RuneQuest II: Fixing the maths

[simonh]

Do characters improve without boundaries? I'm suggesting that whatever we may believe, it's the dice (in RPGs) that create the boundary. When you have a skill of 220%, I'm not entirely sure what that could mean.

It means your chance of a special success is 44% for a start, which is not too shabby. If you start from the perspective that most characetrs will have their best skill a bit over 100%, this frees you up to be more free to apply hefy modifiers to tasks. I think this is a realy good thing as it makes the challenges the characetrs face more varied and interesting. Instead of every lock having the same basic skill chance of being picked, this one was made by a master craftsman and you're at half chance, but that one is a crude old-fashioned model and you're at +30%. IMHO most skill rolls should have modifiers of this kind, it makes the game world feel a lot more inetersting.

This is one reason I liked the Elric variant of the BRP game system. In Elric, 220% sword skill means you can attack twice per round at 110% chance each, or three times at 73% chance. You also get bags of parrys. The new BRP core book has inherited some good ideas like this for scaling skills.

One disadvantage MRQ has is that in moving to Mongoose a lot of the accumulated experience that Chaosium had in tuning and extending the BRP system was lost in the change of publisher. Loz has a solid BRP background and brought a lot of that experience back, but while MRQ2 is a solid game there is still plenty of scope for iterative improvement in areas like this.

Simon Hibbs

 

[duncan_disorderly]

Also, what maths war? I don't recognize the problem.

The "Maths War" only exists if the sole purpose of an RPG is to roll better dice than the GM. In this situation then any improvement in your roll is purely illusionary if it is offset by either a penalty imposed by the GM or an equal improvement in his roll (whether by increasing the skill of the oponent or switching to a "More powerful monster")

But RPG's are not just about who rolls the best dice. The 15 year old shepherd boy fending off a hungry wolf from his fathers sheep is very different from the experienced warrior fighting off the Troll bandit, is very different from the Kings Champion defending the princess from the marauding dragon, even if the mathematical odds turn out to be the same in each case.

Similarly a starting characte may have the same relative chance to scramble over the orchard wall to scrump apples as the experienced adventurer does to climb the Condor Crags to steal a magical egg, but that's because the starting character would not stand a chance of climbing the Crags, even assuming he could survive the journey to get there.

RPG advancement is certainly not perfect. It is based on a particular type of story, and often means you need to create a character who is less able than you desire in order to grow to be the character you want to play, and who will end up becoming more powerful than your original concept. You can certainly run a one-off game and ignore all advancement. You could also run a campaign where you start with characters at a particular level of ability and have little of no (mechanical) advancement (but I know lots of people who don't like one-offs - they see one of the corner posts of a RPG as being the fact that you create a character and continue to play that character. They aren't interested in a character they know has a built in "best before" date...)

 

[Deleriad]

One thing as well about advancement in RQII is that you can tune it depending on the needs of the campaign because it is primarily done through three mechanics:
Hero Points, Improvement Rolls and training.

To reduce advancement you simply reduce the frequency IRs being handed out and reduce access to down time for training. In that case advancement is largely through the increase in hero points. In a campaign like Blood of Orlanth where everything happens over about 8 weeks there is almost no downtime. This means that if you start with very junior characters you can give out IRs every session and progress quite quickly. On the other hand, if the characters are already very good you can reduce the IR frequency and they'll end up with broadly similar skills to what they had at the start. In fact, if the players are too free with spending Hero Points at the early stage, they may even end up relatively weaker at the end.

Mind you there's a difference between speed (or even lack) of advancement and a system which caps the total skill points so that you have to decline in some to advance in others. The latter seems to be the worst of both worlds.

 

[Jujitsudave]

I've thought about this redundant cycle myself. Character's advance and imprive skills only to be faced with harder foes. In actuality, you cannot see any REAL improvement, because the challenges always match you. This is a real illusory concept put into practice in D20, but I have to disagree about it being active and problematic in Runequest.

The way I see it, obstacles may be overcome by a variety of different means in this game whether it's through negotiation, stealth, problem solving, avoidance or combat. Which one the player ultimately decides to use is up to them and consequently, which one to advance as well.

Combat is something that should only be presented if it is either an unavoidable part of the adventure's storyline or if the characters botch up some kind of event. Otherwise, things may be dealt with using far easier means.

