Topic: RM2: what happens if you fail your Transcend Armor roll?

[Hurin]

I know there was a big debate about Transcend Armor in the Combat Companion and RM Classic... I don't want to ressurect all that here.

What I'm wondering is this:
I am starting a new RM2 campaign and one of the characters wants to be a Warrior Mage. I reread Companion 2 and the description of Transcend Armor. I think I remeber how it works, with one exception: what if the person fails to make the Static Action roll to Transcend their Armor? Do they have to continue with the spell? If so, this would be very dangerous... so much so that the character may have a very short life span.

I'm thinking of allowing the character to keep preparing a spell if s/he fails her/his Transcend Armor roll.

Are there any other ways of handling it while still:

--Keeping it as a skill
--Allowing Warrior Mages to be reasonably effective but not overpowered

Cheers

[pastaav]

What I'm wondering is this:
I am starting a new RM2 campaign and one of the characters wants to be a Warrior Mage. I reread Companion 2 and the description of Transcend Armor. I think I remeber how it works, with one exception: what if the person fails to make the Static Action roll to Transcend their Armor? Do they have to continue with the spell? If so, this would be very dangerous... so much so that the character may have a very short life span.

In my game the spell must still be cast with potentially very bad results on a failure. I have great problems seeing why it should not.

[PiXeL01]

If you fail you have to face the full ESF penalty, so if you fail that then it is a x3 mod added to your spell failure roll.

[Ecthelion]

pastaav, PiXeL01: IMHO this renders the skill almost unusable. Given the high ESF penalties of any reasonable armor types, a failure would mean severe harm or death to the character. And every roll of 01-05 can easily lead to such a failure. A ~5% chance of dying or taking severe harm is not worth trying such a skill in most cases. This leads to my question: Did any character in one of your groups ever use this skill regularly?

[pastaav]

pastaav, PiXeL01: IMHO this renders the skill almost unusable. Given the high ESF penalties of any reasonable armor types, a failure would mean severe harm or death to the character. And every roll of 01-05 can easily lead to such a failure. A ~5% chance of dying or taking severe harm is not worth trying such a skill in most cases. This leads to my question: Did any character in one of your groups ever use this skill regularly?

Actually I must admit that it has been a very long since I reviewed my RM2 notes...when looking at them I realize that I had a houserule about allowing the transcend armor user to use his transcend bonus to counter the effect of a spell fumble. Had totally forgotten about that one until you asked. A good reminder why I personally thing the spell casting rules of RMSS/RMFRP is better....

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

I am starting a new RM2 campaign and one of the characters wants to be a Warrior Mage. I reread Companion 2 and the description of Transcend Armor. I think I remeber how it works, with one exception: what if the person fails to make the Static Action roll to Transcend their Armor? Do they have to continue with the spell? If so, this would be very dangerous... so much so that the character may have a very short life span.

I'm thinking of allowing the character to keep preparing a spell if s/he fails her/his Transcend Armor roll.

The ESF rules are meant to allow a character to cast a spell in situations where they normally would not be able to.

The skill, Transcend Armor, is, simply put, a method of getting around the penalties imposed in allowing them to do something they normally couldn't.

If the static maneuver for Transcend Armor fails, the spell is cast normally, as if the character never attempted the skill. This means that the full ESF mod will apply to the fumble range of the casting roll, and if that fails, then triple the ESF is added to the Spell Failure.

Yes, it is dangerous if they fail the Transcend Armor roll. It is supposed to be dangerous. They are doing something that they normally shouldn't be able to do.

If you remove the possible negative effect, then you might as well remove the skill and the ESF mods as well, and just let them cast spells regardless of what they are wearing.

As the only effect of keeping them is to create a DP sink and an extra roll (for which the only negative is requiring a caster to occasionally take extra time in casting a spell).

Basically, it defeats the whole purpose of having ESF mods to begin with, IMO.

Are there any other ways of handling it while still:

--Keeping it as a skill
--Allowing Warrior Mages to be reasonably effective but not overpowered

An option you could consider is treating it like the Maneuver in Armor skill is treated. Each rank reduces the ESF associated, and doesn't require a roll.

