Explain how you believe they are different in the context of Rolemaster system mechanics.
The original proposal is a spell that makes a one-way change. So not "mult-", but rather "re-".
The recent proposal is a complete change without any trace of the old profession remaining. Not multi at all.
So you basically have a completely new character with the same name. Why would you need a system mechanic to do this? If you don't want to play the profession you started as why not just toss the old one and level up to the same point with a new one? You don't need a set of rules to do that. You just need a GM that gives a crap about if you're having fun or not.
Firstly, the system is designed with healing in mind.
You mean it is a sheer accident that all these injuries are plausible for a real-world campaign? And that these injuries were designed to be just right for whatever you mean by "balance"?
I strongly doubt that. To me, it looks as if actual real-world injuries were supposed to be modeled by this, and detailed healing magic was added to make the game more fun for those who want it.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'real world'. Fantasy RPG's aren't the real world.
That aside, it wouldn't be very fun if you couldn't heal your characters. So, yeah, it's there to make the game more fun. Fun is the absolute first factor in gaming. It's
why we are doing it.
But you're claim is it's existence is unbalancing and you haven't explained how. It seems like you're just throwing out poorly thought out examples to see what sticks to the wall.
That aside, do you think a game where the characters can't be healed by any form of magic is somehow more balanced?
Yes, for certain types of games. Frodo Baggings being wounded at the Weathertop and never fully recovering, being weakened and taking a long time to recover comes to mind. Powerful healing magic can just remove such injury (yes, even from Morgul blades) entirely, which may be unwanted in some campaigns.
Firstly, there is most definitely magical healing in LotR.
Second, because some GM's/groups may not want magical healing in a campaign isn't at all a valid reason to not include it in a system and still doesn't explain how it's, as you claim, unbalancing.
Too long of an explanation for something I'm not at all convinced you'd understand
Dude. If you want to come across as a self-important knowitall who doesn't understand what he is thinking and feeling, this is the way.
It's not that I know it all, but rather that it seems your definition of 'balance' isn't the same as everyone else's. I can't really explain it to you if you don't follow the same idea of what balance is.
You believe that allowing players to utilize more than one professions skill costs will somehow 'fix' the idea that Arms Users and Spell Users are not balanced.
I do not. I find it puzzling how you could come to such a conclusion.
By reading your comments. You said Arms Users and Spellcasters are unbalanced and implied that allowing them to develop more than one profession would fix that. Or were you just using the excuse that you feel they are not balanced to implement something that can create more imbalance? As I said before, if
everyone does that you don't have a balance issue between the player characters, but you do lessen diversity, which elsewhere you claim to be trying to preserve or improve. Creating a process that gives characters equal access to the same skill costs does the opposite of that. It makes them less diverse.
Using only one of many really obvious examples I can go from learning one spell for a high cost to learning three spells at a low cost.
I suggest you actually make a full character switching back and fourth with all the skills and spells to understand what I was pointing out.
It's basic math. I'd suggest to you that you do this over a spread of levels so that you start to realize once you hit the somewhere around 7th level or so (give or take) the character using two different professions skill costs is going to have a noticeable advantage. Much of the reason for this is the diminishing returns you start to get for your DP.
In the past there have been long debates about the Mage vs Fighter balance in RM, but it's not a straightforward issue. Versatility is a significant factor and play-style sometimes even bigger. For example, if you have GM that allows the spellcasters to rest and get all their power points back after every major combat then the spell casters will be much more powerful in comparison to the arms users. At lower levels arms users tend to have the advantage of focusing on a single offensive skill, but once you start hitting around 4th-5th level the spell caster starts to build up a much broader selection of options. Give a character both of those (good arms and spell skill costs), give it several levels, consider how diminishing returns makes the characters DP expenditures much more efficient, and it's pretty obvious there's an advantage there.
There are also other ways to heal than immediately transferring a wound from one character to another that are far less disruptive, but RMU does it anyway. But disruptive isn't good: it's interesting in a story and a game.
How, in terms of actual real world game play time (how long you're literally sitting around the game table), does magical healing differ from 'natural' healing (i.e. you sit around for six week while your broken arm heals)? It doesn't. It's an entirely in-world mechanic.
How, in the average game world of a medieval fantasy setting, are you going to heal organ damage? You pretty much aren't.
Healing magic gives a way to eliminate the idea that after every deadly fight your characters would realistically be laid up healing for months otherwise.
Rolemaster is known for being deadly. The magical healing system balances that deadliness.
The idea that healing unbalances damage is complete nonsense.