Author Topic: ERA Customization Questions- Adjustment for RMSS Ruleset  (Read 1323 times)

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Offline Firefairy

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ERA Customization Questions- Adjustment for RMSS Ruleset
« on: October 09, 2021, 09:25:01 AM »
My GM is running RMSS, which is close enough to RMFRP that most of that version of ERA works nicely. There are a few things that are different, however, plus I have a homebrew Profession with its own spell lists to work with. Here are the things that are giving me trouble so far:

1: In RMSS, you can take spells from lists outside your own Realm, and non-magic-user classes choose a Realm at character creation, which makes that one slightly easier to learn in. Buying spells outside your own Realm is exorbitantly expensive, but we have a player who did, so I have to make it work. As spell lists don't seem to list their Realms or whether they are Open or Closed (at least in the examples), I am not sure how to even begin to go about this. I figured out I could probably add the Realm-specific Groups to that config file, which would allow me to assign costs, but what do I need to do to designate a spell list as, for example, an Essence list? Or do we just do that by which Group we choose when we add it?

2: The way Stat changes upon leveling work is apparently completely different than RMFRP. In RMSS, you roll 2d10, and whether you get doubles and the exact roll determines if your Stat goes up or down and by how much. There is no other way to adjust them up or down (no option to spend DP on them). As there is no DP cost, I guess we can just manually adjust the stats after rolling in real life, but it would be nice if there was a way to track it in ERA.

3: When adding Development Packs, I found the place to indicate the name of the pack and how much it cost in DP, but it doesn't seem to have any mechanical effect, and if I add the skill changes manually, they (for obvious reasons) are included in the DP expenditure on top of the cost of the pack itself. I assume I am doing this wrong, but I can't find any reference on how to do it correctly.

4: Everyman/Restricted/Occupational doesn't seem to work the way my GM was expecting. His expectation is that it would be marked e/r/o, and would modify the number of ranks acquired- buy one, get two, for example, with Everyman. No option to buy just one rank with Everyman or Occupational skills, no way to save up to buy a rank with Restricted skills. I have just tested with "additional ranks" and it still looks odd on the sheet and I can't tell for sure if it is working correctly for his expectations.

5: The homebrew Profession, Soothsayer, has custom spell lists, so the first item also affects knowing how to designate some lists as the Base lists for Soothsayer, both for listing and for cost. In the Magician example, I see some lists entered as Favorites, but I don't see how they are designated as Base lists.

6: Soothsayer's lists include the Learn Language tree, which has an Everyman-like effect on learning new languages while the skill is active. For our game's purposes, the GM is applying it as a modifier at leveling unless there is some situation where a new language appears at a time when the character can't afford to be using magic for whatever reason. This means the number of ranks grated per rank purchased varies over the course of the character's growth. Even more, at higher levels, the multiplier goes up as the spell level does, and the player with the homebrew character is currently at a modifier of 3, and about to go up to 4. I can kind of jigger 3 with marking it as Occupational, but i have no idea how to handle 4 and up.

