I played a lot of Elric, and that is similar to brp as far as I recall.

You had to max out your dodge and or parry, and wear heavy armor or you were toast.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;646337Cool thanks Just curious.

:hatsoff:

Quote from: Rincewind1;646339More importantly perhaps than death itself, if you use the location HP rules, it is rather quick to toss someone out of combat, since most locations on average will have 3 - 4 HP, and loosing all of them in a location is a severe hindrance for your fight abilities - if you can stand from pain at all.

Exactly. Most fights in RQ are not to death because you can be easily incapacitated of a non-lethal wound.

Quote from: Bill;646347I played a lot of Elric, and that is similar to brp as far as I recall.

You had to max out your dodge and or parry, and wear heavy armor or you were toast.

Yup, those demonweapons are wicked.

Quote from: Imperator;646424Exactly. Most fights in RQ are not to death because you can be easily incapacitated of a non-lethal wound.

I expect this very notion is very important to Aces & Eights (planning to run a campaign now), and my players will need a swift "learning curve" to discover that fights themselves may not be deadly - and that's a problem. It's watching your friend die in screams from a gutshot or perish away in fever from gangrene that's painful.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303No give the Seal his core weapon an assaut rifle and I will give him better than fair chance of killing a bear ....

Why not give him a tank and use his driving skill. I've no idea how you're missing the point here unless you're doing it intentionally.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303In hand to hand combat you are forgetting some core stuff.
The Seal can avoid the bears blows and hit the bear far more often. This is likely.

Hahaha! I take it you've never seen a bear go to work. 'Slow' is not a word I'd use to describe them. No, a serious apex bear will take your head off your shoulders before your neural impulses have a chance to tell your midriff muscles to duck. Polar bears are one of the very very few animals that actually stalk and hunt humans successfully.

Still, you can hold off a decent sized bear with a sharp stick if you know what you're doing and it isn't too hungry.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303The bear on the other hand  will not hit the skilled fighter often

Hahaha!

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303So you need to differentiate combat skill from damage and damage resistance.

I do!
 

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303A flyweight boxer might have loads more skill than a heavyweight but the fact that the small guy does 1d6 dmage with a punch and the heavyweight can buffer 4 points off each punch makes the small guy weak in combat. On the other hand the heavyweight deals 1d6+2 damage and the flyweight can only buffer 2 points of damage so the damage the Heavyweight does with each punch is much greater if he can hit.

So separate the skill system from the damage resolution mechanic.

Now with weapons things change a heavyweight can not buffer blows from a knife any more than a small guy, so the small guy hits 3 or 4 times more often and that does huge amounts more damage.

You switched back to humans again for some reason. I dunno, this is getting ridiculous.

Quote from: Imperator;646312Not necessarily because, again, we are talking about different scales. Now, the kung fu master should beat the crap out 99 times out of 100 of an unskilled oponent with excellent stats that fights in his same scale.

Or maybe the cheetah has a ridiculously higher dash skill. Or maybe its dash skill is not in the same scale as a human.

But I can represent statistical probabilities perfectly well within the one scale, I don't need a new higher megadamage scale tacked on.

It's actually a hell of a lot of fun, once you can approximate a realistic system that scales from cat to human to horse to bear to rhino to elephant, you can slot in imaginary monsters were you see fit and get a feel for how they would perform in real life. Quite a rush.

Incidentally, even a cheetah with a shitty dash will outrun Usain almost 100% of the time. It's about the stats in that case. Yes it is, don't bother arguing.

Does BRP use a particularly skill weighted system or something, because religious defence of some system is the only reason I can imagine for the utterly bizarre arguments being put forward in some parts.

If a Navy Seal is swiftly mauled by a deaf bear in an otherwise uninhabited forest, does the dying Seal make a sound?

