Actual Play with Skills over 100%

[Chaot]

Split attacks are great, but I rarely actually see them in play. My players don't really care about the -30% on secondary parries. They'd rather go for the higher chance of rolling a critical.

[badcat]

I saw it rarely too, but they did start splitting sometimes when weapon skills got up towards 150%+. It was a very effective way to wear down a powerful npc opponent. They would wolfpack and sometimes reduce the npcs defense by 90-120% and then attack again. Very effective indeed. I think the highest skill was one had 180%, so he was still getting a critical chance of 26% on the 'real' attack. Did not see it used at the start, when the highest skill was 105% or so, but I don't know if that was choice or simply that they didn't know the system well enough yet.

[Lord Twig]

We played RQ3 and allowed split attacks against the same opponent. So in badcat's example the first attack would be at 50% and would most likely be parried, the second attack would be at 85% and the opponent would not be able to parry at all, unless he split his parry (assuming his parry was over 100%).

Needless to say people split their attacks pretty often.

[Chaot]

Ah yes, that makes sense. It's funny how game mechanics effect play. Using Elric!/SB5 as a base, it seems to be most effective for the PCs to gang up on a given individual per round, the weaker the better. Those -30% add up.

Oddly enough, most of my players haven't clued into this. I don't know why, and I'm very happy they're playing through the story rather than gaming the rules....

Edit: Oops, I began the post and got busy with other things. The above response is to badcat.

To Lord Twig, that makes sense. I've read, but have never actually played RQ3. I'm coming from the Elric!/SB5 rules.

[badcat]

Gaming the rules is pretty much necessary in any rpg with a tactical element, it's just over-done in some. That is probably my main concern about using opposed rolls in BRP, esp. if using a combat matrix a la MRQ.

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by Lord Twig

We played RQ3 and allowed split attacks against the same opponent. So in badcat's example the first attack would be at 50% and would most likely be parried, the second attack would be at 85% and the opponent would not be able to parry at all, unless he split his parry (assuming his parry was over 100%).

In RQ3 we did this as well.

In RQ2 there was no need as RQ2 had Anti-Parry, so someone with 250% Bastard Sword Attack fighting someone with 50% defense knocked 100% off the opponent's parry, so skill had a massive effect on combat. Of course, we used to split attacks, parries and defense against multiple opponents, so a high-level statement of intent could involve 7 or 8 splits, but we managed without a problem.

In RQ3 there was no anti-parry concept, so two very skilled opponents could virtually guarantee that they could parry any attacking blow, so if both sides had enough armour and a good parrying weapon then combat could take a long, long time to resolve. As most people over 100% were Rune Lords, they usually had iron weapons and armour and probably had some magic, so they had a lot of APs.

Eventually, we got around this by allowing multiple splits against the same opponent. This meant that skill became important again as someone with higher attack/parry skills could split 3 times and force the defender to split parry three times which sometimes reduced them to less than 95% Parry chance. When we double-teamed an opponent it was even better as both attackers could split attacks, leaving the defender splitting his parries 4, 5 or 6 times.

In an ideal world, I'd use RQ2 Anti-Parry and also allow multiple splits against the same person. That way, skill is the main driver in a combat.

Originally Posted by Lord Twig

Needless to say people split their attacks pretty often.

I sometimes played a centaur who had 5 legs and a spider mask that meant he could cast Transform Head once a week. When fully tooled up he went in with Spear, Hoof, Bite and Punch. He normally went in Fanatically or Berserk so he was attacking on between 200%-260% so he would split Spear/Spear, Hoof/Hoof, Bite/Bite, Punch coming in on SR 2/7/12, 5/10, 5/10 as his Hoof and Bite were considered independent attacks. He wasn't that effective against very skilled opponents, but he went through supporting initiates like a combine harvester, leaving the rest of the party to concentrate on the big hitters.

[soltakss]

Originally Posted by Chaot

My games routinely have skills above 100%, usually at character generation. It doesn't break the system at all, even without the multiple attack rule. It just makes the characters more effective. The Success Matrix scales nicely.

I've never really started with a Rune Lord, apart from said Centaur who was rolled up with enhanced Character Generation (+20% to skills and incredibly lucky characteristic rolls) and just scraped in. The trouble with that approach is that you end up with PCs who are very skilled in certain areas and very unskilled in other areas. They also end up with good specific magic but lousy general magic. But, that's fine if that's the way the campaign works. Sometimes it is good not having jack of all trades PCs.

Originally Posted by Shaira

Now, if you *really* want to know how well high-level skills work, ask Simon (soltakss)... There's a campaign that pushed the envelope!

Originally Posted by Chaot

Indeed. Here's a link to the overview. Follow the links in the article to read more. Fun stuff.

Thanks, we had a blast playing it. Some people who didn't play in the continuing campaign complained that the skill levels were just silly, but they actually worked surprisingly well with only a few tweaks.

I don't know how BRP will scale, Stormbringer doesn't really scale in the same way that RQ used to because of the -30% rather than the 50/50ish splits, so a powerful Stormbringer character will have a lower pecentage skill than a RQ character of similar game ability/effect. I don't have BRP0 so I can't comment on its scaleability. But, if you use the old RQ rules for high skills they work just fine. I can't see them being incompatible with BRP.

[Dredj]

So, does anyone have a really good conversion, then, for Jedis? With skills over 100%, deflecting blaster shots with a lighsaber should be easy.

[frogspawner]

BRP0's sample Galactic Knight has Energy Sword 150%, Martial Arts (in Energy Sword, presumably) 80%, and various psychic abilities you might expect. The rules say a "cinematic" campaign can allow missile-weapon parries, as "extraordinarily rare combat feats", at full skill if they first make an Agility roll.

There's no mechanic I can see for targeting parried laser-bolts, though... So I'd suggest allowing further "special abilities" to be chosen for every, say, 50% of Martial Arts - and that sort of fancy parrying could be one such special ability. Would that do?

[NickMiddleton]

Originally Posted by Dredj

So, does anyone have a really good conversion, then, for Jedis? With skills over 100%, deflecting blaster shots with a lighsaber should be easy.

IIRC Jason's notes on doing Star wars in BRP were posted in a thread at RPG Net a while back...

Cheers,

Nick Middleton