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#1
RMC/RM2 / Re: ELEMENTAL ATTACK ROLL MODI...
Last post by marseu77 - Today at 12:26:27 PM
RM is always open to many interpretations, but some things are a must.

BAR can't have OB bonuses except Base spell casting bonuses, (infact it ha a table with a 100 result max.)
EAR we use only OB written in Spell Law and don't mix it with AL. (Attack tables for bolts and balls are totally different from weapons, they have UM and F resluts for example and you can't never go over)
OB for Arms, we use only bonuses written in arms law and arms companion optional but booth are specific to physical combat.
#2
Rolemaster / Re: RMU Creature Law typos and...
Last post by rdanhenry - Today at 01:22:44 AM
Bonus issue: Table number system is inconsistent with other core books. The other books have "Table [Chapter Number] – [Section Number] (optional letter)". This book has "Table  T-[Chapter Number].[Section Number] (optional letter)".
#3
Rolemaster / Re: RMU Creature Law typos and...
Last post by rdanhenry - Today at 01:22:05 AM
3.2 Creature Details

"In the case of Range Increments, per RMCL,
they are noted as <5'/ lvl>." -- This method does not appear in Core Law, which only provides the individual ranges on attack charts. This method is used in Spell Law, where it is explained in section 2.6, p. 25.

Example: "in 5' hexes" should be "into 5' hexes".

Detailed Stat Block: Oh, sweet gods of redundancy, here we get another round of "Category, Archetype, Variant (actually "Variants" here, which is wrong) because of the splitting of data.

Size: First sentence is unnecessary and could seem condescending.

Armor: DP cost on the table should be 45 for AT 10. Some inconsistent capitalization in the examples.

Material/Size: "1.01 g/cm3" The 3 should be in superscript. Also, you are mixing metric in the text here with pounds and cubic feet in the table.

Table 3-9 is referenced. It does not exist. Table 3.2b (somehow the "T-" is missing off this one) appears to be intended.

Much of this material appears to go with modifying creatures and really ought to have been reserved for book two.

Healing rate (capitalized "Rate" would appear consistent with most of the detail headings): Inconsistent notation with "x2" and "X0.5".

Stat Bonuses: Once more we have a grocer's apostrophe inserting itself into "GMs".

There is so much in chapters 2 and 3 that is unnecessarily redundant (and only partly due to the split creature data, though that's a major contributor) even within this volume, and there is much more that is redundant with basic system information in Core Law. Even beyond that, there is a lot that could be explained more clearly in fewer words. I would strongly recommend a complete rewrite, combining both chapters (and preferably reorganizing creature presentation so we don't have to flip pages for one creature).
#4
Rolemaster / Re: RMU Creature Law typos and...
Last post by rdanhenry - Today at 01:19:17 AM
Movement: The details of calculation can be omitted here. This is supposed to be explaining the stat block so that we can use creatures. Derivation of the numbers is a different subject and including it here simply makes it harder to get the actually needed information.
"Note that Maneuver Bonus is now integrated into the Skills listing, further to the right in the Stat Block." Remove the "now", as this provides a distracting "Compared to when?" question to the new reader and is unnecessary for those coming from older editions, who can recognize it as a change.

As has been pointed out before, the movement rules here conflict with those on page 104 of Core Law. CrL give non-standard movement (such as swimming for a human) of 1/5 normal base rate, whereas CL gives ¼. It also gives a non-standard untrained penalty of -20 instead of the normal -25.

Exhaustion/Endurance: In the second sentence, either remove the comma after "adds" or add another after "penalties".
"If the roll succeeds, no fatigue penalty is
applied to almost all maneuvers of the creature af-
terwards."
Ignoring the odd wording, this is unnecessary wordy. "If the roll succeeds, there is no further effect." But then, it is unnecessary to repeat the rules for exhaustion when CL 5.5 can be referenced instead.

Size: Again, this is repeating system information that is in Core Law, with the exception of the extended table of Sizes. As for the table: I believe that it has already been pointed out that the Big and Huge sizes are missing closing parentheses. Oh, and there's a frog being Diminutive. Now where are the rest of its stats? Oh, and the first word in the examples are capitalized except for Large and Behemoth sizes. "Tiny antelope" is Tiny? Maybe leave it at three examples if that's the most helpful you can make the fourth.

As has been noted, Table 3.1-d is not consistent with CL. Core Law only provides a DB advantage for smaller creatures, not penalties for larger ones. While it might have made sense to include such for ranged attacks (trying to hit someone bigger than you, all other things equal, is not easier in melee), that did not happen and Creature Law should be adjusted to conform with the existing rules. While the presentation of critical modification based on size difference is correct, this mode was abandoned in Core Law in favor of separate modifiers for attack and defense. This may result in confusion.

Critical Code: This is just "Crit" on the stat table. For that matter, Size is just "Sz". I recommend putting the short form from the table in parentheses after the full name for clarity. Thus, this part would begin "Critical Code (Crit):" Note that I also capitalized both words in the stat name, which is otherwise standard in this section.

