In Morgenstern FRP, there are nine basic percentile stats that can be used to describe every living being (monster, NPC or PC) in the game. Their purposes are rather obvious.
MC – Melee Combat
RC – Ranged Combat
STR – Strength
CON – Constitution
DEX – Dexterity
PER – Perception
INT – Intelligence
WLP – Willpower
FEL – Fellowship
Also, each stat has a modifier associated with it. In most cases, stat bonuses are used in non-test actions, such as dealing and resisting damage, spell effect modifiers, initiative in combat and so on. Each bonus is equal to the tens digit of the statistic (for example, if someone's Strength is 37, his Strength modifier is 3).
Using stat modifiers
Melee and Ranged Combat - stat mods are almost always unused.
Strength - damage modifier, (encumberance).
Constitution - reduction of received damage, duration of sickness and toxin effects.
Dexterity - initiative in combat.
Perception - some skills.
Intelligence - some skills, some spells.
Willpower - resisting insanity, duration of many spells.
Fellowship - social tests and skills (in most cases number of people affected by them).
Inhuman abilities
Some monsters (especially demons, mythical beings and creatures of Chaos) are much more powerful than ordinary mortals. They are much faster, stronger and / or extremely hard to kill. To depict it, some of their stats are at inhuman level. Inhuman ability has modifier multiplied by two (or three or even more). In example, Rot Demon has CON 52 and Inhuman Constitution x2, which means that its Constitution modifier is 10, not 5. In addition, GM may add one or more degrees of success in test of inhuman stat or skill based on it but of course only if test is passed.
Using stat modifiers
Melee and Ranged Combat - stat mods are almost always unused.
Strength - damage modifier, (encumberance).
Constitution - reduction of received damage, duration of sickness and toxin effects.
Dexterity - initiative in combat.
Perception - some skills.
Intelligence - some skills, some spells.
Willpower - resisting insanity, duration of many spells.
Fellowship - social tests and skills (in most cases number of people affected by them).
Inhuman abilities
Some monsters (especially demons, mythical beings and creatures of Chaos) are much more powerful than ordinary mortals. They are much faster, stronger and / or extremely hard to kill. To depict it, some of their stats are at inhuman level. Inhuman ability has modifier multiplied by two (or three or even more). In example, Rot Demon has CON 52 and Inhuman Constitution x2, which means that its Constitution modifier is 10, not 5. In addition, GM may add one or more degrees of success in test of inhuman stat or skill based on it but of course only if test is passed.
I like the inhuman mod idea - its hard to create a mechanic where one size fits all scales of magnitude. I wonder why you keep the stats as a % tho? Will you be checking them against a d100 roll? I guess not, by your use of mods, but a simple roll under system has many advantages... While I'm an old fan of BRP and other % systems, today I'm less keen - I'm not sure if their is a need to for a 1-to-100 resolution in determining abilities and as a mechanic I'm not convinced that there's a need to roll two dice when the second die only counts 1/10th of the time. Seems to me that your system would loss nothing by striping it down to a single d10 roll. It seems to me that a % roll is showing its age as a mechanic. Maybe that's the way you're going but with mods and a roll over a difficulty number system? (But then why bother with the % at all if they're not going to be used in the system) My only problem with difficulty numbers is the range of numbers tends to be quite wide and the difficulty number tends to be very arbitrary and difficult for a ref to gauge correctly. Obviously as I'll be interested to see where you're going with these rules.
ReplyDeleteYes, stat and skill checks will be made with percentile roll. Why I plan to stick with percentile stat range? First reason is that most of my players enjoy d100 rules the most, even more than WoD-style rolling of dozens of dice :D
DeleteSecond and more important reason is possibility of implementing "micro-modifiers", like +2, +3 percent traits, +5 advances, scars reducing stats, slow but inevitable effects of mutations etc etc. Percentile mechanics is much more flexible than one using 1-10 range.