Topic: SM:P races in RMFRP

[Arioch]

I just received my new, shiny copy of SM Privateers and now I'm impatient of injecting some more SF element in my fantasy campaing.
Giving a first look through the manual, my eyes fell on the races' description: most of them have very extreme stat bonuses (and penalties), and loads of special abilities. My question is: are their usable with RMFRP without any tweaking or are they a little unbalanced compared to fantasy races?

[Fidoric]

IMO, they are not unbalanced. The high stat bonuses reflects the large differences between truly alien races. I find it that SM deals better with that than RM. In SM, strong races are way stronger than weak ones and no human will challenge a kagoth in a strength contest. That's the way it sould be.

[Defendi]

I agree with  Fidoric in the context of the Privateers game.  If you're adding the stuff into an existing fantasy game, however, I'd be afraid of a slight power creep.  Players tend to select disadvantages that don't actually hinder their character concepts, so balanced in theory doesn't always play out balanced practically.  If I was doing SF into fantasy, I'd probably start by updating the fantasy races with MP dev and then slowly adding stuff in from there.

Of course it depends on your players too.  If your players trend against powergaming, it shouldn't be a problem.  Having an equal race with wider penalties and bonuses only really becomes and issue when player are working primarily for the numbers.

[Arioch]

I think I'll introduce everything vey slowly, using SM races as rare non-playable races first. If the players like them I'll begin to "unlock" them as PC races.

[David Johansen]

IMO they aren't even remotely balanced for RM and make high elves look down right ordinary.

But then the extreme focus of the races in SPAM has always troubled me.

[Grinnen Baeritt]

My first reaction is that some of the new races presented in SM:P are just races from Creatures & Treasures but after a few million years evolution. (The original RM version of C&T gave stats for these races...)

Falar = Idyiva
Tulgar = Vulfen

Check out the stat bonuses for Humans in both systems and then you will understand the logic.

I don't consider the races very well balanced in SM:P, some of the races have tons of special abilities and virtually no disadvantages the High-Elf has relatively minor sets of racial advantages in comparision. If you use the Talent points method then the situation gets even worse...

[Arioch]

Grinnen: I had the same impression!