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why don't 18 in Characteristics get more love?


tgcb

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Made some Runequest 6 characters tonight...and in doing so I noticed something.

(Follow along on Page 18 of the book.)

I have a 18 in CHA. I'm at near the pinnacle in human CHA. I get a +1 Experience Modifier, which is fine.

Fine until I notice that someone with a 13 CHA (slightly better than average CHA) also gets a +1 Experience Modifier.

I have a 18 in CON. I'm at near the pinnacle in human CON. I get a +3 Healing Rate, which is fine.

Again, I'm OK with this until I figure out that someone with only a 13 CON also gets my +3 Healing Rate.

Then to top it off, if I had a 18 POW I would think I was somewhat special. I bank my +3 Luck Points.

But wait....some chump with only 13 POW also gets my +3 Luck Points.

Basically...not sure I'd be happy with someone with 28% less in my Characteristic getting the same bonus I did. What's so special about being the best when mearly "above average" is now equal?

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Yeah I saw this and felt the same way tgcb.

I beefed up the tables, and any result of 13-18 now reads as an increment of 13-14, then I have new ascending increments for 15-16 and 17-18, then every 6 beyond this. So a CON of 15 would grant a Healing rate of 4, or a POW of 17 would give you 5 Luck Points for example.

I haven't put it into play yet, it was just a tinkering I did, as I know my players will say exactly the same thing as you have identified. I'm sure my changes won't break the system, but it will make beginning characters a little more powerful than the authors originally envisioned. Shouldn't be much of an issue though, its better than than having players constantly complaining about it.

Edited by Mankcam

" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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I could see a problem with this approach, if applied to all the stat related features. Particularly CHA. A CHA of 17-18 in your house rule would get an improvement roll bonus of +3, that is double the recommended advancement rate per session/story!

The other 2, Healing Rate and Luck points are strong, but I feel not so game breaking as doubled advancement rate. Possibly go for 13-15, then 16-18 if you must. I suspect Pete and Loz wanted to discourage stat dumping, and I wonder if too great a reward for extreme stats may bring it back.

Clearly, "what I like" is awesome, and a well-considered, educated opinion. While "what other people like" is stupid, and just a bunch of made up gobbledygoook. - zomben

Victor of the "I Bought, We Won"

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To me it seems like a 28% range is way too much. But I also understand sometimes you have to skew things to make other things work.

However, if I'm a new player (especially one coming over from another system), and I get to page 18 and think "the math in this game is wonky"...I may not give the other 440 pages a chance. Also, there are pages later showing how each type of weapon is "unique" and has it's own feel (they don't lump all swords into one category for example). So why does the falchion get different stats than a scimitar? Aren't they "close enough to be the same"? They're not 28% different are they?

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To me it seems like a 28% range is way too much. But I also understand sometimes you have to skew things to make other things work.

However, if I'm a new player (especially one coming over from another system), and I get to page 18 and think "the math in this game is wonky"...I may not give the other 440 pages a chance. Also, there are pages later showing how each type of weapon is "unique" and has it's own feel (they don't lump all swords into one category for example). So why does the falchion get different stats than a scimitar? Aren't they "close enough to be the same"? They're not 28% different are they?

Sorry, what is this 28% thing? You've lost me. :?

Clearly, "what I like" is awesome, and a well-considered, educated opinion. While "what other people like" is stupid, and just a bunch of made up gobbledygoook. - zomben

Victor of the "I Bought, We Won"

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Sorry, what is this 28% thing? You've lost me. :?

13 (the low end of the range) is 72.22% of 18 (the high end of the range). 13 is 5 less than 18, making 13 approximately 27.77% (or 28%) less than 18.

In other words, the low end of the range is 28% less than the high end of the range. So basically someone who is almost 1/3rd worse in a stat than you is getting the same benefit as you are. Say you take a test and you get 90% and the stoner in the back row gets a 65%. But the teacher gives you both an "A". How would you feel?

Edited by tgcb
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Ah, but where in other games the stats get actual active use, in RQ6 they essentially mark starting potential for the vast majority of applications. The 18 STR person has a full 5% advantage in skill development over the 13 STR guy. The majority of uses of a character's natural capabilities are in the skills, not the derived secondary characteristics.

