From: JOVANOVIC@CUCCFA.CCC.COLUMBIA.EDU
Date: Sat 12 Jun 1993 - 01:26:30 EEST
Nick, David, Loren, Paul, et. al.
Thanks again for all the comments - I wanted to suggest a few
ideas based on some of these comments, and see what people
think of them. Fire away...
DAMAGE BONUS
There is an error in that table on the far end. In any case,
1-5 -4
Each +5 add 1
(This works out to 3.2 points of damage per 16 points of STR or SIZ, fairly
I think that if we're going to go to the trouble of changing
damage bonus (something that would interfere with the use of published
RQIII stats), a straight addition may be the way to go - a number
of people have suggested a few various ways of doing this, and it
has a number of advantages over dice - faster to use, simpler and
smoother. An example:
6-10 -3
11-25 -2
16-20 -1
21-25 0
26-30 +1
31-35 +2
36-40 +3
41-45 +4
46-50 +5
close to the RQIII value of 3.5 points of damage per 16 points of STR and SIZ.
Nick Brooke suggested something very similar, but with jumps every 4 points,
working out to 4 points of damage per 16 points of STR or SIZ. This table,
with jumps every 5 points, seemed even simpler. Nick?)
STRIKE RANKS
I noticed that the modified Harris combined Melee SR table had yet another
problem - very small and clumsy creatures wouldn't have enough SR to land
a blow in the course of a melee round. Another correction should make it work:
DEX Missile/Spell SR
1-9 4
10-14 3
15-19 2
20+ 1
DEX + SIZ Melee SR
(count only
the first 20
points of each)
02-14 7
SKILL CATEGORY MODIFIERS
Nick, I'm actually very much in agreement with you when you suggest using
I'd like to suggest the following changes:
This is what it would look like:
Agility Skills Category Modifier
Communication Skills Category Modifier
15-19 6
20-24 5
25-29 4
30-34 3
35-39 2
40 1
POW in as few modifiers as possible - it changes constantly, which makes
it an incredible pain to refigure skills when you sacrifice for a point
of Divine Magic or enchant something or whatnot. You can tell people not
to change skills when their modifiers change post character generation, but
this is counter intuitive - where I've seen people try to implement this rule,
it has generally been discarded by the majority as making no sense. POW
is already incredibly valuable in spell casting, enchantment, magic resistance,
spell range, cult progression, luck rolls and spirit combat. I don't think it
would hurt to drop it from the modifiers.
1) Drop POW from modifiers. Refiguring skills would become much rarer.
2) Recalculate modifiers so that they balance more equally. It makes
little sense to me that an entire category of skills should be harder
or easier because it has more or less positive modifiers attached.
In RQIII, Stealth, Knowledge and Agility skill start at far lower levels
and progress more slowly by experience than do Manipulation, Magic,
Perception or Communication skills because of the number of positive
modifiers they have. I would suggest that the categories each have the
equivelant of two positive modifiers - a negative modifier such as SIZ
is OK, since it simply says that you must be small to gain the same
benefits as compared to another modifier.
3) Simplify the calculation of the modifiers themselves.
STR + DEX - SIZ - 10
INT + APP - 20
Magic Skills Category Modifier
INT + DEX - 20
Manipulation Skills Category Modifier
STR/2 + INT/2 + DEX - 20
Perception Skills Category Modifier
Reasoning Skills Category Modifier
INT + CON - 20
INTx2 - 20
(A character with a 15 in every stat would have a +10 modifier
Reasoning is just another name for Judgement skills, from
in everything but Agility, which would be +5. If the character
had a 10 SIZ and 15 in every other stat, all the characters
modifiers would be +10.
the earlier suggestion to drop the Stealth Skills Category
Modifier and add Reasoning (can be increased by experience),
contrasting with Knowledge (cannot be increase by experience)).
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
Many helpful comments here by a number of people - the next version
should be much improved by them.
