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Buy it. “The Crimson Queen”

The Crimson Queen by [Hutson, Alec]

Hey, two blogs in one day. I meant to include this is a weekend roundup and forgot to include it in my earlier blog. Lots of standard tropes, many names are familiar, it edges up to LitRPG but it’s good. For self-published it deserves a boost. Check it out HERE.

 

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Random Musings: Rolemaster & Shadow World 2/12/17

Being stuck in severe winter weather is a good excuse to get some writing and work done! I’m still polishing up my next few blog topics but thought I would write a quick blog on some misc. thoughts. This is more to clear my head and refocus my thoughts on various RPG items that are floating around.

  1. There is definitely an “ebb & flow” to the Rolemaster Forum activity. Generally, it seems like the hot topics are created on the RMU forums–intense debates on rules. Right now things just seem slow.
  2. Despite my own frequent blogs about alternate rules I’m having less and less interest in rule sets. Every time I come up with something new, Peter or some one else proposes something as interesting, valid or workable. It feels like a rabbit hole that never ends. In the end I am much more interested in game content than rules. I change rules frequently–with a small group of players it’s less game testing and more about how the rules interact with the narrative flow of the game. My players learned long ago that advocating for rules that allow for min/max, power gaming or mechanistic advantages are missing the point.
  3. Being stuck indoor has allowed me to take a deeper dive in Emer III. I read it when it first came out and scanned several times since, but hadn’t really churned through it or processed new info. I have taken each “canon” SW product and pulled out any world or overview info and added it to our Master Atlas. If you comb through all of Terry’s work and separate local and regional info from world spanning info it results in a much more comprehensive MA. Ours is heading towards 400 pages without creatures or the timeline.
  4. Emer III is fantastic. Like each new product, it continues to fill in gaps in the world building that were hinted at over the last 30 years: Jinteni technology, the Dragonlord, Tower of Vour, Krylites. At 208 pages it covers a lot of new material and straddles a difficult line of overview and specific material. Terry has always been good at that–intensely detailed NPCs, equipment and layouts with broad overviews that still convey a flavor or style.
  5. I’ve said this before but almost every Loremaster or Shadow World product could cover years of gaming. Sure, like everyone else I always want to see new material from Terry, but there is currently enough material now for a lifetime of play. Every product is dense with possible adventure hooks that would be make into a long term campaign!
  6. I’ve been working on an outline to finish the Grand Campaign. My goal was to try and include a snippet of material from each product–that way a group could experience a little bit of each product and visit or explore SW “greatest hits”. Unfortunately I think there is just too much material now! What I have ended up doing is moving several plot lines down to optional to maintain the core adventure path.
  7. My players are finishing up “Priest-King of Shade”. Ideally it would have gotten the PC’s to 12-15th lvl but they are all around 10th lvl. That’s fine–they are segueing into “Empire of the Black Dragon” (which is meant to be Pt. 3 of the series). Empire is less linear than Priest-King; more the style of “Fortresses of M.E.” so the playtesting is an important part of generating adventure layouts for the final product.
  8. I’m hoping I’ve found someone to redo my layouts for Empire. It’s basically 4 facilities, each very different in style and purpose. We shall see!
  9. BASiL Mentalism. A number of people have contacted me about putting up the Mentalism spells. I’m working on it! Unlike Essence or Channeling, I felt that Mentalism needed more work. I started formatting them and ended up making significant changes to the Monk style spells and making changes to the Telekinesis spells.
  10. It’s great to see new contributors to the RolemasterBlog. I hope that the other people that showed interest will participate as well!
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Seeing the Light—Religious conversions for Channelers in Rolemaster.

I write a lot about Clerics. One interesting phenomena, often featured in popular fantasy literature is the reluctant conversion or initiation of a character into an avatar or priest of a God. Perhaps the PC encounters the God during gameplay and creates an opportunity to pledge fealty. Maybe the God directly recruits the PC as his agent and follower or changes in the pantheons require the PC to choose a new God.

One of the limitations of RM is the inability to switch professions at later levels—precluding a PC from “converting” or choosing to enter a life of a Priest. Certainly a bit of hand-waving and rewarding the player with the appropriate Base List could work, but the PC would still have skill costs assigned by their original Profession choice. To me this is just another limitation of the Profession system; a system that was once advertised as having “no limitations”.

