Topic: Rolemaster Issues

[giulio.trimarco]

I think they are the some problems that you read frequently in the forum.

They are principal about combat and spell casting.

Character generation/advancement is very good, perhaps a bit slow. I'd like to see some official options to remove XP and levels.
Removing profession bonuses. I think that skill costs is already accounting more expertise.

About combat:

Fumble not tied to competence of combatatns.
Critics are too random. An "A" critical can kill you with a bit of luck. (I like realism, but dispatching PC randomly isn't a good choice)
Too simple to kill very impressive monster, doing super-roll.
No locational damage.
No dodge.
No shield skill, only a flat bonus.
RMC presents rules for breakage insanely complex (how do they worked out them...  )
No defense roll. Instead of putting a bonus in defense I'd like an active defense. This way combat is more dynamic (a double fumble!!!!  )
Weapons table are diverse but similar. Doing an "E" critical to a naked warrior with a dagger is the some sa doing an "E" critical with a Great Lance at full gallop wiht a Heavy Barded, Heavy War Horse  . Difference is hits, but not too much. This change, a little, with higher AT20, but depends on the weapons.
Etc.

[Langthorne]

Yep, there are some valid criticisms there, not 'game breakers' but areas that could be looked at, certainly.

[sunwolf]

Criticals are too random. An "A" critical can kill you with a bit of luck. (I like realism, but dispatching PC randomly isn't a good choice)

Combat Companion seems to reduce this issue.

No dodge.

Dodge and/or parry are inherently part of the system that is what using part of OB as DB is IMO

No defense roll.

At least for RM I prefer not having an active defense roll as it slows down combat and RM combat is already slow enough.  YMMV

[giulio.trimarco]

Well, I don't completely agree.

To a little extent CC mitigate the issue. But the problem is still there. An A critical is light wound, that can degenerate in a serious wound.

If you don't have a weapon with wich you have expertise, you can't "parry/dodge". If you do you are using another manoeuvre completly, taking all the round.
If you have a shield and no weapon you can't improve you parry/dodge.
Rolling defense will not slow down combat if you reorganize the numbers of tables and how you use them.

There are some mechanics that can speed up play and give more dinamism.

In addition RM takes into account facing (rear/flank), instead of using some semplification.
Since the combat round is 10 seconds, talking of facing is a little odd.

Instead you should apply your defense for the entirety of the round and, for every attack over the first, scaling the DB of an X factor.
More speed and semplicity and make sense too, since in 10 seconds who knows where you're facing?

[jolt]

giulio:  I completely understand where you're coming from regarding crits.  However, I've found that (especially when playing with the same group for a long time) randomness is often your friend.  I understand that it doesn't seem to make much sense for an "A" crit to lop off someone's head while an "E" crit does +2 hits.  But if you take away too much randomness, combat becomes too predictable and ends up as little more than an exercise in basic math.  My players like the idea that any critical is potentially devastating.  If it's really a problem for your group, remove the "Auto-kill" results from the "A" and "B" crit charts and replace them with severe bleeding instead.

jolt

[giulio.trimarco]

Eehe,

no, I don't believe it's a randomness problem.

It's a table problem. Since there are too much results for every critical, they don't know what to put in them.
Randomness is good, but after years (6 or more) reading the some tables, that's no more randomness, it's a table readed for years.

And the 66... I hate that 66.
What's the meaning of putting a 66 that's a killer? Randomness?
But that's another story.

And the Large and SuperLarge Tables?
Boys, more than half the results are only a way or another of saying: it's dead.  :'(

And the magic fumble?
Only the last 4 results gives something to worry about. You must roll 96+96+100 to be in some type of danger...
You loose three minutes to roll a near meaningless fumble.

Call it randomness...

Sorry for the rant. It's wasn't meant to be.

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

[modbreak]
I decided to split the topic because it didn't actually have anything to do with RMC vs RMFRP (i.e. a comparison of the two versions of the Rolemaster system), and was more about various issues that giulio has with Rolemaster (both versions, apparently).

Those issues are a proper subject for discussion (no system is perfect), and should have their own topic.

Please continue on.... 
[/modbreak]

[Ecthelion]

I'd like to see some official options to remove XP and levels.

Please not. I belong to those that would rather keep both. And with the goal based XPs from RMX the handling is now far easier than for older RM versions.

Removing profession bonuses. I think that skill costs is already accounting more expertise.

Please keep them, they give a distinction between different profession even at early levels.

Fumble not tied to competence of combatatns.