Thankfully not relevant for our game, but this spell line isn't the only reason this could matter- the Sailor Development Package (I think, could have been Mariner) modifies certain skill costs, but only when you stay involved with the sea. Go inland for too long, and the skills revert to their previous costs.
~~~~~

I think that's all I have run into so far. Current plan is to build what I can of Soothsayer, a Group for spell lists outside of the Realms of professions currently in use, and the homebrew spell lists, and wait on answers to the above, or more issues to crop up. Hoping most of these are just me not noticing the right places to poke, since that's the easiest to fix.

Offline Firefairy

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Re: ERA Customization Questions- Adjustment for RMSS Ruleset
« Reply #1 on: October 09, 2021, 10:18:09 AM »
Okay, new one: The Soothsayer Profession has an Everyman cost for all History skills, which are under Lore - General. These are added ad hoc as varying subjects become available for study, and are not always shared across all players, due to differing backgrounds and playstyles. How should this be handled?

Offline Voriig Kye

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Re: ERA Customization Questions- Adjustment for RMSS Ruleset
« Reply #2 on: October 09, 2021, 01:25:59 PM »
1: In RMSS, you can take spells from lists outside your own Realm, and non-magic-user classes choose a Realm at character creation, which makes that one slightly easier to learn in. Buying spells outside your own Realm is exorbitantly expensive, but we have a player who did, so I have to make it work. As spell lists don't seem to list their Realms or whether they are Open or Closed (at least in the examples), I am not sure how to even begin to go about this. I figured out I could probably add the Realm-specific Groups to that config file, which would allow me to assign costs, but what do I need to do to designate a spell list as, for example, an Essence list? Or do we just do that by which Group we choose when we add it?
The distinction of open/close/base has no impact other than the costs defined by default.
Favorites spell lists declared for a profession are put into base spell lists since that is the most common scenario.
If a player adds the odd spell list and the situation is not that common, you'd be fine just by adding it to one of the existing categories that do not give a bonus (for example the TP category) and adjust the cost for the specific list.
If most players will start learning outside their realm, then it would be better to customize the categories.XML and skills.XML, you can even use the Variant Profession feature to indicate the cost.

2: The way Stat changes upon leveling work is apparently completely different than RMFRP. In RMSS, you roll 2d10, and whether you get doubles and the exact roll determines if your Stat goes up or down and by how much. There is no other way to adjust them up or down (no option to spend DP on them). As there is no DP cost, I guess we can just manually adjust the stats after rolling in real life, but it would be nice if there was a way to track it in ERA.
I don't follow the issue here. ERA will offer stat gains on leveling up, doubles will put the temporary up or down accordingly, and you can even purchase a stat gain after leveling up. Could you tell us the steps you'd be expecting to see, and what happens instead?

3: When adding Development Packs, I found the place to indicate the name of the pack and how much it cost in DP, but it doesn't seem to have any mechanical effect, and if I add the skill changes manually, they (for obvious reasons) are included in the DP expenditure on top of the cost of the pack itself. I assume I am doing this wrong, but I can't find any reference on how to do it correctly.
Training Packages are the next best thing coming to ERA, hopefully before end of 2021. The current version only offers to record a name and a cost, and you need to manually edit the skills ranks, add items, do stat gains manually, etc.

4: Everyman/Restricted/Occupational doesn't seem to work the way my GM was expecting. His expectation is that it would be marked e/r/o, and would modify the number of ranks acquired- buy one, get two, for example, with Everyman. No option to buy just one rank with Everyman or Occupational skills, no way to save up to buy a rank with Restricted skills. I have just tested with "additional ranks" and it still looks odd on the sheet and I can't tell for sure if it is working correctly for his expectations.
The e/r/o can be seen next to the skill cost. Restricted shows up as [0.5x], while Everyman is [2x] and Occupational [3x]. You can't purchase 1 rank in Everyman for half the cost, but you can pay for half a rank in a Restricted skill and it will be saved, so that next time you purchase 1 rank you get the corresponding bonus. As for the case of the stat gains, please share with us an example on the steps you are doing, what happens and what you'd expected to see.

5: The homebrew Profession, Soothsayer, has custom spell lists, so the first item also affects knowing how to designate some lists as the Base lists for Soothsayer, both for listing and for cost. In the Magician example, I see some lists entered as Favorites, but I don't see how they are designated as Base lists.
Favorites spell lists declared for a profession are put into base spell lists since that is the most common scenario.

6: Soothsayer's lists include the Learn Language tree, which has an Everyman-like effect on learning new languages while the skill is active. For our game's purposes, the GM is applying it as a modifier at leveling unless there is some situation where a new language appears at a time when the character can't afford to be using magic for whatever reason. This means the number of ranks grated per rank purchased varies over the course of the character's growth. Even more, at higher levels, the multiplier goes up as the spell level does, and the player with the homebrew character is currently at a modifier of 3, and about to go up to 4. I can kind of jigger 3 with marking it as Occupational, but i have no idea how to handle 4 and up.

Thankfully not relevant for our game, but this spell line isn't the only reason this could matter- the Sailor Development Package (I think, could have been Mariner) modifies certain skill costs, but only when you stay involved with the sea. Go inland for too long, and the skills revert to their previous costs.
You can edit a skill (pen icon to the left of the row, then cog icon which is the first to the left on the options that appear to the right of the skill name column) and manually set the "ranks gained per purchase".

Okay, new one: The Soothsayer Profession has an Everyman cost for all History skills, which are under Lore - General. These are added ad hoc as varying subjects become available for study, and are not always shared across all players, due to differing backgrounds and playstyles. How should this be handled?
Same as the languages and the sea TP situatiuon, you can edit the skill and change it. If it lasts for only for a moment, you can change it during level up and then back for example.

Let us know if that answers all the questions.

