sarahnewton said:
I think the issues identified so far are quite easily fixed, in fact. And without getting too "house-rulesy" about it. You could do the following without causing too much pain, and, I imagine, without breaking the MRQ system:
1.) 100%+ Halving Rule Solution 1.
Ignore it. If you have a 120% skill, you have a 12% critical chance, a 96-00 failure chance, a 00 fumble chance. This applies on all rolls, opposed or not (but see #3) below. This is a minimal impact fix, as far as I can see, and would probably work well in a campaign where you have very little 100%+ activity, with most play being under 100% skills. Let me know if you see any probs with it!
2.) 100%+ Halving Rule Solution 2.
Ignore it, and replace with the "HeroQuest" mastery solution. This means that blocks of 100% cancel one another out - a 220% attacker vs. a 160% defender is played as 120% vs 60%. Any remaining blocks of 100 are used to "bump up" the success of the roll; in that latter case, the 120% is treated as 20%, but all results are "bumped up" one notch, so a fumble becomes a fail, a fail a success, a success a critical. On a critical, you bump your opponent down one level. I'm summarising, but that's more or less the mechanic. This would probably work well in a campaign where you have a lot of 100%+ activity.
Well, I think I perhaps will use option 1 there.
Though I am considering using the Stormbringer rule of splitting % over 100 into several attacks for combat.
But considering the Action/Reaction system, this will most likely break things quickly. Unless you reduce the number of actions/reactions a character has.
sarahnewton said:
3.) Opposed Defense Rolls.
Ignore the second roll - the initial unopposed attack roll becomes the first roll in an opposed contest if the defender elects to defend. Treat the success level of the first attack roll as the one the defender has to compete against. One die roll less - and I can't see that you've lost much, if anything at all.
I agree, I can not see why this is not the way it was done in the first place.
What you loose is the "attacker failed" part of the table, which hurts the defender more than a little.
But then, I see very little that is in favor of the defender at all in MRQ. There is a serious problem with being able to defend yourself well, you will always take some damage.
sarahnewton said:
4.) Critical Hits
Make them ignore armour. This way, a critical hit to an opponent's head with a "war sword" has at least the chance of knocking him unconscious.
Well, not having it this way is just insane. That I know for a fact after having run other game with HP / Hit Location. It just break down into a D&D-esque feeling otherwise.
"What? a dagger in my eye, ah, nothing worse, I'll live"
That should be a serious injury, a dagger in the head is serious any day in our world. Obviously not in Glorantha and MRQ.
sarahnewton said:
5.) Skybolt
Jury's out on this one. If I ever play MRQ, I won't be using this spell, at least until I've seen how the rest of the game plays out, at length.
Well, if there had been a Total HP to keep track of, and it had dealt damage to just that, then it would have made sense with a really deadly 3d6 damage spell. But as you say...
sarahnewton said:
That just leaves you with the bits of MRQ which I see as being genuinely new - the Combat Actions, variable Strike Rank, and Rune Magic rules. I'm happy & willing to give all of these new rules a whirl & see how they play out!
Cheers,
Sarah
Variable initiative is something I am used to in BRP games since 1983 (swedish game; Drakar och Demoner). It is nothing new, neither are Combat actions (swedish game; Drakar och Demoner 91 - Krigarens Handbook (warriors handbook, had these rules)). I know they work well.
So in a way I am just happy that a BRP derivative (which MRQ can not be called other than that) available in the english language finally have included them.
So what I guess I am most exited about is that there finally is a BRP-derivative/Clone that is OGL!