Correct, perhaps this could be improved. No big deal OTOH.

Critics are too random. An "A" critical can kill you with a bit of luck. (I like realism, but dispatching PC randomly isn't a good choice)
Too simple to kill very impressive monster, doing super-roll.

The criticals in this way are something which is very special for RM and in contrast to you I think it is a good thing. I agree that having a PC killed by an unlucky roll easily is a bad thing. Therefore I would vote for having a rule like the Fate Point rule from Channeling Companion being a core rule rather than something optional from a companion book. But being able to have a lucky roll and to kill a superior opponent is something that I very much like about RM (even if it happened very seldom that one of my characters actually had such a lucky roll against a vastly superior enemy  ).

No locational damage.

Many people indeed mention this. Personally I never missed this.

No dodge.

Perhaps you can take a look at HARP Lite which includes such a rule. I think that rule could (and perhaps should) be adapted for RM.

No shield skill, only a flat bonus.

On the one hand I agree that the handling of a shield is probably something that needs to be learned and therefore a skill should exist. OTOH we already have quite a long list of skills, so I am a bit unsure whether a shield skill should really be added.

RMC presents rules for breakage insanely complex (how do they worked out them...  )

I suggest to make these optional if they not already are. Simply don't use the parts you don't like and that can easily be left out. Breakage rules are such rules.

No defense roll. Instead of putting a bonus in defense I'd like an active defense. This way combat is more dynamic (a double fumble!!!!  )

From a statistical POV it does not change the average outcome of combat a single bit. So it's simply an unneccessary roll. And you still can have a double fumble if both combatants fumble their attack rolls.

Weapons table are diverse but similar. Doing an "E" critical to a naked warrior with a dagger is the some sa doing an "E" critical with a Great Lance at full gallop wiht a Heavy Barded, Heavy War Horse  . Difference is hits, but not too much. This change, a little, with higher AT20, but depends on the weapons.

The lance does almost three times as many hits as the dagger against AT1 and more than eight times as many concussion hits against AT20. So the difference in hit points is considerable, not even taking into account that from a full gallop the result on the lance attack table will likely be higher than the dagger attack done from a footman, due to the OB bonus from the horse's speed. It is true that the critical is the same for low armor types (for AT20 the dagger can't even reach a D or E critical), but when it's your PC the lance attack is done against, then your probably glad that this lance attack does not mean certain death but that it has the same (relatively low) chance of killing the PC as the attack from the dagger. So in general I think the tables are OK.

[Ecthelion]

In addition RM takes into account facing (rear/flank), instead of using some semplification.
Since the combat round is 10 seconds, talking of facing is a little odd.

Instead you should apply your defense for the entirety of the round and, for every attack over the first, scaling the DB of an X factor.
More speed and semplicity and make sense too, since in 10 seconds who knows where you're facing?

Perhaps your suggestion would also work, but I think that it is the current handling, with a simple +15/+35 being added to the roll, which is more simple.

[Ecthelion]

And the 66... I hate that 66.
What's the meaning of putting a 66 that's a killer? Randomness?

The 66 ensures that Ambush has a significantly higher chance of delivering a killing blow. With the 66 in the tables a 10th level assassin with 20 ranks of Ambush has a 55% chance of killing his opponent if he delivers a C-critical or higher. Without the 66 the chance would be only 30% for a C-critical - only a bit more than half the chance. So it has it's merits. And is there really a problem with the 66?

And the Large and SuperLarge Tables?
Boys, more than half the results are only a way or another of saying: it's dead.  :'(

Huh, unless you have a holy or slaying weapon most results that you will achieve say you did only a bunch of concussion hits. Yes, if you have a very good weapon and we talk about "only" a large creature, then results of 96 until the end of the table will probably deliver a killing blow. But that's on an open-ended roll! And for super-large creatures you can IIRC not achieve a killing blow with a normal weapon at all unless you have one of those special 96-100 results.

Sorry for the rant. It's wasn't meant to be.

But I must say it very much sounds like it  . Much of what you wrote, at least in your last two postings, is not really a general problem of the RM system but appears to be something which you don't like and which you are ranting about here. Perhaps it would be better to discuss individual parts of these problems in separate threads, possibly giving a suggestion how to improve the system and gathering input for ideas. Collecting a bunch of perceived problems in a single thread creates a high likelyhood of drifting off into ranting...

Just my 2 cents

[pastaav]

Fumble not tied to competence of combatatns.

What would you call the skill Swashbuckling that can be used to recover from fumbles? A experience fighter who ignore this skill has only himself to blame IMHO. He simply did not spend any effort on improving his ability to counter fumbles.

