Author Topic: Balancing: High Men stats  (Read 1290 times)

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Offline Ecthelion

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Balancing: High Men stats
« on: June 23, 2020, 01:10:45 PM »
Hi,

in our group the High Men belong to the races that get used only very rarely. The reason is that - at least in our POV - the stats of this race are relatively weak. With St, Co and Pr at +4 (RMSS stats) while Ag and Qu are at -2 (both quite important stats, at least combat-wise), the total of the stat bonuses is a +8. On top of this the RRs vs. spells are all at -5 and the race only gets 4 BPs.

Comparison 1: Mixed Men get +2 for 5 stats, so that total for the stats is +10. The don't have a RR penalty vs. spells and get 5 BPs.
Comparison 2: The Laan / Zori from Shadow World, the SW equivalent of High Men, get +4 for St and Pr, +2 for Ag, Co, Me, Sd and Em and they get -2 for Qu. So the total across at stats is +12. They also get the -5 for spell RRs but they get 5 BPs.

Any explanation why the standard High Men are so weak? Something I overlooked which makes this race attractive, especially when comparing it to the Laan / Zori?

Thx

Offline Hurin

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Re: Balancing: High Men stats
« Reply #1 on: June 23, 2020, 01:18:13 PM »
Do you mean in RMSS? You've put this in the Rolemaster (general) forum, but you seem to be talking primarily about RMSS.

The High Men have been redone for RMU, with the following bonuses:
-2 AG
+3 Con
+3 Pr
-1 Qu
+1 Re
+3 St

+5 Cha
-5 Ess
-5 Men

And +5 base hits.

They are now excellent for Mentalism casters and semis, and decent for melee type arms users.
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Offline Ecthelion

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Re: Balancing: High Men stats
« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2020, 02:50:29 PM »
Do you mean in RMSS? You've put this in the Rolemaster (general) forum, but you seem to be talking primarily about RMSS.
I listed the RMSS/RMFRP stats because it's the system I'm using. But I think it applies to all versions because the RMSS stats for the High Man are simply converted RM2 stats. In RM2 is was the same, we rarely played a High Man because the stats were crap.

Quote
The High Men have been redone for RMU, with the following bonuses:
-2 AG
+3 Con
+3 Pr
-1 Qu
+1 Re
+3 St

+5 Cha
-5 Ess
-5 Men

And +5 base hits.

They are now excellent for Mentalism casters and semis, and decent for melee type arms users.
Thanks. Without the full listing of races it's hard for me to judge how the RMU High Man compares to the other races. It would be good if he now were on par with other races.

I'm a bit more interested in hearing about the older RM versions, i.e. RM2, RMC, RMSS and RMFRP. Is the general consensus that High Men are a bit weaker than most other races in terms of balancing and get played only when it comes to some Mentalism spell users or out of love to the racial background (like Dunedain in Middle Earth)? Or are there character builds were the existing High Men really shine?

Offline Hurin

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Re: Balancing: High Men stats
« Reply #3 on: June 23, 2020, 03:06:19 PM »
In RM2 core, the only human races were Common or High Men. Common Men got +5 St, and 0 to everything else, whereas High Men got +10 St, +10 Pr, +10 Con, +5 to Cha saves, as well as a higher hit die (d10 as opposed to d8) and max hits (150 vs. 120), so they were the stronger choice for humans in many cases (though they also suffered -5 Qu, -5 Ag, and -5 to Ess/Men saves).

The extra races that came out with Rolemaster Companion I changed all that, of course, since there were now many more human races, many of which were betters suited for some builds.

And then of course there were the Laan in Kulthea, who had still better stats. But there were also other races, most notably the Talath, who were even better for some builds (e.g. Paladins). The Kulthea races seemed to have really jacked stats, with some races having just incredibly good arrays, which led to some races being chosen inordinately frequently (Talath Paladins, Vorloi or Dyari Magicians, etc.). I don't remember the Laan being chosen as frequently as Talath or Vorloi though.

'Last of all, Húrin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed'. --J.R.R. Tolkien

'Every party needs at least one insane person.'  --Aspen of the Jade Isle

Offline jdale

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Re: Balancing: High Men stats
« Reply #4 on: June 23, 2020, 03:15:37 PM »
There's a complete point breakdown for all the races in RMFRP Gamemaster Law. In addition to the stat modifiers, they have a very good progression for body development, a great one for mentalism PP, and good for essence PP too. But, if you look at the talent point cost of the races, you'll see they don't actually balance and that's especially true if you are using background options rather than talent points. High men cost 97 points, but wood men (common) are 96 and mariners (common) are 109. Meanwhile, rural and urban men (common) are 40 and 44 points respectively. I'm fairly confident this is because the races were created first and then afterwards a system was created for new races, rather than the other way around.

If you're concerned about that, you could use the talent point values given in GM Law rather than the background options, or use the talent point values to come up with revised numbers of background options.

In RMU we started with a system so the races balance better, and also basing it on DP gives a little better resolution. Of course the actual value of any given advantage or disadvantage depends greatly on what the character is going to do. If you are trying to exactly fit the strengths of the profession and do not rely on its weaknesses, the race is more valuable than if you are going across the grain. For high man in RMSS, the optimal path is probably something like Armsmaster, where you get maximum benefit of the small net stat boost for combat, the hits, and the mentalism PP.
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Offline Ecthelion

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Re: Balancing: High Men stats
« Reply #5 on: June 23, 2020, 05:01:37 PM »
Thanks for the insights.

Offline Ecthelion

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Re: Balancing: High Men stats
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2020, 01:38:09 AM »
FYI, we now decided to change the High Men's Ag stat bonus from -2 to +2 (like their Shadow World counterpart, the Laan have it) to make the race more attractive for players.

Offline Vorng79

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Re: Balancing: High Men stats
« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2020, 07:16:59 AM »
I faced your problem in the past, relate to Dunadan/numenoreans. I play in M.E. (and i like numenoreans characters) so for me determine resonable stat for numenoreans, taking into account they importance in the M.E. History, their relationship with elves and their strenght was important. For me was not acceptable that they were so weak compared with other race.
I found a PDF doc in the web with many details about how to adapt RMSS/FRP in M.E. with info for specific M.E. culture (also for not canonical as Bozishnarod or similar).
In the doc for numenoreans/black numenoreans  is suggested to have:
+4 St +4CO +3PR   , no penality for QU e AG   +0 vs Ess/Chan/Ment  +5 to Poison +15 to disease
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Offline Ecthelion

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Re: Balancing: High Men stats
« Reply #8 on: December 03, 2020, 09:06:27 AM »
Yes, there's some Rolemaster rules for Middle Earth where these stats are probably from. I've also seen these rules. But AFAIK the goal of these rules was not in the first place to have well-balanced racial stats but - from my POV - to have racial stats where especially the elves more closely resemble these uber-beings that elves are in Tolkien's works. That's why we used only the aforementioned small change of the Ag stat. But the stats you mentioned for the Numenoreans would probably also work. Thx