I would prefer Arabic over Roman numerals for the crit codes, not just to shorten them, but because it is far harder to misread "6" for "7" than "VI" for "VII" or even to misread "6" for "4" than "VI" for "IV". It would make both proofreading and use in play easier. Roman numerals are most useful when they are used for values near other values in Arabic numerals, in order to avoid confusing the two. There really is no risk of that with the current layout.

"dditional codes" missing an "a".

! entry on Table 3.1e is grammatically incorrect. a second "knocked" is required before "down" (and an Oxford comma is recommended – if it had been included, you probably would have caught this yourselves). Also, add "its" before "physical" or "possession of" before "a special ability".

@ entry includes obsolete terminology for stun results.

PG, PK, PP, PS, PT, and PU describe identical effects applying to different attacks, but with varying language each time. Standardize the description.

Hits: This is mostly information the reader should already have from Core Law, while the key bit of necessary information is communicated less clearly than it should be. If I understand correctly, text should read something like "This entry lists the number of hits the creature can take in damage before falling unconscious. The second number, in parentheses, indicates the number of hits that the creature can take before dying from this damage."

Armor Type (AT): Even the gaining of natural AT from a talent is not news. Core Law already gives examples of races with enhanced AT. The page number given for Table 3-2a is incorrect. "When on humanoid foes the AT is usually just 1"... What? Why is the "When" there?

Defensive Bonus (DB): Remove the first sentence of the first paragraph as something nobody has a hope of making it through this book if they don't already know. Change the second sentence to start "The first listed value is the base DB, which includes...". This will clarify the intent of this paragraph.
Second paragraph: Mostly good, but Table 5-11a doesn't have zeroes here, so I'm assuming that it isn't rank/skill in Running, but in primary movement skill. Please rewrite to state this correctly.

Attacks: Listing out of attack size codes should have "or" or "and" before the final entry in the list.

#WF: "Such an attack will list
either the attack to be used when all attacks are the
same, or it will list as All, signifying the attacks
are diverse." -- I feel that this could be expressed more clearly. I had to read this three times to figure out what it was trying to express. It doesn't seem to cover all possible cases. Creatures with many options for attack should probably be able to combo different sets of those attacks, rather than being limited to "bunch of identical attacks" or "All". Certainly, the traditionally described sets of attack options for RM dragons does not fit in that box.

Offensive Bonus (OB): "Offensive Bonus of the creature" should be "of the attack", as a creature may have multiple attacks listed with different OBs. Again, we don't need to be given information on how the number is derived until the next book, when we can actually use it. (Plus, it is mostly duplicating information from Core Law, except that the archetype is replacing normal skill development.) Although, this does make my point that a creature may have more than one OB since both a primary and secondary base value are given (as well as different stat modifiers for different attack types).

Power Points: Again, the text is not so useful. It would be helpful to point out here that since PP are actually a skill bonus, some creatures will have negative values (since seeing these may puzzle readers who overlooked this detail and are wondering why the zombie doesn't just have a zero here). I actually don't think this needs a chart column, since it only matters for spell casters (or those with natural magic) and those can't be run just from a chart. Taking that out, I really do think that the tables can be turned. Although I still think it's better to have all the info in one place (especially since creatures with combat codes are going to require checking against a key until the GM uses them enough to get them memorized), even just not having to turn the book to use the tables would be an improvement.

Resistance Roll (RR): This is redundant information. More useful would be explaining "All creatures are assigned a magical Realm, even if they are not spell-casters, in order to assign the +10 bonus against spells of one's own Realm." This will pre-answer likely FAQs.

Skills: Since some skills are abbreviated on the stat table, this would have been a good place to list the abbreviations and what they stand for, but perhaps there is a better place later on.

Biomes: I would suggest adding "Cultivated species, weeds" to C for Flora and "Weeds" to Ruins to avoid leaving these blank, suggesting they are empty of flora. Fauna for C would be better expressed as "Civilized races, domesticated animals, urban wildlife". The Fauna entry for R is just a description of what ruins are (and I don't think that is needed). Surely, if a code has been added for Ruins, there must be a few creatures that use that code and could appear as examples.

Number Encountered: Why the silly names for ranges of animals? They have implications that are confusing and the examples reflect these, while the numbers matched to them are arbitrary. The difference between a "school" of fish and a "flock" of birds is not numerical, but the nature of what is numbered. At best, these add nothing. At worst, they confuse and limit (why should groups of 8d10 creatures only be assigned to things that fly, for example?) options. If you just give the average number and a random range to roll straight up, you would not only simplify this entry, but eliminate a half-page table.
#5
Rolemaster / Re: RMU Creature Law typos and...
Last post by rdanhenry - Today at 01:05:27 AM
3. CREATURE STATISTICS

3.1 Stat blocks

Now explain it to me like I'm not five years old. Or better yet, don't explain it at all, because this is more content-free fluff. What we have is vague descriptions of what will have to be described more exactly anyway, another dangling of "Oh, just wait till you can get your hands on Creature Law II" reminders, and repeating creature "category" and "type" quasi-definition. What is actually useful in Chapter 2 should be folded into this chapter and the space reclaimed for, well, something useful. Maybe restore amphibians.