The difference is that there is no roll, thus no chance of failure, and the skill would not remove the whole ESF mod unless he had enough ranks in the skill. If used in this manner, I would not give any stat bonuses to it.

[vroomfogle]

You can still increase the severity of failure, but remove the roll.      Have TA decrease the ESG mods associated with armor automatically.  Don't require a roll for every spell cast, as that does increase your chance of failure a lot due to the possibilities of open-ended low.

But if the spell fails, then the ESF mod is added to the roll, or some multiple or fraction of it.  The actual amount you should chance based on how severe you want it to be.   You could have the original ESF mod add to the roll, the original ESF mod minus the TA skill, or some fraction of the original ESF mod.

This way you aren't increasing the chance of failure unless their TA armor skill doesn't fully cover the ESF mod from armor but you are increasing the severity of a failure if a failure occurs.

[Ecthelion]

If the static maneuver for Transcend Armor fails, the spell is cast normally, as if the character never attempted the skill. This means that the full ESF mod will apply to the fumble range of the casting roll, and if that fails, then triple the ESF is added to the Spell Failure.

Yes, it is dangerous if they fail the Transcend Armor roll. It is supposed to be dangerous. They are doing something that they normally shouldn't be able to do.

In this form the skill is practically unusable due to the aforementioned deadly results of a maneuver failure. I doubt that anyone has had a character in his group that had made regular use of Transcend Armor when handling the skill this way. Otherwise please raise your hands and tell me of your experiences.

An option you could consider is treating it like the Maneuver in Armor skill is treated. Each rank reduces the ESF associated, and doesn't require a roll.

The difference is that there is no roll, thus no chance of failure, and the skill would not remove the whole ESF mod unless he had enough ranks in the skill. If used in this manner, I would not give any stat bonuses to it.

This IMHO makes more sense and leaves the skill useful. OTOH I don't see that much a difference, apart from the suggestion to remove the stat bonus, from allowing a spell user to abort the spell if the Transcend Armor roll fails. This time it's a DP sink without an extra roll while the other variant is a DP sink with an extra roll.

[thrud]

No one said it would be easy casting spells in a full plate armour.
Our paladin took the easy way out with the transcend armour "talent"/Background Option fron RoCoI.

[Justin]

If the static maneuver for Transcend Armor fails, the spell is cast normally, as if the character never attempted the skill. This means that the full ESF mod will apply to the fumble range of the casting roll, and if that fails, then triple the ESF is added to the Spell Failure.

Yes, it is dangerous if they fail the Transcend Armor roll. It is supposed to be dangerous. They are doing something that they normally shouldn't be able to do.

In this form the skill is practically unusable due to the aforementioned deadly results of a maneuver failure. I doubt that anyone has had a character in his group that had made regular use of Transcend Armor when handling the skill this way. Otherwise please raise your hands and tell me of your experiences.

Maybe your opinion is different, but Paladins and Warrior Mages are general looked upon as broken classes. I echo Rasyr's voice here: It isn't supposed to be easy. Throwing around dangerous spells and wearing good armour and having a competant weapon skill is freaking dangerous and unbalancing. The weapon skill is kept in check by the rapid dp cost, and with ESF and TA, the spells and armour balance each other. That's the way it should be.

[Ecthelion]

Indeed the RoCo2 Warrior Mage and Paladin can be regarded as unbalanced or perhaps even "broken" classes. OTOH this should IMO not be "fixed" by introducing a broken version of Transcend Armor (TA) that renders this skill practically useless.

If you think that TA which lets the user cast spells without a severe risk of crippling himself would make such professions unbalanced, then it's IMO better to utterly remove the TA skill instead of keeping a useless version of it.

[Hurin]

Thanks Rasyr, Vroom, Ecthelion and everyone else that is participating in this. It is particularly helpful for me to see how TA was originally intended to be used and to hear suggestions on how to modify it.

