Topic: Profession Swapping

[arakish]

One thing I do is make the player keep with the percentage he uses the old profession skills in relation to the new profession skills.  Especially if the professions are drastically different such as a Fighter who begins learning the Magician profession.  Then the player must apply the percentage of XP into his two professions.

Example, if he begins at 1st level Magician, but uses his fighting skill 40% of the time, then 40% of any XP must be put into the Fighter's XP while the 60% goes into the Magician's XP.  I do not penalize if using skills not specific to the old profession, such as Hiding.  I just rule s/he is using what they learned as a Fighter, but still using the skill as a Magician.  I only penalize when using profession specific skills. 

Of course, this is monstrous record keeping for the player/character, but IMHO it is only fair.

Otherwise, I just let the player swap professions.  In addition, s/he would have to seek out a mentor to get them going into the new profession.  Especially, if going from Fighter to Magician.

rmfr

[JimiSue]

Arakish - that sounds like dual classing, which is a whole new ball of wax

I'm still thinking that a lot of these barriers being brought up are imaginary - simply because I've played RM characters which have switched professions, been in groups where it's happenbed, and even run games where it happened, and it was pretty easy to manage.

Rule 1 - common sense trumps all.

Even the most hardened rules lawyer knows when they are pushing their luck. Agree to common sense from both GM and player, and your problems will be minimal.

[intothatdarkness]

Arakish - that sounds like dual classing, which is a whole new ball of wax

I'm still thinking that a lot of these barriers being brought up are imaginary - simply because I've played RM characters which have switched professions, been in groups where it's happenbed, and even run games where it happened, and it was pretty easy to manage.

Rule 1 - common sense trumps all.

Even the most hardened rules lawyer knows when they are pushing their luck. Agree to common sense from both GM and player, and your problems will be minimal.

Agree. I'm in the process of drafting up the rules I used with my group. It ended up being a seven step process, with three hurdles to be cleared before any change could take place. Sure someone could find a way to abuse it, but I've seen people abuse NP and other similar systems as well. For every rule, there's always some wank trying to get around it. Sadly common sense is sometimes anything but common.

[JimiSue]

For every rule, there's always some wank trying to get around it.

Which brings me onto:

Rule 2: No matter how tightly you define a rule, someone, somewhere, will find a way to abuse it.

I'm no stranger to world, system and rule design - I've certainly done enough of them in my time. But there comes a point where you have to realise that if someone wants to abuse your precious rule, they are going to. Once you accept that it gives you license to allow flexibility to those who will go by the spirit of the change as well as the letter - and suddenly as a result, the rule becomes more playable, and more fun. Which at the end of the day, is what it's all about really. It's a game - so long as the people playing it are having fun, I couldn't really give a hoot if they are abusing a rule or not

[Marc R]

I am also a firm believer in that rule myself.

But I also like to avoid creating loops to put holes into, so if I were tasked to come up with a method to allow in play choice to become more important, and profession choice before play less important, I'd likely start from the NP and fix it, rather than profession swapping. . . . it being an instance where it's better to repair the simple than to construct the complex.

[markc]

  Maybe there has to be a gradual profession change in that if you wanted to switch from a Magician to a Fighter you have to go to 1 level as a warrior mage, 1 level as No profession and then to fighter. So it is a gradual switch and not just a sudden break.


MDC

[Cory Magel]

I know it sounds a bit like me saying "Get off my lawn!" but, imo, changing profession pretty much tosses the primary reason for differing skill costs out the window (which is pretty much; balance) and turns a lot of things on their ear.  If I just leveled up to, say, 5th as a Fighter then switched over to being a Pure Spell User of some type I could probably create a character that would likely blow any other away within a few levels.

Now, maybe too many people don't level up high enough for this to become an issue, but we normally get at least into the 12-14 level range, sometimes 17-20, before we are done with a campaign.  The higher level you go to the more you start to see the inequalities in characters (typically due to the profession - but occasionally due to how the player develops their character).