This is the marked difference between RQ6 and "that other game" and many others where the stat plays a significant ongoing role in the character's chances of succeeding in a task. So to use your exam example, the stat difference is more like a "reading age" assessment than a final exam. The final exam is a more of a skill comparison.

That's how I read it anyway.

Clearly, "what I like" is awesome, and a well-considered, educated opinion. While "what other people like" is stupid, and just a bunch of made up gobbledygoook. - zomben

Victor of the "I Bought, We Won"

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OK, here's a better example:

You are the pinnacle of health (CON 18) and you happen to break your leg. A jerk you hate, who is no where near as healthy as you (a mere CON 13), also breaks his leg.

Instead of you getting out of the hospital several days before he does, since you both have the same Healing Rate, you both get out of the hospital at the same time.

Now how do you feel about it?

PS- I do realize that in skills the 18 is going to be superior to the 13...just wondering why in these other areas it can't also be superior, since obviously it is superior.

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OK, here's a better example:

You are the pinnacle of health (CON 18) and you happen to break your leg. A jerk you hate, who is no where near as healthy as you (a mere CON 13), also breaks his leg.

Instead of you getting out of the hospital several days before he does, since you both have the same Healing Rate, you both get out of the hospital at the same time.

Now how do you feel about it?

PS- I do realize that in skills the 18 is going to be superior to the 13...just wondering why in these other areas it can't also be superior, since obviously it is superior.

I never said don't adjust the secondary stats, I just think the impact could be greater than you might first think, particularly with Charisma.

Re the hospital example, the Hospital probably discharges people once they are deemed able to manage independently, not necessarily waiting until they are fully healed. They need the beds after all. So our two patients my heal at the same rate, but the CON 18 person, having a higher Endurance skill, would be able to manage independently before the CON 13 patient, if only by a day or two... ;-)

Clearly, "what I like" is awesome, and a well-considered, educated opinion. While "what other people like" is stupid, and just a bunch of made up gobbledygoook. - zomben

Victor of the "I Bought, We Won"

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Now how do you feel about it?

I'd be quite happy about it, since my other characteristics are not going to match the 18 I have in CON. ;)

The best way of thinking about this is that Characteristics also have effects on your secondary Attributes, and that to be honest you are more than just your sum of random rolled stats. In RQ6 skills are king, and bad stat rolling isn't as penalised as in other games .

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Honestly, part of it has to be the granularity of the system. Healing Rate is currently CON/6, round up, because everyone wants to use whole numbers. If, instead, you chose not to round up, you'd have something a little more interesting, if a bit more complex. Your CON 13 character would have an HR of 2.167, while CON 18 gets you a full 3.000. Requires the tracking of fractional hit points (or a revamp of the entire hit point system) but would give you the granularity you want.

Gets harder with Luck Points, where they replenish back to their starting value each session. You'd have to tweak the rule, to say that you get back your base value in LP, but do not lose any fractional LP that you have left in your pool - so that 2.167 LP guy ends the session and then gets points back to take him to 2.33, and eventually, after six sessions, he starts with 3.00 LPs and has an extra whole one to use. Again, you have to be willing to track fractions or revamp the rules entirely.

Experience Modifier is actually a very close cousin to the way that prime requisites worked in OD&D - you had a high enough score in your primary stat and you got a 5 or 10% bonus to earned XP. It, too, was a static breakpoint that made any stat over that value effectively useless. At least here you get some skill default bonuses for those high ability scores. I suppose you could do the math-heavy version here as well - for every point of CHA below 7, you have a 16% chance of losing an Experience Roll. For every point over 12, a 16% chance of gaining an extra one.

I'm afraid to try to tackle the fantastic breakpoint that is INT+DEX = 25 - 3 APs and benefit from rounding up on Strike Rank - ain't nobody going to sit still for rolling a percentage chance of getting an extra action point per turn, no matter how realistic it might be...

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  • 2 weeks later...

