Best percentile systems

[Dustin DePenning]

historically I don't like percentile RPGs. I find scaling difficulties awkward, especially with games like eclipse phase.

However, I was reading through some of the new call of Cthulhu and really liked it. I found that you divide your base skill to find your odds for higher difficulties to be really fair and clear. If I remember something hard is 1/2 your skill, and something difficult is 1/5 your skill.

It got me thinking. Are there other good percentile games I'm overlooking?

 

[clemens]

Rolemaster

 

[Dustin DePenning]

I got to the variable actions table and felt a little overwhelmed. It looks to be really nitty gritty. Do you play often with role master?

 

[clemens]

No, we've tried it a bit back in the day beacause we were playing MERP and it seemed a logical next step. It's a horrible, horrible system that left its marked on percentile systems ever since, I think. It was supposed to be ultra simulationist, I guess, but failed at being a playable system. I still like percentiles, though, even though they seem to be considered old-fashioned these days... I hear Eclipse Phase's system is criticized a lot for its "heaviness", but I quite like it. Compared to rolemaster, it's a very rule-light system...

 

[Dustin DePenning]

Thank god you were trolling me

 

[Dustin DePenning]

No, we've tried it a bit back in the day beacause we were playing MERP and it seemed a logical next step. It's a horrible, horrible system that left its marked on percentile systems ever since, I think. It was supposed to be ultra simulationist, I guess, but failed at being a playable system. I still like percentiles, though, even though they seem to be considered old-fashioned these days... I hear Eclipse Phase's system is criticized a lot for its "heaviness", but I quite like it. Compared to rolemaster, it's a very rule-light system...

If I remember in eclipse phase, you just subtract raw percentile for difficulty. So you have a 30% less chance of doing something difficult. I don't know why but that felt weird to me. Like my skill of 70 shouldn't just go down to 40 for something really hard. It feels like it should be even less, like CoC doing the 1/2 1/5 thing. Also I like that the hard success rate of CoC is precalculated rather than math on the fly.

 

[L'ennui]

Basic Roleplaying by Chaosium Games is the generic system that powers Call of Chtulhu, as well as the Runequest fantasy RPG. I haven't played it but have heard good things about it.

 

[Dustin DePenning]

Basic Roleplaying by Chaosium Games is the generic system that powers Call of Chtulhu, as well as the Runequest fantasy RPG. I haven't played it but have heard good things about it.

Yeah I haven't played but reading it made it look like a really solid percentile system. Totally reversed my opinion on d100 games.

 

[fastjack]

I came from Shadowrun and dice pools and I think runequest 2nd edition (Basic Role-Playing) was the second system I ever really tried. Long story short I am not a big fan of percentile systems or single roll systems like d20 for that matter. I love systems that have variable levels of success and the curve that a dice pool gives just feels better to me.

I think a big part of what drove me crazy with runequest (and wfrp 2nd ed.) was the same thing that sells a percentile system, that it is so open. It just takes me out of a game when the upcoming roll is 40% chance of success instead of 'my mid-tier skill against a moderate challenge with some drawbacks'. Basically I think it's all about muh immershun.

 

[Dustin DePenning]

I came from Shadowrun and dice pools and I think runequest 2nd edition (Basic Role-Playing) was the second system I ever really tried. Long story short I am not a big fan of percentile systems or single roll systems like d20 for that matter. I love systems that have variable levels of success and the curve that a dice pool gives just feels better to me.

I think a big part of what drove me crazy with runequest (and wfrp 2nd ed.) was the same thing that sells a percentile system, that it is so open. It just takes me out of a game when the upcoming roll is 40% chance of success instead of 'my mid-tier skill against a moderate challenge with some drawbacks'. Basically I think it's all about muh immershun.

I have the exact same gripes, but the hard success mechanic of COC won me over somehow. Can't quite explain it, it just made sense.

So you stick to dice pool games mostly?

 

[fastjack]

While I prefer them, I have recently been playing DnD 5e and Pathfinder before that simply because they are so well supported. I'm just not that creative and I have run games with the same group (more or less) for over a decade and so all of my tricks got old years ago. I am just starting an Edge of the Empire game and it was playing it recently that had me realizing how much I prefer dice pools.

