whats your house rules ?

[weasel_fierce]

Going over MRQ again, after re-reading 2nd and 3rd edition and comparing things, and Im figuring this is a few things I'll try out next time:


Resilience skill is replaced with CON x 5

Persistence skill is replaced with POW x 5

Bring back total hit points (average of SIZ and CON). Any injury to a location also reduces total HP. Poisons and similar "system shock" affects total HP, not locations. At 1-2 you're unconscious, at 0 or less you die at the end of the /following/ round.

Experience checks work as in RQ3, except the gain is 1D4+1 rather than 1D6. If a player should blow all of his rolls, he can pick a skill to get an automatic gain in.
Training takes a month and just gives an extra skill gain roll. A failed roll gives +1.

Training attributes will propably work as RQ3, but I'll have to think about that for a bit.

For Glorantha specifically, cult members can use their "theology" skill to cast rune spells tied to that cult, without having the rune.

Any PC gets a free skill reroll once per adventure.

Im very tempted to say everyone has 2 actions per round, but the jury is still out on that one.

When rolling for dodges and parries, a roll thats higher than the attackers roll causes the attack to be considered "failed" on the reaction charts.


Whatcha think ? Suggestions, comments, rules of your own ?

 

[Trifletraxor]

2 actions per round!

SGL.

 

[weasel_fierce]

Im very tempted for that, as well. Just make a cheap heroic ability (6 points maybe) that lets you take the number of actions that your DEX normally entitles you to

 

[darshan]

Within these months we have tested and played with these rules there has comen quite some actually.

Just to mention few;

- converted old critical failure tables to MRQ; mostly cause players just couldn´t live without them :twisted:

- Also gave experience ticks as in RQ III, d4+1 per roll. Character get that sure +1 to skill till the original skillstats x 5 is bypassed, after that only 96-00 gives any experience (for example for close combat the limit is DEX+STR x 5. Skills with only one stat the multiplier is 10). This way an old, experienced character may gain pretty high skills without any heroquesting and such.

- Maxium limit for that sure +1 for resilience and persistence is Con x 5 and Pow x 5. After that you have to beat your skill as descripted above. Also fixed fatiguemodifiers into resiliencerolls when character takes damage (talked about this on the damage modification thread).

- Addet armour fighting skill into game. With every 2% of the skill character looses one precent from the armourpenalties. And its a percentual part, so once character skill is 200%, he is free at last of the negative modifiers . And this skill helps only with attacks, parries and dodge. In every other place (like fatiguerolls) the modifiers are in.

- Fixed a bit armour points of the weapons and armours.

- Halved the armour penalties of the leather armours, gave +1 AP to the rest of the armours (the armourpenalties are still as they were original, so this add aint +1 into armourpenalties). With Armour fighting skill even a heavier armour begins to be an option to experienced fighting type character.

- Fixed the flurrymodifiers a bit as they range from -10% (dagger and such) to -30% (2h swords and such); Just thought that it may be a bit easier to slash out a series of blows with small weapong than with 2 meter long blade.

- Fixed bypass armour precise attack simulary; -30% with the smallest weapons, -50% with the greatest. It may a bit easier to find that jointpart of the platemail with dagger than with trollmaul, hee.

- Fixed out totally the Ca system of the game. Now the Ca´s are calculated with this forumula: (Weaponskill / 5+Dex)/2. The weapon counts in this average, as for example a 2H sword gives -2 to the final average, and dagger gives +2. Stat is count to this average up to 25, skill up to 125%.

Also the combataction table is a bit hasher

6 or less one action
7-15 two actions
16-20 three actions
21- four actions

- Fixed up the combatmatrix as we just needet the old system with special and critical succes Critical attacks don´t penatrate armour, but has different kind a boost into damage regarding the type of the weapon (in the spirit of RQ III)

- Took Ruriks most excelent dodgeoption into our game and worked out an skill against skill table. Has made combats against high damage monsters like greattrolls and such quite a thrillers

- Took good old spirit combat system from the RQ 4 draft. Spirit combat skill is replaced with persistence.

- Fixed out a table, where character may use lores to make skilluse a bit easier. For example with a succesfull animallore throw character gets +10% to his huntingskill and with a critical succes in plant lore he gets +30% to his survival on woods. With fumble comes the penalties of course. Just wanted to give some sure penefits from having some loreskills. And yes, characters have had an option to use lores this way before of course, but now as the effects of the loreuse is printed up, players know now whats the use to use the loreskill.

Needles to say I have made quite a few tables just to keep these ideas easy to use. There are pretty much changes yes, but we have had a long road with RQ, so they ain´t too much to take into game.

We have played kind a testingcampaing from auttumn, and I have given pretty often the experiencechecks just too see a bit how the characterdevelopment goes, so characters have up to 110% skills and spells up to magnitude 4. This far we haven´t had any balancingproblems with these changes.

Hopefully you got some picture of the ideas- as I´m just a tourist with english, presenting a bit more complex ideas is a bit hard sometimes.

