Topic: The Argument Against Character Classes in Rolemaster. PT 1.

[GrumpyOldFart]

I've been working on a "professionless" form of HARP. I too always had a problem with 'professions' as a label, to me the choices you make during character generation define how your character learns. I also have a problem with changing professions, as I feel like changing fundamental things about how you process information and learn skills shouldn't be nearly as easy as it is (assuming you even consider it possible).

When speaking of this, the usual response I've gotten was, "Why don't you just play GURPS then?" Well the reason why is because (so far as I can tell) anyone in GURPS learns anything and everything equally easily. I don't buy that one, for reasons others above have already listed. What I've been doing is allowing the player to define for himself what skill categories are "easy" for his character to learn, and the rest of them aren't. So no, there aren't any real limits on how you define your character's learning abilities (and thus his strong points regarding skills), but nonetheless there are a lot of different ways people learn, and your character's learning habits are unlikely to be the same as your neighbor's.

[B Hanson]

Again, thanks for all the responses and on to the next step….

Step 2.  Development Point Cost

As discussed previously, a change to the skill bonus chart will have an affect on player skill picks.  This would then be combined with a change to the skill DP costs: basically making skill acquisition “limitless” at each level with a marginal cost increase per rank per character level. 

Skills would have an assigned cost of 2* through 7*, but each additional rank PER LEVEL cost would increase by 1.  For example, Caylis is 1st lvl and wants to focus on his bow skill.  His bow skill cost is 2*.  The first rank costs 2 DP, the second rank costs 3 DP, and the fourth rank costs 4 DP.  He still has a lot of other skills he needs so he stops at the 3 ranks with a total cost of 9 DP and a base skill bonus of +9.  At second level he decides his role as primary missile combatant requires him to put even more of his DP allocation into the bow.  He takes 5 more ranks at a cost of 2+3+4+5+6 = 20 DP’s!  His base skill bonus is now 9 + 30 = 39 with 8 total ranks.

So while this system can allow a player to increase a skill at a much faster pace than the current system it comes with a much greater DP and opportunity cost.    If Caylis had chosen to gain 1 rank per experience level his total DP cost for 8 ranks of that skill would be 16.  Instead he used 29.  The combined effect of this change to the skill rank bonus and DP cost adds a “third dimension” to decision making.  A player that wants to excel at a particular skill early will be able to do so, but at a substantial opportunity cost.

The added benefit to this system is that it can not only standardize character class creation but also allows for a classless system as well.  The best of both worlds.  In my next segment I will detail four different options for applying these two changes to the current RM classes as well as a method for skill based character creation.

[kevinmccollum]

A) RM2 professions in companion are not balanced, they were created by fans and published by ICE as is.

And we played many of them. As campaigns ended, classes were banned.  I still play RM2 but I only use the original core classes with a couple of classes added but with tweaks.

I'm glad they started supporting RMC but regrettably, I won't be buying anything from ICE unless they are putting out quality modules/campaign material for it.    For the record, the old Shadow World stuff from RM2 era was not good stuff. It was pretty monty haul and had some preposterous assumptions. Now the older MERP stuff was really good. (For a good example, compare the original Dol Goldur from Southern Mirkwood module vs. the revamped Dol Goldur module. Great vs. crud)

[kevinmccollum]

Sorry if that sort of rambled off track. I'm saying, I'm not going to purchase a new, revamped game with the Rolemaster label. RMSS tried to convince me it was rolemaster that i loved, it wasn't.

[markc]

A) RM2 professions in companion are not balanced, they were created by fans and published by ICE as is.

And we played many of them. As campaigns ended, classes were banned.  I still play RM2 but I only use the original core classes with a couple of classes added but with tweaks.

 I agree that this is what a lot of people did and have done. I also remember different DP costs for skills among some products versions that arose when I started playing RM2 in the late 90's. The GM had been playing RM2 for a long time and had not noticed the inconsistency until one of the players was making a computer program and looked at different versions of some of the RM books. I do not remember exactly which books they were but they probably were v1 vs v2 and maybe there are some differences between publications of books also.
MDC

[intothatdarkness]

As I mentioned before, I redid many DP costs and other things when I started creating my world. I also don't allow all professions.

One thing that RM doesn't really deal with is the concept of changing professions. I've got some guidelines for that in my Top Secret RM modification, but allowing players to potentially change classes/professions at some point can be helpful.

I also gutted level bonuses and put them totally under player control. Instead of using the RM2 or RMSS (which I honestly can't stand) profession-based level bonuses, each character gets the same total number of points to distribute among his or her skills (anywhere from +1 to +3). The only catch is that it has to be a skill the character already has. This lets players really specialize some skills and does away with some of the contradictions that exist within the professions and the skill families.

