Even if we’re currently using D20 for our Conan campaign, I can’t say I’m really satisfied with the system, and neither is the majority of my players. We encountered many problems in D20 that didn’t occur in our previous Conan BRP campaigns.
The party will be around level 10 by the end of Betrayer of Asgard, a good point to stop the campaign and start a new one, switching back to a BRP based system.
By the way, I think the major flaws of Conan D20 come from the fact that the system had to be tweaked for Conan, thus affecting its balance, creating problems that were not present in D&D. The ‘Power Attack/MD problem’ is a perfect example of this, for instance. The Defence system has been changed, giving the average character a lower Defence than in standard D20. MD has been lowered to 20, and weapons get higher damage dices, thus making power attacking 2hd weapons far too much powerful, allowing to trigger MD on every blow, something that doesn’t happen in standard D20 rules. (There are been many threads about this on this forum, hence this example…)
The main advantage of BRP is its flexibility. As it is shown in the last edition of Chaosium BRP, the game can easily be tailored to your needs, a thing that’s more difficult in D20 given the intricacy of the system.
People that say you can’t run a heroic campaign using BRP obviously don’t know the system very well… Designing your own BRP is a very easy task. My own version has been build from scratch, using ideas from different systems, BRP based or not, and without the need of calculating math heavy formulas.
Many of the points against BRP in this thread don’t appear very logical to me.
For instance:
As I said above, the d20 rules need some tweaking in several areas but going to a % based system will simply introduce different problems and to my mind give a weaker starting point for gameplay. Mainly because RQ is not a system that allows heroic combats of one against many but also because the % system, as Colvenhoof says, copes quite poorly with ease/difficulty of tasks. Let's say I've Climb 50%. When do I roll and what bonus penalties apply in the following cases?
Climbing a 40' ladder tilted at 95 degrees?
Climbing a 100' 'vertical' rock face.
Climbing a wet and slippery 65 degree slab where the holds are small and poor?
Hauling myself onto a low roof?
Using daggers as impromptu handholds inserted in the masonry to scale a castle wall?
In d20 one merely sets a difficulty level and rolls against it. In RQ I must determine a penalty or bonus to each roll, which adds a step to the process.
I can’t see the point. What’s the difference between setting a difficulty level or a penalty/bonus? In the end, you’ll end with a chance to perform the action. If you have, let’s say a +5 bonus to climb against a difficulty of 15, you’ll end with a 50% chance of performing the action (needing a 10 or more). If you have a Climbing skill of 60% and a penalty of 10%, you’ll still have 50%. In both cases, you’ll have to choose a number to set the difficulty of the action. I don’t see why it’s more difficult to choose a penalty/bonus than a target number…
The Hp problem is also a no brainer to my eyes as killing blows (due to MD) appear quite frequently in Conan. And using the CON+SIZ hp formula allows an armoured character to stand pretty well in a pitched battle.
The RQ hit location system can cause problems indeed, but it is not a rule that’s implemented into every BRP game. Removing it doesn’t change anything to the system. Actually, only a few BRP games ever used this system (RQ, Ringworld and Elfquest, if I remember well…)
The “Magic” problem isn’t actually one I think. It’s true than in RQ magic is quite mundane, but the vast majority of BRP settings are rather low magic, far more than the average D20 game. You can go without magic in BRP. For instance, healing rates have been changed in D20 Conan to compensate the lack of magical healing. There is nothing that prevents you from doing the same in BRP. The 1 hp/week rule might be good for Cthulhu, but not for Conan…
Same for skill levels. It’s up to you to choose. In Elric, you can start the game with skills higher than 100% (and it’s not cheating, as Clovenhoof might think), when in RQ III, you’ll be happy with a meagre 40%. The system is flexible enough to let you decide of the power level of your campaign. Same for multiple attacks or parries. MRQ has several actions, Elric let you split your percentile or take multiple parries, and so on. As I said the system is easily tweakable for your own needs.
BRP is table-based… Well I don’t know where you’ve seen that. Flip through the average D20 rulebook and then do the same for BRP. You’ll see for yourself… One of the main advantages of BRP for me is that it’s a direct dice reading system, with no tables or cross reference. Well, there’s the Resistance Table but its mechanics are very simple to use without consulting it.
All this doesn’t mean BRP wins all and D20 sucks. BRP has its own flaws, just as D20 does.
D20 has more options for character building than any BRP game, and is perfect for people who like crunching numbers and a more tactical approach of the game. BRP, with its light and flexible system is more ‘storytelling’ oriented. It’s up to each gaming group to choose the system that suits its style of play.
My own version of the Conan BRP is quite far from the original rules and borrows ideas from other systems, including D20. It goes like this:
I use BRP stats, which are basically the same as D20, with SIZ added. I use characteristics rolls for some special actions, with 3 levels of difficulty (Average x 5%, Difficult x3%, Very Difficult x1%).
Hps are CON+SIZ for heroes and major villains, CON+SIZ/2 for goons. I kept the Major Wound Level. I use some wound penalties (less than ½ hp: -2 Initiative, Physical Actions
–10%; less than ¼ hp: -4/-20%). Wound penalties occur after combat, to simulate the adrenaline rush of the fight. Natural healing is 1d3 per wound per day.
I use a Fate point system, which are drawn from MPs:
-Reroll: 5 points
-Soak Damage: 3 pts/dmg pt.
-Maximum Damage: Weapon dmg range in pts.
I also use them for other minor actions. It’s a neat mechanic that doesn’t introduce a new stat and that gives a nice use of Magic Points, which are a bit left aside in low magic settings.
I kept the OGL Terror Factor, making it an opposed roll vs POW, using the Resistance Table.
Damage bonuses have always been rather clumsy in BRP, so I went for the neat OGL fixed bonus, simplifying dice rolling in combat.
I hate weapon tables, so I use broad weapons categories, like light weapons (+1 Init, dmg 1d6); 1hd Weapons (+0/2d6); 2hd weapons (-1/3d6), and so on… It has streamlined combat a lot and allows players to favour some weapons for style rather than just checking stats numbers, making some weapons overused and some other forgotten. I also use broad weapon skills, based on the same categories, which allows to avoid the Yelmalio Rune master problem mentioned somewhere…
Armours have fixed values and gives penalties to Initiative and Physical skills.
Critical hits are 10% of attack chance, so calculating them is no big deal. They do maximum damage, ignoring armour, with a Critical Effect based on the last BRP rules (bleeding, crushing, impaling or knockback depending on weapon type).
I sometimes use hit locations, but without hp repartition. I use a the reverse of the attack roll, like in Warhammer. Locations are mainly for wearing only armor pieces (which is very much S&S for me…). There’s some extra damage when striking vital areas like chest (+1d6) or head (+1d6, stun chance)..
I suspect that if Elric had been first done in d20 by Mongoose then there would be a whole forum of people saying that it is impossible to do Elric in MRQ for a million reasons.
The best statement so far of this while thread...