 

[darshan]

...just one more ad to the essential houserulings;

- Succesfull dodge either halves damagemodification and spelldamage or (as with rurik-option) succesfull dodge is an old school RQ dodge, if the succesdegree is better than the attackers throw.

Just wanted to avoid the situation, where sorcercer with damageboost 10 slices anything into pieces if the dodge ain´t perfect rurikdodge.

 

[CthulhuFnord]

I'd have to go with the experience tick system myself.

 

[Exubae]

These are the main ones:

Resilience skill is replaced with CON x 5.
Persistence skill is replaced with POW x 5.
Athletics loses its brute force/lift aspect becomes STRx5.
Parrying armour is raised by +4 across all weapons and shields.
2 actions per combat round.
Move back to RQ2/3 Divine magic POW sacrifice approach.
Re-introduce attribute gain rolls, but kept new experience system otherwise.
Theology is used casts cult Rune spells.
Re-mapped some of the runic requirements of the Rune spells.
Re-worked benefits from the cults in COG1 (i.e. spells etc)
Spirit combat using MP as hitpoints, but retaining how the spirit damage is calculated.
Runes are bound into the Soul of the integrator, when slain the runes go with the intergrator to their afterlife. As the soul loses its individuality, the runes slough off into the cosmic flow returning to the middle world... eventually.

We've be contemplating dragging the resistance table from retirement and scrapping Persistence/Resilence/Brute Force - but haven't as yet taken this step.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Persistence as POW x5 is an unfair and unrealistic disadvantage for Divine Magic users. When you perform a ritual to Urox in order to learn Berserker, you should not become 10% more vulnerable to Befuddling jack-o-bears! It is already bad enough that you get a -2% with the present system.

Resilience has some trouble with Dragons and the like, but bringing it back to CONx5 does not fix it, as Dragons have huge CON. Just don't allow the roll when the character is too damaged.

A limit of CONx5 and POWx5 to the free training of both should be enough to avoid abuses.

Armor penalties and armor bypasses are more easily dropped. Everybody agrees that the rule is broken, so just drop it, maybe doubling the ENC values to avoid abuses.

Dead Blue Clown suggested a more complicate but more realistic way of calculating CAs by dividing the rolled SR by 10 some time ago.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Oh, and +1 for bringing total HP back. "If it is not broken, do not fix it." Got the picture, game designers?

 

[Exubae]

Persistence as POW x5 is an unfair and unrealistic disadvantage for Divine Magic users. When you perform a ritual to Urox in order to learn Berserker, you should not become 10% more vulnerable to Befuddling jack-o-bears! It is already bad enough that you get a -2% with the present system.

It works fine if your using the RQ2/3 approach of POW sacrifice rather than POW dedication - but I agree if your using the current Divine Magic approach of POW dedication in screws over Divine Magic users.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Nope, it was screwed in RQ2/3 too. My Storm Khan sacrifices two POW before going chaos hunting, and he is Harmonized by a jackie just because of that -10% in the Mp vs. Mp roll. Dedicated POW just makes it more evident. The current rule should stay IMO, because it discourages POW-hoarding.

 

[simonh]

Nope, it was screwed in RQ2/3 too. My Storm Khan sacrifices two POW before going chaos hunting, and he is Harmonized by a jackie just because of that -10% in the Mp vs. Mp roll. Dedicated POW just makes it more evident. The current rule should stay IMO, because it discourages POW-hoarding.

It depends how you look at it. In RQ3 I usually maintained a POW of 15 for my characters and sacrificed points above that for Divine Magic or enchantments. I considered the character's POW to by 15, maybe with a few extra points while working up to the next sacrifice. If you see you're character's POW as naturally being 18, but occasionally you have to grudgingly sacrifice it down to gain divine magic. It's just a matter of perception.

Dedicated POW is a whole different ball game. There's absolutely nothing you can do to mitigate that POW 'loss', or more importantly in MRQ Magic Point loss which seriously limits you're flexibility as a magician.

BTW I don't think replacing persistence and resilience with stat 5% helps. It only makes a marginal difference to the fundamental scalability issue which is monsters with these skills at or over 100%. Mongoose are hinting at SpaceQuest being a redesign f the rules using the same basic stats, and I think this is the way to go.

Rather than rework the stats, which still retains the basic problem because some characters will still have stats beyond the range which the game system can handle, we need to revise the rules so that they handle broadly scaled stats sensibly. I must say I'm very encouraged by the info we've been given about SpaceQuest. It shows that Mongoose are listening to their customers and are serious about addressing our issues.

 

[Exubae]

I must say I'm very encouraged by the info we've been given about SpaceQuest. It shows that Mongoose are listening to their customers and are serious about addressing our issues.

Keeping my fingers crossed that this is the case.

 

[Mugen]

Mine :

*1 action and 1 reaction per turn is the norm. You can still do up to (DEX/6) of each of those per turn, but you suffer cumulative malus if you do so.

