First of all, WOW! You really did a run on the features! I am honored that you covered so many of them and all the tweaking you tried. And I am happy to know that you had fun doing it.
Let's answer each of your comments in turn.
1) needs some tuned up documentation such as a step-by-step walk-thru of character creation and combat and maneuvers. I still am unsure how you set out the effects of parrying for example. do you place the percentage of OB used for parrying or defense in the percent box? or do you use the raw amount of OB in that box?
Yes, up to date tutorials videos are on my to-do list. I really haven't found the time to do them. With ERA RMU in the works, that has taken all my available time.
Parrying is briefly mentioned in
this part of the tutorial video you need to choose the skill used to parry, and the percentage of that skill to apply. The Hits and Other boxes are for adjustments to the skill, meant for penalties the defender might be having.
But, you could assign 100% parry, and use the Other box to put as a penalty the amount used to attack. In that way ERA also support parrying as a direct number.
Assigning 0% and Other as a positive value would not work, since the formula is: [ Skill + Hits Adjustment (normally negative) + Other Adjustment (normally negative) ] * Percentage.
2) how do you chose to perform a maneuver during combat. did not see that as a tab in the options during the round. specify drawing a sword, diving behind cover, etc? I saw a lot of data in the combat actions .xml file so I suspect its in there somewhere I just hadn't figured it out.
Only combat actions that have a “representedBy=” attribute in the XML will appear as options. This is done to avoid visual clutter, and allow some specific campaigns that might require a lot of those actions to add them on demand.
Now, as to what options you have for the icon there, you are entering even muddier terrain. I'll let you dabble further, just point your eyes to a file “…\Resources\adventuring.css”.
During an adventure, I normally use the Concentration action, since it does not have any effect when clicked on during the round, it will just be marked as “done”. Then I enter the specific action in the notes input during the round declaration. You can get a tooltip for those details when hovering on the action in the round sequence.
3) Height in inches so it can more closely reflect the characters actual height as a record, or impact stride as needed.
Height is in feet but you can use decimal numbers to represent any value. It is a pity the imperial system does not use base 10 for its measures, so you will need to convert extra inches to feet and add them. For example 5’ 8’’ would be entered as 5.67 in the height input. Stride should be correctly computed with that, and will be considered for movement actions.
4)exhaustion points? not sure if most players use them. probably not. But your system would be ideal to track them, the totals, how they are used up for actions how they are recovered. Might actually make that system work as intended without much effort during play. at the least for those who use them calculating the totals on the character sheet might be nice. along with height, stride, recover modifier, soul departure wt limits etc.
It is true a system as ERA could handle exhaustion and make it finally usable. The truth is I have never used it because …who does? So I wouldn't know where to begin. Just a box for the number, or tracking it like what is done for hits could be added.
Recovery modifier and soul departure are missing, that is true. It would not just be a box in the character sheet, I would need to make sure that is included as well in the races. I will add it to the to-do list, so a future version might surprise it with it.
5) is it possible to have a rounds to death (or other status) box like there are for bleeding/activity/spell effects? or how do you do handle that in your play? (spell effect: life lasting for 6 rounds?). character fighting on for 6 rounds and then dying for example.
I think those criticals almost never came up during my adventures, so if they happened I might just record them with rounds of staggered/must parry, or maybe a spell effect with the duration according to the rounds remaining, or just editing the character notes. I think the character information dialogs are stuffed enough to justify adding that information.
6) the initiative box do you enter the 2D10 summed roll? does the system add the Qu bonus to that to determine initiative?
Yes, quickness it automatically added. So you just enter what you rolled, adjust for any situational details and let the system handle it. Initiative modifiers from the character sheet are also considered. Mental actions will always use SD as the optional rule, my to-do list includes making that configurable. Also, there is some debate related to how character penalties are affecting initiative. I encourage you to try some scenarios and let me know if you find it correct.
7) anyway to incorporate range modifiers (probably not I suspect it would be too complex). anything to cut down on table looking up is nice.
Attack tables can hold range information, which has been there from the beginning. What I never got around to doing was adding a “distance” box in the attack dialog, to make use of that information. It has gone down in the priority list because a lot of other ideas have taken precedence, but it will be there one day.
Would love to have a way to save NPCs/Monsters prior to a adventure. It would be ideal to have all encounters preloaded in the system. in some way other than creating a character and leveling them. Most monsters are not leveled characters, just enter OB, hits, DB, level, resistance info, some skill bonuses and ranks that might apply, some notes, and spell lists then save. As it is on the fly how do you use the template do make it so the npc/monster can utilize spells?
I think it will be great if/when Creatures/Treasures is available because I suspect that will be all worked through in due time.
What you ask for is called “ERA Creature Module”. Sadly it has never been implemented, due to lack of time. With the advent of RMU Creature Law there is more reason than ever to have something like that. But it would take quite some time to program.