[Marc R]

If you only allow this under the most extreme conditions, then it's three eyed fish, a strange anomaly that only comes up once a decade, it's best covered by house rules in an ad hoc manner. It will appear so rarely, it likely won't have a large effect on balance.

If you allow it in a fickle manner to some but not all characters in every game, you are courting imbalance and player problems. (This is what I'd consider the worst possible choice).

If you're opening it up to the point where everyone is doing it with every character they play, then it won't create imbalance or player problems since everyone will be doing it.

But, in that last instance it seems like you have a deep dislike for highly biased archetype costs, and it seems like it would be a lot easier just to do something like "You must pick one of the semi professions, but you get to pick which set of 6 base lists you want from any of the casting professions of your realm" or the NP option (or something like NP, cleaned up to suit your preferences).

It's sort of like saying you really hate having a bent front left wheel on your car, because it keeps pulling left, and your solution is "I will get a sledgehammer and bend the right front tire in the opposite direction so it drives straight". . .OK, I admit that this results in a car that drives straight, but it seems like a messy, inefficient, potentially dangerous and roundabout way to drive straight by taking two highly bent forces and forcing them against each other to go straight, rather than just straightening out that bent front left tire so your car drives straight. (i.e. rather than essentially forcing everyone to take two opposed professions of pure arms and pure casting to drive up the middle, just force them to play only semi professions, which drive up the middle).

[Cory Magel]

Oddly enough, I use a Rogue part of the time and various Semi's the rest of the time, not simply because I specifically like them, but because they give me the best balance point for how our group ends up playing.  I end up with a good balance of non-combat skills, arms skills, and spell/rune ability as a result while the Pure Arms or Pure Spell users have started to plateau.

I like ending up as self sufficient as possible, which means a somewhat middle of the road profession, when ironically enough I like strong archetypes. Heh.  I guess what I really want is better balanced Pures... but that's not an easy task.  Something I've been working on very much like the MAC combat styles helps the Pure Arms users, but I haven't even begun to look at Pure Spell users.

[jdale]

Oddly enough, I use a Rogue part of the time and various Semi's the rest of the time.... I like ending up as self sufficient as possible, which means a somewhat middle of the road profession, when ironically enough I like strong archetypes. Heh.  I guess what I really want is better balanced Pures... but that's not an easy task.  Something I've been working on very much like the MAC combat styles helps the Pure Arms users, but I haven't even begun to look at Pure Spell users.

I'm with you on this (playing semis, being self-sufficient), but I don't know this can really be fixed. The advantage of self-sufficiency is you can be productively involved in everything. The specialists may be superior when it's their time to shine, but that is less often. It's not balance of power (pures can win) but of story share... (generalists always will lead)

[Marc R]

That is where a dual class will both be more powerful and also pull more story share, which either creates a problem, or forces everyone to dual class.

[naphta23]

If a player really wanted to swap his character's profession by any means necessary, I guess I would allow it and take the easy way, allow him to change the profession, keep all the bonuses and skill ranks - and tell him that from this point on his character would permanently need the double amount of Experience Points to level up.

Perhaps this is cruel, but hey, either the swap is badly desired and this penalty is it worth to the player, or it is not.

Seriously, I can not think of any reasonable explanation why a profession-swap should be made: any character can learn anything in Rolemaster, given time and Development Points. I understand a profession as a character's mental hardwiring and his ability to grasp the concept of various skills, be it theoretical or practical. If nothing noteworthy happens, then the rules are clear from the start and every player knows that professions are fixed and plan accordingly.

There was a situation in our campaign when we allowed profession swaps or completely rebuild characters: we changed the rules how magic works and a player lost interest in his dabbler and wanted a rogue. He took his character, rebuild him and was happy with it ever since, no harm done.

If a player without any experience with Rolemaster realizes that his character was wrongly build and developed, then we allow her or him to make the changes accordingly. Sure, we introduce her or him to the rules, point out the more important skills in our campaign and potential pitfalls, but nobody is perfect, as the saying goes. We call this the "welp's shelter" (or "welp's protection", I do not know what the right translation would be) and there never were any problems with that.

But maybe I am just too narrow-minded.