From: +Mark Abbott (abbott%dean.Berkeley.EDU@berkeley.edu)
Date: Sat 18 Aug 1990 - 09:56:33 EEST
Re armor and helmets: I've been playing around with the Harnmaster armor
system lately and I think I may use it for RQ. It uses a hit location
system with a much more detailed breakdown for humanoids. Each location
is rated as a %of the total body area. Armor weight is figured by
multiplying the weight of the armor type (chainmail, leather, etc) by
the % of the body covered. This makes it easy to construct pretty
spotty or idiosyncratic armor or stick with whole suits. What I've done
is take their armor weight values and convert them to kg. I've got
a formula which takes RQ Size, a weight value by armor type, and % of
body covered, and you get out the weight of that piece of armor. Encumbrance
values are closely comparable to current RQIII for the different armor
types but the RQIII size break points are gotten rid of.
When it gets to helmets, the head in the Harnmaster system is broken
into skull, face, and neck allowing quite a bit of detail in helmet
construction. They have an optional table to break up locations on
the face. What I'm doing is using their locations and mapping them
to the RQ locations for HP. So, I've got a location table using the
Harnmaster hit locations. If I roll an 'elbow' location that maps
to the RQ PC's arm, groin maps to abdomen, etc. It allows you to set
up a much more detailed suit of armor for a PC but doesn't force it.
And you can still use unmodified RQ hit points.
You can still use full suits of one armor sort and you can switch back
and forth between the more detailed hit location table and the normal
RQ table pretty much at will.
If anybody is interested in this I'll get it typed up and send it in.
[I am!]
Care to elaborate on the GURPS distinctions between crushing, edged, and pointed weapons? I don't know much about GURPS.
[Nor do I. Elliot?]
As to flails, around here we halve parry when defending against a chain weapon and take 3/4 of the parry versus flexible weapons. The catch is that chains get their fumble chance tripled and flexible weapons have a double fumble chance.
On skills specialization, I limit PCs to 10 experience rolls per adventure. This means that I can give them tons of chances to use skills and they'll still pick a set which they work hardest on. I also encourage roleplaying PCs such that we don't have much of the "Everybody try to pick this lock and somebody will succeed" problem.
[I prefer to give higher fumble chances to untrained people, so they break
something in the lock (or whatever, depending upon the skill) and make it
impossible to pick. The 10 rolls per adventure also makes all adventures
equally valuable experience-wise, which may not be desirable; a suggestion
using this approach is for the GM to evaluate the adventure and give a
specific number of rolls (as opposed to the straight 10.)]
On the fatigue stuff, sorry, I should have elaborated a bit more. Effects of negative FP are exactly the same as per RQIII, -1 FP = -1% in all skills, unconsciousness at minus double (or whatever, haven't ever had to apply that rule so I'm not certain what the cutoff is). Even though I called it Maximum Encumbrance, I don't really use that as a hard limit on what can be carried. The same rules for fatigue expenditure and movement can be used for carrying loads over "Maximum ENC". For example, your soldier with 13 STR and CON would have a Max ENC of 78 and 26 FP. If he carries 78 ENC that's 11 FP expended per round and his movement is reduced to 1. This means that he'll have 3 rounds of normal skills and then he'll be fighting at minuses. He'll quickly hit his limit and have to stop exerting himself so strenuously. If he carries 91 ENC, 110% his max, he'll use 12 FP per round and move at 1.
As for what causes you to use up fatigue, any combat or maneuvering in combat causes you to expend FP at the rate determined by your encumbrance. I allow characters to sprint (move at double the normal rate) but it uses one of their actions for that round and it adds 1 to their FP expenditure rate. Under normal RQIII fatigue rules, sprinting had the same effect, spend +1 FP per round. Standing back from a fight but staying very alert and combat ready you spend no fatigue but can make various perception rolls, see who needs help, etc. Leaning on your sword allows you to recover fatigue (at d4-2/round, I think, whatever it is in the book) but you aren't as alert. You'll still notice that troll charging you but you might not notice that your buddy, 20 yards away and partly behind a bush, is in need of your help. You definitely won't notice the elf hidden in the bushes who is about to turn you into a pincushion.
Simple jogging, outside of a fight, uses fatigue each minute, ie you use 1 (or more depending on ENC) FP per minute as opposed to the normal 1 per round.
As for short vs long term endurance, I just use fatigue for short term and CON for long term. If a character hasn't had enough sleep, I take off from his CON. This effectively lowers his fatigue, resistance to poisons and disease, etc. CON lost this way is recovered by remedying the situation, ie taking a nap.
[Your CON versus FP dichotomy is a lot like my adrenal versus basic fatigue
idea.]
Hm, this is getting awfully long. I think I'd better send this off before it gets completely absurd.
Mark Abbott
abbott@dean.berkeley.edu
{ihnp4, sun, decwrl, sun, hplabs}!ucbvax!dean!abbott
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