Quote from: pastaav on October 07, 2026, 03:56:31 PMWhy continue with releasing material that is not truly compatible with the rest of Ironcrowns material?

Because companies can publish and maintain more than one product line ?

I don't necessarily mean to throw a full load of new ideas at a wall and see what sticks, but being faithful to a setting, in my opinion, is (much) more important than being faithful to a system when what you are publishing is material for a settings product line.

Most of my gaming has been done outside of Shadow World, but I have used quite a lot of material from Shadow World (using RM2, RMSS and RMU) there were many cases when I felt that I must adjust the numbers since the players would totally misjudge the situation if the values were used as written.

It is great that Terry had a vision for Shadow World, but why should you run a level based game in the first place if levels does not mean anything firm?

Having NPC that violate the rules means lots of nasty surprises for the less experienced GMs. Myself I often felt the need to fudge things for experienced players so they don't know the enemy level and start to make mistakes due to expectations of what a certain level characters should be able to do. In the adventure I am currently running I recreated the Shadow World NPC as RMU characters but kept the suggested level and equipment to dodge all the inconsistency.

RMU is the first edition where things are reasonably balanced against each other and I think the choice to stay true to this should be obvious. Terry is sadly not around anymore so he won't ever manage to advance the timeline or fill the gaps. Why continue with releasing material that is not truly compatible with the rest of Ironcrowns material?

In fact, nobody knows, how much Terry was involved in the stats- of course he did not wrote them himself- but I am also not found of creating any kind of stats (RMU or otherwise)- still if somebody would create them for my adventure I would have a look on them to be sure, they represent the NPC I imagine. Doing otherwise would be somewhat "strange". I think similar to Nicholas he was not writing them, but cared about his world enough to track and would have asked for changes if he would not liked them.
As the main responsible person for SW I would bet, that he at least looked through the stats before publishing them.
So, even if Terry was not writing them, that does not mean, he was not knowing and backing them.
Just my thoughts on that.

[Yes, since they by definition have no will of their own. That said, if the undead is already controlled (or mastered) by someone else's spell, that would be a conflicting spell effect situation, so the lower level spell would need to make a RR vs the higher level spell (SL p48). That applies even for type E spells.

So spontaneously created or uncontrolled undead are easy to control, but stealing another necromancer's undead may be more risky]

Thank you very much! I didn't thought about this!  It makes a lot of sense!

Ludaranor

Quote from: jdale on October 07, 2026, 11:11:47 AMI would generally treat joining for bone as dealing with the structural attachment and blood will keep the tissue from dying so you can do the rest later, and that should prevent incipient death from massive blood loss. Then you need the other parts to regain function.

Not familiar with the spell mastery as spell research option so I won't comment there.

Fantastic thank you for confirming. As far as spell mastery for research in RoCo 4 it allows you to research specific spell mastery's to get more consistent effects. It very useful. I will probably make a post on just that. What is really really crazy is that as I was going through stuff I found an email chain from 1998 that I printed out in 1999 that was written on this general subject and the author is Nicholas HM Caldwell. I wasn't sent it, I found it in 1999 searching internet on spell mastery house rules while goofing on library reference desk during slow times at UMD during grad school. I printed out and have had it with my rules for all this time. It actually heavily influenced how 6-7 different GMs in VA did spell mastery. It's small table after all

I would generally treat joining for bone as dealing with the structural attachment and blood will keep the tissue from dying so you can do the rest later, and that should prevent incipient death from massive blood loss. Then you need the other parts to regain function.

Not familiar with the spell mastery as spell research option so I won't comment there.

If you are dealing with a severed arm (mortal wound) and you cast Joining (blood) and Joining (bone) does this change status to just arm useless and stop the mortal wound countdown? Once the first bone "joining" is performed then is it attached, and the remaining spells are mostly restoring use? Could you use spell mastery as spell research as per RoCo4 and change "joining" for relevant list to "restore use" to fix a non-severed arm useless crit like arm broken (but not shattered) arm useless Krush criticals?