For stuff that seems broken, it's fine to use the support mail account, specially since it takes forever to get attachments approved in the forum.

You can also check the era-for-rolemaster channel in the ICE Discord server, where many ERA users are active and give fast and good advice.

Offline Firefairy

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Re: ERA Customization Questions- Adjustment for RMSS Ruleset
« Reply #3 on: October 09, 2021, 02:35:16 PM »
Okay, first, thanks for such a fast response to my laundry list of confusion. Much appreciated!

Responding in order:
Quote
The distinction of open/close/base has no impact other than the costs defined by default.
Favorites spell lists declared for a profession are put into base spell lists since that is the most common scenario.
If a player adds the odd spell list and the situation is not that common, you'd be fine just by adding it to one of the existing categories that do not give a bonus (for example the TP category) and adjust the cost for the specific list.
If most players will start learning outside their realm, then it would be better to customize the categories.XML and skills.XML, you can even use the Variant Profession feature to indicate the cost.
It's definitely not common. Looks like in RMSS there is a distinction between sources and open/closed/TP in terms of cost, so I managed to make categories for them, and plan to make Variants exactly as you stated, since the GM will be making the NPCs with this as well, and I am not privy to which classes are doing weird stuff. If players want more spell lists once I am done getting this set up, I will show them the format and turn them loose to do the data entry themselves. :P

Quote
I don't follow the issue here. ERA will offer stat gains on leveling up, doubles will put the temporary up or down accordingly, and you can even purchase a stat gain after leveling up. Could you tell us the steps you'd be expecting to see, and what happens instead?
Okay, then I am also confused. That's the correct level-up stat gain. In my test character (using a Dwarven Cleric, all stock), this is what I get when I hit the Stat Gain button, which I assume is the purchase one. Where else should I be looking? https://sta.sh/026qq75x9sz3

Quote
Training Packages are the next best thing coming to ERA, hopefully before end of 2021. The current version only offers to record a name and a cost, and you need to manually edit the skills ranks, add items, do stat gains manually, etc.
Okay. I had to do that with our previous solution as well, and we're probably going to tweak everything in the XML to handle the fact that these characters are far from level one anyway. Good to know it is coming, though!   :D

Quote
The e/r/o can be seen next to the skill cost. Restricted shows up as [0.5x], while Everyman is [2x] and Occupational [3x]. You can't purchase 1 rank in Everyman for half the cost, but you can pay for half a rank in a Restricted skill and it will be saved, so that next time you purchase 1 rank you get the corresponding bonus.
I am seeing the half-rank take the skill from its initial state of negative bonus to zero, which is the main issue- those half ranks seem to be doing something under the hood. Knowing that the others are just using other notation is enough for me.

Quote
Favorites spell lists declared for a profession are put into base spell lists since that is the most common scenario.
Okay, that makes sense.

Quote
You can edit a skill (pen icon to the left of the row, then cog icon which is the first to the left on the options that appear to the right of the skill name column) and manually set the "ranks gained per purchase".
Nice! I wasn't expecting that one to have that simple of a solution. Well done!

Quote
You can also check the era-for-rolemaster channel in the ICE Discord server, where many ERA users are active and give fast and good advice.
Can I get a link for that Discord? I grabbed the one I found when I did a quick Google search, but it doesn't have that channel, so I think I got an unofficial one.

My remaining issue is languages- I understand about licensing and needing to use generic terms in the product you sell, but we use a lot of languages in this game, and having the ones that came automatically named generically and all the others named accurately is a bit jarring. If I edit the Cultures to have the relevant names, will that be enough? It seems like no languages get added automatically other than those, and I don't see them in the Skills or even Categories list.

Also, is there an override for cultures and races the way there is for professions? It would help me add flavortext that is relevant to the setting of our specific game, in addition to the language situation, without having to make entire cultures from scratch when the crunch is accurate.

Thanks again!

Offline Voriig Kye

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Re: ERA Customization Questions- Adjustment for RMSS Ruleset
« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2021, 06:59:57 AM »
In my test character (using a Dwarven Cleric, all stock), this is what I get when I hit the Stat Gain button, which I assume is the purchase one. Where else should I be looking? https://sta.sh/026qq75x9sz3
I should really do a RMFRP level up tutorial, but it'll have to wait until training packages are finished.
When you start a level up, you get the list of stats and have a chance for stat gains. You have a field next to each stat to enter the result of the dice, and you'll get a preview of the updated temporary.
Then, during a level up, you can click on stat gain to purchase an additional one. Here you can enter as many rolls as you like, and it will charge you only for those that have a roll next in the corresponding field.

Can I get a link for that Discord? I grabbed the one I found when I did a quick Google search, but it doesn't have that channel, so I think I got an unofficial one.
https://discord.gg/4F59tPK2

My remaining issue is languages- I understand about licensing and needing to use generic terms in the product you sell, but we use a lot of languages in this game, and having the ones that came automatically named generically and all the others named accurately is a bit jarring. If I edit the Cultures to have the relevant names, will that be enough? It seems like no languages get added automatically other than those, and I don't see them in the Skills or even Categories list.
All skills mentioned in the files you place in ERA/RMFRP/Configuration/Skills will be added to new characters. So you could add there a "World languages.skills.XML" and list the default languages available to all characters.

Also, is there an override for cultures and races the way there is for professions? It would help me add flavortext that is relevant to the setting of our specific game, in addition to the language situation, without having to make entire cultures from scratch when the crunch is accurate.
Variant Races and Variant Cultures will be done in the future. There was an unexpected positive effect in customization when we added Variant Professions, and the technical part is not that hard to do. But first we need to finish Training Packages.

Thanks for the questions, I'm sure they will be of use also to other users.