SKILL VS. SKILL
David, I think we discussed something very much like what you
suggest (subtract skills from each other, divide difference
by two, add to 50 and roll) but the opinion at that time was
that this was more complex than dividing each skill by 10
and comparing on the resistance table (reducing it to the
same mechanic used by an MP vs. MP struggle). The method you
suggest does away with the possibility of a rounding error,
but requires more manipulation (subtract, divide, then add to 50).
I'm not sure if this slight increase in accuracy is worth the
slight increase in complexity. I'd be interested in hearing what
people think, though.
TRAINING (CHARACTERISTICS AND OTHERWISE)
Nick, David, thanks for the feedback.
Nick, you're correct, this system is very training heavy, but
so were RQ2 and RQIII. Frankly, I think the best fix for this
would be to get away from the idea of training individual skills
and characteristics for huge lengths of time, which makes little
sense, realistically speaking. People do train and research many
of these skills and characteristics, but generally simultaneously.
I'm working on something that tries to approach the situation
from the idea of how a character spends his or her time over a
period of time (perhaps with a minimum interval of a week).
More to come on this.
FATIGUE
The chance of fumbling increasing, even dramatically, was exactly
our intent. From my sparring experience, it is also a very good
approximation of what happens when you get tired - you make
sloppy mistakes which you would never make when rested,
and begin seeing openings that you can't take advantage of due
to your fatigue. Experienced fighters try to pace themselves so
that they do not get tired - please note that with the RQIV rules,
it only takes two melee rounds of dodging or parrying, or a single
round of resting to recover fatigue - which strikes me as an excellant
simulation of what happens when people spar. We also thought it would
be a lot more dramatic - a character that gets tired really has to
think about whether it is worth pressing the attack, or whether they
should try to catch their breath by going on the defensive for a bit.
David, how long do your fights run in rounds, typically? This may be
a hidden variable. At least one playtester suggested shifting the rolls
to every 10 melee rounds, which struck me as far too long an interval,
simply because most RQ battles seem to be over in 10 to 15 melee rounds,
but they seemed to regularly go 20 or so rounds.
SPECIAL COMBAT OPTIONS
David, good suggestion regarding Guard and Weave.
I also like your idea of lumping Jumping Kick in with special combat options.
We can always adjust the training times, based on feedback, if people want
them easier to learn. They needed to be discussed in terms of cultural
availability as well, as Nick suggests.
GRAPPLE
David, I think this could use a bit more simplification in any case.
However, Grapple Attack and Parry are distinct, as is any Weapon
Attack and Parry, or Fist Attack and Parry. If you want an
example of people that learn Attack separate from Parry, many schools
of Jujutsu focus almost exclusively on attacks at first, and only later
on counters. Aikido, in contrast, emphasizes Grapple Parry over Grapple Attack.
Grapple Parry can be used to parry anything however, just as can Fist Parry.
SKILLS
We started with more skills than we thought should end up in the final
draft - the idea was to see, through feedback, which new skills people
found useful, and which they did not. Fear not, the next draft should
have even less of them.
Loren, take heart, we're working on an idea for how communication skills
should function which may make you much happier with them - namely to
make them function in a way that encourages roleplaying as opposed to
rollplaying. More on this later. You're correct in that right now they
aren't too useful.
SORCERY
I think Paul (and Mike) have some very interesting ideas here -
THE GREAT APP VS. CHA DEBATE
some of these will hopefully end up in RQIV.
Hm. Looking at this, about all I can say is that it looks like
there are few people happy with either. Here's another suggestion:
rather than use either APP or CHA, which have specific connotations
people have trouble with, how about using a different name entirely?
One suggestion was to use something called Presence (PRE) instead
(this came well before Paul's use of the term <g>). This would
simply reflect how well a character presented themselves and
something about the force of their personality. The individual
player could then decide whether this came from physical appearance,
charisma, or a mixture of both. For example, a character with a 13 PRE
(above average) might have but an average appearance, but a magnetic
personality and a good voice (strong charisma, if you will).
A character with a 10 PRE might have average appearance and
personality, or they might have above average appearance and
an unappealing personality. Any opinions?
Oliver
0,,
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