If I ever get to play (which may be never), I may try something like:

Experience Modifier

[TABLE=class: grid, width: 500, align: left]

[TR]

[TD]CHA[/TD]

[TD]Exp.Modifier[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6-[/TD]

[TD]-1[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7-12[/TD]

[TD]0[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]13-15[/TD]

[TD]1[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]16-18[/TD]

[TD]2[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]19-21[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Healing

[TABLE=class: grid, width: 500, align: left]

[TR]

[TD]CON[/TD]

[TD]Healing Rate[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6-[/TD]

[TD]1[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7-12[/TD]

[TD]2[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]13-15[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]16-18[/TD]

[TD]4[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]19-21[/TD]

[TD]5[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Luck

[TABLE=class: grid, width: 500, align: left]

[TR]

[TD]POW[/TD]

[TD]Luck Points[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]6-[/TD]

[TD]1[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]7-12[/TD]

[TD]2[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]13-15[/TD]

[TD]3[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]16-18[/TD]

[TD]4[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]19-21[/TD]

[TD]5[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

Obviously it may "bother" some that the first 2 entries are grouped by 6 and the higher ones grouped by 3 but it's the best I've come up with so far.

Edited by tgcb
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I don't think you'd break anything there. Just a little easier for the very healthy to heal, for the very lucky to control their own destinies, and the very charismatic to increase in power more quickly. If those aren't issues for you, I suspect you'll be just fine.

Still doesn't get rid of breakpoints. I mean, what's the value in a CON, CHA or POW over 16?

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Still doesn't get rid of breakpoints. I mean, what's the value in a CON, CHA or POW over 16?

For CON anyway, you may get more hit points per location (depending on your SIZ).

And obviously a slight bump in any skills that use these characteristics.

I haven't yet found a way to make it more granular without really screwing up the values...or doing some wonky stuff which just takes away from the game without gaining much (other than appeasing my anal-retentive nature).

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  • 3 months later...

Let's look at it this way:

18 shows up 1/216 of 3d6 rolls (supposedly).

That would mean that in London around roughly AD1000, there would be roughly 40-50 people at the "pinnacle of human ability" in some area or another. Doesn't sound all that special, anymore, does it? Why should 18 scores get extra love?

If you want to make up NPC tables that greatly reduce the frequency of rolling in the tails, feel free. However, RQ has never been the game where "If you roll 18/00 you rule the world."

Science is not about belief. Science is also not about truth. Science is about models. All models are wrong. Some models are temporarily useful. If you want truth, don't ask me, I have science to do. (List of publications in pertinent peer-reviewed journals available.)

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Simplest answer is that characteristics are *relatively* unimportant in RQ6. If you are rolling randomly then this is probably a good thing as it means most characters are about as viable as most other characters. Note also that by default, RQ6 has no permanent way of improving characteristics.

The choice of "breakpoints" means that someone using points-buy does have meaningful decisions to make. E.g because CON 13 is significantly better than CON 12 for healing rate you don't have to bust your budget to hit a breakpoint.

The other way to do it, rather than making it more granular, is to set the breakpoints more to the extremes so that most characters are close to the same.

E.g. Action Points might be.

INT+DEX 1-6: 1 Action Point

INT+DEX 7-30: 2 Action Points

INT+DEX 31-36: 3 Action Points

Each +12: +1 Action Point

That way, only exceptional people get more than 2 Action Points.

Ditto Luck Points

POW 1-3: 1 Luck Point

POW 7-15: 2 Luck Points

POW 16-18: 3 Luck Points

Each +6: +1 Luck Point

RQ6 is fairly well balanced in terms of attributes. If you start adding more points in the normal human range to make it more granular you start getting more Luck Points per session, more action points per round and so on and the game can ending up feeling rather stodgy with combat rounds in particular taking longer to resolve.

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OK, here's a better example:

You are the pinnacle of health (CON 18) and you happen to break your leg. A jerk you hate, who is no where near as healthy as you (a mere CON 13), also breaks his leg.

Instead of you getting out of the hospital several days before he does, since you both have the same Healing Rate, you both get out of the hospital at the same time.

Now how do you feel about it?

PS- I do realize that in skills the 18 is going to be superior to the 13...just wondering why in these other areas it can't also be superior, since obviously it is superior.

