Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Schrodinger's HP and Combat
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6505653" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Yeah, that about covers it. There's no reason to assume that an inspired fighter cannot just stand up and go on as if his injuries are trivial. If the GM is determined to narrate every hit as guts falling out on the floor then perhaps there's a stumbling block there, but personally I'm too interested in the overall action to labor each such point with an elaborate description unless its say a massive damage overkill that felled the character to -bloodied in one shot (in which case the rules already do what I want, no healing is going to help this guy).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Call me old-school, I don't find that the 19 skills of 4e are overly generalized. I mean you mention Diplomacy and Bluff, but there's also Insight, Intimidation, and Streetwise just to name some that fall within the limits of your example. A high Bluff, high Intimidation character without Diplomacy training is likely the pattern for your callous personality, etc. </p><p></p><p>Nor is every elaboration left only onto RP, there can be other subsystems besides skills. 4e has, and I have expounded on in my own play, the utility of the background system, which can both supply mechanical support for "My character knows how to play the fiddle" as well as add nuance to the character's personality. </p><p></p><p>I don't think detailed skill lists work well. They're not particularly realistic and they lead to other sins of design that more than compensate for any advantage IMHO. When you have 60 or more skills as RM does (and with expansions and etc its probably MUCH more) things just get ambiguous and confusing. Should I use gemology or assay to determine the price of the Great Carbuncle? Or should it be some other skill entirely? I tried running a BRP-based game a year or so ago and I just couldn't deal with it. Inevitably the PCs always lacked the one critical skill that would save the day at any given moment, or had 30% in it because they had 200 choices to spread points around. Other times we spent 20 minutes wrangling about which skill was appropriate. Maybe HARP/RM has a much more carefully designed skill list, but I don't remember it being so. 3e/d20 has the same flaw. </p><p></p><p>I much prefer a system where the mechanics give you basic 'bents' or 'knacks' like 'Athletic' or 'Diplomatic' which you can apply to problems and then the players can, if they like, carry the elaboration further and specify that they are for instance particularly good at swimming or etc. In my current system this sort of thing would be taken care of by a minor boon, you spent a week learning to swim, now you get +2. Granted, in a very sandboxy campaign you might get a group of players "camping" on their base and just spending years learning every obscure boon they can get for a GP price, but GMs have plenty of ways to combat THAT. It certainly suites my style of play anyhow. </p><p></p><p>So, no, I wouldn't recommend RM, personally. I don't think its a bad game, its mechanics work quite well for what they were designed to do, but IMHO it doesn't lead to greater verisimilitude, and whatever it does get you is at the cost of learning and wading through a system that earned the name 'Chartmaster' and 'Rollmaster' many times over! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6505653, member: 82106"] Yeah, that about covers it. There's no reason to assume that an inspired fighter cannot just stand up and go on as if his injuries are trivial. If the GM is determined to narrate every hit as guts falling out on the floor then perhaps there's a stumbling block there, but personally I'm too interested in the overall action to labor each such point with an elaborate description unless its say a massive damage overkill that felled the character to -bloodied in one shot (in which case the rules already do what I want, no healing is going to help this guy). Call me old-school, I don't find that the 19 skills of 4e are overly generalized. I mean you mention Diplomacy and Bluff, but there's also Insight, Intimidation, and Streetwise just to name some that fall within the limits of your example. A high Bluff, high Intimidation character without Diplomacy training is likely the pattern for your callous personality, etc. Nor is every elaboration left only onto RP, there can be other subsystems besides skills. 4e has, and I have expounded on in my own play, the utility of the background system, which can both supply mechanical support for "My character knows how to play the fiddle" as well as add nuance to the character's personality. I don't think detailed skill lists work well. They're not particularly realistic and they lead to other sins of design that more than compensate for any advantage IMHO. When you have 60 or more skills as RM does (and with expansions and etc its probably MUCH more) things just get ambiguous and confusing. Should I use gemology or assay to determine the price of the Great Carbuncle? Or should it be some other skill entirely? I tried running a BRP-based game a year or so ago and I just couldn't deal with it. Inevitably the PCs always lacked the one critical skill that would save the day at any given moment, or had 30% in it because they had 200 choices to spread points around. Other times we spent 20 minutes wrangling about which skill was appropriate. Maybe HARP/RM has a much more carefully designed skill list, but I don't remember it being so. 3e/d20 has the same flaw. I much prefer a system where the mechanics give you basic 'bents' or 'knacks' like 'Athletic' or 'Diplomatic' which you can apply to problems and then the players can, if they like, carry the elaboration further and specify that they are for instance particularly good at swimming or etc. In my current system this sort of thing would be taken care of by a minor boon, you spent a week learning to swim, now you get +2. Granted, in a very sandboxy campaign you might get a group of players "camping" on their base and just spending years learning every obscure boon they can get for a GP price, but GMs have plenty of ways to combat THAT. It certainly suites my style of play anyhow. So, no, I wouldn't recommend RM, personally. I don't think its a bad game, its mechanics work quite well for what they were designed to do, but IMHO it doesn't lead to greater verisimilitude, and whatever it does get you is at the cost of learning and wading through a system that earned the name 'Chartmaster' and 'Rollmaster' many times over! ;) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Schrodinger's HP and Combat
Top