Special / Critical Success and CMs

[DrBargle]

I know that there is no such thing as a 'special' success in MRQII/Legend. However, I am wondering if anyone has tried using a BRP-like 'special' success in their own games, or whether such a system was considered and playtested.

In MRQII/Legend there are rarely hits that do 'ordinary' damage - that listed for the weapon - without the extra edge of a CM. That is because for almost every attack that succeeds in causing damage, there is a difference in the level of success. The exception is when a Parry roll is a success but the parrying weapon is of insufficient size to block all/any of the damage. Given that you can abort a parry after the Attack roll has been made (something that I am toying with doing away with - commit to Parry roll and you remain committed - has anyone playtested this?), failing to block any damage with an ordinary success will only occur when the defender is going for a last-gasp gamble on a rolling a critical success.

What I'm thinking of doing is bring back the BRP 'special' success level at 30% of the skill for combat only, and a the same time requiring a 2-step difference in success to win a CM. So:

Attack Ordinary Success vs Parry Fail = ordinary damage
Attack Special Success vs Parry Fail = 1CM attacker
Attack Critical Success vs Parry Fail = 2CM attacker

So we get a situation where not every successful hit involves a CM, but enough still do to make them an interesting feature of play. Sometimes you just roll for damage and location. People aren't being impaled left, right, and centre - but certainly plenty of people will still end up run through by a spear!

I was thinking of special success falling at 20%, but opted for 30% as, after all, the special range should be larger that the critical range, i.e. a special success should be more likely than a critical success. A fighter with 75% combat skill will 'critical' 8% of the time, 'special' 16% (under 24% - it'd be easier to apply multiples of the critical level than actual percentages of the combat skill), and 'ordinary' 51%.

A side effect of this would that it would make the effect of a house-rule compelling combatants to parry once committed even worse for the defender, as an ordinary parry success would do nothing against a failed attack, so perhaps, if adopting special sucessess, the option to parry should remain entirely reactive.

As an aside, I note that Loz and Pete are doing away with the fumble table in RQ6. A fumbled parry already provides an extra, probably fight-ending CM in the RaW, and a fumbled attack is certainly incentive to attempt a parry in order to get two CMs, so another randomly generated super CM on top seems a bit harsh. But, of course, sometimes, whether the defender is out of CAs or the fumble is with a missile weapon, the extra CM=enough pain for a fumble equation doesn't work. How do people find fumbles in MRQII/Legend. In Pendragon, Greg Stafford is pretty clear that while fumbles should have some effect, they shouldn't be player killers.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Given that you can abort a parry after the Attack roll has been made (something that I am toying with doing away with - commit to Parry roll and you remain committed - has anyone playtested this?), failing to block any damage with an ordinary success will only occur when the defender is going for a last-gasp gamble on a rolling a critical success.

I think a strict interpretation of the rules is that a parry can only be aborted if the attacker misses. If the attacker crits, you can't abort. Not that you'd want to, I think, because if you get a normal success, you block all the damage anyway and reduce the attacker from 2 CMs to 1. Sure they can still choose Bypass Parry, but that's better than them getting Choose Location and Maximise Damage.

 

[Deleriad]

As an idea this does pop up from time to time. The idea of CMs though is that there aren't supposed to be hits that 'just do damage.' Once you have hits that just do damage then the game becomes focused around Hit Point attrition and fights can take a lot longer to resolve. The idea of CMs is that the CMs are largely fight enders.

What this means is that anytime you fail a defence and your opponent makes an attack, you're screwed. That makes damaging attacks much more dangerous and means it's reasonably likely that a fight can be resolved in fairly few dice rolls. It also means that most fights resolve in a fairly cinematic fashion rather than due to an accumulation of minor injuries.

If you implement your idea what you find is that suddenly fights take a lot longer to resolve. Don't forget that there are no general HPs in RQII/Legend so most of the first few "normal" hits will spread around the body. What you'll eventually find is that the blow which ends the combat is nearly the first one which gets a CM however you've made it so that it takes longer to get to the CM. The end result is that you've increased the number of dice rolls needed yet not actually changed the odds of who wins or how they win.*

On the fumbles front; I've ditched the fumble table in RQII/Legend and haven't missed it. The CM advantage given by fumble is plenty. If a fumble has no effect (e.g. ranged attack) I'm happy to think of that in terms of embarrassment (that was an awful attempt) rather than potentially random player death.

*On the whole. Your system would give an advantage to large, well-armoured types who can soak up more HP damage. It would make the daring swashbuckler a lot more vulnerable.