Actually, there's a chance he will be out sooner, given that I had to lose more Hit Points to have my leg broken.

If you want actual stat numbers to matter more, it is possible to use a random method using 1 die + Characteristic score.

For instance, you could state that weekly HP recovery is based on a D10+CON roll, or that Combat Actions are based on the Initiative roll and not the sum of INT and DEX.

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  • 3 weeks later...

OK, here's a better example:

You are the pinnacle of health (CON 18) and you happen to break your leg. A jerk you hate, who is no where near as healthy as you (a mere CON 13), also breaks his leg.

Instead of you getting out of the hospital several days before he does, since you both have the same Healing Rate, you both get out of the hospital at the same time.

Now how do you feel about it?

PS- I do realize that in skills the 18 is going to be superior to the 13...just wondering why in these other areas it can't also be superior, since obviously it is superior.

How was the leg broken? If these guys both took equal damage to the same hit location, chances are the guy with the 18 CON didn't actually get a broken leg, but a bad sprain. He didn't take the detrimental effects of a disabled hit location, etc.

Likewise, the guy with 18 POW has half again as many Magic Points as the guy with 13. He has a greater capacity for magic, etc.

This extends throughout most of the characteristics, really. You've chosen one example for each, rather than looking at all the different things each characteristic modifies.

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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I'd say stats are redundant in many roleplaying games and in RQ.

If I was starting again I'd adopt the Talislanta approach and actually just generate a modifier, +/-5: +/-10: +/-15: +/-20: +/-25

Or, just abolish them and have skills only.

Or, have no skills and use stats only with the resistance table from BRP and a narrative 'label' to trigger situational bonuses (like 13th Age does)

But we ain't going to go there.

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Stats in BRP are really best seen as the building blocks of your character. They're the materials you use to give shape to various elements, in different ways. Stats give a general overview of the possible capabilities of your guy, but the ultimate definition is created through application of skill points, choice of magic, equipment, etc.

In that regard, I'd argue that stats in BRP are possibly more important to the system than in many other similar games. You have to have all those numbers down in order to combine them to varying effects. In some iterations of BRP they are obviously more or less important (IE: stats are quite important to figuring skill modifiers in all versions of RQ, as well as Magic World, etc., while they have no bearing on skills in CoC).

IMHO, YMMV, and all that jibba-jabba.

Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing.

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I was thinking of this from my point of view as a "newish" player reading the book: you'd get to page 18 and say "OK, you had me roll characteristics as a foundation for the rest of my character, now you're going to give me some bonuses based on what I rolled..that's cool, I like bonuses!....hold on a second ...now you're going to give the same bonus to my buddy who rolled way less than I did." Basically I don't like that you say "roll these dice to get a numerical value for a characteristic....wow, you got an 18...that's the best you can get!...now here's a bonus based on those rolls....we're going to give you the same as if you rolled a 13, is that OK? In other words, we're going to not reward you for being the best, instead we're just going to lump you in with the top 3rd of your class."

I think some of those tables are setup because someone like the symmetry of having them grouped by 6's instead of some other grouping. That's fine for most people I'm sure...except for people like me that think if you roll much higher than your buddy, your bonus should be much higher than your buddy.

And I also realize with the right GM and group it won't matter about relatively minor nitpicks in the rules (which I suppose it true of any game not just Runequest). But, I'm reading right now not playing so these kinds of things "stand out.". Again, with more experience I'm sure these things won't matter in the grand scheme of things, but on the initial read it was an "issue"....but of course we'd just use our own homebrew tables that we like better, so it doesn't really matter.

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Some attributes matter more than others. A POW-roll of 18 will make any Call of Cthulhu-player tear up(with joyous tears). While a CHA/APP of 18 will probably make any player, regardless of BRP-subtype, groan audibly "Why, oh why couldn't I have rolled that one on an earlier stat?"

And that 18 will look very sweet when you roll on the Resistance Table. Which doesn't help you much if your playing new RQ, as the RT has gone the way of the dodo, but still.

I, like zomben, view attributes as the raw bones of a character. Some are, again, more boney than others. But together they generate a nice starting point.

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