Combat methods

[Utgardloki]

What do people think is the best way for a character in Runequest to establish unique combat methods and skills, other than Legendary Abilities. Legendary Abilities are nice, but they're very legendary. I'd like lesser characters to also be able to distinguish themselves.

People here criticize D&D a lot, but the 3rd edition Feat mechanic does work well for making one sword-wielding character different from every other sword-wielding character, in terms of whether the attack fast, or attack often, or hit hard, or use two weapons at once, etc. Runequest, until characters are able to get Legendary Abilities, characters seem to be mainly differentiated by what their skill levels are.

Specialization may be one way: the idea is that a skill like Sword Use can be specialized with Two Weapon Fighting, Sword Parrying, Sword Use vs Broo, Second Strike Sword Use, etc. Each specialization is built up like a skill, and the player can add a skill and specialization together to determine his character's effective skill level.

Another way I've defined, which is a bit controversial, is to allow players to spend Hero Points for advantages which are available before Legendary Abilities become available. This allows use of all the D20 feats by just converting the effects to Runequest and applying an appropriate Hero Point cost. One thing I like about this idea is that it can get players to spend their Hero Points, which means they have something else to do with them other than making sure that they survive all attacks against them.

Any other ideas?

 

[Durand Durand]

You could use a tree'd powers system like Exalted's. Perhaps some different special moves or results for specific weapons. For instance, thrusting weapons get impales, what about bludgeoning weapons getting a knockback bonus of some kind and slashing weapons damage opponents weapons on a critical parry. That makes weapons a bit different. You could have special abilities that focus extra effort on these attack differences.

Another idea is to have legendary abilites slowly develop. Something like a 3 tiered ability that increases with time/training/questing, giving increasing levels of bonus and or additional related ability. Weapon mastery benefits might slowly accrue with lesser expenditure of HP until full benefits are reached, with similarly increasing prerequisite abilities for each level.

Just some ideas.

DD

 

[Trifletraxor]

What is the point of making RQ more AD&D-like? Before, RQ was the alternative for those who liked a bit more realistic system. The more AD&D-like the system gets, the less reason people have for chosing RQ instead of AD&D. If people want to play a game where everyone runs around with greater cleave and massacre an army of orcs in one round, a game, AD&D is the natural choice.

SGL.

 

[Utgardloki]

What is the point of making RQ more AD&D-like?

If I didn't make RQ more AD&D like, I could be playing Call of Cthulhu. CoC Dark Ages is very gritty and "realistic", but I was a little disatisfied because there was no provision for extra heroism.

On the other hand, D&D has provisions for super heroism. Runequest promised to be a medium-level system.

Kind of like the difference between having coffee black, having coffee with seven spoons of sugar (like I do), and having coffee with just a spoon or two of sugar.

So my point is that I'd like my Runequest with just a little more sugar, but maybe not as sweet as D&D is.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Perhaps this sort of thing would make a good martial arts supplement...

 

[Trifletraxor]

two spoons of sugar?

SGL.

 

[iamtim]

The more AD&D-like the system gets, the less reason people have for chosing RQ instead of AD&D.

It is possible to keep the feel of RQ while importing some D&D-style mechanics to make the game more appealing to D&D players. The two are not mutually exclusive and there's a reason why D&D is the most popular fantasy role-playing game of, well, pretty much all time.

While I'm not advocating D&D-izing RQ, there are certain things that can be learned and implemented from the success of D&D.

 

[Trifletraxor]

It is possible to keep the feel of RQ while importing some D&D-style mechanics to make the game more appealing to D&D players. The two are not mutually exclusive and there's a reason why D&D is the most popular fantasy role-playing game of, well, pretty much all time.

Oh yes they are!!! Start importing AD&D-style mechanics to RuneQuest, and you end up with a D100 style AD&D. (And that is a horrible thought!)



SGL.