This whole discussion leads to a suggestion that athletes should be doing sports well into their 80s, since if skill is so much more important than (what we call in RPGs) abilities, and skills only raise with age... Bolt may be the best runner for now, but in a few next years he'll start loosing to his younger opponents - not because they are more skilled than him, but because their bodies are more capable to utilise their lesser skills. And it warms my heart to watch Lord of Engineers Duckman to fall into this trap. Because if we'd be looking for a truly "realistic" system, we'd need to have a form of both added bonus to skills via D20, and for the attributes to limit "maximal" skill level, so to speak. And that'd even apply to academic skills as well - you can't keep up with stuff so fast when you're growing older.

Quote from: Bill;646347I played a lot of Elric, and that is similar to brp as far as I recall.

You had to max out your dodge and or parry, and wear heavy armor or you were toast.

Elric and CoC are basically BRP, except BRP extends the rules of combat towards more tactical uses of firearms than featured in CoC.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646468This whole discussion leads to a suggestion that athletes should be doing sports well into their 80s, since if skill is so much more important than (what we call in RPGs) abilities, and skills only raise with age... Bolt may be the best runner for now, but in a few next years he'll start loosing to his younger opponents - not because they are more skilled than him, but because their bodies are more capable to utilise their lesser skills.

Exactly. There are a hundred ways to make the same point but none of them seem to be making a dent.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646468and for the attributes to limit "maximal" skill level, so to speak.

That's an interesting point, which would certainly limit the 'professor with intelligence 3/10 because he worked really really hard'. I must ponder the ramifications of this. Base stat as a modifier in terms of how fast you can advance? Does it cross the playability versus reality boundary?

Hmm.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646468This whole discussion leads to a suggestion that athletes should be doing sports well into their 80s, since if skill is so much more important than (what we call in RPGs) abilities, and skills only raise with age...

While that may be how you and Traveller view the discussion, that's not how others here have been viewing it.

They've been viewing it as matter of using stats where stats matter and using skill were skill matters. Most in favor of that have even allowed for stats providing a cap on skills.

Traveller and yourself seem to be hung up on the idea that the only possible solution is one pool of dice that determine the entire result. That's only only a flawed model- it's one that only he (and it seems you) are suggesting.

Quote from: The Traveller;646466But I can represent statistical probabilities perfectly well within the one scale, I don't need a new higher megadamage scale tacked on.

Hum, I don't see those values as megadamage. 3d6 is the same amount of damage that a very strong human can do with a big Danish axe.

QuoteDoes BRP use a particularly skill weighted system or something, because religious defence of some system is the only reason I can imagine for the utterly bizarre arguments being put forward in some parts.

Sorry, I don't understand the question.

Quote from: Imperator;646519Hum, I don't see those values as megadamage. 3d6 is the same amount of damage that a very strong human can do with a big Danish axe.

You're talking about a seperate scale for exceptional whatever. This isn't a great design idea since you almost immediately run into edge cases which are better represented in one scale but fall into the other. This is the megadamage problem. In the system I've outlined you don't need finicky patches like that, just bigger numbers.

Quote from: Imperator;646519Sorry, I don't understand the question.

You don't understand why athletes retire after a certain age? It's not because their skills got rusty, it's because their body can't compete. So the question is why on earth would anyone refuse to accept the importance of stats, is there some beloved game system that heavily weights skills or something?

I'm genuinely puzzled as to why this might be contentious, yourself and jibbajabba seem to have pulled an assertion out of a hat and are dead set on defending it in the face of reality, as in example after example after example. You even agreed with one of the examples when you said the bear should maul the special forces guy most of the time.

Quote from: The Traveller;646466Why not give him a tank and use his driving skill. I've no idea how you're missing the point here unless you're doing it intentionally.


Hahaha! I take it you've never seen a bear go to work. 'Slow' is not a word I'd use to describe them. No, a serious apex bear will take your head off your shoulders before your neural impulses have a chance to tell your midriff muscles to duck. Polar bears are one of the very very few animals that actually stalk and hunt humans successfully.

Still, you can hold off a decent sized bear with a sharp stick if you know what you're doing and it isn't too hungry.


Hahaha!


I do!
 

You switched back to humans again for some reason. I dunno, this is getting ridiculous.


.