*Critical beats normal successes in opposed skill checks.

I would also favor Generic Hit Points and a StormBringer-like "major wounds" system : When you lose more than half your HP maximum in one blow, you have a chance to get permanent malus.

I also think the attack/dodge and attack/parry rules should be based on opposed checks, like Rurik suggested.

I'm against going back to rolls under Characteristic*5, even if the current implementation of Resilience skill is not very satisfying...

 

[Deleriad]

Major ones for me are:
* Everyone gets 2 actions and 2 reactions per turn
* If using a skill of 100 or higher then you get one "free" action or reaction out of it.

* SR if using a skill equals the skill over 10 (i.e. just use the 10s score and yes SR0 does exist)
* SR if not using a skill is equal to your DEX. (Mostly used for moving or actions like reloading etc)

* Tweaked effects of damage, added in shock and specified that taking more than 1*HPs or 2*HPs in a single blow is a major or severe (chopping off) wound.

* Dodge and Parry work as opposed rolls; if you make your skill but fail to beat your opponent then you dodge or block some damage. if you beat your opponent you dodge all damage or block a lot more damage.

* Skill set remains pretty much the same but I have introduced "skill specialisation". E.g. if you want to specialise in Athletics/Climb then your base score = STR+DEX+(Athletics/10) and can climb unusual surfaces. You get one free reroll of a specialist skill per session. Specialist skills are advanced skills.

* Dedicated POW has gone. Instead, initiates build Grace with a deity. Gain Grace by sacrificing POW and other things. Use Grace to cast Divine Magic. Rune Spells belonging to a deity (or associate deity) can be stored in Grace and cast using Lore (MyFavouriteGod)

* Very different ENC, Load and Fatigue system.

* Spirit Combat has been rolled back to how it used to work (largely based on the unpublished RQ4)

* Filled in some of the gaps in combat manoeuvres and grapple.

* Dropped RuneCasting as a separate system of magic. Dropped Legendary Abilities.

There are quite a lot of changes though some pet bugbears that others have (persistence, no overall HPs) I actually think work really well. I would say that my changes make it more complex than MRQ though not as complex as RQ3 so it's still medium crunch - which is roughly what I like.

 

[Quire]

- Fixed out totally the Ca system of the game. Now the Ca´s are calculated with this forumula: (Weaponskill / 5+Dex)/2. The weapon counts in this average, as for example a 2H sword gives -2 to the final average, and dagger gives +2. Stat is count to this average up to 25, skill up to 125%.

That's an interesting take on figuring CAs, darshan, but what about if I'm not intending to use a weapon during combat? What about if my favoured weapon breaks or is dropped? Why should my weapon skill (and which one?) figure my CAs then? Do you figure CAs per round? What about someone who only intends to cast spells in a combat? Or use a bow until the enemy closes then switch to sword? etc.

- Q

 

[GoingDown]

Dedicated POW is a whole different ball game. There's absolutely nothing you can do to mitigate that POW 'loss', or more importantly in MRQ Magic Point loss which seriously limits you're flexibility as a magician.

What is the difference between sacrified POW and dedicated? Why you cannot raise your POW higher as in RQ3?

Companion:

Dedicated POW is effectively deducted from the character's POW Characteristic for as long as the spell is held by the character...

 

[darshan]

Mostly figured by Gm and considering the situation. If its a combatsituation I go for what´s your mainweapon at the moment. If no weapons involved I´d use just dex and check the chart. I know that our idea ain´t flawles and leaves some pigeonholes, but if one thing I have learned is the veto-option Gm may use- and common sense.

But this way most character (and opponents) have only two actions per round and three actions hit in when skill level reaches 80-100% (and fellows with twohand swords will have to wait a bit longer... And with bows things work out as well- one has to have some skill to shoot three or four arrows per 5 secs...

And with spellusers- well, if they stand back and just wave fingers, just replace weaponskill with runecastingskill- or just use dex. Depents how nice GM wants to be, hee.


<That's an interesting take on figuring CAs, darshan, but what about if <I'm not intending to use a weapon during combat?

 

[Quire]

Mostly figured by Gm and considering the situation.

I get where you're coming from, and it makes for a fine house-rule.

I have a different way of figuring it, though, which I think takes care of the various situations you describe, is dead bloody simple, and still allows for the kind of things you are thinking about POST CA configuration. I'm not going to describe it now though, because: a) I am an utter bastard, and b) I am working on an integrated OGL version of the rules that make complete sense to me, and I ain't done with it yet. And c) I may yet change my mind (see point a).

- Q

 

[darshan]

Anyways, in case parts A and C are left out and option B is complited, please share the description- always instrested in seeing options ppl have worked out for the system


I'm not going to describe it now though, because: a) I am an utter bastard, and b) I am working on an integrated OGL version of the rules that make complete sense to me, and I ain't done with it yet. And c) I may yet change my mind (see point a).

- Q[/quote]