Topic: Attack Tables and Quickness bonuses to DB

[Ratpick]

A bit of a preface: I've been away from Rolemaster for a very long time (started on 2nd edition back in my teenage years, Finnish translation of the three Laws by Ace Pelit baybeeee) but have recently gotten the Rolemaster bug real bad. Managed to find a used RM2 boxed set (I believe it's the 1990 printing?) at a convention many years ago and got it as a curio, but ever since then I've had Rolemaster on da brain.

Anyway, on to my question, which is actually more of an observation and I just need input from people to know that this is either a non-issue or that it's an acknowledged issue: the attack tables and Quickness bonuses to DB. The attack tables in Arms Law seem to have been set up in such a way that you need a lower number to "hit" (i.e. deal any concussion hits) to a character in heavier armor, but as a tradeoff any attack that connects with an unarmored target will deal more damage and any critical hits will be more severe. (I'm specifying Arms Law tables because only a cursory glance at the various Bite, Claw, Trample and Stomp tables reveals that this rule does not apply to animal attacks, with unarmored targets being at more of a risk of getting hit in general and also taking more damage).

Now, my reading of the way the Arms Law tables are set up is that it's supposed to simulate armored targets being easier to hit due to decreased maneuverability from wearing armor, and the heavier the armor the easier you are to hit... but that's already factored into Quickness bonuses to DB, which can be canceled out by wearing heavy armor.

As I said, this might be a non-issue and may have even been intentional on the designers' part. I'm not really interested in a deep simulation, I just love those goofy lil tables cause they're fun, but my main worry is if there's an observable drawback from wearing heavier armor in actual play than emerges from the fact that heavy armor makes it easier for a character to take concussion hits via attacks AND that heavier armor cancels out Quickness bonuses to DB.

(The Claw Law tables are their own can of worms so I'm willing to leave them out of consideration for now.)

[Ratpick]

Hate to reply to my own thread simply to say "disregard this I actually read the tables again and realized that this is a non-issue" but... yeah.

I went and looked at just one of the Arms Law tables and imagined a situation where a character at the general human peak of Quickness (+25) got attacked twice with the same result, once while wearing plate armor (thus canceling out their Quickness bonus to DB) and once while wearing no armor. Assuming someone with a broadsword were to take a swipe at them and get a final result of 125 (or 100 against their bare unarmored flesh, assuming no dodging or parrying) the Quickness bonus is still not going to make a huge difference. Just running my finger across the table and looking at all the possible armor types, even with a high Quickness bonus you're much better off wearing SOME armor the way the tables are set up.

Anyway, Rolemaster owns, I can't wait to run this game again.

[Hurin]

The new edition of Rolemaster, Rolemaster Unified (whose publication is 'imminent'), has fixed this issue, removing the inherent quickness bonus in AT 1.

Welcome back!

[Ratpick]

The new edition of Rolemaster, Rolemaster Unified (whose publication is 'imminent'), has fixed this issue, removing the inherent quickness bonus in AT 1.

Welcome back!

Ah, so I wasn't imagining after all? Interesting, I'll have to give RMU another look. Having said that, the differences between Armor Types in 2e seem to be so pronounced that differences arising from Quickness bonuses aren't that big a deal, but I do want to see how much the math changes in RMU.

[Hurin]

The new edition of Rolemaster, Rolemaster Unified (whose publication is 'imminent'), has fixed this issue, removing the inherent quickness bonus in AT 1.

Welcome back!

Ah, so I wasn't imagining after all? Interesting, I'll have to give RMU another look. Having said that, the differences between Armor Types in 2e seem to be so pronounced that differences arising from Quickness bonuses aren't that big a deal, but I do want to see how much the math changes in RMU.

The differences aren't always decisive, but the old system does create trap armors such as AT 2, which are almost always worse than AT 1. So, the new system ensures that doesn't happen -- and that the system removes quickness entirely from the charts (since as you noted Qu is handled by the separate system of DB bonuses).

