MRQ 'Atlantean' Edition?

iamtim said:
Just roll d%. Use criticals and fumbles. As skills go up, so does their chance to crit while their chance for automatic failure goes down. Crits trump successes, successes trump failures, failures trump fumbles. With two normal successes, he who wins by the most wins. With two failures, they both fail.

What about if you still use halving with your rule? So basically just "when both characters fail, lower roll wins" rule from rulebook is forgotten.

I haven't done the maths, but it feels quite correct .
 
iamtim said:
Actually I think the simplest solution -- not that I think one is needed any longer, now that I see the reasoning behind it -- is this:

Just roll d%. Use criticals and fumbles. As skills go up, so does their chance to crit while their chance for automatic failure goes down. Crits trump successes, successes trump failures, failures trump fumbles. With two normal successes, he who wins by the most wins. With two failures, they both fail.

No math unless of two successes, then it's just determining degree of success.

So in the case of 350% vs. 125%, if the rolls are 34 and 50, the 350% wins because 34 is a crit. If the rolls are 44 and 50, the 350% wins because 350-44 > 125-50. If the rolls are 95 and 98 the 350% wins because 98 is a failure.

That seems totally simple to me.

That was brought up on another thread. The problem is that including criticals in opposed rolls alters the chances of success very little.

The math works out to 0.5% advantage per difference in critical chance.

Just using criticals turns opposed tests over 100, such as 350 vs 125, turns into a 100 vs 100 test, decided by criticals. The base chance for 100 vs 100 is 49.5%. Since the 350 crits on a 35, and the 125 crits on a 12, the difference is 23. 23 x 0.5 = an 11.5% advantage, added to the base 49.5% chance of winning equals 61%.

So the 350 skill only has a 61% chance of winning vs. a 125 skill.

Adding different levels of success, such as a special result at 20%, and even another level at 50%, makes this system work much better but also changes the basic MRQ rules pretty drastically. The thread this was discussed in is here.
 
atgxtg said:
If it was "broken" and was "fixed" we could call it the Mostali Edtition. :)

That would require a dedicated, unflinching determination to remove all errors, possibly over hundreds of years.

"Do not worry, citizen. Fixing things is on the schedule. All things will be fixed and will work properly - eventually"

Mark
 
atgxtg said:
If it was "broken" and was "fixed" we could call it the Mostali Edtition. :)

Oh very good!

On rolling once for every fuull 100, adding them up and adding the last roll if it's a success - It sounds simple, but adding up 3 or 4 different 2-digit numbers for every skill roll is going to be a huge pain.

On just using the existing rules fro criticals, as I pointed out on another thread, this effectively means that characters stop improving beyond 100%. The only skill improvemnts that make any difefrence whatsoever are the ones that take you over a multiple of 10. As has been pointed out by others even over 200% skill your chance of beating a chaarcter with 90% is only 2 out of 3. Because MRQ crits are on 1/10th skill compared to RQ2 or 3 specials on 1/5th it actualy manages to make MRQ improvement beyond 100% worse than it was under the older RQ systems.

I want to be able to make a single roll, and se streight away from the numbers in front of me how well I did, then compare that to my opponent. No additomns, divisions or subtractions just did I crit/succeed/fail/fumble and how well did the other guy do. It's perfectly possible.


Simon Hibbs
 
simonh said:
I want to be able to make a single roll, and se streight away from the numbers in front of me how well I did, then compare that to my opponent. No additomns, divisions or subtractions just did I crit/succeed/fail/fumble and how well did the other guy do. It's perfectly possible.


Simon Hibbs

Simon, This is an interesting method. Perhaps since you are only rolling against the 10's and 1's columns, and the 100's column merely bumps the degree of success, skills over 100 should be listed with just their 10's and 1's columns, and the 100's value could be noted to the side, perhaps after some marker such as the Mastery rune... So that a skill of 233% would be recorded on the character sheet as 33% W2? I didn't know that Elric used something like this, but it sounds a lot like Heroquest to me.
 
GoingDown said:
What about if you still use halving with your rule? So basically just "when both characters fail, lower roll wins" rule from rulebook is forgotten.

I've thought about that; I've also thought about keeping criticals and using the crit chance from the non-halved skill. So a dude with 110% would be halved to 55% but have a crit chance of 11%.

I dunno, I don't start my game 'till the 31st. I'll probably start with the halving rule and cycle through different options if the halving rule becomes an issue in play.
 
Rurik said:
Just using criticals turns opposed tests over 100, such as 350 vs 125, turns into a 100 vs 100 test, decided by criticals.

I don't think so; you must not have fully read what I said. If neither opponent crits, and neither fails by rolling an 00 or the equivalent of their skill's fumble range, than low roll wins.

So even if neither crits, if neither fumbles one will be a clear winner.
 
algauble said:
So that a skill of 233% would be recorded on the character sheet as 33% W2? I didn't know that Elric used something like this, but it sounds a lot like Heroquest to me.

So true!

