From: Steve Maurer (vsi1!steve@ames.arc.nasa.gov)
Date: Sat 18 Aug 1990 - 09:56:33 EEST
Of the problems I have in Runequest, a bunch of Jack of All Trades characters is not one of them. Typically my players end up too busy to scientifically try to get all the checks they can, because any NPCs in battle are busy trying to kill them. Pathetically weak opponents, who fanatically continue combat even when they know they're outmatched are rare in my game, so the characters either can't get checks in secondary weapons because the enemy runs away, or they're too scared to use anything but their best.
Then too, the characters don't always ( -ever- ) have the chance to fight, return, practice for exactly one week, resume battle, fight, return, practice, etc. My characters live in a campaign world, not a misty netherland of individual descrete adventures. Reasons and/or opportunities to fight are not static situational things - usually the NPCs catch on that the players have a base camp, and track them to go raiding it, or move out of reach, or do something else that is logically reasonable to turn the situation to their best advantage. (Of which allowing their enemies to train is not one). Thus, the "Check Zoo" has never become a problem in my game.
In fact, to relieve the problem of not enough experience, I've lately been allowing players to "stack" checks from different battles for later rolling. Say several battles occur over the course of a couple of days - then for each battle, they may "save" the check for later. (I don't allow this for Pow, of course, but for everything else it seems to work ok).
For weapon damage ranking, I have changed the RQ skill system slightly, to make things more realistic at the higher levels. (Not that I have too many players at the higher levels - the PCs average
15% Lay, 70% Initiate, 7% Runepriest, 5% Runelord, 3% Hero). In my variant, there are 7 different levels of success: Fumble, Miss, Hit, Special, Critical, Special Crit, Super Crit respectively. Each areas they are in RQ2, with a Special Crit being 1/5 a normal crit (01 on 100% chance), and Super Crit being 1/400 of the chance to hit.
In an attack/parry sequence, the levels of success are compared to each other, with the results being shown as below:
Parry 2 better - Blow blocked, do damage to attacking
weapon and/or special parry applies
(See Sword Biter)
Parry 1 better - Blow blocked
Equal Success Levels - Blow blocked, roll for weapon damage
Attack 1 better - Attack normal damage
Attack 2 better - Attack "special" damage
Attack 3 better - Attack best of "special" or "critical"
Impaling weapons, as a below
Attack 4 better - Attack "special" and "critical" damage
This allows me to run occasional Heroquests, with all the Runelords running around with only a mere "20% chance to special". As everything is basically up one notch on the hero plane (i.e. everything has a 100% chance to make a parry), a "special" is like a normal hit.
Steve Maurer
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