What exactly do the stats do?????

[Skipper]

Power = majical limitations

INT = Spelling!

or DEX=Typing

No spelling error here, this is how I type light hearted majic. ; )

 

[algauble]

Everytime you need a skill check, pick the most appropriate* stat, as well.
Roll vs. the skill on your d100 and simultaneously roll a d20 vs. the stat.
If you get under both, you get a special success.
If you get under stat but not skill, you get a marginal result.
If you get under skill but not stat, you get a regular success.

Nice in principle, but it means that characters with say a stat of 15 will critical three quarters of the time that they succeed, which seems rather high.

You could use the plain stat as the percentage you roll under to get a crit. This would be more in line with the odds of a crit under the current system, but doesn't scale at all as characters improve their skills.

You've hit on precisely what I don't like about my own idea. The way I was thinking of working around this, was by considering the stat success + skill success not a critical, but a special, allowing for critical as an even higher level of success (probably with rolled doubles on the skill roll determining a critical, or maybe rolled double on either the skill roll or the skill and stat roll, but that's probably getting way too fiddly), but you're definitely correct that it makes the influence of a high stat disproportionate to what we're used to here.
Mugen's idea has quite a bit of merit as well. Consider arm wrestling, the contest _should_ go to the higher strength, except _maybe_ with the possibility of skill or random factor swaying the contest to the contrary.

What about some sort of degree of success system?
Roll under stat, 1 success
Roll under skill, 2 successes
Roll any doubles, +1 success each if under skill/stat (so if you rolled a 3 on the d20 and on both of the d100's d10s, that would be +2 successes; roll 3 on any two of the three, +1 success)

Total Successes:
1 - marginal success
2 - regular success
3 - special success
4 - critical success
5 - super critical

Am I getting too unrecognizably far from the MRQ/BRP core here, or just too complicated??

 

[Mugen]

That makes sense too. For example, yuo could roll apropriate skill, and if you make the roll divide the number you rolled by ten, that the temporary, instant bonus you get to you're stat for that contest.

e.g. Two characters are arm wrestling. Art has STR 13, Bruce has STR 10. The GM rules that the appropriate skill is Athletics: Brute Force. Art rolls 62, which is over his skill of 45% so no bonus. Art rolls 22% which is under his skill of 37%, but the 2 point bonus raises his STR to 12, which isn't enough to win the contest.

Yes, but if you go this way you'll be tempted to use the 10s as a generic degree of success and use it in many ways, with crits counting '0' as '10'.

For instance :

*dmg = 10s+(weapon bonus)
*dmg absorbed by a parry = 10s+(weapon defensive bonus)
*Actual Magnitude of a Sorcery Spell = min(10s, MP spent)

Oh... But this is actually what I did in my homebrew version of BRPS

 

[Skipper]

Everytime you need a skill check, pick the most appropriate* stat, as well.
Roll vs. the skill on your d100 and simultaneously roll a d20 vs. the stat.
If you get under both, you get a special success.
If you get under stat but not skill, you get a marginal result.
If you get under skill but not stat, you get a regular success.

Nice in principle, but it means that characters with say a stat of 15 will critical three quarters of the time that they succeed, which seems rather high.

You could use the plain stat as the percentage you roll under to get a crit. This would be more in line with the odds of a crit under the current system, but doesn't scale at all as characters improve their skills.

You've hit on precisely what I don't like about my own idea. The way I was thinking of working around this, was by considering the stat success + skill success not a critical, but a special, allowing for critical as an even higher level of success (probably with rolled doubles on the skill roll determining a critical, or maybe rolled double on either the skill roll or the skill and stat roll, but that's probably getting way too fiddly), but you're definitely correct that it makes the influence of a high stat disproportionate to what we're used to here.
Mugen's idea has quite a bit of merit as well. Consider arm wrestling, the contest _should_ go to the higher strength, except _maybe_ with the possibility of skill or random factor swaying the contest to the contrary.

What about some sort of degree of success system?
Roll under stat, 1 success
Roll under skill, 2 successes
Roll any doubles, +1 success each if under skill/stat (so if you rolled a 3 on the d20 and on both of the d100's d10s, that would be +2 successes; roll 3 on any two of the three, +1 success)

Total Successes:
1 - marginal success
2 - regular success
3 - special success
4 - critical success
5 - super critical

Am I getting too unrecognizably far from the MRQ/BRP core here, or just too complicated??

Now this is an idea I can really sink my teeth into. Magnificent. I hope you don't mind if I steal it. I'm going to start on it right after I get back from lunch.

 

[algauble]

...
Now this is an idea I can really sink my teeth into. Magnificent. I hope you don't mind if I steal it. I'm going to start on it right after I get back from lunch.

Funny, I didn't think this would go over well at all. Let me know what you come up with.

 

[Nickbergquist]

The stats are good for ROLEPLAYING too.
They don´t have to be used with other game rules.
The stats may affect other game rules, but for me they are like Loz said:
Stat x 3, 4 or 5 can be used in a lot of ways.

For instance:
The Athletics skill means for me how good you are in using your STR to do a task, even when you are not soooo strong.
STR means that you may get the task done even if you don´t have a high Athletics skill... use brute force.


Sometimes it is not good to take a game sytem word for word, or use each game stat in the way the game system describes it, but to use your imagination, common sense, and roleplay a situation, without number crunching.

Only my 2 cents


Cheers

Osentalka

God, it is nice when someone remembers that this is a role-playing game, and that not everything needs a rule-defined purpose. By the logic of the post, I would have no reason to include gender, nationality or other abstracts since they serve no rule purpose.

That said, this does remind me of two rules missing from MRQ near as I can tell that harken back to older BRP editions: The contested stat rolls (Dex vs. Dex stuff, for example) and the Know/Idea/etc. rolls in CoC which are save numbers based off of the prime stats multiplied by a factor based on difficulty. And of course, I use both such rules in my games.

But frankly, If Cha 9 character meets Cha 17 character, it's nice to know with a quick glance which one is prettier, friendlier, and better able to get his/her way in a situation.

 

[Utgardloki]

My opinion is that stats should be used, otherwise why bother generating them?

Things like sex, height, weight, etc are useful even if there is no game mechanic that relies on these, because these are "things" that people inside the game world will refer to.

But nobody in the game world will say "Wow, that guy really has a Charisma of 16!" So why bother writing Charisma 16 on his character sheet if it is not going to do anything?

(Well, I guess there is a point. For my female NPCs, I roll an Attractiveness stat just so that the guys in my group don't think that every priestess or sheriff is a babe.)

I did think of having the PCs roll for Ectomorphness, Endomorphness, and Mesomorphness (or selecting scores) in order to define their looks. But even there, people realize there are ectomorphic, endomorphic, and mesomorphic types, even if they don't realize that there is a scientific terminology for naming these body types.

(The scientific measurements have technically only been defined for men, but we all know that it would be possible to create a scale for women as well, if anybody wanted to do that.)

I guess the point is, nobody is going to say "Look at the Size 8 woman!" unless they were referring to her dress size, and I'm sure Runequest Size does not correlate with dress size. Stats should either be used in the game, or else used to derive an apparently obvious result.

What's the sense of having an Intelligence of 15 if it is not going to do anything?

Which is why I plan to allow players to add their Intelligence to their die rolls to determine if they get to roll a die when they make an Improvement Roll. That way, not only do you get a boost for having a high Intelligence, but it helps you throughout your career.