Topic: Roll on stats

[Fingolfin80]

I have the RMFRP manual (the Italian edition, and as far as I know it's heavily reworked in the way content is presented) and I cant't find a rule for this: how do you handle a check on basic stats? For example I need to see if a PC remembers something, so I would require a pure check on Memory. What's the bonus? I would say stat x3, but still I can't find an official rule, It would be ok even from RM2 or RMU.

[Hurin]

I don't know if there is an official rule in RMU, but stat bonus x3 is definitely the way to go, IMHO.

[jdale]

In RMFRP, in the English version, under Static Maneuvers in the bulleted list of modifiers, it says:

* If a skill applies to a maneuver, add the skill bonus from the character's character record.
* If there is no specific skill, the GM may decide that three times an applicable stat bonus will modify the maneuver.

For Moving Maneuvers it says "If no skill applies to the maneuver, add three times the character's Ag stat bonus."

So, yes, 3x stat bonus is an official rule.

[Fingolfin80]

Thank you both, I'll go with the x3 stat bonus then.

[Peter R]

As a house rule it is worth experimenting with adding the entire stat rather than the bonus x 3. What you gain is: Stat only challenges are working on the same scale as skills so you can use the same and full range of difficulties. Also, after the first few levels stat bonuses play such a small part in the total skill bonus that stats are of no consequence. This makes stats more important.

[Fingolfin80]

As a house rule it is worth experimenting with adding the entire stat rather than the bonus x 3. What you gain is: Stat only challenges are working on the same scale as skills so you can use the same and full range of difficulties. Also, after the first few levels stat bonuses play such a small part in the total skill bonus that stats are of no consequence. This makes stats more important.

Uhm, I don't know. A pure stat roll is a request I usually make for something quite easy to do, that requires no particular training and doesn't improve over time. For more complex task or scalable things there should be a skill, imho.

[jdale]

Using the stat itself ignores the racial modifiers, and has a very different distribution -- it gives more weight to stats closer to 50 and less weight to very high or very low stats, since the stat modifiers are on a curve.

Using a low maneuver difficulty (e.g. giving a bonus) will bring the odds up without those issues. It might be appropriate since, where skills will generally be positive, 3xModifier might be a range of -45 to +45 or so.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

For stat rolls, I derive a skill equivalent, with (stat / 10), round up, being the number of ranks, to be of course added to the stat bonus.

[Peter R]

Using the stat itself ignores the racial modifiers, and has a very different distribution -- it gives more weight to stats closer to 50 and less weight to very high or very low stats, since the stat modifiers are on a curve.

Using a low maneuver difficulty (e.g. giving a bonus) will bring the odds up without those issues. It might be appropriate since, where skills will generally be positive, 3xModifier might be a range of -45 to +45 or so.

The problem of negative stat bonuses getting even bigger is one of the things that I find using the whole stat 'solves'. That is of course depending on whether you see tripling negative stat bonuses as a 'problem' that requires 'solving'.

[Peter R]

For stat rolls, I derive a skill equivalent, with (stat / 10), round up, being the number of ranks, to be of course added to the stat bonus.

So actually you and I are achieving a similar end of putting the net bonus up into a similar range as characters main skills. Both mean that as a GM you can throw a range of tasks that the characters with a range of difficulty factors and they have a chance of succeeding.

[Peter R]

Using a low maneuver difficulty (e.g. giving a bonus) will bring the odds up without those issues.

If a character is trying to bend an iron bar to escape a prison cell, having to make it a 'routine' task just to enable to character a reasonable chance of success seemed to me to be a little bit silly. Admittedly, you could use another skill like 'weight lifting' but that way just leads to skill bloat as you need at least one skill to support the use of each stat and can lead to odd situations where you get someone with a huge stat but no skill (therefore -25) being massively out performed by someone with mediocre or a poor stat and just a single rank or two.

The house rule has another consequence. It makes every point of your stats more valuable. Stat gains mean something. In Hurin's game his players do not even roll stats, they just roll stat bonuses. That is an indication of how unimportant stats can be in Rolemaster.

[Peter R]

As a house rule it is worth experimenting with adding the entire stat rather than the bonus x 3. What you gain is: Stat only challenges are working on the same scale as skills so you can use the same and full range of difficulties. Also, after the first few levels stat bonuses play such a small part in the total skill bonus that stats are of no consequence. This makes stats more important.

Uhm, I don't know. A pure stat roll is a request I usually make for something quite easy to do, that requires no particular training and doesn't improve over time. For more complex task or scalable things there should be a skill, imho.

For more complex tasks where multiple stats play a part then it probably should be covered by skills but simply trying to remember the exact wording of a text that the character read months ago certainly isn't a non-trivial task. Also stats do improve over time via stat gains.