[smug]

As I mentioned before, I redid many DP costs and other things when I started creating my world. I also don't allow all professions.

One thing that RM doesn't really deal with is the concept of changing professions. I've got some guidelines for that in my Top Secret RM modification, but allowing players to potentially change classes/professions at some point can be helpful.

I don't think that changing professions in RM makes any sense; aptitude templates aren't really changeable, they describe you. What you can change is what you choose to learn next.

[Ecthelion]

Fully agreed, Smug.

[intothatdarkness]

As I mentioned before, I redid many DP costs and other things when I started creating my world. I also don't allow all professions.

One thing that RM doesn't really deal with is the concept of changing professions. I've got some guidelines for that in my Top Secret RM modification, but allowing players to potentially change classes/professions at some point can be helpful.

I don't think that changing professions in RM makes any sense; aptitude templates aren't really changeable, they describe you. What you can change is what you choose to learn next.

I'd rather have a mechanism that allows players to change professions than an overly-complex design your own class style system, personally. Changing professions isn't necessarily easy, and it comes with some penalties and drawbacks (for one example, a Channeler in my world would most likely lose access to spells depending on the profession chosen, as channeling in my world is based on spells granted directly by specific deities...break the pact, you lose the spells). I also never really saw professions as aptitude templates but rather something more like study plans or courses of learning that characters followed. And as vocational plans, they can be changed. But as with all game things YMMV.

[kevinmccollum]

I don't think that changing professions in RM makes any sense; aptitude templates aren't really changeable, they describe you. What you can change is what you choose to learn next.

Absolutely.

[GrumpyOldFart]

For the sake of playability and giving players lots of options, I'm willing to keep the possibility open, even though I consider it an "aptitude template" more than a "study plan". But because I consider it more indicative of how you learn than of what you chose to learn, I think it should cost pretty much an entire level's worth of DPs to do it.

...break the pact, you lose the spells.

Sure, but Channelers are always a special case. While I would expect a Channeler to have to keep up his "priestly duties" in order to keep his spellcasting ability, I would not expect the same problems for any other source of spell power.

[intothatdarkness]

Actually the cost is somewhat higher than that. If a player opts to change professions, he or she starts over at level one (with the new DP costs for skills, although the character does retain old skill levels) and only gets half DPs for each level until the character exceeds his or her max level in the old profession. For example, a fifth level fighter who decides to become a magician could do so, but he'd start over at first level and only get half of his normal DPs until he became a sixth level magician. So it's not a simple or painless process by any means, but it is possible if a player really wants to go that route.

Again, YMMV. I'm not a fan of high-powered, heavy magic campaigns (and neither are my players), so that sort of flexibility works well for us.

[markc]

The two most common profession definitions are: 1) Genetic aptitude for skills 2) Focus of Study


 IMHO there is a problem with #2) above as if that is so then everyone is a Channeler-Essence-Mentalism-Arcane caster and Psionics user.
  IMHO if #2) is you play style then it is better to adjust the skill cost of the Layman or no-profession to reflect your focus of study. But this is/can be a lot of record keeping for the player and GM and can be tough to recreate a PC or check a players DP expenditure.   


 But IMHO it is also very important for you to have fun in your game. If it works for you and your game and play group then it is a great rule. Keep it and use it as you see fit.
MDC 

[B Hanson]

Step 3:

So time to tie it all together:

1.   Modified Skill Rank Bonus as discussed in step 1 above
2.   Unlimited Rank Development with a cost escalator in step 2 above
3.   A skill cost distribution system that can be applied to current character classes, used as a “tool kit” for new class creation or as a stand alone skill driven system.

For the options illustrated below I have a total of 36 skills in 5 categories: Combat(10), Physical(6), Magical(6), General(7) and Special(7).  No secondary skills.  These are just my own rules preference, and any of the options below can work with the current RM skills or any modified skill set.

OPTION 1: The Meta Classes

This option recognizes that all RM character classes are either non, semi or pure spell users, and that there needs to be a balance between combat skills and spell casting ability.  As people have pointed out in some of the posts, a overly flexible system could allow players to optimize both spells and some combat ability to be a combo fighter and pure spell user.  With this option, players(or GM’s) assign the individual skill costs within each skill category to fit either their preferences or to fit a specific character class.  This trends closer to the current system with high combat skill costs for spell users and high magic skill costs for non’s, and a middle ground approach to semi’s.  This still allows a great deal of flexibility and player preference.

Equally as important: each meta class has an equal value of skill costs: 6 each of costs 2* through 7*.  While the distributions among each skill category are driven by the meta type, there is a balance between classes and/or characters.


