Topic: Skills for Monsters

[Ido Tamir]

Hi,

In RMFRP p.53 (under Awareness), it states that Orcs have an Alertness bonus of +5.
Where did that number came from?

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

I have no idea...


You have to remember, I did not work for the old ICE, and thus cannot answer questions about "why xx" or the "origins of yy" in regards to questions for products that were inherited from the old company.

I have enough troubles remember why we did some of the things we did on the products I did work on... heheh 

[markc]

 I would guess that it might have come from "Underground Races" in which they detail quite a few races. I will also have a look in a couple other areas,
MDC

[Ido Tamir]

Ok, I'll refine my question.

Using RMFRP core books, how do I assign skills for monsters? I'm mainly interested in Awareness and the likes, but a generic answer will be fine.

Is there a good answer in RMC (or any uninherited product  )?

[Arioch]

Using RMFRP core books, how do I assign skills for monsters? I'm mainly interested in Awareness and the likes, but a generic answer will be fine.

You could give each monster a profession (most of them would be fighters) and use skill bonuses from Master Character Table in Character's Law...

[Ido Tamir]

That's what I'm doing. But I thought there was an 'official' answer...

I use profession and monster level. Is this the way you do it?

[craggles]

Hi Ido

This is almost exactly what I asked a day before - it was the awareness, stalking and hiding skills I wanted to know about. This was Rasyr's response -
http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=8184.msg104761#msg104761

As Rasyr mentioned above, the people responsible for the RMSS/RMFRP rules aren't with the company anymore which would make Rasyr's answer as official as it can get at the moment.

For the manish creatures (orcs, trolls, gobblins etc) I used the Master Character table on page 61 of RMFRP and allocate a profession and work it from there (and I think it was Arioch who suggested it to me some time ago as well).

For the Creatures/Monsters (professionless creatures) I've followed Rasyr's advice and given all the monsters 2 ranks/level and given the 'Prey' animals (animals that are renown for their stealthiness or acute site) an extra bonus between +25 to +50. This bonus is mixed and just because a creature gets a +50 to awareness, he doesn't automatically get a +50 in stalking as well. I've tried to stay true to animals in real life and used those same principles on the Creatures in the book - a Sabber-tooth Tiger gets a similar bonus to our present day big cat for instance.

It's likely I have some of them wrong, but they're a lot more accurate than my previous method of taking a random number out of the air when it was encounter time.

[Ido Tamir]

I know this is off topic, but if the guys supporting RMSS/RMFRP are not with ICE, does this make RMSS/RMFRP unsupported? Is RMC now the Official Rolemaster version?

Thanks for the answers, anyway. I'll follow your advice at the moment..

[craggles]

I suppose it's unsupported in that there doesn't seem to be any new products being released for it - but there's plenty of support in the forums for the entire RMSS and RMFRP range!

[Arioch]

I know this is off topic, but if the guys supporting RMSS/RMFRP are not with ICE, does this make RMSS/RMFRP unsupported? Is RMC now the Official Rolemaster version?

Thanks for the answers, anyway. I'll follow your advice at the moment..

It's not that people supporting RMFRP/SS are not with ICE, but people who made RMFRP/SS (or even RM2) are not with ICE anymore.
Old ICE (the people who made RM2 and RMFRP) went bankrupt and the company was then purchased by current ICE staff (I'm sure you can find a more detailed history of ICE somewhere on this site).
Here you can find an answer to your question about RMFRP support:

http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=8191.0

I use profession and monster level. Is this the way you do it?

No 
I never give skills to creatures and monsters, only to humanoid NPCs (and for those I use the Master Table).
IMHO animal and monsters don't need skills: if a monster/animal is trying to do something and no PC is involved in it, then the GM decide without rolling if it accomplishes its task.
If PCs are involvedm the they should roll on their skills to see what happens.

Example:
Does the wolf manage to jump across that cliff? GM decides without rolling.
Does the hydra notice the PCs sneaking past it? Players make a sneak maneuver to see if they can pass without alerting the hydra.

[Ido Tamir]

Arioch - your method does not take into account the Hydra ability in spotting the PCs, just the PCs ability to sneak..

The hydra might have 5 heads.. more heads = more chance to spot 

[craggles]

In the case of an animal jumping over a cliff, I'd not roll on it - he would just do it.

But when there's something that directly effects the PCs I'd need to know by how much.

If you can get into the right ballpark by allocating a difficulty, that's great. But for me, without so much experience on that, it helps to have an idea the level of skill the animals would have in either detecting the PCs or skulking around to avoid detection from the PCs.

I'm sure that in time, I'd be able to do it but in the meantime, I have a spreadsheet that lets me know just how observant or sneaky those pesky creatures and monsters are.