This also speaks to the awkwardness of emulating the Open/Closed/Base paradigm for the Channeling realm. Conceptually it doesn’t work well; was the reason I started my own re-write for Spell Law; and I suspect the need for the Channeling Companion. By its definition, Channeling ability must be given or granted by a God or God-like being. Rather than define Open/Closed/Base from an access viewpoint (a PC must spend DP’s to gain a spell list), it must be defined by a bestowed viewpoint (the God chooses which spell lists are granted–though the PC would still spend DP’s). In other words a God would likely provide Channeling spells to followers based on their need and their position in the church. So even low level admin or devout follower might have some lower level “Open” utility lists. This will just depend on the setting and as Peter pointed out, you could simplify all of this by just merging Channeling into Essence and Mentalism. My game allows for characters to access any or all of the “realms” so I end up with the same result using a different solution.

I like the idea and I like the dramatic potential of the ability to change religious loyalty and in the last few years have really embraced active gods in my Shadow World setting. As a Deux a Machina, I have more flexibility with a Lord of Orhan than a nosy Loremaster, and from a narrative standpoint I can provide unambiguous direction for the group when needed. Again, In my setting there is not difficulty in granting Channeling lists to a new convert—but how should that work in standard RM RAW?

Converting from one God to another is fairly straightforward: just replace current base lists with the lists of the new god. In regular RM this might not require any changes, as Clerics all receive the same Base spells. For people using Channeling Companion or have embraced the concept of God-aspected spell lists this would create a significant change in PC abilities. Can a PC willingly switch Gods—perhaps motivated by the powers/spells they might receive by changing allegiances? Fiction is ripe with stories about characters worshipping dark Gods for additional powers, but what about switching Gods within the same pantheon or “alignment”? Would the discarded God feel betrayed? Punish the PC? Would the new God require a Quest or some other token of loyalty before granting Aspected spells or even Power Points? I think this raises great adventure possibilities!

In the end, the narrative should drive the rules—right? But I would rather create flexibility rather than “one-off” rules to explain away system conflicts. Whether you use Professions or not, the Channeling Realm may benefit from some fluidity or tinkering in your game.

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Rolemaster Spell Law: Revisiting and rethinking Project BASiL.

Our rewrite of Spell Law was always going to be a work in progress: every new idea, every game session of playtesting or a random thought makes us rethink our basic assumptions. So a recent comment on the Rolemaster Forums  and various blogs on the RolemasterBlog has me thinking about “Realms” again.

Peter makes the argument against the Channeling Realm and his solution rolls various Channeling spells into either the Essence or Mentalism realms. I think my discussions of BASiL realms can be misleading—I don’t see “Realms” as separate properties of power; instead we see “Realms” as the separation of magical powers by casting mechanisms. In RMU this is the same distinction between generating magic effects via spells versus magical effects via rituals. We just take it one step further and further divide spell casting into more distinct mechanisms. This just happens to mirror the original Essence, Channeling, Mentalism to some degree, but we added 4-5 other “Realms” so the comparison starts to lessen. (I just haven’t gotten around to put up these other Realms yet). Peter refers to this as Schools of Magic which I think is a pretty good model to view it.

I think RMU and RM in general has it wrong to use the same spellcasting mechanism for all three realms (SCR, 1-3 round casting time .etc). Furthermore it’s clear that some spell lists just don’t fit the assigned realm or that casting process. We attempted to correct that in BASiL and just took the process where it led us. That meant that “Imbedding/Alchemist” magic needed a better casting and process methodology; “performance magic” (bard, dance, sing etc) needed a more unique process and “written” magic (runes/sigils/glyphs/symbols/circles) didn’t really fit into a 1-3 round casting time.

I’ve blogged about increasing distinctions between Realm powers, but in my thinking over these latest posts and blogs I think I made a mistake—one that I write about often. It’s difficult to completely remove all the tropes/memes and biases built up over a lifetime of gaming and I question my thinking all the time when writing new material, but I stuck to a trope I should have reconsidered. Why shouldn’t the Essence realm have healing spells?

