Why was it called Rolemaster Standard Edition?

[Hurin]

Rereading the definition in Companion II, I can see how perhaps the original intent was lost in the wording. The RM2 wording is that the skill give a bonus to the orientation roll that you have to perform in order to perform 'any action' while stunned. It then says that success in the check allows you to perform 'any action' while stunned.

The wrinkle is that by the core rules of RM2, you can't perform any action while stunned. Arms Law made clear that stun means you can't attack (you could parry if you got a normal stun but you couldn't parry at all if you got a 'stun no parry' stun), and says explicitly that the only other actions you can take are movement and maneuvers at a penalty (again, the clear inference here was that attacking was not a movement or maneuver, and was expressly forbidden).

However, when we first got our sweaty hands on Companion II, we all just assumed that when the skill description says we could perform 'any action' with a successful Stunned Maneuvering check, we could attack. I never heard anyone ever question that. But looking back, I can see perhaps that was an not the intent of the skill: maybe it was originally just to allow movement and maneuvers at no penalty? Maybe it was never meant to allow attacking?

Every group I ever played with assumed a successful stunned maneuver roll allowed you to attack. It's pretty wild to think everyone got it so wrong, but we might have...

[pastaav]

Personally, I find it weird to have skills that totally short-circuit limitations caused by suffering from a condition. I am not saying that this argument is strong enough to rule out the 'any action' reading of the rules, but that is why I called it weird.

At the end of the day, I would say it is questionable whether there is any wrong reading of Ironcrown's fumbled rule writing. You can read it either way.

[Cory Magel]

Rolemaster being interpreted differently by different people? Shocking I say! Simply shocking.

I do recall two variations of the years for us, but then we started using portions of RM1 and RM2 with AD&D and D&D 2nd Ed before ditching D&D for RM2/MERP then moving whole hog over to RMSS.
One was being able to overcome the stun, but still acting at the penalty.  The other actually removing rounds of stun.

In the end our group actually halved (rounded up) stun results because we found that it was really just dragging out the combats longer than necessary and, really, anything more than like three rounds of stun pretty much removed you from the fight one way or another.

[EltonJ]

But that doesn't quite square with the actual text in RoCo2. Maybe text was changed in some printing.

Maybe. 

[katastrophe]

Considering the cummulative nature of stun, stun removal rather than maneuvering seems a better overall solution. Representing shaking the stun effect off.

[Micael]

Considering the cummulative nature of stun, stun removal rather than maneuvering seems a better overall solution. Representing shaking the stun effect off.

And here it needed another edition of RFRP: the latest German one was edited and rule mistakes were corrected. For example You still need the stunned maneuvering skill, because you get a hefty penalty to all maneuvers & movement over -50 if stunned. This penalty you also get to the stun removal skill maneuver check, but you can use stunned maneuvering to neutralize this penalty. In addition in the German RFRP edition the % of a round you are allowed to use for maneuver as stunned or no parry results are named to 50% or 25%. In addition many actions were named in RFRP as maneuvers like spell casting. All together in the end you could now do a lot more stunned then in older editions. Depending on the % of your maneuver you could use a instant spell (not a attack or parry spell) if you have the condition: stunned no parry, because the -75 you get only for maneuvers, that need 100% of a round and movement. Instant spells are only 10% of a round and are therefore not penelazided  at all.

[Hurin]

Thanks for explaining the German translations. It is interesting to see the various editions of RM struggling with the issue of stunned maneuvers!