duncan_disorderly
Mongoose
atgxtg said:
...Or would do if the person who had written the Combat matrix had remembered that it is possible to fumble...
Maybe you'll be able to cross index rolls on the combat matrix of MRQ 2E?
Max-out skills at 100%?
- Thread starter Banesfinger
- Start date
...Or would do if the person who had written the Combat matrix had remembered that it is possible to fumble...
Maybe you'll be able to cross index rolls on the combat matrix of MRQ 2E?
Banned Beetle
Mongoose
I'm going to cap non-combat skills at 100%. I will also use the skill-check method of experience gain. With no skill modifiers, getting 100% in a skill with the skill-check method will take years, not months.
Upon reaching this mastery of a skill (100%), I plan to reward the player by allowing him to choose the order of the d10s in the d100 roll after rolling when attempting that skill.
With the skill-check method, VERY few players will ever reach mastery of a skill, but then at least they have something to reach for.
(non-combat skill enchancing spells and positive situational modifiers will only be allowed to increase a skill up to 95%.)
Trif.
(NB: I'm talking about non-combat skills!)
Upon reaching this mastery of a skill (100%), I plan to reward the player by allowing him to choose the order of the d10s in the d100 roll after rolling when attempting that skill.
With the skill-check method, VERY few players will ever reach mastery of a skill, but then at least they have something to reach for.
(non-combat skill enchancing spells and positive situational modifiers will only be allowed to increase a skill up to 95%.)
Trif.
(NB: I'm talking about non-combat skills!)
Hmmm, so someone with Athletics (I almost said Climbing) 100% who is using a spell such as Spiderlimbs (from RQ3 but there would be an RQM equivalent) that doubles Climb doesn't go to 200% Athletics.
If he tried to climb a sheer wall with Difficulty -40 then he would be at 60% with or without the benefit of Spiderlimbs.
Is that right?
If he tried to climb a sheer wall with Difficulty -40 then he would be at 60% with or without the benefit of Spiderlimbs.
Is that right?
Banned Beetle said:
Imagine someone who plays every week and has short scenarios, so has an experience roll per week. He rolls up a character and gets Athletics 60%, not that difficult, and decided to increase it every week. Even if he fails to increase his skill he gets a +1%, so within 40 weeks he is guaranteed 100%. With experience rolls, he is likely to reach 100% far sooner than that.
Even with skill checks, he can probably find a good reason to use Athletics every week and get a skill check. After all, how many scenarios don't involve at least one of Running, Climbing, Jumping, Swimming, Arm Wrestling and Holding Your Breath?
Banned Beetle
Mongoose
soltakss said:
fair point, thanks for the tip.
i'll change the above rule to: spells and situation modifiers can temporary bring skill to above 100%, but this does not convey mastery of the skill.
(not something to come up often though)
My players don't get +1% when they fail an experience roll, they get zero. They get +1% if they succeed in the experience roll and roll 1 on the d6. As a little experiment, I just used 73 attempted experience rolls to get from 60 to 100, so it's not like it's likely to happen frequently.
Trifletraxor.
See, just 73 weeks. Easy-peasy.
I allow my players to use a Hero Point to attempt to reroll a failed Experience Roll. That way, they can choose to try again which gives them a better chance of increasing skills and also burns up Hero Points, which is always a good thing for a GM to do.
I don't use the 1% increase on failure, but I'm not really using the RQM rules. I probably would do if I used the RQM rules, simply because skill progression is a lot slower than in RQ3, so if you are going to burn an XP on a skill, you want something out of it.
But, there again, I'm a nice, easy-going GM.
I allow my players to use a Hero Point to attempt to reroll a failed Experience Roll. That way, they can choose to try again which gives them a better chance of increasing skills and also burns up Hero Points, which is always a good thing for a GM to do.
I don't use the 1% increase on failure, but I'm not really using the RQM rules. I probably would do if I used the RQM rules, simply because skill progression is a lot slower than in RQ3, so if you are going to burn an XP on a skill, you want something out of it.