In BASiL I made a clear distinction between Essence (manipulation of the physical world) and Channeling (miraculous and affecting spiritual issues): sort of Science versus Faith paradigm. So while it was clear to me that Spirit Mastery, Souls, etc were solidly in the realm of the metaphysical, I kept healing in the Channeling realm (and self-healing in the mentalism). I do remember questioning this during the Spell Law redesign but I kept healing in Channeling for “balance” purposes!!! My hypocrisy.

Spells that heal tissue, stop bleeding or knit tissue and muscle are very much a physical process and should be included in Essence. At the same time the healing spells in Channeling should be less technical and more miraculous—or just more effective—given their source to divinity. So it looks like I’m moving the Healing Law lists to Essence and writing new and improved healing spells for Channeling.

For more thoughts on the Spell Law rewrite:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

 

 

 

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Advanced Technology in Shadow World

For those that want to utilize it, ancient advanced technology is a narrative aspect to the Shadow World setting. Advanced technology was not just achieved by the Althan/Ka’ta’viir civilization in the 1st Era, but also utilized by several other notable cultures during the Interregnum: Taranian, Jinteni & Worim.

When we think of technology in fantasy role playing we often visualize laser pistols, laser swords, shield devices, power armor—objects that are just more powerful version of standard fantasy weapons (crowsbows, swords, armor etc). I posted up an older file on using technology in SW here, but the convenient fact is that although it’s tech, it can be handled easily within the RM fantasy magic rules. Laser Guns cast “Firebolts”; Lightsabers inflict Electricity, Fire or Plasma Crits; Anti-grav belts cast “Levitation”, etc.

While there have been numerous ancient high-tech civilizations and contemporary cultures that use “science” (Krylites), none of them reached the advancements of the Althans or Ka’Ta’viir.(Tech Level 13+). Truly advanced technology can transcend common form factors and seem inscrutable to normal understanding. In other words, they will seem magical.

Here are a few advanced technologies that might be a good fit in your Shadow World game:

Post Physical Entities: This is a term often used to describe an “upload society” where consciousness can be transferred to a computer network, object or virtual emulator. Shadow World modules already features stored Ka’ta’viir intelligences (Cloudlords) and the Thalan are a good example of a post-physical entities (PPE’s). From a game standpoint, introducing an ancient Althan/Ka’ta’viir consciousness could be interesting. The entity would probably have their own agenda, limit information flow and perhaps “guide” the players to their own purpose. This could provide a useful guide for the GM to direct the PC’s through the adventure or tie multiple adventures into a greater campaign. Mechanically, PPE’s should be treated as an NPC, only limited by the ability to interact with the physical world. Additionally the PC’s may not even realize the “entity” is an uploaded consciousness or ancient being.

A.I.: Similar to Post Physical entities, A.I.’s are already featured in SW. Two prominent ones are the A.I. in Andraax’s tomb and Morik in Eidolan. Unlike PPE’s, A.I.’s are a technical/software artifact and may be limited by their learning ability, programming and information resources. Like PPE’s, A.I.’s should be treated as NPC’s.

Time Control: Ka’Ta’viir use a “Chronagenic” process to hibernate. Not to be confused with a cryogenic process; rather than freezing or preserving a person through physical or biological means the capsule seals the entity into a time singularity. It’s not clear whether the Althans had additional control over time (barring localized events). Jinteni also had some time dilation abilities (Emer III and Inn of the Green Gryphon). Time travel and control have always been tricky in RPG’s: a GM needs to decide the long term effects of causality and impact on the game narrative. There are three basic mechanisms for time manipulation: devices (machines & portals), spells (I’ve uploaded a Time Mastery spell list on the RM Forums  ) or Essaence effects (Essaence Storms and Foci). Time Travel introduces an introducing plot device to allow PC’s to explore other parts of the immense SW timeline. In fact, you could probably roll randomly for page, paragraph and line or 1-100,000 years to pick a date in the timeline to send the players. At the least, they could be spectators to interesting historical events and experience some of the intriguing past of Kulthea!

Matter/Energy Conversion: A truly advanced society will have mastered matter – energy conversion. This is more than simple fusion, it’s a two way process to generate power from any matter OR the ability to produce objects or material from energy. This probably has less game-world impact than other technologies but it does allow for devices to be powered indefinitely (by harvesting small amounts of matter for energy), self-repair of devices and vehicles or for generating objects “out of thin air” like a Wish spell.