I recommend something like "This chapter explains how to read the information presented defining each creature in this book." (Add a definition of "stat block" if you want to use that term.) Then cut straight to explaining categories, types, and varieties (see my comments on Chapter 2 regarding that) and carry on from there, removing four unnecessary introductory paragraphs.

"which is explained in Section 3.3." -- no such section found

"Combat Stat Block"
Splitting "variety" into this section divides the organizational terms and further confuses things with an incorrect description. Varieties are not species. Some are parts of a species, many animal varieties include numerous species (how many varieties are used to cover the hundreds of living bat species, not to mention other extinct, future, or fantasy bat species that would be statistically identical?), and others fall outside the concept of a biological species altogether.

p. 19: I will not be giving this more than a glance due to the bizarre choice to present stats this way. A few things do leap out at me though:

"Hybrid spell user" is unnecessarily wordy in a compact entry format. Just "Hybrid" will do. There are no "Hybrid arms user" types to confuse them with.

Another bloody grocer's apostrophe got into the "OBs"!!!

How do "encounter stats" belong on the "combat" part of this stat break? If we've reached combat, I already know we're encountering x number of them in environment y. I don't have reason to reference this info in a fight. Not sure if moving that to the descriptions would be enough in itself to rotate the table to at least be readable, but at least you could up the font size.

Note that a combat summary table like this would be useful in an adventure/location book to allow quick reference for creatures encountered there, but I don't see any value in having it in this book.

Archetype (p. 20): Remove that first sentence referencing Section 2.2 and you have a clear, concise explanation of the basic function of an archetype while letting the reader know that full details won't appear until customizing creatures is explained in the follow-up volume.

Archetype is after Outlook in the stat table, but before it in the explanatory main text. Items should be explained in the order they appear on the table for easier reference.

"Altruism is not very common, because
of the survival of the fittest principle."
Tell me you don't understand Darwinism without telling me that you don't understand Darwinism. Please, just end the sentence after "common".

There doesn't seem to be enough distinction between "Aggressive" and "Belligerent" to warrant having both outlook types.

Berserk: Neither comma is necessary, and for the first to be used correctly, an additional comma after "insane" is needed.

It doesn't seem necessary to try to prescribe archetypes to every outlook. For some, sure, but the idea that "Crusading" outlook doesn't match the Offensive archetype, even though the actual Crusaders were a bunch of Fighters, seems wrong. I also don't see why any archetype might not be Greedy or Cruel, for example.

Playful "Normally youthful"... if playful due to youth, this isn't going to show up in a listing for the whole variety. Are there entries just for the young of a species?

Protective: Again, the "mother protecting her babies" motive is not going to characterize the whole variety, but only part of it part of the time. The further I get into "outlooks", the less they seem like traits useful to list at the level of creature varieties and more something that's useful shorthand for a setting or adventure supplement. Creatures with actually distinctive behavioral traits should have them described in the full text description anyway. "Protective" doesn't tell me anything until I know what the creature is protective of.
#6
Rolemaster / Re: RMU Creature Law typos and...
Last post by Hurin - May 19, 2025, 05:39:17 PM
Ant Colony has 'Coop 100' to allow ants to increase the size of their attack if 100 ants are attacking. This should increase the size from 1 to 2, but in the stat block on p. 99, their attack size is 4.

I may be misunderstanding how Coop works, but this seems to be an error.
#7
RMC/RM2 / Re: Run and attack
Last post by rsarres - May 19, 2025, 02:46:02 PM
If the question was about charge bonus, it is present on RM Classic, but I do not use because I find it overpowered. I do not find realistic a +50 bonus caused by the pace of the attacker.
We apply mounted combat rules and bonuses, however.
#8
Rolemaster / Re: RMU Creature Law typos and...
Last post by nash - May 19, 2025, 12:55:03 PM
Lich has "Link, focus control [Focus, 100'R, 1 hr] (-50 DP);" talent (flaw).  Not sure what this is about. 

The Classic Lich has "Link, bound spirit" which seems fine.
#9
RMC/RM2 / Re: Run and attack
Last post by Hurin - May 19, 2025, 10:13:23 AM
The rules for charging presented in Companion III just said that 'a spear set against a charge should have the same bonus against the charger.'
#10
Rolemaster / Re: RMU Creature Law typos and...
Last post by rdanhenry - May 19, 2025, 08:56:03 AM
This mass of inconsistencies between individual stat blocks and the tables shows that these were easily missed during editing. Even ICE clearly has trouble working with this split presentation. Another reason to move to single stat blocks instead of splitting them into two parts and separating them so that you have to flip back and forth to get the info for one creature.