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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr Simon" data-source="post: 2741363" data-attributes="member: 21938">RuneQuest!RuneQuest (mostly 3rd ed....)I'll wade in with one of my old favourites and, according to Jonathon Tweet, an inspiration for a lot of the fundaments of D20. I quote from his website:"Hall of Fame, Best RPG: RuneQuest—Chaosium, Avalon Hill.RuneQuest debuted way back in 1978. It had:• prestige classes (rune lords, rune priests, and initiates),• unified skill-combat-saving-throw system,• ability scores for monsters,• 1 in 20 hits are crits,• extra damage for lucky hits with spears and arrows,• ability scores that scaled up linearly without artificial caps,• a skill system that let anyone try just about anything,• "nonabilities" for incorporeal or unliving creatures,• armor penalties for skill checks and spellcasting (but not outright prohibitions),• templates for creatures,• affiliation groups (the model for Ars Magica's Houses and Vampire's Clans),• hardness for objects,• chance to be hit modified by Dex and size,• example characters used in examples throughout the rulebook,• rules for PCs making magic items.     In other words, RuneQuest was the RPG that taught me how to design RPGs. Even so the RuneQuest mechanics weren't perfect." Basically you have similar abilities to D&D (rolled on 3D6 mostly or some variant of such for non-humans.  Dwarves roll 4D6 for Strength, for example).Pretty much everything is decided by percentile dice - combat skills Attack and Parry (whcih are seperate for each type of weapon - 1H sword covers broadsword, scimitar and 1H bastard sword, for example) are simply yet another type of skill.  Skills are listed as a flat percentile chance - Climb 56% etc.  Roll over, you fail, roll under, you succeed.  Very high and very low rolls are critical failures or successes.Your starting skill package is determined by what you were when you grew up.  Once play begins, skills develop as you use them or pay to be trained in them.  There are no levels or classes.  Everyone uses a bit of magic, a lot of which are close to D&D feats more than spells.  Dextrous and Intelligent fighters are usually better in the long run than Big, Strong fighters unless the Strong guy manages to land a hit.  I set my game in a modified variant of Fritz Leiber's Nehwon for which it was a perfect system.Magic is cast first with a skill roll to successfully cast the spell, this uses up a set number of magic points and then, if you are trying to influence another person you also need a second roll to overcome their Magic Points with yours.Armour absorbs damage, there are hit locations, character hit points tend to remain low (average human about 13) but there are defensive skills like Dodge and the aforementioned Parry.As Tweet says, it is not without problems. I prefer the d20 mechanic for resolving opposed skills, for which there isn't a very satisfactory one in RQ.  You can get quite a big difference in hitting power and fragility between a big guy in armour and a little weedy magical type, but then that's not disimilar to D&D.  Single BBEGs also suffer, however, and can be prone to a take-down with one hit. Tactics play a much larger part. The flat chance doesn't give much option for mariginal success or failure (I house-ruled +/-5%).  There is, perhaps, a bit *too* much fineness to the skill levels - is there really a need to differentiate between 54% and 55% skill?  Old 2nd Edition tended to bump skills by a flat 5% each increase, in other words a +1 on a d20 scaled system....</blockquote>

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