Molecular Assembly: Before they have the ability of creating matter from energy, a post scarcity society will have obtained the ability to create any object from scratch using “feedstock” raw material. These Replicators or “Cornucopia Machines” are just highly advanced 3D printers. In Sci-fi and economic theory, such a machine would be a major societal disruptor allowing for the easy creation and accessibility of wealth. This technology was the basis for the post-scarcity society presented in Star Trek. In your SW game, this technology could be useful but not unbalancing on a limited basis—perhaps program/design access is prohibited except to authorized users (i.e. weapon mfg)

Mal-Metal: Malleable, changeable or programmable materials would be common in an advanced society. This allows for amorphous forms—wings that can change shape, weapons that can morph into others with a thought, adjustable cloaks, armor that can distribute impacts or force etc. This type of technology would be very useful to a PC and would be indistinguishable from common magic item tropes. Obvious examples would be morphing weapons (retain weight/mass but changes shape), fluid bracers that cover the arms as greaves at a thought etc. In SW, “Malloys” (malleable alloys) could combine advanced tech with materials like Keron, Eog or Ithloss.

Bionomics: A step past cyborg implants, Bionomics are organic based technological capabilities built into a person at the molecular and cellular level. These could be energy projections (disruptors, beams), shields (force fields or environmental shields), wetware computing power for advanced mental and calculative abilities. Unless they were born from a very specific parentage, installation of Bionomics would require substantial surgical procedures and DNA manipulation.  Bionomic abilities could be treated as innate spell abilities powered by a reservoir of cell energy (use CO. stat?).  In our campaign, Bionomic technology was a significant part of the Xiosian heritage.

Von Neumann Self Replicators: These machines combine the technologies of molecular assembly and matter/energy conversion to build copies of themselves. This is a powerful concept but might not have too much relevance in a gaming environment. However these could also work on a nano scale—“Nannite” clouds that replicate and perform programmed tasks (healing, buffs, metamorphis etc). Examples of “Nannites” might be found in upcoming SW material!

Solid State Technology: When we think of machines we often conflate it to devices with moving parts and collections of components. An advanced society will utilize microtization, exotic meta-materials and atomic level functionality to produce devices that work as machines but won’t have moving parts. To PC’s this will give machine or software functionality to solid objects–just like magic items.

Neural Control/Interface: The Ka’ta’viir were not only advanced technologically, they were able to utilize the Essaence AND access Psionic/Mind powers. At the height of their powers (Late Imperial Era) many devices were controlled through mere thought. In the game, neural interfaces should be treated as quasi-mentalism or accessed via “Attunement” skill (treat as Absurd or -150 due to the complexity of this technology or allow a PC to have some Althan heritage and reduce the penalty).

While primarily a fantasy setting, Shadow World also has elements of a post-apocalypse setting and a sci-fi setting. Maybe the PC’s will initially be unaware they are encountering technology and not magic but these elements could add flavor to your campaign!

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Nature vs. Nurture. The emphasis between Stats or Professions.

I really can’t get off my soap box regarding adopting a “No Profession” system. One of the arguments I often hear for professions and profession assigned skill costs is that early character development locks in affinities that define the characters learning patterns for life.

For me, this is a perfect example of the Nature vs Nurture paradigm. “Nature” being defined as a characters stats and stat bonuses (natural aptitudes) and “Nurture” being defined as early influential training. Rolemaster assumes the primacy of “Nurture”: early choice of a Profession sets skill costs that influence the characters progression and development. However the rules themselves allow that paradigm to be easily broken. For instance a player can choose “Fighter” as a profession but spend all his developments points on thieving skills. At what point or level does continuous training of thieving skills outweigh the early choice of the Fighter profession? Should that character even call themselves a fighter?

I am firmly in the camp of “Nature”—that learning is driven more by innate, natural abilities, but that intensive, immersive training can eventual overcome natural talent. Even a weak, clumsy person can become a competent fighter with enough training and dedication. So if innate ability (Nature) is more important, it argues for the elimination of profession based skill costs and thus professions in general.

Ideally, the best solution might be skill costs set by stats or stat bonuses. I.e. a character with high physical stats would have lower costs for physical skills etc. While this makes intuitive sense it would be cumbersome in practical application. However, if you like the “Nurture” argument, RM and RMU rules are already poised to model this reality with just a few tweaks.