What is great about this system is that while the characters have real and tangible advancement, they are always mortal. In d20 by the time you reach level 5, a group of brigands are something you could take on in battle by yourself. By level 10, they wouldn't even be a threat. In MRQ this is not so. In a duel, your character with a very high set of skills could strike down almost any enemy but he is no superhero. Getting ganged up on in a system this lethal will end up being quite dangerous for anyone regardless of level.

I think the key here is not to advance characters for advancement's sake so they can beat up bad guys (again, not d&d or warcraft) but advance them to reflect the character's improvement do they can overcome future challenges easier. These challenges are something that are important to your players as they attempt to attain their character's personal goals. The advancement is far more rewarding to everyone when it is hard earned, not only though combat, and the end result is the achievement of campaign goals.

 

[Simulacrum]

Agreed - this all seems based on the nonsense that the GM presents the same situations to higher as to lower level PCs but ups the skills/level/number of opponents. But you don't. You present a different set of challenges in line with what the PCs now feel up to tackling.

 

[Jujitsudave]

Numbers are a way of taking absolute power away from the GM, and I've seen GM power abused too often to say that that's a bad thing.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this. A character could have a sword skill of 500%, but no numerical statistic can reign in a bad GM that is not constrained by the rules and can obliterate said character with an errant lightning bolt.

The GM uses rules to his advantage but unlike players, is not bound by them. That being said, being a malicious GM and trying to willfully exterminate the party, killing off a player's character from a personal grudge, or simply saying "you can't do that coz I said so" is an abuse of that power. The only way to stop that is simply don't play with that GM.

 

[DamonJynx]

That being said, being a malicious GM and trying to willfully exterminate the party, killing off a player's character from a personal grudge, or simply saying "you can't do that coz I said so" is an abuse of that power. The only way to stop that is simply don't play with that GM.

I, unfortunately DM'd a game where I actually did that: engineered an encounter to murder most of the party. I apologized soon after because I felt like crap for doing it, there were better ways to handle the situation. Essentially, the PC's were making sure I obeyed the rules to the letter, yet they argued vehemently when the same was done to them, so I murdered a few to teach them a lesson. Not one of my proudest moments DM'ing. Anyway, their stats made no bloody difference!

In any RPG, there must be an in-game method for showing character improvement - or there is no point in playing. You meet a standard monster manual entry Goblin when you begin your career, that's a tough fight, when you've been around the block a few times, that same fight is so easy as to be inconsequential - the Goblin can't bypass your armour and you drop it with one hit. That's real and mirrors life.

Having uber abilities does a couple of things as people have already mentioned. It increases your chances for critical success and reduces your fumble chance. Although, no matter what your skill level there is always a chance for a fumble!

If the advancement process for whatever game you enjoy most doesn't work for you and your players, change it to suit yourself, but I don't believe there is a "flaw" in any of them really (with possibly the exception of D&D version doesn't matter. It gets very difficult in that system to offer meaningful challenges without increasing the level to the ridiculous).

BTW: Cerebro was quite right in his reply - Feats in D&D 3.5/Pathfinder don't always give numerical bonus'. A lot allow you to do stuff that you otherwise couldn't do without some form of penalty, or allow you to do stuff, but give you a penalty (meta-magic feats for example).[/code]

 

[Jujitsudave]

It gets very difficult in that system to offer meaningful challenges without increasing the level to the ridiculous

I could agree with this if we were solely talking about D&D/D20, but fortunately with a system such as Runequest, the challenges never have to be ridiculous. In a combat focused game where character abilities grow exponentially per level, stacking greater challenges are necessary to keep the same pace. This leads to the astute point the original poster made, which is characters fight monsters to gain advancement in their skills to fight greater monsters. It becomes an endless cycle that leads to nothing but ridiculous encounters using characters that nobody can possibly relate to.

Runequest, fortunately, does not fall into this pitfall. Combat skills are on an even keel with every other skill in the game, and if you have a GM skilled enough, these skills will be suitably represented enough that they will be as useful as combat skills (or even moreso). In addition, with such a dangerous combat system, conflicts are furious, cinematic and far more exciting. This pulls you into the action and gives you a gruesome play by play rather than being on the outside looking in while just trying to crunch the numbers. The very lethaliy of it ensures that even that first encounter with a random pee-on, while not much of a threat later, still has the potential to be harrowing in the right conditions.