But, there again, I'm a nice, easy-going GM.
Banned Beetle
Mongoose
Banned Beetle said:
Not to pleasing to the eye either though. Lets rather say:
"Situational modifiers and spells can only increase a non-combat skill up 95%. The effect from spells are added after situational modifiers (positive or negative) are taken into account."
So in this case, the guy with the spiderclimb climbs at 95% (but including the mastery rule, as he had mastered the skill).
8)
Trifletraxor.
Banned Beetle
Mongoose
73 separate adventures, in which every single one they get an experience check. Most adventurers are dead long before that.soltakss said:
Hehe, I threw HeroPoints out the window A LONG time ago. Reminds me too much of AD&D (& HW!).
I don't like the MRQ rules for experience, so I will be using the RQ3 skill check rules. It's the best rules for experience gain I've come across so far. Tick-hunting isn't much of a problem, as it's quite easy to discourage.
I'm not. I like to have them fear for the lives of their characters! :twisted:
Trifletraxor.
(actually getting kinda satisfied with the current version of the capping rules.
)gamesmeister
Banded Mongoose
Banned Beetle said:
Err, this is what I said a bunch of posts back. The only thing you haven't mentioned is what this characters critical range would be.
Banned Beetle
Mongoose
gamesmeister said:
Complete rule:
"Once a character has reached 100% in a non-combat skill, which is the highest possible, he has mastered it. A mastery rune is written over the skill-check box. A character who has mastered a skill, gain the bonus of being allowed to chose the order of the d10 in the d100 roll after he has rolled it.
Situational modifiers and spells can only increase a non-combat skill up 95%. The effect from spells are added after situational modifiers (positive or negative) are taken into account."
The critical range is 10% of his skill, as normal (but he's chance of getting it is higher when the mastery rule is taken into account).
Works perfectly with the skill-check system of experience gain. Probably not as well with official MRQ system of experience gain.
Can you think of any examples where this doesn't work out?
Trifletraxor.
Banesfinger
Mongoose
soltakss said:
Comparing this advancement to D&D (that 'other' game):
Acording to the D&D rules, a character should 'level' about every 4 sessions. For a character to go from only +5% skill (at 1st level) to +100% skill (at 20th level), it would take 20 levels x 4 sessions = 80 sessions (or about 80 weeks if you play every week).
This seems like double the duration soltakss quoted, except you have to remember a D&D character advances many skills during a typical level (attacks, saving throws/resistance, at least 2 skills, and special abilities/feats). About the equivilent of 4-6 RQ skills/level.
So, by my calculations, advancement is roughly the same.
IMO, this is a good rate, since 80 weeks of play is roughly 2 years (with occasional breaks).
gamesmeister
Banded Mongoose
Banned Beetle said:
Well first off under normal circumstances you've reduced the chance of automatic failure from 5% to 2% (99 & 00). May or may not be a good thing.
Second, it doesn't really matter whether you put the spell modifiers before or after situation modifiers, you still have the same problem. Let's say you're trying to whip up a crowd with your Persuasion skill of 95%, the crowd are already angry giving you a +20%, but I'm using Fearsome Din 6 in the background, your success chance will still be 65% rather than 85%.
Finally, you need to define non-combat skills. For example, is Dodge a combat skill? Runecasting?
It seems unnecessarily complicated to me, but each to their own
gamesmeister
Banded Mongoose
atgxtg said:
Isn't the latter the same as allowing the skill to go over 100%, and calculating the critical range based on the real skill but only treating skills over 100% as 100%?
weasel_fierce said:
Um... My current RQ3 campaign has been running continuously, on a weekly basis since 1980ish (we converted to RQ3 from our original RQ2 campaign, which technically started with RQ1 rules and added the "optional stuff" that later appeared in RQ2). Same game world. Same NPCs. Same timeline. It's likely the longest running single RPG campaign in existence, but I can't be sure of that.
