layman, I'm no math expert - correct me at will). The thinking was that the flip-flop gives the player a "mini-dice pool" of two. This is an issue in BRP where "professional" characters are failing their rolls to often in game to be considered professionals. There are other ways of dealing with the issue; give a +30% for a routine task, double skill for a routine task, failure within x% is a partial success instead of failure, etc. The flip-flop was just another option I'm considering.

Thanks for the feedback though, I appriciate it. For the record, I wasn't too impressed with the Unknown Armies background fluff, I don't plan on buying it, I'll stick with CoC.

 

[Utgardloki]

If you want to limit humans to 100%, but allow experts to succeed more often, you could have players roll 3D6 and multiply by 5.

But don't forget that tasks can be rated as Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Difficult, or Very Difficult. By the book, these are bonuses as high as +80% or penalties as low as -80%. By my house rule, your skill % is multiplied by 5 or 2, or divided by 2 or 5, to determine your chance of success.

What this means, is that if something is Very Easy and you have more than a 20% basic chance, you pretty much automatically succeed. I have another house rule that you only need to roll Easy or Very Easy tasks if you have a chance of failure. Thus anybody with at least 50% skill needs no roll for Easy or Very Easy tasks.

 

[Adept]

Adept - Don't hold back, tell me how you really feel :lol:

Heh Thanks.

Sorry about the strong reaction, but the I really, really dislike almost everything about that game.

100 + skill category modifier works well, but then one musn't have too fast skill progression.

I definitely want to have max skills in every system I play in. It helps give the skill levels some meaning.

In a d100 game where I currently play myself (and wrote the rules for) routine tasks get a +40 modifier. That quite handily means that a person with a skill 60 is a proper skilled professional. A cart-driver with skill 60 won't have any trouble in any normal situation, and magic skills at level 60 are reliable in non-combat situations.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

This is an issue in BRP where "professional" characters are failing their rolls to often in game to be considered professionals.

There are a number of other possibilities if you believe this to be the case.
Firstly that you don't have the skill levels of the professionals set high enough, and secondly that you are making too many rolls.

You should never be rolling for routine use of normal skills, So a GP dealing with "normal" injuries and diseases shouldn't be making lots of medicine rolls, the bank clerk handloing normal accounts shouldn't be rolling Accounting every time a new customer comes to the desk, and neither of them should be rolling a "Drive Auto" roll to drive home through normal traffic at the end of the day. They should be making those rolls when faced with a rare tropical disease, to spot the attempt to launder money, or when attempting to give the traffic cops the slip after shooting the red light...

Because RQ/BRP skills are expressed as percentages, you shouldn't be surprised at the rate of success/failure - someone with a 50% skill rating will fail half their rolls. So if you have a "professional" with a 50% skill rating and you think that he is failing to often then the obvious solution is to increase his skill rating.

 

[Utgardloki]

Driving home safely is an example of a task that I would consider to be Easy or Very Easy (depending on where you live -- in the city I live I'd probably consider it an Easy task). Someone with only an 18% total skill at Drive Auto very well may have to make a Very Easy driving skill roll to get home without an incident. (By the book, that would be with a +80% bonus, so would have to roll over 98% to fail, or a 2% chance. By my houserules, his skill is multiplied by 5, giving him a 90% chance of getting home without incident.)

But someone with a 21% total skill level has a 101% chance or a 105% of driving home safely, depending on which rule you use. Since this is a Very Easy task and the chance of success is greater than 99%, no roll is necessary.

A professional should have at least 50% skill level in his professional skills, and not have to make Easy or Very Easy rolls. An amateure or someone who is not qualified for his job may have to make a roll that others consider to be routine. I keep thinking of Captain Kirk in the Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action", trying to drive a 1920s era car. (Although the question of how to handle unfamiliar equipment has itself been the topic of a couple of threads.)

 

[AKAmra]

duncan_disorderly - I agree with you on not making needless rolls for easy or routine tasks. However, my concern is more about the "big picture" of skill levels and how they relate to the game world. A skill level of 50% is generally accepted as "professional" level in BRP with a skill cap of 100% (or thereabouts), so you need rules to deal with easy or routine tasks not only for "Professionals" but for other characters of lesser or greater skill level. What skill level makes a task routine so that a skill roll is unnecessary? That's when houserules like Utgardloki and Adept's come into play.
I like the symmetry of Utgardloki's rule and the simplicty of Adepts's rule. I try to avoid having to do doing quick math at the gaming table (two of my players are my 9 and 11 years old sons).
BTW, Daubet Herve listed his ideas for an OGL/BRP Conan game over on the Conan Forum under the topic "Hyborian Adventures for Runequest?" (I'd link the thread but I don't know how).

 

[Rurik]

(I'd link the thread but I don't know how).

If you put the mouse over the thread you want to link to you will see the URL to that topic at the bottom of the task bar. I usually right click on the topic and choose "Open in a New Window", that will open a new browser with the URL in the address box so you can cut and paste it.

Like this: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=22669

To link to a specific post in a thread use the little post icon (the teenie page image right before the posted date at the top of the post), and use the same right click/open in new window method.

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=309356#309356

For advanced linking use the URL tags around the word(s) you want to link to. Use the following syntax, only with square brackets instead of the curved ones:

(url=www.mongoosepublishing.com)Like This(/url).

Like This.

Hope that helps.