So we agree the bear is a skilled fighter with a lot of combat knowlege and that its size and strength impact its damage potential and its ability to resist damage but not its actual ability to hit in combat...good.
My bear was slow and not good at hitting stuff becuaase you postulated a navy seal has higher 'skill and more trianing' buit it wasn't enough to overcome the bears Strength. Now you are saying that he bear is really fast and good at combat. meh...

I switched back to Humans because you didn't like the bear is a highly skilled combatant argument.
Comparing 2 fighters one flyweight and one heavyweight seemed to be a simpler task as they can both be trained in the same way. Like I said the flyweight might be a much more skilled boxer but his blows won't pack enough force to hurt a heavyweight. Surely you can see how this is just a mirror of the bear who is exponentially larger and stronger. He deals and can take more damage.
If we move to weapons then things change and the buffer of strength is much less critical. so a highly skilled hunter with a spear against a bear ... much more even.

So Skill in combat needs to be separated from damage in combat. High skill might lead to more damage but strength and size need to be considered especially in blunt damage.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646468If a Navy Seal is swiftly mauled by a deaf bear in an otherwise uninhabited forest, does the dying Seal make a sound?

This whole discussion leads to a suggestion that athletes should be doing sports well into their 80s, since if skill is so much more important than (what we call in RPGs) abilities, and skills only raise with age... Bolt may be the best runner for now, but in a few next years he'll start loosing to his younger opponents - not because they are more skilled than him, but because their bodies are more capable to utilise their lesser skills. And it warms my heart to watch Lord of Engineers Duckman to fall into this trap. Because if we'd be looking for a truly "realistic" system, we'd need to have a form of both added bonus to skills via D20, and for the attributes to limit "maximal" skill level, so to speak. And that'd even apply to academic skills as well - you can't keep up with stuff so fast when you're growing older.

.

Now aging is really important very few RPGs try to handle it at all.
I mean imagine a system where a female's appearance drops by 1 point per year after she hits 32, the boards would go mad

Uppost I refered to a game I made up where maximum skill was limited by stat. And you have Active, and inactive skills.

If we supposed Running was a skill based on Strength + agility. so your starting skill was S+A and you could increase the skill to 5x(S+A) then if you maxed the skill out stats would be 25% of skill, but as your stats dropped your skill would diminish.  
Now youy have to be pretty harsh with stats and maybe there is a better stat that Str or agility to determine sprinting , but I think its a workable compromise.

Quote from: The Traveller;646531You're talking about a seperate scale for exceptional whatever. This isn't a great design idea since you almost immediately run into edge cases which are better represented in one scale but fall into the other. This is the megadamage problem. In the system I've outlined you don't need finicky patches like that, just bigger numbers.

But that solution you outline is just what BRP does. A bear does more damage than a regular human weapon, and can soak more damage. How is that a different scale?

QuoteYou don't understand why athletes retire after a certain age? It's not because their skills got rusty, it's because their body can't compete. So the question is why on earth would anyone refuse to accept the importance of stats, is there some beloved game system that heavily weights skills or something?

No one is refusing the importance of stats. In BRP having great stats give you a clear advantage over those who haven't the same. But for the kind of activities that PCs usually do, experience trumps stat any day. I don't see the problem. Actually, running a 100 m sprint at the Olympics is a very fringe case, one that you could easily simulate on BRP using the stats.

QuoteI'm genuinely puzzled as to why this might be contentious, yourself and jibbajabba seem to have pulled an assertion out of a hat and are dead set on defending it in the face of reality, as in example after example after example. You even agreed with one of the examples when you said the bear should maul the special forces guy most of the time.

Sure. Because there are other factors apart from skill involved on that. But I was talking about most typical activities in an RPG session, like two guys in a fistfight, where the idea of an inexperienced guy with good stats having the same chances of winning as an average stats guy with lots of training looks weird to me.

Of course, one could reason that if you have lots of points in a combat skill you probably have good stats as a result of the same training.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;644889Attribute 3 Skill 1

against

Attribute 1 Skill 3

Same result. Should Attributes function differently rather than just "skill + attribute"?

