Official ICE Forums
Systems & Settings => Rolemaster => Topic started by: Doridian on August 08, 2017, 09:34:43 AM
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Let me start saying that I'm having a really good time playing RM with my daughter, a friend of her, her brother and father. And yesterday evening they have been so excited that have thanked me a lot of times after the game session. These gaming sessions are for me the first ones after more than twenty years... So I would like to thank you all here just for being here and for having being supporting (and providing) this forum for these years! This forum is probably the only true reason that made me keeping RM alive in my heart for all of this time.
Now I would like to not make some big mistakes and ruin this gorgeous atmosphere. So I ask you an advise. I'm granting experience points and I do not remember anymore what I used to do so many years ago. By the rules (RMSS) I cannot decide regarding the use of spells and kills. How do you handle them?
I give an example. The party met a quite large group of Goblins. Thankfully in the party there was a magician that put several of them to sleep, while the other members faced the remaining ones (reduced to a more manageable number...). In the meanwhile the magician started to wander in the battlefield to cut the throats of the grounded sleeping Goblins. For the 1st level magician Sleep V was a 1st level spell, cast in a dangerous situation so it granted 2x100 EP's each (the first one maybe by a further x5). Should the magician gain experience kill points for the knocked out goblins the same way as the other characters that were actually meleeing them?
What are you used to do in such a situation?
Thank you in advance!
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Let me specify what puzzles me.
If I grant to the magician the kill EP's for the Goblins she put on the ground, it seems to me that they are too much.
If I do not grant the magician the kill EP's as she already has been rewarded by the spell EP's, it seems to me that they are too few. :o
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In my game, I would give the magician the EP for casting the spell, plus EP for the kills. However, the kills would be reduced because the targets were unconscious. (I don't recall if that's in RMSS, but I'd use something like 1/10th normal KP.)
If someone else had gone through doing the kills, I would still give the magician Idea Points - again, don't remember if this is in RMSS, but in RM2, that would=1/2 the experience that resulted from the idea of sleeping the enemies. (That does not reduce the experience the others got.)
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It may not be your cup of tea, but several of us have gone to a much simpler way of allotting experience points. I basically just abstract it and give xp for each gaming session (you can also give extra bonus xp for good roleplaying, smart ideas, etc.). So I will rate the challenges in the night's session and then just split all those xp points (let's say 5,000) up evenly amongst the party members (e.g. everyone gets 1000). So I don't even track kills, spells, etc. It is assumed that the party is a team and so everyone wins or loses together. It certainly isn't as detailed as the official system but what it lacks in precision it more than makes up for in time savings and ease of use. Just a thought.
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Ah... Jengada and Hurin, I see a clear link between your kind answers. For sure the magician should be granted EP's for this kind of action and the way to handle it depends on how the action developed. So it's not just a schematic criteria to be used; and the GM has to apply some common sense of his/her own. And it can differ from time to time. Departing from schematic criteria can eventually lead you to abstract the whole matter and give points as Hurin suggests. It may be my cup of tea, indeed. I'll try to understand whether it is my players' cup of tea too (or not).
Anyway you confirmed that the right way, between the two alternatives in my example, is somewhere in the middle.
Thank you!!! :)
P.S.: Jengada, the modifiers you have cited are in RMSS too.
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I use a similar approach to Hurin. Each challenge in the planned session is given an experience point value and all those that took part in each event share equally in the experience from each event.
This means that I don't track individual actions, spells kill etc.
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My group gives out experience points for completing a session successfully. Call it 3000-5000 or so on average. Then players receive bonus experience for good ideas or roleplaying: anywhere from 500- 5000.
For games where I GM, this breaks down to 1000 xp for the session and +1000 xp for participating. Then I provide 1000-2000 xp for completing a "mission". On top of that 1 xp/ point of damage provided or taken and 1 xp/pp spent on useful spells.
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I always double dipped for spells and skills used in combat.
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I give an example. The party met a quite large group of Goblins. Thankfully in the party there was a magician that put several of them to sleep, while the other members faced the remaining ones (reduced to a more manageable number...). In the meanwhile the magician started to wander in the battlefield to cut the throats of the grounded sleeping Goblins. For the 1st level magician Sleep V was a 1st level spell, cast in a dangerous situation so it granted 2x100 EP's each (the first one maybe by a further x5). Should the magician gain experience kill points for the knocked out goblins the same way as the other characters that were actually meleeing them?
At the time we used the RAW XP rules we would in such a case grant the spell XPs plus the full Kill XPs for the goblins the mage killed. For us it did not really matter whether the opponents were really killed, it was more important they were somehow defeated. So if in our game a character would e.g. knock down (or put asleep) an enemy criminal, put him in chains and then hand him over to the authorities we'd still award the full Kill XPs for the criminal. There was no point in rewarding the actual killing of opponents and to cause useless bloodshed.
What are you used to do in such a situation?
Nowadays we use a goal-based XP system, because this involves much less effort for tracking the XP points during the session and IMO gives just as good or better results. Our variant of such a system you can find in the House Rules document on my homepage (the link is below my avatar picture).
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I somehow place myself in the middle between the various post above. I agree with Hurin saying that the players are a team and everybody contributes in its way.
So I award kill points (base points + bonus XP) evenly between all combatants participating in the battle. I substract critical xp per the rules so that melee classes get their fair shares and award normal XP for spells or skills.
I found that this gives a good distribution of xp between the players
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Everyone else provided good solid solutions.
On another note, here's what we do..
I tell them when to level based on what we've done, how many sessions and the needs of the story.
No more kill steals, etc..
This has helped me and the players with book keeping and allows us more time to just play. :)
Everyone levels the same and gets the same DP, unless they bring in a new character (death, new member, etc), then they might level a bit faster, just to catch up; which is what happens normally when a lower level character joins a higher level group.
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When another of our players GMs (and I get to play), he does it the way you say, Providence13. He usually just has us level every 2 or 3 sessions. Everyone seems cool with that way too.
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Just for an off-the-wall reply...
- Initially we halved kill point exp and increased critical exp points.
- Next we did away with kill points entirely and divided the exp among all the participants.
- Eventually we just gave group exp for the entire fight.
All three of those were an effort to, firstly, eliminate 'kill stealing' behavior. Once those players were gone from the group it became more of a time saving effort.
I, personally, won't even bother, I'll just tell the group when (they all) level. Saves a lot of time on everyone's part.
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Wow! I didn't expect so much feedback!!! Thank you guys! (In Italian we would say "thank you a thousand").
I've to admit that I'm really tempted to follow the "level up all together" approach. I see a big pros in having high level characters in play sooner. Yet, I'm playing with young newbies (never seen anything like a RP before) and I see that they like to see the EP rewards. And maybe they need to acquaint themselves with the game mechanics: so maybe it would be better to progress a little bit slower (than a level after two or three sessions of play or the like).
I think that I'll keep playing by the rules for a while (you have provided me not just one but several interesting options to find out what should satisfy my needs!!!) and then, when players will appear comfortable with the system, I'll eventually turn to a "level up" approach.
Great! Thank you again. :)