The division aspect for difficulty in CoC sounds cool to me, even though it seems like a well-supported game line I never really looked into it because I knew it was percentile and I knew how poorly received BRP was with my group.

 

[Dustin DePenning]

Group preference wins. Eote is cool! But I hate those dice symbols. I wish they were just smiley faces and frowns faces or anything else easy to decipher.

 

[nikolokolus]

I'll toss in another vote for Chaosium's BRP. I've been running an Magic World campaign (haltingly because of RL issues) for the better part of the last year -- basically just the old Stormbringer/Elric! rules cleaned up and all of the Moorcockian stuff stripped out -- The combination of intuitive mechanics, not overly crunchy, and the amount of freedom it provides is really appealing. After years and years of various iterations of D&D it was quite a revelation.

If people are into heavier systems, The Design Mechanism's Runequest 6 (which is becoming Mythras) looks very good, but I''ve yet to actually run it or play it.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I think a big part of what drove me crazy with runequest (and wfrp 2nd ed.) was the same thing that sells a percentile system, that it is so open. It just takes me out of a game when the upcoming roll is 40% chance of success instead of 'my mid-tier skill against a moderate challenge with some drawbacks'. Basically I think it's all about muh immershun.

Skill checks in RQ can have modifiers, too, or did I misunderstand what you wrote?

Then again, in RQ you could always use resistance tables, if you have sort of contest that is not tied to any particular skill.
https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Runequest_resistance_table

 

[Ulminati]

Nuff said

 

[Elim]

If people are into heavier systems, The Design Mechanism's Runequest 6 (which is becoming Mythras) looks very good, but I''ve yet to actually run it or play it.

I must say that RQ6 is NOT a heavy system. it's quite fast. Thanks to deadly combat and dead simple rules that every idiot gets after reading it once or twice. Pathfinder is rules-heavy. RQ6 is rules-medium and offers so much more depth that Pathfinder.

RQ6 is imho the best percentile system, hack it together with BRP stuff and you can do anything with it. The last supplement, Basic Fantasy for RQ6 is a great addition to the sysrem and turns it more in the D&D direction, which massively outshines D&D.

Best part about RQ6? The combat. This is not about HP or missing all the time. Combat is over in 2-3 turns. With people on the ground, bleeding out.

 

[nikolokolus]

If people are into heavier systems, The Design Mechanism's Runequest 6 (which is becoming Mythras) looks very good, but I''ve yet to actually run it or play it.

I must say that RQ6 is NOT a heavy system. it's quite fast. Thanks to deadly combat and dead simple rules that every idiot gets after reading it once or twice. Pathfinder is rules-heavy. RQ6 is rules-medium and offers so much more depth that Pathfinder.

RQ6 is imho the best percentile system, hack it together with BRP stuff and you can do anything with it. The last supplement, Basic Fantasy for RQ6 is a great addition to the sysrem and turns it more in the D&D direction, which massively outshines D&D.

Best part about RQ6? The combat. This is not about HP or missing all the time. Combat is over in 2-3 turns. With people on the ground, bleeding out.

I said heavier, not heavy (mostly with respect to the family of BRP systems). Other than that I agree with just about everything else you said. like all BRP based games, it's easy to understand, it's fast and deadly and there's a ton of nuance and depth.

 

[Cool name]

historically I don't like percentile RPGs. I find scaling difficulties awkward, especially with games like eclipse phase.

However, I was reading through some of the new call of Cthulhu and really liked it. I found that you divide your base skill to find your odds for higher difficulties to be really fair and clear. If I remember something hard is 1/2 your skill, and something difficult is 1/5 your skill.

It got me thinking. Are there other good percentile games I'm overlooking?

James Bond 007. I'm not joking.

Uses a similar system where skill rolls are multiplied or divided by a difficulty factor. Very straightforward and easy to use unless you are playing with preschoolers who cannot into simple multiplication/division.

Not a perfect system but the genre emulation is excellent, and the game runs really smoothly. Pretty easy to adjust difficulty or set in a number of time periods, though the tone will always be more Bond than say, Bourne because that's the flavour the mechanics are going for (not a negative IMO, not all games should be generic any-setting any-genre ones).

I think there's an updated clone called Classified but I haven't read it so I couldn't tell you if they fucked it up.