Actualy this mechanic has a long and noble history. It's first incarnation was in Pendragon, which used a D20 for resolving skills although the actual mechanic was different. In that ssytem when your skill wne over 20 you criticaled ona score of 20 or more, and got +1 to your roll for each point your skille exceeded 20. It was all a bit oddly explained but the odds worked out the same as the mechanic in HeroQuest.

It's next outing was in Elric, which was a comprehensive rewrite and upgrade of the Stormbringer game. The mechanic I'm suggesting is ripped directly from the beating heart of the Elric rules.

Hero Wars/Quest is actualy only the most recent game to use a similar mechanic, using a D20 as Pendragon did but in a manner that's a bit easier to grasp than Pendragon was.


Simon Hibbs
 
iamtim said:
Rurik said:
Just using criticals turns opposed tests over 100, such as 350 vs 125, turns into a 100 vs 100 test, decided by criticals.

I don't think so; you must not have fully read what I said. If neither opponent crits, and neither fails by rolling an 00 or the equivalent of their skill's fumble range, than low roll wins.

So even if neither crits, if neither fumbles one will be a clear winner.

The math I threw out there was based on low roll wins unless one side criticals. It is actually wrong, the amount it moves is less than .5% per difference in critical (for skills under 500), but it gets (even more) complicated. So my example is generous, the chance of the 350 skill wining are less than 61%.

I realize not everyone is a math masochist like myself. I recommend rolling a bunch of opposed tests and seeing the results. The higher skill should win about 6 out of 10 times in a large enough sample.

Here is the math bit:

Two characters with the same skill each have a 49.5% chance of winning. Since if both get a normal success low roll wins, and if both crit low roll wins, the odds are even if both of those are true. What gives the higher skilled character his advantage is that if he rolls below his crit chance and above the lower skilled characters crit chance he cannot lose.

This is a very narrow range, using your example the range between 35 and 12. But the higher skilled character already wins the majority contests he rolls in that range anyway.

The .5% per chance of crit that it moves from the base 49.5 is a simplification. The .5 is the amount it changes when the crit number is 50 (Skill 500-509). It actually changes less when the crit number is less than 50, so my first example was overly generous.
 
iamtim said:
GoingDown said:
What about if you still use halving with your rule? So basically just "when both characters fail, lower roll wins" rule from rulebook is forgotten.

I've thought about that; I've also thought about keeping criticals and using the crit chance from the non-halved skill. So a dude with 110% would be halved to 55% but have a crit chance of 11%.

Yeah, I might use that as well.

In fail-fail situation I like to have option that both parties actually fail in their task - this gives really interesting happenings. Of course, when fail-fail is not an option, then it is reroll.
 
simonh said:
algauble said:
So that a skill of 233% would be recorded on the character sheet as 33% W2? I didn't know that Elric used something like this, but it sounds a lot like Heroquest to me.

So true!

Actualy this mechanic has a long and noble history. It's first incarnation was in Pendragon, which used a D20 for resolving skills although the actual mechanic was different. In that ssytem when your skill wne over 20 you criticaled ona score of 20 or more, and got +1 to your roll for each point your skille exceeded 20. It was all a bit oddly explained but the odds worked out the same as the mechanic in HeroQuest.

It's next outing was in Elric, which was a comprehensive rewrite and upgrade of the Stormbringer game. The mechanic I'm suggesting is ripped directly from the beating heart of the Elric rules.

Hero Wars/Quest is actualy only the most recent game to use a similar mechanic, using a D20 as Pendragon did but in a manner that's a bit easier to grasp than Pendragon was.


Simon Hibbs


THe odds are a little different between the Pendragon and HQ versions. For one thing Pendragon caps off at 39 (195%) skill. HQ spirals up with degrees of criticals. Pendragon also compares the results with a high (successful) roll beating a lower result (an exception was made for cirticals in the second edtion). HQ works a little differenlty.

Still, if you are going to adopt the HQ merchanic, the I think we should chance MRQ's Hero Points to work like HQ's Hero Points. That it, they give you a "bump".
 
My initial reaction to the opposed role rules was "Where do crits fit?"

mRQ desperately needs a "Design notes" document on the downloads to explain some of the decisions.

I will probably use the following in play:

Use criticals in opposed resolution. SImply because my gamers expect a crits system throughout. Group is built on Pendragon as out common game...

If one side crits and other doesn't: Crit wins
If one side succeeds and other fails: success wins.
If both succeed, higher wins.
If both crit, higher wins.

Just like combat rolls, really.
 
atgxtg said:
Still, if you are going to adopt the HQ merchanic, the I think we should chance MRQ's Hero Points to work like HQ's Hero Points. That it, they give you a "bump".

Only if you want to dramaticaly increase the power of criticals over what they currently are in MRQ. The whole play ballance of HQ is very different to that of MRQ, so I'd be very careful about such a change.

Anyway as I've said it's not realy a HQ mechanic, it's actual much more like the Elric mechanic which pre-dates HQ.

Simon Hibbs
 
Back
Top