Critics are too random. An "A" critical can kill you with a bit of luck. (I like realism, but dispatching PC randomly isn't a good choice)

I would say this randomness is rather essential to making a believable combat system. Without you randomness you end with "high level characters can ignore attacks from low level ones". Being able to kill superior enemies with enough luck is IMHO a very good feature of the game.

Too simple to kill very impressive monster, doing super-roll.

Errh...have you missed that these criticals are open ended?
Consider a super large creature and a normal weapon. The only way to get a killing strike is if the first roll is 96-97 and the second roll small enough to make the final result be 97-98. This is ignoring that the super large creature will absorb low criticals and that they might have the ability to ignore stuns, bleeding penalties and similar. I can't see how this can be seen as easy by any stretch of definition.

For large criticals you "only" need a open ended roll and then have 50% chance of slaying the creature...that is a killing hit on about every 40 critical you inflict. Not that every hit will give a critical due to the large creatures crit negation. Maybe you have a point on very weak large criticals, like trolls for instance, that lack the concussion hits to really withstand large criticals...but I can't see these described as very impressive monsters.

No locational damage.

I assume that you mean called shots...I agree you have a point there. Quite many consider this to be fault of the system. Myself I don't mind since called shots on weak spots would balance with called parry on the same weak spots.

No dodge.

Errrh...dodging is very possible by allocating OB to DB. Is it that there is no roll involved that is your problem?

No shield skill, only a flat bonus.

I don't get the gain really, but it is trivial to add a shield skill that let you add your number of ranks to your DB.

RMC presents rules for breakage insanely complex (how do they worked out them...  )

I agree that the breakage rules are rather hopeless...the same can be said about most gaming systems. Is it in warhammer when all characters carry tons of weapons since the weapons break all the time?

No defense roll. Instead of putting a bonus in defense I'd like an active defense. This way combat is more dynamic (a double fumble!!!!  )

You mean double fumble in that the attacker fumble his attack but still manage to hit his enemy because the enemy fumble and steps into the attack?
Personally I don't loose any sleep about the lack of such double fumbles...what IMHO matters at the end of the day is the effective to-hit-chance and the to-kill-chance. Yet I can understand that people might like rolling dices even while it makes it much harder to get a to-hit-chances and the to-kill-chances that scale well.

Weapons table are diverse but similar. Doing an "E" critical to a naked warrior with a dagger is the some sa doing an "E" critical with a Great Lance at full gallop wiht a Heavy Barded, Heavy War Horse  . Difference is hits, but not too much. This change, a little, with higher AT20, but depends on the weapons.

I think most players would care a lot about taking 18 hits or taking 50 hits. Taking puncture criticals is also in general much worse than slash criticals. On the other hand I do agree that your observation is correct even though it is not a game breaker for me.

[Right Wing Wacko]

Sorry for the rant. It's wasn't meant to be.

But I must say it very much sounds like it  . Much of what you wrote, at least in your last two postings, is not really a general problem of the RM system but appears to be something which you don't like and which you are ranting about here. Perhaps it would be better to discuss individual parts of these problems in separate threads, possibly giving a suggestion how to improve the system and gathering input for ideas. Collecting a bunch of perceived problems in a single thread creates a high likelyhood of drifting off into ranting...

Just my 2 cents

Agreed.

[markc]

Well, I don't completely agree.

To a little extent CC mitigate the issue. But the problem is still there. An A critical is light wound, that can degenerate in a serious wound.

If you don't have a weapon with wich you have expertise, you can't "parry/dodge". If you do you are using another manoeuvre completly, taking all the round.
If you have a shield and no weapon you can't improve you parry/dodge.
Rolling defense will not slow down combat if you reorganize the numbers of tables and how you use them.

There are some mechanics that can speed up play and give more dinamism.

In addition RM takes into account facing (rear/flank), instead of using some semplification.
Since the combat round is 10 seconds, talking of facing is a little odd.

Instead you should apply your defense for the entirety of the round and, for every attack over the first, scaling the DB of an X factor.
More speed and semplicity and make sense too, since in 10 seconds who knows where you're facing?

