From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu
Date: Wed 16 Jun 1993 - 19:02:22 EEST
Joerg has a bunch of good comments, I will respond:
>The POW fixes Paul advocates would include POW even in attack skill.
Uhh... no. I advocate POW in Parry and Agility (currently MUCH LOWER than
attack, leading to the weird phenomenon of you big heroes having 200%
Attack and 120% Parry, which means that the really great fighters have
short, bloody fights. Wrong, defense should be at least even and maybe
better than attack.)
INT should remain the base for attack and manipulation skills.
When I am fighting, my attacks are often based on plans (INT) but my
defenses had BETTER be based on instinct (POW). This seems to go with
what I observe about fighters in general. Martial arts, also.
My full message was cut off by computer problems. My proposed mods
are in fact the following , where 1/2 indicates secondary mod:
Agility:
DEX + POW + 1/2 STR - SIZ
Communication:
CHA (PRE, social intelligence, whatever) + 1/2 INT + 1/2 POW
Knowledge:
INT + at least 1/2 POW. POW gives power of concentration. High INT, low POW
gives you a promising grad student without the willpower to study hard - I know
Manipulation:
DEX + INT + 1/2 STR (unchanged)
Perception:
POW + CON + 1/2 INT
Or POW + INT + 1/2 CON. I like the former better, I have high INT but
my Perception skills are not that good. CON means better senses, POW means
more alert, INT is better interpretation. Since the listed Perception
skills are for noticing something AT ALL and there are knowledge skills
like Evaluate for interpreting information, I think INT really should be
secondary. Things like poor hearing or myopia or astigmatism all get
abstracted as low CON in this system, these have a big effect on Scan or
Listen.
Attack:
DEX + INT + 1/2 STR (unchanged)
Parry:
DEX + POW + 1/2 STR (unchanged)
Note that Attack and Parry are now balanced. Average INT is 13, POW tends
to be stabilize around 14 (minmaxing gain rolls vs. usefulness of High POW)
I have fought big and small people and small size is no advantage in
parrying: I can reach OVER the top of a small person's block and hit
them in the back. I am pretty big and have no real disadvantage parrying,
in fact my greater reach allows me to get some advantages. Really big
people should be a better missile target, however.
- Paul
>Or call them direclty like the skill categories.
Thus an Agility spell adds to Agility Skills, a Stealth spell (projects
'don't notice me' to Stealth skills, etc.? I like this rather a lot.
Have you tried this? Should these be 5% or 10% per point?
Note we've got this already in one case : Comprehension, from Pamalt.
It all depends on how you slice it. A Manipulation spell (helps with
fine work) is at least as logical as a Coordination spell (helps with
climbing, horse-riding, lock-picking, zither playing, etc.) The Manipulation
spell might have a name like "Nimble Fingers" and be available to shamans,
thief gods, and Donander. "Agility" would come from cults like Yinkin and
his sidekick Orlanth.
I think you should write these up and submit them for consideration for
the next draft. They could be additions instead of replacements. If
Pamalt can have Comprehension I really don't see why Yinkin can't have
Agility or Catfoot.
>Just explicitly forbid that praxis, and keep things as they are. Else you get
>born priests as well as born losers, and almost nobody likes to play the
>latter. Rather let me play a slave than a character damned to inactivity
>because of low initial and thereby permanently low POW!
A good point. If I were playing RQ in a universe like Middle-Earth or
Mythic Scandinavia, I'd certainly want to have born priests because they
are in-genre. What's in-genre for Glorantha is up to Greg, but sometimes
it does seem like there are born priests - look at Jar-Eel or Argin Terror.
You can say these are very special cases, but there seems to be a general
principle that some people are just more magical than others, just as some
people are stronger. If you changed the basic currency of power away from
POW toward something more like Glory (from Pendragon) this would be OK.
I liked the RQ2 division between the Rune Lord and Rune Priest tracks.
Rune Lords gained power and skill in the mundane world, Rune Priests in
the Otherworld. They had a higher POW gain roll, remember. This didn't
really bother me at all. Rune Priests also had skill limitations, and
there were real benefits to being a Rune Lord.
___________
> 4. FATIGUE
I'm not too sure about the autofail mods any more. In the real world,
experienced fighters learn to conserve energy and outlast their opponents
as well as outfighting them. A person with 120% skill has worked hard on
his fighting and should be able to outlast someone with 100% skill. In
fact I'm inclined (at the moment) to say:
Take away the 'Skill above 100% subtracts from opponent's Parry' rule.
Use something like Steve Maurer's Success Levels.
Let fights between supermen go on until luck makes one win (crits, fumbles)
or until the fatigue modifiers bring the skills of one of them down below
95%. Now the better man wins. This recreates the psychology of wearing down
the inexperienced opponent and creates a sense of panic in the guy who is
getting tired.
The die roll add does seem quite wrong to me; when I get really exhausted
I'm not going to hit ANYONE for triple damage, more likely just stand there
and get hit. Fumble chance should go up but straight skill mods seem about
right.
> The simplest method I've seen proposed was by (I think) Nick Brooke, who
> suggested doing it Pendragon style; if all rolls are of the same level of
> success, whoever rolled highest in that level wins. One roll, no math.
> Unfortunately it's somewhat counter RQ, where the low roll is always best.
> So, instead say whoever rolled the most under the level needed wins. One
I suggested something like this: better success wins, but within the
same success level high roll wins. This seems simple and involves no
subtraction. Hector has a special 19, Achilles a special 20, Achilles wins.
Little Ajax has a crit 4, Paris a normal 35, Little Ajax wins. This seems
simple enough and also works well with Craft or Devise skills: a GM can write
down a trap as having been set with a Special 10 and leave it at that. Using
the subtraction system is more complicated. Similarly with Conceal, etc.
I use this system in my game and no-one has complained. And it's instant:
when a PC has a Special Scan 8 I know whether or not he beats my assassin's
Sneak roll instantly, no computation involved, just a comparison.
>I'd say stick with th eresistance roll, but do something about the resistance
>table. It's too linear for my taste. I'm not quite convinced about the
>exponential character of characteristics, and even less when it comes to
I say, either make the characteristics explicitly exponential and keep
the resistance table (I like it this way) or fix the resistance table
(Joerg's way). Just make it consistent. I like the exponential characteristics
because this fits in with human perceptions of things: there is a reason that
sound intensity is measured in logarithmic decibels. Forces are also
perceived logarithmically, and brightness: look at star magnitudes. Of
course the description of things like Gift POW have to be changed since
the POW 11 - POW 10 =/ POW 31 - POW 30.
- Paul
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