[pastaav]

A house rule that many uses to fix the combat rules for older RM editions is to have AT2 as standard clothes and not use AT1 at all.

Possibly AT1 can represent the kind of clothes used in sports competitions when you have no outdoor clothes, backpack, scabbard etc but then you in my experience must be ready for players asking for ninja jumpsuits and similar so I am not sure it is worth the hassle.   

[Ecthelion]

We observed the same. That's why we have a house rule allowing the Qu penalty to be offset by what's left of St after encumbrance penalty.

[brole]

The differences aren't always decisive, but the old system does create trap armors such as AT 2, which are almost always worse than AT 1. So, the new system ensures that doesn't happen -- and that the system removes quickness entirely from the charts (since as you noted Qu is handled by the separate system of DB bonuses).

With AT2 representing "full-length robes normally worn by spell users" then these probably should be 'trap armours' as they would be harder to move in.

[Hurin]

The differences aren't always decisive, but the old system does create trap armors such as AT 2, which are almost always worse than AT 1. So, the new system ensures that doesn't happen -- and that the system removes quickness entirely from the charts (since as you noted Qu is handled by the separate system of DB bonuses).

With AT2 representing "full-length robes normally worn by spell users" then these probably should be 'trap armours' as they would be harder to move in.

Ok, I'll change it to 'trap armors such as AT 5'. Compare AT 1 and AT 5 on say the Polearm chart: the Polearm starts getting crits vs AT 5 at 73, but against AT 1 at 88. At the higher results, AT 5 does give slightly better protection by a few hit points and sometimes reducing a crit by one severity. But that hardly makes up for getting hit 15 points earlier, imho.

[netbat]

We observed the same. That's why we have a house rule allowing the Qu penalty to be offset by what's left of St after encumbrance penalty.

Wasn't this an actual rule from one of the companions, or was it just from RMSS/FRP?

The differences aren't always decisive, but the old system does create trap armors such as AT 2, which are almost always worse than AT 1. So, the new system ensures that doesn't happen -- and that the system removes quickness entirely from the charts (since as you noted Qu is handled by the separate system of DB bonuses).

With AT2 representing "full-length robes normally worn by spell users" then these probably should be 'trap armours' as they would be harder to move in.

We always used AT1 only for 'skyclad', loincloth or light tunic/shift with any clothing needed outside a tropical or warm climate as AT2.

[Elrich Maltah]

We observed the same. That's why we have a house rule allowing the Qu penalty to be offset by what's left of St after encumbrance penalty.

Wasn't this an actual rule from one of the companions, or was it just from RMSS/FRP?

It was an optional rule in the original Character Law (1982) and clarified as a standard rule in the common "Rolemaster" section 7.2.2 of AL&CL and ChL&CL regarding Encumbrance: "Once a character has determined his encumbrance penalty, his Strength bonus may be used to cancel all or part of this penalty. If his Strength stat bonus is greater than his encumbrance penalty, the difference may be used to cancel all or part of the character's armor Quickness penalty."

[Ratpick]

We observed the same. That's why we have a house rule allowing the Qu penalty to be offset by what's left of St after encumbrance penalty.

Wasn't this an actual rule from one of the companions, or was it just from RMSS/FRP?

It was an optional rule in the original Character Law (1982) and clarified as a standard rule in the common "Rolemaster" section 7.2.2 of AL&CL and ChL&CL regarding Encumbrance: "Once a character has determined his encumbrance penalty, his Strength bonus may be used to cancel all or part of this penalty. If his Strength stat bonus is greater than his encumbrance penalty, the difference may be used to cancel all or part of the character's armor Quickness penalty."

I can't believe I'd forgotten about being able to offset the Quickness penalty with your Strength bonus, thanks for this! Found it in my books.

I've gone back and forth on this subject and while I do agree that the system does create some armor types that are trap options for the most part the system kinda works? So I'm willing to run things by the book, make players aware of the fact that some options are worse than others and patch things up as need be.