Some questions about dungeon exploration and Theif skills

[Ibex Mantis]

Heya!

As a newbie GM (and player), I have few questions.
The first two are about dungeon exploration.

[1] i saw dungeon maps on grid paper, and i see that a lot of corridors are of 1 line of squares!
can 1 square contain all players (and party NPC's) with 1 figure? if so, can the characters split into other sqares as well?
or maybe it's already that every player has it's own figure and they wait in line in the corridor, or just each player go where ever he wish?

[2] So what happens when my player's party has an elf in the dungeon with 60' feet infravision, and all the others are humans with a 30' feet light from a torch? does the elf draw the dungeon as they explore? how will it work when the elf will be the only one to know?

I have another question about Thief skills

[3] How do you determine the sucess of a thieving skill? I couldn't find any information about it in the book.
All it is written are the chances of sucess in percantage, but what do i roll, and how do i know if it's a success? Sorry for the dumb question.

T-H-X!!

[artikid]

Hi Ibex Mantis and welcome to the forums.
1. I would rule that a 10 feet square area can hold at best 4 characters. They would be somewht uncomfortable though and have a hard time fighting any enemies in such situation.

2. If I remember the rules correctly the torchlight should negate the elf's darkvision.
Anyway some DMs use notes to communicate privately with players, but it tends to slow down the game. Encourage the players to act as a team if possible, they will need it. There's no easier way to get killed than bickering with your fellow adventurers!

3. Roll 1d100 (see the introduction), if the roll is equal to, or lower than, the thief's skill, the action is successful.

[Ibex Mantis]

Thank you, artikid for making these things clear to me

[Solomoriah]

Hi Ibex Mantis and welcome to the forums.
1. I would rule that a 10 feet square area can hold at best 4 characters. They would be somewht uncomfortable though and have a hard time fighting any enemies in such situation.

In reality, you can pack people more tightly than that, but to fight with melee weapons, two abreast in a 10' square is about right.

I draw my battlemat maps in 5' squares for use with figures.

[KJ Obrien]

[2] So what happens when my player's party has an elf in the dungeon with 60' feet infravision, and all the others are humans with a 30' feet light from a torch? does the elf draw the dungeon as they explore? how will it work when the elf will be the only one to know?

I don't have the book in front me of right now, so I'm not sure on the exact way BFRPG handles it. In my game infravision looks just like how it does in "real life". Think how the Predator saw things in the movies. Heat vision essentially. If someone had a torch or bright light next to the elf, they wouldn't be able to use the infravision as everything would be washed out by the nearby light source. Also, since it's light/heat sensitive, infravision makes it extremely hard to pick out details - like you couldn't read a book, spot a key lying on the floor, or distinguish the differences between colors.

The BFRPG version might not have all those detriments, but that's how I keep infravision in check.

[Solomoriah]

Basic Fantasy RPG doesn't have "infravision," it has "darkvision," a much less detailed (and thus, less rules-lawyerable) way of seeing in a dungeon.

Darkvision is ruined by a light source. If you have a torch, and an elf in your party, the elf sees only what the torch reveals. Note that darkvision does not allow reading without a light, so even an elf may wish to carry torches or a lantern.

[Longman]

1 - As a general rule, you could say that most melee weapons which do a d8 or d10 damage would require a wield space of more than 5 feet, and thus you could only have 2 such melee participants in a 10' square. If everyone was using d6 or d4 weapons you could probably have 4 active participants. That's how I'd rule it, anyway.

If you have a party of 4, using 10' squares can be neat because you can use one 'party' figure while they are exploring, and then add in new figures if characters break away from the main square. Or, you can give everyone their own figure.

When I use 10' squares in melee, I say that anyone in a 10' square can be targeted by anyone in the adjacent 10' square.

If you don't like doing it that way, you could use 5' squares like Solo suggests.

2 - Rule of thumb: you can't see in the dark if it isn't dark.

As to your question about mapping, I wouldn't bother hiding the map most of the time. If the elf fell down a chute and ended up on a totally new dungeon level, I might hide the elf's new map from the rest of the party, because they'd really have no idea what was happening to him. But if he's just round the corner and they are going to catch up with him soon anyway, I'd just show everyone the map. There's no point building up suspense for things that are not actually suspenseful.

3 - already answered.