Aha! Found it! Amazing what you find hidden all over the place... If anyone else was interested here's the snippet.
DIM orgColour;0,orgR,orgG,orgB:' save the rgn record for each colour
DIM hsvColour;0,hue,sat,light
orgR=65535:' nice bright red
orgG=0
orgB=0
CALL RGB2HSV(orgColour,hsvColour):' convert to HSV style
fixed&=FN SMALLFRACT2FIX(light):' get the SMALLFRAC out
fixed&=fixed&/100*60:' use 60% of the original value
light=FN FIX2SMALLFRACT(fixed&):' convert back to a small fraction
CALL HSV2RGB(hsvColour,orgColour):' convert back to RGB standard
CALL RGBFORECOLOR(#@orgColour):' set new colour
CALL MOVETO(0,0):' set a point for testing
CALL LINETO(200,200):' draw a full line to this point
HSV is the Hue, Saturation and Light (or intensity). This is an FBII code snippet.
Since none of my projects will sucessfully convert to FB3, FB3 might be different. I don't know.