Two points:

First, this is an over-simplification that ignores the rest of the system. If attributes cost 5 times as much to improve as a specific skill, the system isn't actually placing an equal value on them. Alternatively, you might have a system like Godlike in which your attribute value provides a cap on the maximum skill value you can have.

Second, I tend to think of ability scores in ability+skill systems as basically being very broad skills. This becomes really obvious in systems which feature sub-skills: You pay 10 points to increase your ability by +1; 3 points to increase your skill by +1; or 1 point to increase a specialization by 1 point. The tiering at play is really obvious.

And you can use that sort of tiering to apply slightly different models to each tier: Ability scores can decay with age. Specializations can be the place where players can define their own categories. Et cetera.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646563My bear was slow and not good at hitting stuff becuaase you postulated a navy seal has higher 'skill and more trianing' buit it wasn't enough to overcome the bears Strength. Now you are saying that he bear is really fast and good at combat. meh...

Speed is a stat as well, not a skill.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646563I switched back to Humans because you didn't like the bear is a highly skilled combatant argument.

A bear is going to be less skilled in hand to hand combat than one of a group of the world's foremost killers. The bear will still win. A cheetah is going to be less skilled at dashing than the world's fastest human runners, but it will still run faster than them. A teenage tennis player is going to be less skilled than a former tennis world champion in their 80s, but they will still beat the former world champion.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646563So Skill in combat needs to be separated from damage in combat. High skill might lead to more damage but strength and size need to be considered especially in blunt damage.

Let's stay focused on your claim of 70:20:10, which represents reality not some form of game where you are trying to emulate an atmosphere. I'm saying that's wrong, plenty of others are saying that's wrong, and giving lots of examples to back that up.

Yes play can be complicated considerably by other factors but we aren't talking about that, we're talking about the 7:2:1 ratio.

Quote from: Imperator;646604No one is refusing the importance of stats.

Jibbajabba is, and you were emphatically agreeing with him.

Quote from: Imperator;646604In BRP having great stats give you a clear advantage over those who haven't the same.

I not only don't know how BRP does things I'm not even sure what BRP is. All I'm asking is, is there an RPG system that reflects what jibbajabba is saying to cause this confusion. Apparently there is not.

Quote from: Imperator;646604Sure. Because there are other factors apart from skill involved on that. But I was talking about most typical activities in an RPG session, like two guys in a fistfight, where the idea of an inexperienced guy with good stats having the same chances of winning as an average stats guy with lots of training looks weird to me.

If you mean a shortish asian ninja having the same odds as a hulking German bierhall brawler, it would look a bit weird, but that's because you haven't the skills cranked up high enough for the ninja, plus the ninja will have a variety of other skills like trip, push, nerve pinch and so on.

Quote from: Imperator;646604Of course, one could reason that if you have lots of points in a combat skill you probably have good stats as a result of the same training.

You'd figure that out at chargen usually. I'm leery of changing base stats on the fly in response to player activities because I actually want them to focus on their skills. All I'm saying is that the 7:2:1 mix is wayyyy too skills heavy.

Quote from: The Traveller;646624I not only don't know how BRP does things I'm not even sure what BRP is. All I'm asking is, is there an RPG system that reflects what jibbajabba is saying to cause this confusion. Apparently there is not.

BRP is the system used in Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Elric, Nephilim and other games. It's the classic percentile system.

QuoteIf you mean a shortish asian ninja having the same odds as a hulking German bierhall brawler, it would look a bit weird, but that's because you haven't the skills cranked up high enough for the ninja, plus the ninja will have a variety of other skills like trip, push, nerve pinch and so on.

I think we can agree on this.

QuoteYou'd figure that out at chargen usually. I'm leery of changing base stats on the fly in response to player activities because I actually want them to focus on their skills. All I'm saying is that the 7:2:1 mix is wayyyy too skills heavy.

It's a perfectly valid preference. In BRP changing stats require lots and lots of training.