We achieved this via the following:

  1. First there needs to be an increase in the influence of stat bonuses. In RM2, stat bonuses are really only influential at the first few levels and then begin to diminish quickly as the skill rank bonus increases. We adopted the RMU stat bonuses and 3 stat per skill calculation to increase the benefit of stats.
  2. We set all skills costs to 5*. That doesn’t mean that skills cost the same for everyone: the increase in stat bonuses means that the real measure is the acquisition cost/skill bonus ratio.
  3. We adjusted the skill rank bonus progression to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5….up to 10 and then it drops 1/rank back down to 1 again. This accomplishes several things—it increases the importance and influence of stat bonuses (by lowering skill bonuses) and reduces the benefit of picking up a handful of ranks in a skill to “max out” the rank bonus vs. acquisition cost. Plus, in general, this progression better models a natural learning curve.
  4. We introduced unlimited rank development. This allows a character to singularly focus on a skill to overcome innate limitations. But this comes at a high opportunity cost—each additional rank taken costs an additional 1DP/rank (this resets each level) so focusing on one or a handful of skills will allow a player to truly excel but at the cost of other skill development.

For our gaming group the application of three elements allows for fast character creation, flexible characters and a more intuitive modeling of character development in the Nature v. Nurture framework.

 

  1. Cultural Skill packages (Nurture) to reflect early development and culturally appropriate knowledge.  This is non-stat influenced as it is skill transmission driven by society and culture.
  2. Vocational Skill Package (Nurture) to reflect young adult vocation, job or trade. This is non-stat influenced as it represents an early “career” decision, availability of vocations in a specific culture or the imperative of cultural norms (ie everyone must join the military).
  3. (Nature) Uniform skill costs, influential stat bonuses and unlimited rank development to give players maximum flexibility and cost/benefit decision making. This is stat dependent as detailed above.

For those that like Professions, this still allows the creation of creative, emulative or societal driven Cultural or Vocational training packages. Our Shadow World campaign has over 40 Cultural Packages and 50 Vocational Packages that can be combined to make thousands of interesting characters without the arbitrary dictums of Professional names or concepts.

Just my two cents—what’s yours?

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More thoughts on “Level-less” Rolemaster.

Rolemaster is inherently a skill-based system but it has clung to some of the established level mechanisms of D&D by reverting them into skills. Peter had a great blog on making hit points independent of skill. I’m really embracing this idea now–and it gets rid of Body Development skill which is a plus in my endless efforts to reduce skill bloat. (We’ve shifted the other aspects of Body Development  into our meta-skill “Athletics”).

So I’m still struggling with disconnecting RR’s from character level. We use “Spell attack level = PP’s” which makes a lot of sense to me, but could be unbalancing if characters didn’t have a better chance of saving as they progress. Or is it unbalancing? Here are some scattered thoughts in no real order:

  1. Set all RR’s to a base of 50/50 success. The threshold is adjusted by the “attack level” of the spell/poison/disease/effect etc. So a PC resisting a 50th lvl spell would need to roll above 100—but would still have their stat bonus and any other spell buffs. A RR vs a 10th lvl poison would need to roll above a 60 etc.
  2. Magic is powerful and should be difficult to resist. However, using this system, a lower level caster who dedicates enough PP’s could affect a 50th lvl character. Is this unbalancing? Higher level characters should have substantially better protection in both items and spells.
  3. While this may increase the potency of spell casting, our own character law system results in casters having fewer, more individualized spells. Under normal RM rules this system might greatly enhance spell-casters.
  4. More buffs. I’ve always felt that the protection spells in RM were fairly weak, something we have tried to correct in our Spell Law re-write. If protection spells were increased in than this might offset the bump in potency in spell casting?
  5. I’m trying hard to get almost every action resolution into the standard RM 1-100 resolution process. The idea proposed in #1 above doesn’t quite work within that frame. RMU tries this with spellcasting by incorporating +100 into the SCR which I find cumbersome. Perhaps, like weapon attacks, I’ll have to let this be just slightly different.
  6. I’ve seen some proposals to get rid of levels to determine RR and to introduce “resistance skills”: skills that give bonuses against Essence, Channeling, Mentalism. That leads down a whole complicated path on spell mechanics, training etc–anybody try this?

Resistance Rolls seem like the last vestiges of a level based system; one that I would like to eliminate. Open to any ideas.