 

[DamonJynx]

As an idea this does pop up from time to time. The idea of CMs though is that there aren't supposed to be hits that 'just do damage.' Once you have hits that just do damage then the game becomes focused around Hit Point attrition and fights can take a lot longer to resolve. AKA D&DThe idea of CMs is that the CMs are largely fight enders.

What this means is that anytime you fail a defence and your opponent makes an attack, you're screwed. That makes damaging attacks much more dangerous and means it's reasonably likely that a fight can be resolved in fairly few dice rolls. It also means that most fights resolve in a fairly cinematic fashion rather than due to an accumulation of minor injuries.Also one of the reasons why sometimes a mook with General HP can take longer than a unique NPC to take down.

For the rest I agree completely with Deleriad. Don't forget Runequest and BRP rules are derivatives of each other, hence why some of our CM's are BRP's Specials. This is one of the things that attracted me to Runequest over BRP for fantasy gaming, the simplicity of combat and resolving skill challenges.

 

[DrBargle]

AKA D&D

Now, now. There's no need to be insulting ;-)

The idea of CMs is that the CMs are largely fight enders.

While I'm pretty convinced my your arguments, in the special success system, CMs would still be fairly common, and they would be fight ending. The system wouldn't make RQ like D&D (though I don't know any D&D beyond 2e). Indeed, there'd still be more distinctiveness to the combat in the 'special success system' than there were in 1980/90s editions of RQ, thanks to retaining the CMs. But I agree, all the special success system is likely to do is prolong combat, rather than achieve any qualitative shift in the way combats are resolved.

What this means is that anytime you fail a defence and your opponent makes an attack, you're screwed.

I guess part of my intention in toning down an ordinary success was the fact that having more CA than your opponent is *far* more important than having more skill. It's not so much failing a defence, but the automatic fail involved in fighting 2 CA to 3 CA, or 3 CA to 4 CA. I know that this is a feature, not a bug. My problem (and it's not a real problem, more a niggle at the back of my mind, I still really like MRQII/Legend as written) is that a 1 point characteristic difference is all that is between 2 CA and 3 CA, and that extra CA (innate) kills more surely than a big bunch of extra fighting expertise!

However, you've pretty much convinced me it isn't worth running my special success system as a proper playtest. Gaming time is precious enough.

 

[DrBargle]

By the way, I'm aware that people have discussed the power of CAs, etc. before on this forum. I wasn't trying to restart one of the those threads. It was more about my 'inspired'(!) solution to the problem, which I figured that people would have already considered, and maybe even tried out in play (especially the given that the designers and playtesters of both MRQs and RQ6 hang about here).

 

[Deleriad]

I know what you mean about the effect of CAs vs skills and I see your point about reducing the number of CMs potentially reducing the impact of a CA imbalance. It would do that somewhat but at the cost of re-balancing combat back towards HP attrition. It does mean that heavily armoured tanks with 2-handed weapons (or big 1H weapon plus shield and a meaty damage bonus) become favoured by the system. There might be some cases where this is actually a desirable outcome.

 

[DamonJynx]

Now, now. There's no need to be insulting ;-)

The truth can never be insulting!

Seriously though, games such as D&D, more so the later editions which I played a lot, were about HP attrition. And to be honest, they became a bit boring in the end. I think that's why we were so eager to get on the 4E bandwagon, something a bit different. Wish we had of discovered D100 games earlier - much earlier, like when I bought Dragon Lords of Melnibone back in about 2000, we could have been playing Elric or Stormbringer! Far superior to D&D. Legend is even more so. Just MO.

 

[DrBargle]

I see what you're saying, and I agree - D&D (BECMI, in my case, mostly) can get pretty boring when you are whittling away at HP; there's no mechanical effect until 0, and little room for a GM to liven up combat with narrative as HP loss cannot be actual wounds, it must be more fatigue and psychological damage. I get that, totally, which is why I tried MERP in the 1980s, before giving up on the awkward, flavourless system, and then finding WFRP1e (both of which are 'critical hit' systems), with the odd sideays glance at RQ thanks to its place in White Dwarf.

However, the problem isn't really HP attrition. It's that even mid-level D&D characters can take multiple maximal damage 'hits' from a sword. As you imply, in most BRP-derived games the difference isn't that they don't use HP, it is that characters' HP isn't very high, and never really gets much higher. BRP games share with, say, WFRP1e and even a D&D-ish game such as Dragon Warriors, emphasising the danger of fighting with big bits of sharp metal.

If we wanted to get rid of HP altogether, we could always refer every successful attack to the resistance table / resilience check, with a critical hit table for major wounds and a minor wound tally (additive rather than deducted from HP) used for calculating healing after a skirmish that doesn't end needing emergency medical care. It wouldn't be a RQ/BRP game, though. Because they use HP ;-)