 I tend to play RM because of the things you mention you do not like.
1) A Defense roll will slow down combat by a lot if the GM has ro roll for each of his 15-30 combatents as well as the players rolling.
2) The Crit Type: IMO the crit letter is showing how good of a chance you have to inflict a lot more damage or strike a vital area. So an A only gives you a small chance to strike a vital area and an E means you have lots of options to strike a vital area during the round.
3) The facing: Since you said you like wargames I am supprised you do not like the facing rule.
4) Parry with weapon: In this case it is a little easier to parry with a weapon if you use the Combat Companion with RM2/C or RMSS. I also think it is a valid point that if you do not know how to use a weapon you will not use it effectivly in combat.
5) Shield: There have been a few people that like the idea of a shield skill or use the MAC or CC to have a combat style that increases a shields DB in combat.
6) Numbers: On the weapon charts there are some special numbers that have always been in the game. They are 01, 66, 100 and that is just the way it is. If you do not like one or another just change it. If I were to guess why the 66 was in there it would be that plaing the result higher in the chart might require a reroll or a roll up and would not produce the same effect. This way even if you do not roll up you know that generally a vary potent crit if your crit result is reduced by some monster special ability.

MDC 

[Arioch]

Critics are too random. An "A" critical can kill you with a bit of luck. (I like realism, but dispatching PC randomly isn't a good choice)

Imho this is the only real problem in you list, the others are just very minor issues, mostly personal preferences that aren't really related to problems in the game structure.
You don't like those things, but even changing them you'll add nothing or very little to the game, because you'll leave some gaps in the "internal logic" of the system unchanged.

Why I said that "crits are too random" is the only real issue in you list? Because IMHO it underlines one of the "internal logic" problems I mentioned above. RM gives you a very detailed character creation, you can basically make any character you want and you'll know everything about him/her. This would suggest that PCs are really important in the game (not inside the game world, but wihtin the scope of the game), but then RM doesn't give you any mean to build stories around the characters you created or to bring into play the bits of your character that you would like to explore/expand.
Quite the contrary, it makes characters almost irrelevant to the game flow, granting them of the same attention that it gives to every NPCs in the game world. Yes, Fate Points are a sort of patch to fix a part of this problem (preventing PCs to be killed randomly), but they still fail to solve it completely, as we still lack a way to make characters important. Note that by important I don't mean powerful, I mean important for the story, what lack are ways to make the game focus on characters' motivations, beliefs, fears...
So: do we want RM to focus on characters, maintaining and maybe developing further its character creation system, or do we want it to focus on lethal combat and real-life simulation? I think we cannot have both.

[GrumpyOldFart]

No locational damage.

I stand by what I've been telling my players since I started playing this game with RM1. If your foe doesn't leave open the spot you want, are you gonna wait, or are you gonna take whatever you can get? I'll let you call a shot anytime you could normally use "Ambush" skill. Even if you don't actually have any Ambush skill. If the crit table disagrees as to location, your called shot trumps it, but amount of damage/disability is comparable.

No dodge.

People dodge all the time, that's what most of DB usually is. Do you mean nothing that falls between 'auto dodge' as represented by stat mods to DB, and Adrenal Defense skill?
I can see your point I think, but I don't see a major problem with it as it is. Getting yourself to dodge by training rather than by instinct as most people do would probably be about as hard, and carry about the same penalties, as using Adrenal Defense. The light armor, rapier-and-main gauche types could probably find a way to work it as part of a combat style, I'd have to look. But for a guy in a steel breastplate? Dodge? Huh?!?

No shield skill, only a flat bonus.

This was an easy fix, I houseruled this long ago: Weapon, 1 hand concussion, shield punch. Use Ram/Butt/Bash, unless you are really ginormous you'll max out at Small.

RMC presents rules for breakage insanely complex (how do they worked out them...  Roll Eyes)

I agree. Well, not insanely, but too much housekeeping/info tracking for too little gain. Often as not, I ignore em, and it doesn't seem to do much harm to my game. I just remind players that they might want to replace things that take a lot of abuse. If I started having a problem with players using 2 handed swords as prybars and such, I'd do something about it.

No defense roll. Instead of putting a bonus in defense I'd like an active defense. This way combat is more dynamic (a double fumble!!!!  Cheesy)

I'd call it another case of too much housekeeping for too little gain. You're saying take every physical attack in the game and make them all opposed rolls instead of single rolls, right? I agree it will change the feel of the game, but I'm not unhappy with it as it is.

Weapons table are diverse but similar. Doing an "E" critical to a naked warrior with a dagger is the some sa doing an "E" critical with a Great Lance at full gallop wiht a Heavy Barded, Heavy War Horse  Embarrassed. Difference is hits, but not too much. This change, a little, with higher AT20, but depends on the weapons.

Um, I gotta ask.... how much deader than dead do you want?