IMHO, the original way of using it (the caster has to cast the spell even if he fails the TA role) makes the Warrior Mage and other classes that depend on TA virtually unplayable. It's just too dangerous.

The option of applying the skill ranks in TA (with the stat bonus) is a bit better. But this to me is a little overpowered, however, since by level 9 or 10 you'll have people easily able to cast spells with no ESF in AT 20 (since the ESF mod for AT 20 is only 90). Removing the stat bonus is not a perfect solution (since casters with better stats should still be better at TA, IMHO), but is a better idea, and would be close to being balanced (IMHO).

I'm still trying to find a middle way between severely underpowered and overpowered (in my own judgement, of course, as I recognize people will differ on the issue).

If I do use the idea that TA skill ranks reduce the ESF chances without the character having to make a roll every time s/he wants to cast, I think I might add a 'minimum ESF mod' to armor much like the 'minimum ESF mod' to moving maneuver rolls, so there is always at least some penalty to casting in armor.

I also might just stick with my original solution, and allow the character the option of continuing or cancelling the spell when the TA static maneuver roll fails. This would still allow casting in armor but have it have some serious negatives: extra DPs for the skill, and some extra rounds spent at inconvenient times (i.e. right in the middle of combat) cancelling or preparing spells.

But I'm still open to suggestions, so please... keep the discussion going!

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

If the static maneuver for Transcend Armor fails, the spell is cast normally, as if the character never attempted the skill. This means that the full ESF mod will apply to the fumble range of the casting roll, and if that fails, then triple the ESF is added to the Spell Failure.

Yes, it is dangerous if they fail the Transcend Armor roll. It is supposed to be dangerous. They are doing something that they normally shouldn't be able to do.

In this form the skill is practically unusable due to the aforementioned deadly results of a maneuver failure. I doubt that anyone has had a character in his group that had made regular use of Transcend Armor when handling the skill this way. Otherwise please raise your hands and tell me of your experiences.

Umm.. that is the basic, core form for the skill. What I described was basically saying that if he failed with the skill roll, then it is as if he never attempted the skill roll. That the ESF rules work normally on the spell.

It is no more dangerous than using the ESF rules without the Transcend Armor skill at all.

IMHO, the original way of using it (the caster has to cast the spell even if he fails the TA role) makes the Warrior Mage and other classes that depend on TA virtually unplayable. It's just too dangerous.

That is the point -- that those professions are NOT supposed to depend upon TA. 

If you have a character who is depending upon TA, then that player has a completely wrong idea on the purpose behind the skill.

[Ecthelion]

That is the point -- that those professions are NOT supposed to depend upon TA. 

If you have a character who is depending upon TA, then that player has a completely wrong idea on the purpose behind the skill.

I agree that professions like the Warrior Mage (WMa) should not depend on TA. OTOH it might be the case that the authors of RoCo2 had a WMa wearing armor in mind when designing the profession, given that the WMa's armor costs are quite low and the profession does have no spells that enhances their armor, such as the Elemental Warrior from RMC Combat Companion has on his Warrior's Shield list. So I can at least understand if a player would like to have his WMa character wear armor. IMO a design flaw of the profession (and/or the TA skill).

[dutch206]

Q:  What happens if you fail your Transcend Armor check?

A:  Zzzzzt!  Pop! 

[PiXeL01]

We never used `the roll` method either, but used the `Skill ranks and stat bonus` method. It was simpler and easier, but yes it definitely throws powers into the hands of Semi spell users, even though in the beginning it can be somewhat of a DPs sink. Well at least it isnt a /* skill like Man in Armor.

If you use it this way nothing is stopping you from reducing the value of the ranks bought.

[Hurin]

We never used `the roll` method either, but used the `Skill ranks and stat bonus` method. It was simpler and easier, but yes it definitely throws powers into the hands of Semi spell users, even though in the beginning it can be somewhat of a DPs sink. Well at least it isnt a /* skill like Man in Armor.

If you use it this way nothing is stopping you from reducing the value of the ranks bought.

Well, I'm leaning towards ranks without a stat bonus right now... it just seems the most balanced to me, even if it's not perfect