                      Combat Skills             Physical Skills          Magic Skills            General Skills       Special Skills
               
Non-Spell User      2/2/2/3/3/4/4/5/6/7       2/2/3/3/4/6         5/5/6/6/7/7        3/4/4/5/5/6/7          2/3/4/5/6/7/7
               
Semi Spell User      2/3/3/4/5/5/6/6/7/7      2/2/3/4/5/6           3/3/4/5/6/7           2/2/4/4/5/5/6     2/3/4/5/67/7
               
Pure Spell User      4/4/5/5/5/6/6/6/7/7       2/3/4/5/6/7            2/2/2/3/3/4         2/3/3/4/5/6/7     2/3/4/5/6/7/7
               
               

OPTION 2: Fixed Flexible

This option is similar to Option 1, but without the category constraints.  Each player assigns 36 costs to each of the 36 skills.  Those costs are as above: 6 – 2*’s, 6 – 3*’s, 6 – 4*’s, etc.  Alternatively a GM can apply this cost distribution to the existing characters to “re-balance” the classes.

There is a potential downside—with 6 skill costs of 2* a player could assign these costs to two combat skills, armor, spells and body d and have optimized the “perceived” primacy skills.  However this option does allow for easy tinkering: you can decrease the number of 2*’s and increase one or more of the other costs. 

OPTION 3: Player Assigned Points

Option 3 allows players(or GM’s) to assign costs to all of their skills.  In this example with 36 skills, players receive 162 pts to assign a value of 2 through 7 to each of the skills.  There are some of the same concerns as Option 2 with player optimization but a GM can INCREASE the total pt value(over 162) to make it harder to optimize these primacy skills OR can just put a limit on the total # of 2*’s or even 3*s a player can assign.

While the total pt allocation can be adjusted—or dictated by the total number of skills used I personally feel this is the best framework to create a skill cost tool kit for RM, and it fits into the look, feel and spirit of the system. 

OPTION 4: Class Assigned Points

This option uses the same point structure (162 pts for 36 skills, costs between 2-7) but skill costs are pre-set by the game system.  I have the skill cost table for the original 18 classes, but don’t think I can fit it into this post.


So that's it for now.  Just to reiterate--this proposal relies on three structural changes that need to be implemented: skill bonus progression, skill rank cost, skill cost assignment.  These changes:

1. modify the cost/benefit analysis for players during skill selection and progression,
2. inject more flexibility into skill allocation,
3. creates a formulaic balance for skill costs between differing classes and
4. creates a class building toolkit for a class based system or a flexible methodology for a skill driven system.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

There.
You just put out exactly why I'm against removing the professions. Now, each player has to spend hours (and probably more) creating himself his own class and skill costs. Aside from not many players (or even the GM) fully knowing the viability of its skill cost tweaks and spell list combinations in a long run, you'd probably end up with players putting low costs to the most "useful" skills and having the highest costs in the skills they don't even intend to take. Balance? Hardly.
Besides, it just goes against any kind of logic that, once a certain skill cost tweaks and spell list combinations is proven to be efficient, neither the GM, nor the players would just keep it for further re-use, rather than redesigning the wheel each and anytime (especially the GM for his hundreds NPCs, who would probably create some generic skill cost tweaks and spell list combinations, for instance: the "fleshed out city guard template", the "typical guild mage template", the "typical thug template", etc. Oh wait, he just recreated professions!). Honestly, I have over a thousand NPCs and like nothing more than creating one. As it stands, it takes me time enough to create one, even though all the skill costs and spell lists are already established once I've chosen the profession that I don't really think I'd like to spend additionnal hours every time, in order to create myself the skill costs and spell lists. It's not that I always find the profession that match my image of the NPC, and I do create my own professions but, even then, it's way easier to start from an existing framework than to  create everything from scratch. RM2 just has too many skills and spell lists for that to be a good idea, imo.
IMO, having rules to tweak professions to match a player or GM's wishes for deviations from the norm (rules that already exist in RM2) works infinitely better than rule to build your own class from scratch any time you want to create a character but... oh, well. Whatever floats your boat.

[B Hanson]

There.
You just put out exactly why I'm against removing the professions. Now, each player has to spend hours (and probably more) creating himself his own class and skill costs. Aside from not many players (or even the GM) fully knowing the viability of its skill cost tweaks and spell list combinations in a long run, you'd probably end up with players putting low costs to the most "useful" skills and having the highest costs in the skills they don't even intend to take. Balance? Hardly.

Thanks for responding, but I think you missed all the parts about using this system with the existing character classes.   Despite the thread title, which was meant to be evocative, I've carefully stated that this system works for both a skill driven system or applied to the current RM classes.  I did skill cost allocations for all of the original 18 classes in about 45 minutes.  If players/GM's want to use the existing classes then it's easy and quick to adapt.  If a GM wants to generate a new class based on his campaign setting then he has a toolkit that allows for an efficient and flexible method.  If a player wants to tweak the skill costs on his character than there is baseline for doing so(in this case 162 pts to allocate as skill costs assignments).