 

[iamtim]

Oh yes they are!!! Start importing AD&D-style mechanics to RuneQuest, and you end up with a D100 style AD&D.

So... there is NOTHING good in D&D, then? Absolutely nothing? It's ALL crap?

 

[Trifletraxor]

That's correct. Now you got it!

SGL.

 

[iamtim]

That's correct. Now you got it!

Ok.

Well, I can see that this is a dead-end conversation.

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

Slight derail:

The d20 resolution mechanic is excellent (IMO), and feats and skills make a good springboard for developing a classless system.

I'm not sure about RQ being a medium system. It's always been lowdown and gritty, and in fact MRQ is far more medium than previous incarnations. Still lowdown and gritty, but less so than before.

Back on topic:

Yes, allowing characters to develop their own individual combat style is a good idea. Something like every 20 points of skill unlocking a new combat action would work well for me. We could then have basic combat actions (as listed in the core rules) which any Joe who learns how to swing a weapon can do, and advanced combat actions which would be the ones which are unlocked.

 

[Trifletraxor]

That's correct. Now you got it!

Ok.

Well, I can see that this is a dead-end conversation.

Yes, ten million different species of gorakiki-worshippers can't be wrong!



SGL.

 

[soltakss]

While I'm not advocating D&D-izing RQ, there are certain things that can be learned and implemented from the success of D&D.

I've not played a lot of AD&D (a couple of years play, 20 years ago) but it's strengths seem to me to include:
1. A comprehensive rulebook
2. Lots, and I mean lots, of cheap almost throw-away supplements/scenarios
3. A huge amount of extra support in terms of fanzine articles
4. The possibilty, with character classes, of many new character classes for people to develop characters in new ways

RQM certainly doesn't have (1), it seems to be spreading rules across a variety of supplements.
Currently, there are a fair number of supplements coming out and, with companies like Seraphim Guard and Otherworld Creations there may well be a host of throwaway supplements coming, so (2) might be taken care of.
There has historically been number of RQ fanzines, but they seem to have disappeared, with the exception of Tradetalk, perhaps. Hopefully we'll see more fanzines published in the near future.
Although RQM does not have character classes, it does have cults and professions, which allow people's characters to develop in interesting ways, so (4) should be fine.

As to game mechanics and game rules, I don't know enough about AD&D these days to comment. The last version I saw, a long time ago, had clerics getting different spells depending on what kind of deity they worshipped, so it was moving closer to RQ than before.

In any case, it is awlays fairly easy to steal ideas from other systems and repackage them for RQ.

 

[simonh]

What do people think is the best way for a character in Runequest to establish unique combat methods and skills, other than Legendary Abilities. Legendary Abilities are nice, but they're very legendary. I'd like lesser characters to also be able to distinguish themselves.

Here again, practical experience with the new system is thin on the ground, but in previous editions of RQ characters often developed very distinctive styles and approaches to combat. Their individual choice of weapons, armour, shield or no shield, emphasis on ranged or melee combat, secondary weapon or unarmed skills, offensive and defensive magic choices and also which combat rules they habitualy took advantage of all added up to a very wide pallate of choices. None of this requires any specific support in the rules for specialist options only learned by certain characters. rather, it naturaly emerges from the richness of the system.

D&D doesn't have that because it doesn't model the differences between weapons very well (e.g. suitability for parrying), it doesn't model armour and shields very well, it doesn't model combat skills very well, and it doesn't allow most fighting characters to have a rich array of offensive and defensive magic. Therefore it needs to have something like profficiencies and feats or whatever in order to increase the tactical options available.

In this respect MRQ seems to be very true to the spirit of RuneQuest past. It also has a set of game mechanics that cover a very wide variety of equipment, skill, maneuver and magic support options for characters. In a system like this, arbitrary 'profficiencies' that you have to buy or select in order to be able to use them at all just plain aren't necessery. They're a workaround to a problem that doesn't exist in RuneQuest.