1. A streamlined version of TPs will be presented in the Character Companion, but they aren't going to give big DP discounts the way the RMSS TPs did. The RMSS version really became mandatory because it made so much difference for the DP costs and even the maximum number of ranks, and we chose not to do that, for the sake of streamlining. The reduction in the number of skills also made them less necessary.
2. The sorts of things that were done with background options are done with talents instead. Additional talents along those lines will appear in the Character Companion. What they don't do is randomization.
3. XP is covered in chapter 12.4. But it's goal and event driven rather than skill and combat driven.
4. I'd probably treat it like the Clotting spell, so 1 hour.
5. See chapter 9.4 for the effects of size. There aren't separate Large and Superlarge critical tables, instead critical severity (and optionally damage) is stepped up or down, which permits a much wider range of sizes.
6. If the outcome is that the character fails their RR and then another character is forced to take action to assist them, then the fear had an effect. That seems ok. Leadership won't always work, either.
7. There are more possibilities than you list but for example:
* making a 4 AP attack, from which you can allocate some of your OB to to parry, and getting the benefit of your passive dodge or block
* do a full dodge or block (4 AP)
* make a 2 AP attack (at -50), which you can parry with, and also do a partial dodge/block (half of your dodge/block bonus as DB)
Combinations of partial dodging with combat will be especially common if you use Adrenal Defense skill.
8. I played MERP way too long ago to answer that directly. But it would be reasonable to give those characters some Running and/or Shield skill ranks which they could use for defense.