I wouldn't read too much into the youth, apprentice, etc. The rules say (emphasis added):

Table 12-2 has examples of names or titles based on level and an age guide, indicating level for one's approximate age. The GM may find this more useful for NPCs, keeping in mind that actual level can vary wildly depending on the type of NPC desired. These are not rules written in stone, merely guidelines from which a GM can start from before they tweak to fit their world or any specific character or NPC.

Since Terry didn't create the RMSS stats, I really don't think it makes sense to use them as a reading of his intent.

Quote from: netbat on October 06, 2026, 07:36:10 PMIt might be worth lowering the water requirement if using fresh food or increasing it for rations.

That's true in real life at least as far as food that contains water/liquid. There is also the morale factor if you have any hirelings.

Quote from: jdale on October 06, 2026, 06:58:28 PM

Quote from: Micael on October 06, 2026, 05:18:40 PMIf I calculated the levels of ordinary Shadow World NPCs strictly from all their skill ranks and spell lists, many of them would suddenly end up at twice their original level, or even higher.

And that is only looking at skills and spells.

I don't think that's generally true if you start from the RM2 stats.

You are right, that the conversion seems easier from RM2- but that was not the goal- it would change the conversion process fundamentally, because now you have to simulate (if you use a software) the RM2 skill system and stats with RMU- we ignore 20 years of offical SW history with RMSS being the official system (with Terries blessing- he never gave a veto for that as I know of).

In addition the Power level of RMU is much higher then in RM2- a 1-3 lvl spell caster in RMU is able to do things, where a RM2 Spellcaster is dreaming of. Regarding Power  level RMU is much nearer to FRP imo- not in lvl1-3 but after that surely.
Therefor it seems a trick for me, arguing, that Terries 30 years old stats are more important then the last 20 years of SW product.
You have to decide anyway to use one or more of the 5 paths I mentioned in the discord chat- it is not so big a difference as with FRP, but sometimes it is still.
That´s said, for conversion RM2 to RMU you need people who are specialists in RM2 and RMU- what I am not (its 20 years my last RM2 campaign was finished). So that means starting the complete conversion from start. Not sure if that would help much looking on the timeline of SW conversion.

And for all that RMU describes level 1 as a child, a 1st level pure or hybrid caster in RMU has significantly more spell power than their RM2 equivalent.
[/quote]

Yes, a RMU child is regarding spell casting much more capable then a lvl1 RM2 PC (not using optional rules).
My problem is calling all Lvl1-3 NPCs childs, youths or apprentice after the RMU core rules- that will not fit the SW stories in most cases (Aprentice are in SW Tales from the green gryphon in lvl 1.)

So, my last words to this will be:
1. RM2 NPCs of higher level are much to low powered in comparison to RMU imo- you will have problems with lots of decisions like this. In fact to get comparable NPCs you have to add new RMU skills like multiattack, shield skill etc. to a certain degree (tha also cost DP), where all infos are open, how to do that properly and consistently.
2. You could use a compromise deleting all skills, spell lists ranks for a FRP to RMU conversion that are not also in RM2. That will help a little to make a "official" conversion easier, because then you don´t have to delete them case by case., but still that means, that the story experience from FRP to RMU will change dramatically (having no lvl 11-15 lvl spells make a big difference sometimes).

I post the paths and the needed decisions which one to prioritise here again:

1. You can ignore the DP to level rule of RMU, which would be the easiest way

2. You can take the new level in RMU which would be nearly double of that in FRP, which is also not so big a problem, if you are not giving them better skill bonis or lists to max. them for their new level- only RR rolls would be much better of course.

3. You  can cut the spelllist ranks to half and the skillranks of the skills down till they get the FRP level- in which case you have to generate fakestats (that are not given in FRP) to get a realistic statbonus to skill rank ratio.

4. You can ignore 20 years of RMSS and just go back to RM2 stats (what Jdale suggested), but that would only use the reality, that in RM2 much less info was given for NPCs then in RMSS/FRP to make it a little easier. You still have to make one of the above mentioned compromise.

5. You can ignore the RMU core rules, where lvl1 means child, lvl2 means youth and lvl3 means apprentice... - in SW its not like this at the moment or you give all NPCs not apprentices in SW lvl4 min.