Topic: ERA: How do I do simple maneuvers in the adventure module?

[alloowishus]

For maneuvers, I only see a list of skills for each characters, what if I just want to do a generic maneuver not listed in the skills?

[Voriig Kye]

What do you mean by a generic maneuver? A table not related to a character's skill? Like a random encounter?
If you want an NPC do attempt a maneuver the can have skills and roll for them.
If you need a table that does not relate to a skill bonus, you might want to try adding a treasure table, since they are basically just rolls and results. In the medium term, the treasure module might be revamped as a random table rolling module, and include stuff like random encounters, breakage rolls, etc.

[alloowishus]

Just a regular moving maneuver. Let's say they are trying to quickly navigate some rocks or whatever.

[alloowishus]

Basically all you need to do is to add "Moving Maneuvers" as a skill, which would be the armor skill bonus plus the no armor bonus. Not sure why you don't have this, there are plenty of times that you need to do maneuvers that don't involve a specific skill. For instance even doing a fast sprint requires a roll, how do you do that in the adventure module?

[alloowishus]

Actually, if you change the category the armor from "Special Maneuver" to "Moving Maneuver" in the character xml file it works. Just need to add "no armor"

[Voriig Kye]

Basically all you need to do is to add "Moving Maneuvers" as a skill, which would be the armor skill bonus plus the no armor bonus. Not sure why you don't have this, there are plenty of times that you need to do maneuvers that don't involve a specific skill. For instance even doing a fast sprint requires a roll, how do you do that in the adventure module?

Weird as it may sound, I don't think we've received that question before.
For most campaigns I've known, there is always some skill involved even for those maneuvers.

I'm not sure changing the armor skills to moving maneuvers won't have side effects, since all skills marked as moving maneuvers have a penalty equal to the armor skill total.

Can the "movement" skill ever be positive? If it's the equivalent of an armor skill plus the result of the current armor penalty, you can create a new skill in the Armor category, make it a moving maneuver, and bind it to the character's current armor skill. Would that cover it?

[alloowishus]

Strange how it's never come up, since doing any movement beyond walk during combat requires a movement manuever roll.

From Arms law:

Use the Maneuver Table for movement
under pressure. Where an individual or group
is “under pressure” from attackers, the weather,
or some other perceived threat — or time is a
major factor — have them roll on the Maneuver/Movement Table. Simply determine the
appropriate difficulty (from the Pace Chart, or
by GM assignment); the result is the percentage of the distance they would normally move
given their rate of speed. It is possible to move
faster than normal due to this process.

However you want to handle it, just needs to show up when you select your skills.

[Voriig Kye]

Thanks for bringing up this rule. We'll make sure to review it and allow some feature to make it available.

[Voriig Kye]

So, let's debate this ruling.

RMC Character Law - Section 5.4 --> Movement at faster than a walk is a moving maneuver using Qu/Ag.
RMC Character Law - Section 10.4 --> Movement maneuvers usually use Ag, apply the armor penalty and a skill if applicable, then has an example doing exactly this. So it ignores its own previous ruling on Qu/Ag, and applies the armor penalty without mention to the armor skill.
RMC Character Law - Section 10.5 --> Movement under pressure seems to use no skill and ignore armor penalties, although the example lacks detail.
RMC Character Law - Option 23.2 --> There is an Athletic category for skills, and some professions have a level bonus to those, which includes potentially skills that would be used under pressure/for moving faster than a walk.
RMC Arms Law - Section 3.4 --> Part of the combat example has a character making a moving maneuver for running, modified by Agility.
RMC Arms Law - Section 4.0 --> The same information as RMC Character Law at Section 10.4, with the same example.
RMC Arms Law - Section 4.1 --> Movement under pressure seems to use no skill and ignore armor penalties, although the example lacks detail.

RMFRP Character Law - Section 15.0 --> If no skill applies to a moving maneuver, use Ag (3x because that's how thing are done in RMFRP). Armor skills is considered. The example used is the same as in RMC when no detail is provided, here also not provided, but the outcome is the same. There are Athletic - Gymnastics (Ag/Qu/Ag) and Endurance (Co/Ag/St) skills that cover a lot of movement situations, like Sprinting, Distance Running, Acrobatics, Tumbling and some professions have a bonus for them.
RMFRP Arms Law --> No mention of movement rules.

RMU mentions moving maneuvers might consider the armor penalties when relevant, and always applies a skill, since it includes the Running skill for ground movement, Swimming for water, Climbing for vertical, Flying for aerial. These skills are in a Movement category, which uses Ag/St. Some professions have a bonus for them.