For me, this is more consistent than applying 1/3, 2/5, 2/7 etc arbitrarily to the available skills.  While that cost assignment is driven by class tropes there is no attempt at balance.  And let's be honest, players already "shop" the classes based on the current skill cost allocations and spell lists for maximum benefit.  Often times, GM's will offer enticements to a player to take a less desirable class for narrative purposes.

I suspect that most GM's on this forum are experienced enough to tinker and modify their rules with some competency and several posts have basically said "just use what rules or options work best for you".  That's not the point of my argument.  Game systems should be first a consistent framework and then develop a series of optional rules: I'm suggesting a change to the framework.  The original AD&D system is a good example of poor framework development.  Each character class and most of the spells has it's own set of individual, proprietary and unique rules.  It's basically a game system of one-offs.  Try reading the original DM's Guide if you haven't in a while--barring a few pages of confusing combat resolution rules it's a collection of proprietary magic items, encounter tables and miscellaneous.  We spent A LOT of time in AD&D just interpreting how spells or special abilities would even work.  (That seems to have been addressed somewhat in more recent versions via a d20 success/SS rule.)  We all know that many game systems modified their rules by adopting many of RM's innovations: criticals, spell points etc. 

Most importantly Rolemaster has generally been the opposite by first establishing baseline rules that apply to every in game action:

1.  Defining actions as either static or moving
2.  All action resolution via d100 percentile w/open ended

The only proprietary rules are the individual attack charts: idiosyncratic really given the rest of RM's structure.  Interestingly, the attack charts are one of the most beloved parts of the system for players and one of the most criticized back when RM was relatively new.( ref. some game reviews back in the early 80's, ref. "chart master").

Anyway to get back to my point, I was never arguing removing professions.  "Argument against Professions" was a deconstructive argument meant to strip away preconceptions and then rebuild the class/skill/cost framework consistent with the rules and spirit of the original RM.

[intothatdarkness]

Frankly I'm seeing a whole lot of cost (extra time spent explaining/creating characters) with little real benefit.

[markc]

 I think what bhanson is saying that a GM for RM2/C can now create professions or unique professions for their game world. Creators will love this as it provides a method to expand their game into areas the rules do not go and allow for their game universes to be special.
 A system for "profession" creation would also make developing game universes for creation/sale easier do to how RM2/C rules are structured.

 
 IMHO I would not allow players to create their own professions because I know how such a system can be abused unless it has many rules governing the creation process.


 I guess the flip side is the Divine Profession in that every skill costs 1* with double DP do to the fact that the PC's are Divine in origin.
 But again what ever makes your game work is good in my book and I but a Divine campaign would be fun sometimes with players running a Divine PC and some normal PC's who are trying to get "something" done or undone.


MDC

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

Anyway to get back to my point, I was never arguing removing professions.  "Argument against Professions" was a deconstructive argument meant to strip away preconceptions and then rebuild the class/skill/cost framework consistent with the rules and spirit of the original RM.

Uh, if by "stripping away preconceptions", you meant "giving new definitions to words", then I'd say that, during my years of playing RQIII, we called "fighters" the guys with a focus in combat, "magicians" the guys with a focus in magic (despite how every in RQIII knowing magic to a certain degree, the one who mostly casts spells, has spells, goes after finding new spells, etc. is the magician), etc. And, really, even in the framework of a skill-based system that is RQIII, preconceptions about "professions" exist. I mean, there are stuff everyone would expect an Humakti to be good at, for instance.

I think what bhanson is saying that a GM for RM2/C can now create professions or unique professions for their game world. Creators will love this as it provides a method to expand their game into areas the rules do not go and allow for their game universes to be special.
 A system for "profession" creation would also make developing game universes for creation/sale easier do to how RM2/C rules are structured.

Oh, if bhanson means its system to be rules aimed at GMs, to help the creation of new "balanced" professions, I'd welcome them (though I still think rules to tweak existing professions would work just as well, with way less work and headache). OTOH, I understood him as suggesting them as rules aimed at players, and part of the character creations. As such, I'd say that RM has enough of a reputation for being overtly complex, repuation that put new players off even trying it, than a character creation system which is basically giving players a list of hundred skills, skill categories and spell lists then tell them "Now, create yourself the progressing frame for your characters" is, well, as intothatdarkness said, "a whole lot of cost (extra time spent explaining/creating characters) with little real benefit."

[B Hanson]

There are absolutely both sides to this, but ultimately I see this proposal as a took kit for GM's and a framework for the system.  It's a leveraged framework--just like the open d100 rolling system.

Players are always going to take opposing views on complexity--GM's know that there are "rules centric" players and narrative centric players.  RM is often seen as too complex, but that complexity is equally seen as a positive.