[craggles]

Arioch - your method does not take into account the Hydra ability in spotting the PCs, just the PCs ability to sneak..

The hydra might have 5 heads.. more heads = more chance to spot 

At that point, Arioch would have a suitably high difficulty mod for the PCs to take into account the multiple heads and it's general awareness ability.

I'm nowhere near as confident as that (and without any experience) so my spreadsheet utilising Rasyr's formula will be coming in handy. Now I have an informed decision on what that difficulty mod should be as I'd not be consistent in my decisions otherwise.

[Arioch]

Arioch - your method does not take into account the Hydra ability in spotting the PCs, just the PCs abilit ;)y to sneak..

The hydra might have 5 heads.. more heads = more chance to spot 

At that point, Arioch would have a suitably high difficulty mod for the PCs to take into account the multiple heads and it's general awareness ability.

Right 

[Ido Tamir]

Isn't it backward?

If you modify the PCs roll (according to the opponent ability), you should tell them (and by doing that reveal something about the opponent). If you modify the Monster roll (according to the PCs success), you don't tell them and you keep them in the dark regarding the opponent they face..

I always thought that the opponent modifies his roll according to the PCs success...
This is why I would prefer assigning skills to monsters. However, I better like Arioch's method as it makes my
preperation easier (just decide on modifiers instead of calculating skills for monsters).

Arioch - how do you handle it in game?

[DonMoody]

Arioch - your method does not take into account the Hydra ability in spotting the PCs, just the PCs ability to sneak..

The hydra might have 5 heads.. more heads = more chance to spot 

Wouldn't the PCs just roll with the GM deciding the difficulty of maneuver (you know, that 'routine' to 'absurd' aspect)?
And then with that one roll by the PCs you know if they succeed or fail (or something in between, depending upon what they were trying)?

And no, I don't tell the player's the exact modifier for such attempts (although I may give them some idea via description; e.g. "you can see five heads of the hydra, most of them looking rather alert" or "you see quite a few necks but can only currently see two heads, the eyelids of one seem rather droopy").

DonMoody

[runequester]

Ive used this in Runequest for years. I never stat out skills for monsters or NPC's unelss they are major and recurring. Rather I give them a generic "skill" rating. They roll that for anything they could be expected to be good at, then apply a penalty for things that are more marginal.

So a wolf might have a "wolf" rating of 60. It rolls at +60 for anything a wolf ought to be good at. If its doing stuff it should have skill in, but isn't good at, roll at +30 or so.

[markc]

 What I do is a two tier approch. The first tier are the skills I think are very important for the monster to have and gives those skills 2 ranks per monster level. The second tier skills are those that are not as important to the creature and I give them 1 rank per level.
 Also I might add some skills to monsters that are more powerful than the norm to represent leadership etc.

MDC

[Arioch]

Isn't it backward?

If you modify the PCs roll (according to the opponent ability), you should tell them (and by doing that reveal something about the opponent). If you modify the Monster roll (according to the PCs success), you don't tell them and you keep them in the dark regarding the opponent they face..

I always thought that the opponent modifies his roll according to the PCs success...
This is why I would prefer assigning skills to monsters. However, I better like Arioch's method as it makes my
preperation easier (just decide on modifiers instead of calculating skills for monsters).

Arioch - how do you handle it in game?

I always tell my players what's the difficulty of a maneuver (for example, in the situation above I would tell them "sneaking past the hydra is a Sheer Folly maneuver").
I think it's fair to tell them, so that they can decide in advance if attempting the maneuver or letting it go and try something else.
Why should I hide maneuvers difficulties? IMHO it leads only to misunderstandings ("I didn't understand that the pit was so large!" or "I didn't think that hydras were so difficult to sneak upon!").
Announcing difficulties OTOH makes the game clearer and helps players to picture the situation ("Jumping the pit is a Extremely Hard maneuver? Wow, it's really large, isn't it?")

[GrumpyOldFart]

"I didn't think that hydras were so difficult to sneak upon!"

I'll grant you that I try to be as clear as possible in my descriptions so as to avoid misunderstandings... but... if someone has never faced a hydra before, how would they know how difficult it is?

Generally I'll confine myself to things like, "You realize it has several heads, right? It has more "range" than most things in hearing, sight and smell because it has so many eyes, noses and ears. And it doesn't appear to be just some mindless lump, it looks pretty alert. Still wanna go for it?"

In short, I try to avoid giving players a precise look into the mechanics of what they're about to try, but if I say something like the above it should be obvious I'm trying to say, "I think this is a lot more difficult than you think it is. Don't forget that I'm the GM, I'm the one who has to decide how difficult it is."