Topic: Intentional combat effects/manuevers

[stacktrace]

In all the various suppliments and articles written for Rolemaster, has there ever been any that addressed attacking with the intent of achieving a specific non-damage result?  Such as Knocking the opponent down, disarming them, or sundering their weapon?

If not, any good houserules?

[yammahoper]

Yes.  In allversions since RM2, when the first yet now traditional companions came out.

Basically in RM2, train each special mnv as a combat mnv.  Disarms Foe, Melee Scuffle, Fient , Lasso, Tumble Evade, Yado (arrow deflection), etc.  Most skills will be treated as OB  in place of normal OB when the skill is used.  Regardless, OB used cannot be higher than skill total.  If skill total is higher than normal OB with weapon being used, then normal OB is used.  User of special skill will parry with new OB and use the remaining OB to perform his skill check, with appropriate dificulty mods and penalties/bonuses.  If the skill check is 101+, then:

a) skill was successful
b) target now makes appropriate rr versus skill ranks of attacker.  So if Disarm attempt, and atrtacker has 18 ranks in skill, than defender must make rr versus level 18, in this instance with St mod - amount over 101 skill check was made by.
c) GM fiat.

RMFRP is basically the same.  Some like to use remaining skill after parry with a penalty equal to defenders remaining OB as a penalty instead of foes DB, since this is a test of skill at arms.  So, if Disarm is used witha skill of 91, 30 is used for parry, the attacker makes mnv with a skill total pf 61 - foes OB = 101+ to disarm.  This system may be prefered if GN's don't want to go the rr versus ranks route.

Disarm is normally required to be trained per weapon catagory.

Yado was a popular skill in my game for a while back in RM2.  I dropped it in RMFRP.  Basically, the skill allows deflecting ot catching an arrow.  A mnv was made and the number rolled on the MM table was DB gained.  If the DB gained was sufficient to make arrow miss, then arrow could be caught.  Now, melee was 50% activity, so that left 50% activity to move with, so this was my table for yado;

Activity Used:               Difficulty of mnv (each additional attemtpt to deflect at -20):

10%                               Absurd
20%                               Sheer Folly
30%                               Ex Hard
40%                               V. Hard
50%                               Hard
60%                               Medium
70%                               Light
80%                               Easy
90%                               Routine
100%                             Auto deflect/catch one arrow, then all others roll as Easy mnv's.

Once accumlative -20 mod reduced skill to zero or less, no additional attemps are allowed.  Postional mods are tripled and applied as penalty to skill check.

I'd share more, but I'm going back to watching the meteor shower.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

Such as Knocking the opponent down,

Subduing, RoCo II, p40.

disarming them,

Disarm foe, armed and Disarm foe, unarmed, RoCo II, p28.

or sundering their weapon?

Weapon shatter, AC, p81.

[stacktrace]

Thank you for the detailed replies!  I knew it had to be somewhere.  I apreciate the details yammahoper

[yammahoper]

One detail I left out: if you go the rr routhe to resolve skill use, then you might want the target of the attack to resist at a level equal to the number of ranks it has in the appropriate skill.

So the 18th level disarm attack would resist at a level equal to the number of ranks in the weapon being weilded.