My point is that although both RMC and RMFRP mention how to resolve a maneuver without using a skill, it seems more of a leftover from when Rolemaster was just an add-on for that-other-game and not consistent with the rest of the rules. If characters can have a sprinting, acrobatic, tumbling skill, and have a professional bonus for it, just rolling without adding anything seems lacking in potential success. Of course every gaming group will have its own view of these rules, and not all of these books will be considered.

For RMC in particular where there is more room for interpretation, my suggestion would be to add a "Movement" skill in the Armor or Athletic category, using Qu/Ag as suggested in Section 5.4, which would also include the armor skill total since it would be a moving maneuver. Since characters can't develop it, it should have a +25 special bonus to counter the lack of ranks.
For RMFRP I would suggest allowing character to roll their highest Athletic skill that might be relevant to the situation.

What do you all think?

[alloowishus]

THere are plenty of manuevers that don't involve a particular skill, for instance maneuvering rough terrain, walking across a precarious plank etc. In addition there is no skill for "sprinting" in the current RMC system. You can't have a skill for every single situation, so generic manever rolls I think should be available.

In addition, I found (*uggh*) another issue with the Adventure module. If I change a character's status so that it is not wearing armor (change AT to 1) then it still applies their maneuver penalties for whatever is set to on their character sheet before loading the character. So what I suggest is the following:

All characters should have a default maneuver skill in AT 1, which is 0 + their agility stat bonus, you can't really develop this skill.

When maneuvering in armor is developed AND that character is wearing that armor, apply those modification to maneuvers. They should also get a default Maneuver skill in that armor which is equal to their Armor Maneuver modification. If they change their AT to 1 in an adventure setting, it should switch to the AT 1 skill.

[jdale]

In RMSS, moving maneuvers use Distance Running for movement up to a Run pace, or Sprinting for movement faster than that, with the special case that you use 3xAg if you don't have the applicable skill (RMSR pg 84). Also, every race gets one rank of the Athletic-Endurance category, limiting just how bad you can be at them. That covers maneuvering over rough terrain too, the terrain is just a difficulty modifier. It's a pretty weird rule (especially since the category stats are Ag/Qu/Ag, not Ag/Ag/Ag), but if you implement it, not only does it handle the situation, it also saves people from figuring out how it is supposed to work.

Walking across a precarious plank would be covered by Tightrope-Walking (which isn't just for ropes, it lists modifiers for things up to 3' wide).

In RMU, any movement over ground, rough terrain or not, is going to be Running skill (or maybe an alternate specialization of running, e.g. skiing). Any movement that involves balance would be Acrobatics.


All that aside, you could probably cover a lot of house rules and special cases by providing an option to make a maneuver against a stat instead of a skill.

[alloowishus]

In no armor, it should be just agility. In armor it should be just the modification of moving in that armor, or your agility, which ever is less. That's the way I am used to playing.

Using acrobatics for everything does not make sense, maneuvering over rough terrain is not necessarily acrobatics. Just think of your daily life, if you go hiking or something, do you have an acrobatics skill? I don't, but I can still maneuver around terrain. You should be able to "run" without having a running skill, just having the skill would give you an advantage. In any case, there is no running skill in RMC, which is the version of ERA I am using.

[Voriig Kye]

Adding a skill for each stat would be doable. But then the question comes... are they all static maneuvers? Are Co/St/Ag/Qu ALWAYS affected by armor?
@jdale do you think it still would be useful if it only provides the stat bonus and players manually adjust for additional modifiers?
In my gaming group we don't consider fair to use a table prepared for skill+roll to be used with only stat+roll so for those "stat roll" situations we do a simple d20+ total stat bonus and the GM determines the target number.

@alloowishus maneuvering without armor using only agility is against the ruling that mentions using Ag/Qu mentioned in the previous post, so deciding on that would be a house rule no matter what you choose. This array of possible interpretations are what have kept an official feature in ERA from being added.

If you are determined to have the ruling the way you mention, the easiest way would be adding a group named Movement, with a category of the same name, and a skill declared as Moving Maneuver, with Agility as its only stat. That only leaves you with the rank bonus issue, sadly at the moment the only solution there is to manually give characters a +25 to compensate.

Regarding the change to AT 1 after loading a character, the implications are bigger than you mention. The armor declared in the character sheet can have a number of modifications to DB, Minimum or casting penalties. This is why changing the armor during the adventure is expected to only affect the damage received by the character, most likely due to some spell providing a better armor value, but not changing what the character is wearing.

[jdale]

You'll never implement every possible house rule. That's kind of the nature of RM, especially RM2. Letting people manually adjust means there is always a way to do whatever it is they want to do.