I guess my experience may be different then most, but we *do* play for very very long periods of time. Heck. I've run single scenarios in this campaign that have run for more then a year (same set of characters on the same adventure). I know that lots of people run scattered scenarios and change characters and worlds often, but we don't. And I don't think a game rule system should assume that a campaign is going to be restarted ever X years either.
We'd most certainly see a preponderance of characters with a whole bunch of "100"s marked on their sheets. Doubly so since MRQ actually reduces the number of core non-combat skills. I have several characters right now that have over 100% in hide, sneak, conceal, scan, search, and listen. Not to mention things like ride, throw, track, jump, climb, etc... Most of which are condensed into far fewer skills in MRQ, meaning the same characters, had they been run under MRQ rules would simply have a sheet full of 100s on just about everything and in far less time...
This may not apply to everyone, but I think it's incredibly limiting to simply place hard skill level restrictions in your game. IMO, the problem is that you want to start out characters with "decent" skill levels (to avoid the "wiff fest" factor that many players dislike), but that leaves relatively little room between those decent levels and the max level (if you make 100% the max). You could artificially slow down advancement, but now the players will be discouraged that their characters aren't growing fast enough. You could start them with lower skill levels, but now you're back to the "I'm not heroic at all" factor.
If you're going to "fix" the problems with dealing with opposed skills, and this fix requires changing some of the core MRQ rules, I just think that everything being equal, coming up with a fix that allows skills to progress over 100% and stay meaningful is better then one that does not.
But that's just me...
I agree with Gnarsh, especially since the standard rules in MRQ start you off with characters in the 70% to 80%+ skill range.
One option is to not have skill progression at all. Traveller did quite nicely for a long time with no skill advancement rules whatever. If your assumption is that the characters are well experienced and at the top of their game, then why do you need them? It's just a matter of what the focus of the particular campaign is. I suppose the advancement systems come from the fact that many fantasy novels and stories are coming of age stories where the characters grow considerably during the course of the tale, but it doesn't have to be that way for every story, or every game.
One option is to not have skill progression at all. Traveller did quite nicely for a long time with no skill advancement rules whatever. If your assumption is that the characters are well experienced and at the top of their game, then why do you need them? It's just a matter of what the focus of the particular campaign is. I suppose the advancement systems come from the fact that many fantasy novels and stories are coming of age stories where the characters grow considerably during the course of the tale, but it doesn't have to be that way for every story, or every game.
gamesmeister
Banded Mongoose
Rurik said:
Just to come back to this point, it does specifically say crits are based on the modified skill.
Core rulebook, page 19: "Note that the chance of a critical success relates to the modified skill total being used in the test, not the original 'normal' skill level. If a character is suffering a penalty to the skill test, it will reduce the character's chance of scoring a critical success. If a character has a bonus to the skill test, it will increase the character's chance of scoring a critical success."
simonh said:
This is an approach I actually like a lot. There should be a mechanism for learning new skills, but people don't steadily progress in everything they do so that they inevitably end up with 150+% in skills they actually use.
In the games I play (and run) we usually play competent people, with very slow (or nonexistant) skill development in play. If development happens, it's either in new skills, or then because of dedicated research/practise over a period of years.
simonh said:
Hear, hear!
The major bonus (at least to me) is that skill levels can take on definite meaning. If 60% skill is a veteran soldier, it should still mean that after several years of play. It's strange to play with RPG-systems that result in any veteran character becoming almost superhuman.
frogspawner
Mongoose
For me, the character is the thing, rather than any particular episode they take part in. Progression is necessary, or there is no point. It doesn't have to be quick - and indeed it shouldn't be - but it should be possible.
PS: The dream is that you are steering your character towards glory, hero-, even superhero-dom. And for that you need progression. (Beyond 100% too...)
PS: The dream is that you are steering your character towards glory, hero-, even superhero-dom. And for that you need progression. (Beyond 100% too...)
weasel_fierce
Mongoose
I'd argue that there are games where progression isnt really important. A lot of superhero games f.x., or games that are intentionally not written for campaign play, f.x.
