COMMENTS, TRAINING, MODIFIERS, DAMAGE BONUS

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From: JOVANOVIC@CUCCFA.CCC.COLUMBIA.EDU
Date: Thu 17 Jun 1993 - 02:14:20 EEST

Loren -

Sorry, can't give you an exact release date on the next draft.
Depends on Avalon Hill to a great extent. If I have the time
I'll try to post a complete summary of what changes should be
made based on playtester feedback - I'll keep posting various
new ideas in the meantime.

All -

I'd appreciate comments on the following, which is a simpler
version of the RQIII/RQIV training rules (and Copyright 1993
Oliver Jovanovic and Michael McGloin). It seems to simplify
training, research and Instruct skill. Let me know what you think.
This is part of a system which will suggest that characters
divide their time for each week, season or year (as appropriate
for the time scale of the campaign) among days spent on duties,
training, practice, research and socializing.

A typical week for a would be adventurer holding down a full time job
in Pavis might be:

4 days of duties (job)
1 day of practice (a job related skill, such as Craft <Masonry>)
1 day of training (weapons work with the local blademaster,
                   costing a pretty penny).
1 day of socializing (going out with friends, talking to people).

The segmentation into days is just an abstraction - in reality, the
character would mix various parts of this into the way they spent each day.
In the case of the character above, it simply means that they spend
4/7 of their free time on duties, 1/7 of their free time practicing, 1/7 of
their free time training, and 1/7 of their free time socializing.

Duties typically yield a salary or are required by a
character's position in a cult or other organization,
and may yield some slight benefits (free practice of
duty related skills).

Practice, research and training are dealt with below.

Socializing yields friends and contacts. A character that
does not spend one day a week socializing will have few
or no friends or contacts. Most characters will typically
have two or three friends or contacts (an exact number can be
calculated by dividing Custom skill by 20 and multiplying
this number by the number of days a week spent socializing -
a character with 71% Custom skill that spends 2 days a week
socializing would have 7 good friends or contacts).
Generally the more powerful or useful the friend or contact,
the less influence over them the character would have.

TRAINING

Days of training to increase a skill by <die roll> = skill/10

<die roll> = 1d6 for a Medium skill, 1d3 for a Hard skill and 2d6 for
              an Easy skill.

Optional rule: Subtract skill bonus/10 from the days of training time required
               (this avoids penalizing characters with high bonuses).

Training can be expensive, and may be difficult to obtain, particularly at
higher skill levels.

PRACTICE

Practice is studying something on your own with the proper techniques,
partners or equipment on hand, and takes twice as long as training
(training time x2), but is generally more affordable and easier to
arrange than training.

RESEARCH

Research is studying something on your own with little or no background or
equipment on hand, and takes four times as long as training (training time x4),
but costs little or nothing.

A simplified chart:

                Days of Days of Days of
                training to practice to research to
                increase by increase by increase by
Skill % <die roll> <die roll> <die roll>

1 to 10 1 2 4
11 to 20 2 4 8
21 to 30 3 6 12
31 to 40 4 8 16
41 to 50 5 10 20
51 to 60 6 12 24
61 to 70 7 14 28
71 to 80 8 16 32
81 to 90 9 18 36
91 to 100 10 20 40
101 to 110 11 22 44
etc.

Optional rule: Subtract 1 day of training time required for every 10% of skill
               bonus (to avoid penalizing characters with high skill bonuses).

TEACHERS

A teacher can normally train someone effectively that has a skill level equal
to or lower than half theirs. If the students skill level is above half the
teacher's but equal to or below the teachers skill, it counts as practice for
the student. If the students skill level is greater than that of the teachers,
it counts as research for the student.

INSTRUCT SKILL

Instruct skill enhances the effectiveness of a teacher. Add the teacher's
Instruct skill to the skill they are teaching (not to exceed twice the level
of the skill being taught) for the purposes of determining their ability to
teach).

Example: Arlia has a Scimitar attack skill of 68%, but no Instruct skill.
She could effectively train someone with a Scimitar skill of 34% or below.

Drill Sargent Carnifex, with a Scimitar attack skill of 71% and a Instruct
skill of 85% could effectively train someone with a Scimitar skill of 71%
or lower (half of 71+71 (not 71+85, as 71x2 is lower)).

(Basically, this means that a competent teacher (with high Instruct skill)
will be able to teach twice as effectively as an incompetent one, but
eliminates the need to make Instruct rolls, which seems a significant
simplification).

Any comments?

Characteristic modifiers -

I kind of like Paul's idea of using Original POW to determine skill
bonuses - the original POW roll determines whether you are fairly
inobtrusive or have great presence, and would make a thief that
later increased his POW a reasonable character to play. I disagree
with the idea of letting Original POW affect the likelihood of
POW gain, however - that would be far too unbalancing - in the
long run, characters with low starting roll for POW would be dwarfed
by those with a medium or high roll. POW just plays too vital a role
in spell casting, magical attack, magical defense, spirit combat
and cult progression. Even without this, the Original POW idea gives
characters that start with a high original rolled POW some incentive
to become magicians, since their magic bonus will be higher than
that of other characters.

Given the idea of changes from Original POW not affecting modifiers,
what about the following set of modifiers:

Agility Skills Category Modifier
STR + DEX - SIZ - 10

Communication Skills Category Modifier
INT/2 + Original POW/2 + APP - 20

Magic Skills Category Modifier
Original POW + INT/2 + DEX/2 - 20

Manipulation Skills Category Modifier
STR/2 + INT/2 + DEX - 20

Perception Skills Category Modifier
INT + Original POW/2 + CON/2 - 20

Reasoning Skills Category Modifier
INT + Original POW - 20

Stealth Skills Category Modifier
DEX + INT - SIZ/2 - Original POW/2 -10

I would still retain a seperate category of Knowledge skills (skills
that can't be increased by experience, but if these represent skills
that are strictly learned, they really don't need a bonus in any case).

Damage Bonus -

It would be an added complication, but if we go with the point by point
damage bonus system, something like half the damage bonus is your
natural armor might work fairly well - humans would have one or two
points at most, which sounds about right.

With respect to highly skilled fighters doing additional damage - to a
certain extent specials and criticals handle that already - however, one
of the best ideas I've seen suggested for this was by Brandon Bryslawski,
who suggested that characters be allowed to subtract from their
chance to hit in exchange for doing extra damage - something like
+1 damage for every 20% subtracted from your skill - this would
let highly skilled fighters (such as a Rune Lord with 140% attack)
do 2 or 3 extra points of damage per blow. Might make for a good optional
rule.

Oliver


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