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Weekend Library

Greetings all and welcome to my new column: Weekend Library.  I read quite a bit so I thought I would offer up a list of books that might be a little obscure but worth checking out for great game or campaign ideas for your Rolemaster, Shadow World or fantasy setting.

The Mechanical (3 book series). Interesting take on Clockwork men and alchemy. I got some ideas to update my adventure “The Lair of Ozymandias”.

Six of Crows. A grittier version of “Lies of Locke Lamora”. Good characters and ideas for a urban “Sting/Heist” campaign.

The Face Fakers Game. The writing is a bit inconsistent, but an interesting system of magic that gave me a few ideas.

The Copper Promise. A throwback to the early D&D style adventures. Fun but a straight forward translation of game to store.

The Dungeonneers. Witty and fun quick read. However, it’s interesting because it acknowledges all the traditional dungeon tropes and tackles them head on via a group of Dwarven adventurers.

Free the Darkness. What type of game would you have with a character that was good at EVERYTHING?

Mountain of Daggers. Very old school (Howard or Leiber). Short stories of a famed thief.

Low Town. Great urban low-magic fantasy.

 

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Shadow World Religions as Rolemaster Professions?

If you read this blog consistently you are probably aware that both Peter and I are proponents of a “No Profession” game. But the truth is that a having “No Professions” generally means that most players end up designing a character that conforms to a common fantasy trope anyway. Whether that’s because players are guided by long held biases and profession models or that a balanced design forces players into basis archetypes (at least non, pure or semi) a no profession system almost always results in customized but identifiable classes without the need for “one-off” rules, talents, quirks or similar work-arounds. (For more thoughts on this check out my blog “No Professions Equals All Profession”.)

Many, many RM’ers love having lots of professions, but many of the Companion professions are only slight variations on the 1-2 dozen standards used. I’ve read lengthy argument about tiny variations in individual skills costs to justify the differentiation, but let’s be honest—do you really need different professions for a Knight, Barbarian, Duelist or Warrior? They are all just fighters aren’t they? A barbarian is just a fighter that wears less armor!!! That differentiation could best be done with equipment choices.

However, if you like the endless variations in professions than let’s talk about Channelers, and more specifically Clerics. RM paints a very broad brush with Clerics; they basically have the same vanilla powers set in DnD: protection, healing, creation and resurrection. Blah!!! Channeling Companion went a long way in addressing the need for differentiation in Clerical powers based on their specific Diety and added several new professions as well. In my view, the choice of God makes each pantheons clerics a unique profession. In fact, I see Animists/Druids as an extension of this viewpoint—they are Channelers of a “nature god”. Why Animists/Druids are singled out as a profession when Clerics of the God of Fire, or Lightning, or Trickery should be equally as valid makes little sense—unless you are stuck in the common profession tropes of DnD and standard RPGS.

We play in Shadow World which as a very specific set of Gods. It’s common sense that a Priest’s training (spells and skills) will reflect the nature of their patron. Isn’t this the very definition of RM Professions? A “Battle-Priest of Z’taar” should be VERY different than a Cleric of Eissa. In our SW campaign, Clerics of differing religions rarely share the same spells—unlike RM RAW where most Clerics will have all the same Open, Closed and Base lists.

Because we designed our Shadow World Clerics with very specific spells and skills they basically create whole new professions. A quick look at a few of our Shadow World “Clerics” with basic tagline descriptions (you need an RM Forum membership to see or download the files):

Scions of Kuor: Lightning wielding priest, moderate pro-business republican, conservative, male, Zeus, WASP, 1% upper class, politician, elder statesmen. Spell List. RM Profession: Cleric.

Scholae of Valris: Gnostics, scribes, professors, Loremasters, scientist, Da Vinci. Spell List. RM Profession: Scholar.

Messengers of Teris: Travelers, Messenger (Warded Man), navigator, postman, pony express, information guild, courier, dispatcher. RM Profession: Spell List. Rogue, Bard?

Disciples of Cay: Olympians, Wrestlers, Greek Athletes, Gladiator, model, youthful, Grecian. Spell List. RM Profession: Monk, Fighter.

Stormbringers of Shaal: Stern, fierce, mercurial, father figure, Stormriders (Malazan) not humorous, storms, cold. Spell List. RM Profession: Cleric, