d20 Conversions: Rise of the Runelords

Deleriad said:
Actually you've come across one of those situations where d20 and RQ don't correlate on a 1-1 basis. As an example, according to the Pathfinder SRD the STR of a gorilla and a goblin dog are identical at 15 while a common dog is STr 13. An adult Red Dragon is STR 31.

If you look at printed stats for RQ you find that a common dog is average STR 4, a gorilla is average STR 36 and an adult dragon is STR 70. Basically RQ STR is on a much wider range than Pathfinder.

A good rule of thumb is to find a printed RQ equivalent and use that rather than trying to follow a formula. As RQ already has goblins then I would just use the printed stats that already exist and vary them off that. So a goblin dog might use the same stats as a regular dog with a couple more points of STR and SIZ.

On a more fundamental level, especially when it comes to nameless mooks and so on you don't really need to know the characteristics because with the occasional exception of SIZ you never need them directly. When I'm using NPCs and don't need to know the details I only use SIZ and the attributes:
Combat Actions, Strike Rank, Damage Modifier, Move, Magic Points, movement.

Awesome advice all around! I needed to read this. The only problem I can see is if damage becomes too weak. You'd have to emphasize other abilities such as grappling in order to bring down a human. They can always get some kind of racial bonus to skills for this.
 
cthulhudarren said:
Awesome advice all around! I needed to read this. The only problem I can see is if damage becomes too weak. You'd have to emphasize other abilities such as grappling in order to bring down a human. They can always get some kind of racial bonus to skills for this.

Exactly. you are talking about a mob of things that maybe weigh the same as a 10 year old human attacking a 6 foot tall, 200lb knight wearing plate armour with a greatsword. Realistically it ought to end badly for a bunch of angry oompa-loompas no matter how angry they get. However, jumping on the big guy from height and going for the grip combat manoeuvre makes life dodgy for the knight, as does having to deal with one of them closing on him.

Smart goblins use nets, slingstones, befuddle spells, trip wires, snares and pits to deal with marauding humans. Stupid goblins charge to attack and die a lot. Sort of implies that Darwin was wrong when it came to fantasy goblins.
 
PhilHibbs said:
You are a warrior. You are facing an opponent who is not parrying or evading because he has used up all his actions. you are more likely to miss him than you are to hit him. I don't think that is a realistic situation. Anyone who is trained in a profession should have a better-than-evens chance of performing their primary skills.

I'm in a fairly old-school CoC game at the moment and the GM makes almost everything we do consist of more than one skill roll to complete. I think the idea is to make tasks more inetresting by making them multi-step processes using combinations of skills.

That's fine, and I understand the motivation, however because our characters are very vanilla old-skool CoC characters with skills in to 40%-60% range the effect is that most everything we do involves at least one or two failed skill rolls at some point or other. His way round this is by often saying "only failed by 15%? That's close enough!" In other words our characters are crap, and we only get anywhere though GM kindness. It's not a great feeling.

Modern BRP style systems have plenty of mechanisms to allow skill contests to scale well over the 100% threshold. As Phil says, a competent character that someone is likely to actualy want to play and enjoy playing realy ought to have a better than evens chance at succeeding at their best few skills.

IMHO it's beter to give players characters with high skills and impose the occasional -20%, -40% or half chance penalty for realy tough tasks, than it is to give them low skills and hand out charity bonuses to help them succeed at 'easy' tasks.
 
PhilHibbs said:
cthulhudarren said:
Deleriad said:
That's your RQ2 days speaking. Starting PC at novice level is likely to be around 75% in their best skills. That is a deliberate choice. If you look at the BRP Gold Book or the latest CoC, about 75% in best starting skills for a new novice character is about the norm.

I don't understand this. What's the purpose of that? That's too uber for my sensibilities!
You are a warrior. You are facing an opponent who is not parrying or evading because he has used up all his actions. you are more likely to miss him than you are to hit him. I don't think that is a realistic situation. Anyone who is trained in a profession should have a better-than-evens chance of performing their primary skills.

Maybe if your former profession was a warrior. What about someone who was a farmer? I think even 50% is high for someone who has never been in a combat situation before.

Someone that is a hunter would be better with a bow, but again that's not in a combat situation either.
 
cthulhudarren said:
Maybe if your former profession was a warrior. What about someone who was a farmer? I think even 50% is high for someone who has never been in a combat situation before.

Someone that is a hunter would be better with a bow, but again that's not in a combat situation either.

If your character is a farmer then odds are his best weapon skill is somewhere around 35% but his most commonly used farming skills (e.g. brawn, resilience, craft (framing) will be in the 65-75% region. If his father was a farmer but their village was raided by broo and he became a mercenary then odds are his best combat skill is around 75%.

A starting novice character usually has 70%+ in their key skills.
 
Deleriad said:
cthulhudarren said:
Maybe if your former profession was a warrior. What about someone who was a farmer? I think even 50% is high for someone who has never been in a combat situation before.

Someone that is a hunter would be better with a bow, but again that's not in a combat situation either.

If your character is a farmer then odds are his best weapon skill is somewhere around 35% but his most commonly used farming skills (e.g. brawn, resilience, craft (framing) will be in the 65-75% region. If his father was a farmer but their village was raided by broo and he became a mercenary then odds are his best combat skill is around 75%.

A starting novice character usually has 70%+ in their key skills.

I can buy that. It's just with all the points you get at creation it's not hard to buy up any skills, regardless of background. A 17 y.o. Town Scribe can have sword and shield at 70%.
 
cthulhudarren said:
I can buy that. It's just with all the points you get at creation it's not hard to buy up any skills, regardless of background. A 17 y.o. Town Scribe can have sword and shield at 70%.

I don't have a problem with that. Said town scribe is presumably a PC destined for death or glory. After all to get that +70% the town scribe used his cultural background bonus, has a STR of 15 and DEX of 15 and has spent his maximum of +30 free skill points. So here we have a person who spends his day toiling away in an office but each night he goes to his attic where he does press ups and sit ups until it burns, practices for hours on end with his fighting stances and dreams of the day he can track down the petty hoodlum who murdered his parents in that grimy alleyway....
 
Deleriad said:
cthulhudarren said:
I can buy that. It's just with all the points you get at creation it's not hard to buy up any skills, regardless of background. A 17 y.o. Town Scribe can have sword and shield at 70%.

I don't have a problem with that. Said town scribe is presumably a PC destined for death or glory. After all to get that +70% the town scribe used his cultural background bonus, has a STR of 15 and DEX of 15 and has spent his maximum of +30 free skill points. So here we have a person who spends his day toiling away in an office but each night he goes to his attic where he does press ups and sit ups until it burns, practices for hours on end with his fighting stances and dreams of the day he can track down the petty hoodlum who murdered his parents in that grimy alleyway....

He becomes batman. I try to curb optimizers though.
 
Deleriad said:
Actually you've come across one of those situations where d20 and RQ don't correlate on a 1-1 basis. As an example, according to the Pathfinder SRD the STR of a gorilla and a goblin dog are identical at 15 while a common dog is STr 13. An adult Red Dragon is STR 31.

If you look at printed stats for RQ you find that a common dog is average STR 4, a gorilla is average STR 36 and an adult dragon is STR 70. Basically RQ STR is on a much wider range than Pathfinder.

Yeah, I saw that, too ^^. I tried using the conversions from the file I found, but look kinda wonky (it doesn't really change anything until 18, and the it goes hiiiiiigh. For example, the suggested equivalent for STR 31 in d20 is SRT 400-500 :shock: )

A good rule of thumb is to find a printed RQ equivalent and use that rather than trying to follow a formula. As RQ already has goblins then I would just use the printed stats that already exist and vary them off that. So a goblin dog might use the same stats as a regular dog with a couple more points of STR and SIZ.
In the specific case of the Goblin Dog, I think I should base it off more on a wolf than a dog, actually, but toning them down, since the original idea (from the campaign) was to give the goblins mounts that weren't very much more dangerous than themselves, hence the goblin dogs being a toend down wolf.

Looking now at the wolf and the dog from the core and the Monster Coliseum... hm. I think the dog stated in the Monster Coliseum might be a tad too small to be used as a mount. Anithing that a 10 years old chil can't use as a mount should probably not be used by a goblin, either. That said, I see they tie SIZ with STR.

On a more fundamental level, especially when it comes to nameless mooks and so on you don't really need to know the characteristics because with the occasional exception of SIZ you never need them directly. When I'm using NPCs and don't need to know the details I only use SIZ and the attributes:
Combat Actions, Strike Rank, Damage Modifier, Move, Magic Points, movement.

As goblins are fast, weak and magically weak then a standard goblin might look like
CA 3, SR (14)13, DM -1D2, Move 8m, MPs 7, HPs 6
Armour: leather Rags (2APs, body). Penalty: -1
Combat 50%, Evade 60%, Persistence 30%, Resilience 40%,
Non-Combat 30%, Sneaky Goblin skill 60%
Shortspear (M/L 1D8+1), dagger (S/S 1d4+1), Buckler (M/S 1D4), Sling (H/- 1D8)
Common Magic 50%: Fanaticism (2), Pierce 2.
That's very sensible =^_^=, and great writeup. That might be the best way to do it, KISS.

That said, when you use these stats, how do you track damage? Do you use the General Hit Points or the Underlings rules from the core, or do you track wounds as in any regular character?

Thanks again for all the feedback, btw :)
 
cthulhudarren said:
As we discussed in a different thread, I'd suggest breaking up each Gods' cult into multiple cults with roughly equivalent power-level. Each cult would just worship one or two runes(=domains) and have the corresponding spells/skills. You can develop awesome fluff for the myths of each cult from the Pathfinder articles.

:shock: ...Oh! :D

Didn't think about that. That sound superb! Thank you very much!

So a possible example:
Abadar, Master of the First Vault, Judge of the Gods, The Gold-Fisted God of the cities, wealth, merchants and law
Alignment: LN
Domains: Earth, Law, Nobility, Protection, Travel

You could split Abadar worship into 3 cults.

Abadar: Judge of the Gods
Runes: Law, Truth


Abadar: Master of the First Vault
Runes: Earth, Mastery


The Gold-Fisted God of the cities, wealth, merchants, Travel
Runes: Motion, Man

For the myth parts you'd want to tell the stories on how Abadar gained the abilities that go with each runes.
That looks fantastic. Now I must do it ^_^ (more work >_<) Thank you very much!


Question for others: Can you invent more runes? Like one for Civilization? Protection? Commerce?
That's a good question. Is thee anything inherent in a rune (outside of Glorantha, for example) that prevents the making of new ones, or excludes the possible need?
 
Essentially, it doesn't much matter whether "competence" in a skill is defined as being 50% (RQ3), 75% (MRQ), or 100% (Elric!). Each system is designed around those expectations, and each works equally well. Elric! characters are not "more uber" than RQ3 characters just because the numbers in the two different game systems are different, any more than a D&D dog is stronger than a RuneQuest dog.
 
I can buy that. It's just with all the points you get at creation it's not hard to buy up any skills, regardless of background. A 17 y.o. Town Scribe can have sword and shield at 70%.

All you need to do then is describe how the characters background lead to that profficiency. There are endless ways someone with the profession of scribe could end up skilled with a sword. Maybe his father was a famous swordsman. Mr Miyagi in the orriginal karate Kid was a fisherman, he just happened to have been born on on Okinawa, the home of Karate. In real life, Sho Kosugi was all-Japan Karate champion at the age of 18 and his father realy was a fisherman (from Tokyo though).

There is so much to people other than just their profession. I'm an IT engineer and gamer, but also hapen to have 3 years of infantry traning thanks to a stint in the TA, and was a member of the Battalion shooting team. Not many computer nerds have completed week-long urban combat courses, but it just so happens that this one has.

Simon Hibbs
 
simonh said:
I can buy that. It's just with all the points you get at creation it's not hard to buy up any skills, regardless of background. A 17 y.o. Town Scribe can have sword and shield at 70%.

All you need to do then is describe how the characters background lead to that profficiency. There are endless ways someone with the profession of scribe could end up skilled with a sword. Maybe his father was a famous swordsman. Mr Miyagi in the orriginal karate Kid was a fisherman, he just happened to have been born on on Okinawa, the home of Karate. In real life, Sho Kosugi was all-Japan Karate champion at the age of 18 and his father realy was a fisherman (from Tokyo though).

There is so much to people other than just their profession. I'm an IT engineer and gamer, but also hapen to have 3 years of infantry traning thanks to a stint in the TA, and was a member of the Battalion shooting team. Not many computer nerds have completed week-long urban combat courses, but it just so happens that this one has.

Simon Hibbs

I'm not saying they can't, but it reeks of optimization. These adventurers would not have had time to accumulate all these backgrounds. We're talking 17 y.o? I might make my players 15 to start.
 
PhilHibbs said:
Essentially, it doesn't much matter whether "competence" in a skill is defined as being 50% (RQ3), 75% (MRQ), or 100% (Elric!). Each system is designed around those expectations, and each works equally well. Elric! characters are not "more uber" than RQ3 characters just because the numbers in the two different game systems are different, any more than a D&D dog is stronger than a RuneQuest dog.

25-50% is considered "Competent" and 50-75% is considered "Professional" according to the rules (page 33).
 
Albertorius said:
Do you use the General Hit Points or the Underlings rules from the core, or do you track wounds as in any regular character?

This General hit points system is money. It saves a lot of book-keeping and space on the page.
 
cthulhudarren said:
I'm not saying they can't, but it reeks of optimization. These adventurers would not have had time to accumulate all these backgrounds. We're talking 17 y.o? I might make my players 15 to start.
RQII starting age is, I think, 17-20, which means they've probably been apprenticed and/or working for a total of 5-8 years. That's what the 250 points with a cap of 30 on any one skill is aimed at, and it is quite generous I think. For a younger start, 150 Free Skill Points with a cap of 15 per skill might be what you are after. Bear in mind from this that the scribe with 70% has a STR and DEX of 15 each and has spent the maximum amount of time that he could possibly spare on learning how to fight. He didn't just wake up with a wicked sword arm. With my suggestion for a 15-year start, he can have a skill of 55, bearing in mind that his base chance is 30%.

I do actually share your concerns, now that I think about it. The only difference that a warrior profession gets is +10, the rest is all in Free Skill Points, so the differentiation between warrior and scholar (given appropriate stats for the profession) is only going to be 15%. Maybe there is a case to increase the profession skills and reduce the Free Skill Points and limit them to 20 per skill, but then you can't do much about low skills like Resilience or Persistence if your profession doesn't get it. Alternatively, limit Free Skill Points to 30 if you get the skill from your profession, or 20 if you don't, and maybe allow the full 30 if you're buying an Advanced Skill otherwise it just starts at base+10.
 
cthulhudarren said:
25-50% is considered "Competent" and 50-75% is considered "Professional" according to the rules (page 33).

In my view, those adjectives are meaningless.

Think that an untrained average character in MRQ2 has a skill around 21 to 25% in a base skill. Is it legitimate to think a character with 5 or 10 % invested in a skill is "competent" and not a "novice" ?

More than that, I think the real question to ask is how often should a "Competent" character succeed at a task with average (0%) difficulty ?

To me, 25 to 50% is not a good answer. 40 to 60% is more in line with my expectations :).
 
Mugen said:
cthulhudarren said:
25-50% is considered "Competent" and 50-75% is considered "Professional" according to the rules (page 33).
...Think that an untrained average character in MRQ2 has a skill around 21 to 25% in a base skill. Is it legitimate to think a character with 5 or 10 % invested in a skill is "competent" and not a "novice" ?
...
To me, 25 to 50% is not a good answer. 40 to 60% is more in line with my expectations :).
I agree - I'd rate "competent" as 50-75 and "professional" as 75-100, so RQII starting characters are mostly at the low end of "professional".
 
Mugen said:
More than that, I think the real question to ask is how often should a "Competent" character succeed at a task with average (0%) difficulty ?

Every time bar unusual circumstances. If I am a competent car driver it means I can take the car out and come back home safely.

As it says in the rulebook "Routine activities; those an Adventurer conducts time and again, under normal circumstances and expected pressures, do not require a roll for success."

However if I were merely a competent driver and had to make an emergency manoeuvre to avoid a disaster then I would expect to fail fairly frequently. On the other hand I would I would expect a professional driver (say someone who drives for a living) to succeed most times.
 
cthulhudarren said:
As we discussed in a different thread, I'd suggest breaking up each Gods' cult into multiple cults with roughly equivalent power-level.

I don't think I'd go that far - some Gods, and some Cults are undeniably more powerful than others (Who is more powerful - the Roman Catholic Church or The Church of God (Huntsville, Alabama) (about whom, admittedly, I know nothing, but a quick Google for "minor Christian sects" threw them up as an example).

It is, however a good idea to break Gods up by "aspect" (per the Abadar example upthread). Another principle to follow is that a cult that offers potentially great power to PC's should also be one that limits them in other ways, so that picking a god isn't just a case of going for the one with the best attack spell... These limits can be in terms of forbidden magic, Geases and Restrictions on behaviour, and/or social consequences of belonging to the cult in question.



cthulhudarren said:
Question for others: Can you invent more runes? Like one for Civilization? Protection? Commerce?

Yes - If you are creating your own Campaign world (or adapting one originally published for another system) then Runequests Glorantha-centric Runes may not be the best fit. Runes should be the "basic building blocks" - Civilization may be covered by the Harmony Rune, Commerce is covered by the Communication/Exchange Rune.

Most cults cover no more than three Runes - (A powerful "ruler" type deity may have minor aspects that offer some ability in other runes), so try not to get too carried away!
 
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