If you don't have a weapon with wich you have expertise, you can't "parry/dodge". If you do you are using another manoeuvre completly, taking all the round.
If you have a shield and no weapon you can't improve you parry/dodge.

See above. "Shield punch". Learn 1 rank. Or learn 0 and take the minus for no skill.

In addition RM takes into account facing (rear/flank), instead of using some semplification.
Since the combat round is 10 seconds, talking of facing is a little odd.

I can see your point, but again it's not a game breaker for me. One of the things I like about RM is that it's pretty modular, the line between "is affected by houseruling X" and "is not affected" tends to be pretty clear. So if you think facings are dumb, leave em out. Don't bother to think up a change until you've playtested leaving em out and found out whether that works for you, and if it doesn't why not.

So: do we want RM to focus on characters, maintaining and maybe developing further its character creation system, or do we want it to focus on lethal combat and real-life simulation? I think we cannot have both.

I think we can Arioch, but I think it'll be a long, rough road. I agree the story needs to have more say, but we should probably start a whole new thread about ideas to implement that one.

Let's just say I agree.... but I disagree, too.

[markc]

 I sort of like the breakage numbers of weapons as I use it for dramatic purposes. Yes there weapon can break during a battle but what about the 50th battle? Sometimes I have the player track the weapon damage and sometimes I track the damage.
  On the PC front they have to find a weapon smith to fix weapons or have the tools and knowledge themselves. In the past I have created magical forging tools and whatever else they would need to fix armor and weapons. They were either shruck down and then expanded or it was in a magical house item.

MDC   

[Arioch]

So: do we want RM to focus on characters, maintaining and maybe developing further its character creation system, or do we want it to focus on lethal combat and real-life simulation? I think we cannot have both.

I think we can Arioch, but I think it'll be a long, rough road. I agree the story needs to have more say, but we should probably start a whole new thread about ideas to implement that one.

Let's just say I agree.... but I disagree, too.

We could, but just not in the way RM tries to do now... and yes, it'll be a very rough road, the system should basically be rebuilt from scratch.

[Langthorne]

I agree that a shielding skill would be an improvement, which is skill at using a shield defensively (using a shield is, after all, a skill).
Shield bash or shield punch are different skills - they are essentially OBs.

The only other issue that I agree with is profession bonuses - I'd be happy to see them go.

[giulio.trimarco]

Hi,

I think that some of my ideas have been read in the wrong way.

What I've said aren't problems or something that destroy RM.
They are simple peculiarities that have, in the long run, given me a rationale to quit playing RM.

I have suggestions/ideas for "adjust" many of them, or at least I can give my insight on the matter.

In every case I don't expect that everyone of you feel the some about this "peculiarities" but, imho, on thing is finding (please forgive this  ) a patch, one thing is trying to justify why this peculiarities aren't peculiarities.

We can discuss every of them in detail (even in different threads), perhaps some useful solutions/suggestions can come up, and who knows, the Big ICE Brother could take some good point... after all they're humans   

[GrumpyOldFart]

We could, but just not in the way RM tries to do now... and yes, it'll be a very rough road, the system should basically be rebuilt from scratch.

I don't know that that would be necessary, although it's being done all the time for a variety of purposes anyway. I think the major problem is that of most RPGs: How many hits you took and dealt, what injuries you did, what spells you cast, who and what you killed.... all that is easy to quantify for purposes of giving experience. So an RPG designer can fairly easily draw up a basis for XP guidelines based on it, and a new GM can understand it. What's harder is thinking up XP guidelines based on a player's contribution to a story that the person making the guidelines has never, nor will ever, hear.

I agree that a shielding skill would be an improvement, which is skill at using a shield defensively (using a shield is, after all, a skill).
Shield bash or shield punch are different skills - they are essentially OBs.

A shield, even a small one, has a surprising amount of inertia to it. There are basically two ways you can use one. You can either actively shove the shield toward the incoming attack, or you can leave the shield basically in place and move around behind it. Most people do the second. The first is called "punch blocking", and is a favorite of fighters who use small roundshields or bucklers (what RM calls "target shields"), which are about as light as it gets. Seriously, with a "normal" shield that weighs 15 lbs. attached to one hand and arm, how active do you expect that off arm to be? Won't you snug it up close to your ribs and let your legs do the work of toting it?
And if you're a punch block defender, I let it be assumed that you learned how to shield punch during that process.

The only other issue that I agree with is profession bonuses - I'd be happy to see them go.

Easy enough to ditch em from your game, no?