From: boris (mabeyke@batman.b11.ingr.com)
Date: Fri 18 Jun 1993 - 00:53:27 EEST
TO: the Gang of (RQ)4. All six of them.
Notes on Oliver's (that's MR. JOVANOVIC to you boy ;-) suggested changes.
Diving right in....
>
>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.
Instead of saying an exact number, say an approximate number. Experienced
GMs won't let themselves be bound by this, and there's no reason to confuse
beginners with what is, essentially, a rule of thumb. State that it is
just a rule of thumb explicitly, for the beginners. We do want to get as
many (good) new players in the RQ fold as we can, after all.
>
>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.
Are we working with just intergers here? If so, then state explicitly
(there's that word again) how to round. Yeah, I know, it's implicit in
the table. Humor me, it'll help the tyro. Also, if it is just interger
math, then the add from skill boni are going to be just zero or one (if
rounding down) or just one or two (if rounding up), unless truely
exceptional people are involved. If the subtraction is done before
dividing, as some have suggested, then this is not as granular, and works
better.
>
>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).
List costs in the chart also: if this is the same as 3rd ed. then it would
be based on number of students, which is based on level of skill. So add
two more columns showing these, and the GM can quickly look it up and tweak
for current conditions as he wishes, all very quickly. Currently training
in RQ is a pain in the butt; this looks to be a massive improvement. Add
the extra info to make it a complete snap. Of course state that the costs
apply only to commonly available skills, and suggest modifiers for rarity.
>
>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.
This would be a good place to mention how much teachers can charge, based
on skill level and rarity of skill.
>
>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).
Much better than requiring a success roll for each training session. Now
players can process downdown without a handful of dice. As an aid to this,
might allow a fixed add of, say, 1, 3, or 6 for hard, medium and easy
skills. I never minded a fixed add, I just didn't like it being equal to
the average roll. This way, someone who wants to take the time to roll
gains the advantage of faster increase, on average, but if someone needs
to go up at least 3 points, they can take the add.
>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.
I can see keeping this for balance. It *is* very much in genre, however,
to have some who are born "powerful"; Merlin (as well as Arkat) started
with a high POW and just got higher. But it's not a major point.
>Given the idea of changes from Original POW not affecting modifiers,
>what about the following set of modifiers:
>
>Communication Skills Category Modifier
>INT/2 + Original POW/2 + APP - 20
APP as APP makes little sense here. If it's CHA or PRE, then I agree
completely.
>
>Magic Skills Category Modifier
>Original POW + INT/2 + DEX/2 - 20
INT as a secondary char. for Magic? I'd say make it primary, and drop DEX,
if you want to balance things.
>
>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).
I disagree. Something that is strictly learned is still learned more
>Damage Bonus -
quickly by more intelligent people. Give them a bonus on INT - 10 (or
2xINT - 20 if you want balance with the others). Making the base of these
skills zero more reflects that they are learned only. IMO, of course.
>
>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.
This makes some sense, especially in heroic games. Perhaps rule that any
wound taken has to have these APs healed as well. Though that would be
an added complication that's not really needed, so it would be best as an
optional rule, I guess.
>
>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.
I like this. Say even if a Storm Khan had cast Bladesharp 6 and Berserk,
raising his normal skill of 110% to 250%, then he would either special
50% of the time, or drop his skill to 90% and his special chance to 18%,
but get +8 to damage. (Hey, I like using gedanken experiments to explore
the hairy fringes. So sue me.) Need to (here it comes again) explicitly
specify how the added damage if affected by specials and crits.
I'd say it looks good. Needs some text fixes is all, but it is a predraft,
so that's normal. I like it.
----
(*) ZZ [] (.) @ e K| o8- |> oK <>< )o 3 8 <|
Two heads are better than none.
Thanatar proverb.
Boris
|><| +- (| >- .: K * =|= <- (O) ( ) (o) (|) X-
0,,
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