I think it is obvious by now that your thorough analysis has touched on most of what I have been leaving unfinished in the application. I try to add features in the order that best adds value to as many campaigns as possible, mostly by making a balance between number of requests and time required.
9) in terms of what I would love to see I GM'd mostly fantasy settings, but used rolemaster/spacemaster for scfi, post-apocalyptic, and cross-genre type stuff. So I would love to see:
-The Armory damage tables
-Weapons Law: Firearms
-Spacemaster: Blaster Law and Spacemaster: Equipment Law damage and critical tables. The Spacemaster/ modern armor types incorporated into the system
-the other Spacemaster content (future law/privateers)
-smoothed stat bonuses
-Creatures and races from Creatures and treasures ( or whatever it is called these days)
-essence/channeling/mentalism companion content
-Shadow world content
-black-ops?
I have not received any requests so far for Black Ops nor Firearms. Some people have mentioned an intention of using ERA for Spacemaster, but since I have never played it the time variable is greatly increased, and the chance for mistakes in the functionality for lack of knowledge quite high. Reports such as yours, which allow me to know which features of Spacemaster are not available with the current version, will help a lot in polishing those details.
Shadow world content and E/C/M companions are not difficult at all, since I use them for my campaigns. The work pending here is that I have only created so far what my players needed, but in order to offer it through RPGNow it would to review and complete the content, then polish it and bundle it for sale. Shadow World content was also the top voted feature on a poll I did some time ago. As soon as ERA RMU is ready, that might be my first order of business.
The armory tables could be done, if enough people were interested in them.
The smoothed stat bonuses option, at least as mentioned in RM2 Companion I, is already included, since I use it for my gaming group. It is not available in the configuration options though, but there have been requests for it so I have added the option, and the next version we make available to the public will include it.
I am hung on launch because it can not find a category named power manipulation in the named group power manipulation. I deleted that group/skill/category from all the config files profession/culture/race files. searched all those files and could not find it. not sure why it looks for that.
Since you are using the RMFRP ruleset, there are a number of categories/skills that the system needs to consider for all characters. Spells, Power Development, Body Development, Weapon and Armor groups should be left untouched. You can add additional groups, but too much is dependent on these basic groups to allow them to be removed. Of course a truly independent Spacemaster ruleset would have its own “core” groups/categories/skills.
Also when working on the culture files for the adolescent ranks I noticed something. Spacemaster doesn't specifically assign those ranks always to specific categories or skills. There might be several ranks assigned to a group, to be applied to various categories in that group, or for example, several skill ranks to be assigned as the player chooses to skills within a specific group or category. multiple ranks to assign to Science/Analytic group categories and skills for example. Rolemaster was always very specific about adolescent skill assignment. There is much more player choice in the process for Spacemaster.
I had no idea Spacemaster had that difference over RMFRP. For my gaming group we have a similar ruling, and I have already developed something like what you mention. Eventually I could try to add that option when configuring the system, such that category ranks are interpreted as “ranks for the player to distribute among skills in the category”.
I noticed that Adrenal Deflecting was listed twice as a skill once under the group martial arts and once under the group combat maneuvers. Was not sure whether that was intentional.
That might be a leftover from the Martial Arts Companion. I think they moved the skill location, so by having it in both places the GM might choose which one you should develop.
The new added Groups are unable to be added to during Hobby rank assignment.
I tried adding a group, category and skill, and it appeared during hobby rank assignment. Hobby ranks in RMFRP should allow all skills in all categories. Send me a PM with the Groups, Categories, Skills, and Profession XML and I will check if there is something missing.
I did not add a new realm...I instead just based all the classes on mentalism and used PP development for the psion skills. But that would the next thing to dabble with.
Adding realms is complicated. Lots of features in the adventuring module rely on knowing the casting penalties, resistance adjustments, and other factors. So that makes it quite difficult for me to offer such a possibility for now.
I did add new resistances (Psion). This does not show up on the character sheet. That I guess is due to the size of the box that displays that data, and likely to there being no resistance check keyed to that in the ruleset. The added resistances also do not show up when you print the character sheet.
As you guessed, the resistances are also wired into the ruleset. It would be easier to make them customizable than it would be realms, but still I guess that feature it not a top priority.
I figured though that I would be able to edit the costs as needed once I got to the character sheet. However, once there I found they were fixed and uneditable based on how they were specified in the.xml files. I wonder is there a way to edit those costs on the character sheet or make them editable in future versions?
You can see
at this point of the tutorial video that all skill costs are indeed editable by character. Let me know if that solves the issue.
This was all to see just how customizable the system is. I found that for the majority of users adding races, professions, adjusting skill costs or changing skills the system is extremely flexible.
Again, I am glad you found it interesting, and thanks for such a complete review!
I hope the next versions can add on the features you need the most.