Considering switching to third edition rules?

I'm currently translating the French third edition rulebooks from 2001 in order to get a good look at the rules and setting. That edition replaces BRP with a new system. I'll try to describe that below.

Task resolution

The 3e rules use much smaller numbers than BRP. Characteristics and Potentials have been consolidated into Characteristics and Difficulties. Characteristics and Difficulties are rated from 1-5, while Skills are rated from -2 to +1. However, the rules describe these with adjectives, adverbs, and shifts rather than numbers, like so:

For Characteristics and Difficulties: Not (1), Little (2), Enough (3), “…” (4), and Very (5).

For Skills: Profane (↓↓), Apprentice (↓), Companion (no modifier), Master (↑).

Every task is resolved using the Resistance Table, or as it's called in this edition the "Universal Resolution Table", by comparing the Characteristic against a Difficulty level shifted up/down by the relevant Skill. Instead of a d100, a d20 is rolled under instead. A result of "1" on the dice is a Critical Success, while a result of "20" is a Fumble.

I've reproduced and translated the table below:

Characteristics: DEX, CON, STR, INT, CHA, Initiated… ↓
↓Difficulty↓	Not (1)	Little (2)	Enough (3)	“…” (4)	Very (5)
Not Difficult	10	13	16	19	Success
Little Difficult	7	10	13	16	19
Enough Difficult	4	7	10	13	16
Difficult	Failure	4	7	10	13
Very Difficult	Failure	Failure	4	7	10

The Difficulty represents the base difficulty of the action that doesn't vary by circumstances, such as whether a road is straight or winding. Each level of Characteristic, Skill and Difficulty is equal to a ±3 modifier to the d20's target pips. Circumstantial modifiers of ±1 or ±2, representing variable conditions like lighting, time, health, etc., are applied directly to the d20's target pips. 

Certain other traits are measured with bullets: "○" and/or "•". E.g. during character creation each step is measured from "•" to "•••", points stored in a Stasis item are measured by marking bullets, degenerations like Khaiba, Narcosis, and Black Moon are represented using Characteristics and bullets, etc. 

Each level in Characteristics has an attached pool of 10 "bullets", which are gained or lost to represent progression or damage. For example, damage to Ka is taken against the bullets rather than the level, but the player only needs to recalculate the level after losing all points associated with that level. In BRP terms, only the tens digit is counted for the purpose of task resolution.

Adapting to d100?

The Universal Resolution Table is easy to adapt to a d100 if that is preferred. Simply multiply the numbers by 5. For example:

Characteristics: DEX, CON, STR, INT, CHA, Initiated… ↓
↓Difficulty↓	Not (1)	Little (2)	Enough (3)	“…” (4)	Very (5)
Not Difficult	50%	65%	80%	95%	Success
Little Difficult	35%	50%	65%	80%	95%
Enough Difficult	20%	35%	50%	65%	80%
Difficult	Failure	20%	35%	50%	65%
Very Difficult	Failure	Failure	20%	35%	50%

The benefit of a d100 is that it lets you instantly use modifiers from BRP, much faster compared to trying to convert them to the d20 circumstance modifiers. At least when using Liber Ka, as Enlightened Magic simplified all modifiers to multiples of ±5%, which instantly converts to a ±1 modifier to the d20 roll. So maybe using d100 isn't so important...

For the future...

I find the smaller numbers a lot easier to manage in my head and for bookkeeping during play, so I'm considering switching over to this system from BRP. My current plan is to adapt the 3e rules to Chaosium's version of the setting, as I personally prefer using that over the original French setting. 

However, I plan on translating the 4e and 5e rulebooks to get a sense of the changes they make to the rules to see if there's anything I can retrofit to the 3e rules. 

The 5e rules combined skills and past lives into "experiences", written on the sheet as that past simulacrum's historical period and profession, rated from 1-10. That looks fairly attractive to me and sounds like it would make recalling new past lives during play a lot easier. The complicated character creation always intimidated new players and I think it would be helpful to remove unnecessary complexity. I think even experienced players could benefit from that.

The 5e rules also introduced side effects for different degrees of Khaiba, Narcosis, and Shouit Totals, which I find a good way to make them more relevant in regular play compared to the 1e system where they were completely latent until an episode struck. 5e divides them into 4 states of progression compared to 3e's Characteristic levels rated 1-5, but it should be easy enough to adapt.

Until next time...