 

[DamonJynx]

It gets very difficult in that system to offer meaningful challenges without increasing the level to the ridiculous

I could agree with this if we were solely talking about D&D/D20, but fortunately with a system such as Runequest, the challenges never have to be ridiculous.

The comment you quoted JujitsuDave was directed entirely at D&D/D20. The whole reason I went looking for another RPG system to GM for my group was because I was sick and tired of having to "up the ante" for nearly every encounter in D&D/D20 and the fact that in the 4E incarnation of the game, there is very little real threat to the PC's regardless of level and they keep changing it!

This is why I'll only be running Runequest from now on. I looked at BRP, but the amount of house-ruling required for the game I wanted to run was over top. MRQII, particularly Elric of Melnibone, is what I was looking for. I can just see Cran Liret's subterranean lair on Sorcerers Isle being a perfect fit for a modified "Tomb of Horrors" scenario!

 

[Jujitsudave]

My only regret is that I've only learned about MRQ in the last few months out of 22 years of tabletop gaming. I don't want to be too harsh on d20. It's a fun. playable and flexible system.

That is why it's mind boggling that WotC would go the opposite direction with 4E. Instead of a more mature, gritty and dynamic system, they boost the aforementioned "level inflation" through the roof with 4E! When I read it, I barfed a little in my mouth. Instead of focusing on what makes tabletop relevant, they make Warcraft on paper.

 

[DamonJynx]

I know what you mean. I play in a 3.5 Eberron Campaign (Warforged/Occult Slayer) But all we're doing at the moment is bashing skeletons. It's fun, but when you do around 100pts of damage per round, it's a bit wrong. We also have a 4E game going and a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - that's deadly.

4E was okay to DM at first, the monsters were more streamlined and easier to run, players weren't so over the top. But the HP and healing! Then the changes that came after - far, far too many.

Unlike you, my group and I are complete Runequest/D100 newbies. We're starting an EoM campaign next week.

 

[Jujitsudave]

Are you kidding? I'm very green with this system, but learning more every week. My players are far more knowledgable about the system than I.

 

[Redcrow]

I haven't played DnD since 2e. For me it began to feel like a Supers game in a vaguely medieval setting and that just isn't what I want in a Fantasy RPG. Although I can't speak from experience on DnD 3e/4e, it wouldn't surprise me if some players did feel like they are treading water after leveling up.

I'm fairly new to MRQ2, but so far I don't see any problems with characters advancing yet not feeling sufficiently advanced or sufficiently challenged. No matter how skilled your character may become they will always fall victim to sheer numbers. In DnD a high level Fighter could probably wade through 100 Goblins and receive barely a scratch, but in MRQ2 a Fighter could have a Weapon Skill of 1000% and they would still probably be massacred long before all 100 goblins even had a chance to act.

 

[cthulhudarren]

I also don't see a problem with the maths. But I do see the point in a game where the GM always tries to match the power level of the players. But in a real world (sandbox campaign), players can run into any challenge they like at any time. If your map has "dragon lair" marked on it and they go there as starting adventurers, they'll feel the burn... per se.

I like it when the characters have to run for their lives at times.

 

[taxboy]

I also don't see a problem with the maths. But I do see the point in a game where the GM always tries to match the power level of the players. But in a real world (sandbox campaign), players can run into any challenge they like at any time. If your map has "dragon lair" marked on it and they go there as starting adventurers, they'll feel the burn... per se.

I like it when the characters have to run for their lives at times.

Totally agree, else in my experience you get players who simply assume they can survive EVERYTHING and every challenge..

...though to be fair, one group I had constantly did overcome odds I would have thoguht to be pretty impossible...

 

[PhilHibbs]

I like it when the characters have to run for their lives at times.

And the good thing about MRQ2 is, you're just a CM away from doing something that helps you escape. In previous games, running away has usually been a death sentence as the opponents always got free hits.

 

[taxboy]

I like it when the characters have to run for their lives at times.

And the good thing about MRQ2 is, you're just a CM away from doing something that helps you escape. In previous games, running away has usually been a death sentence as the opponents always got free hits.

Not as bad as those attacks of opportunity in d & d, spack....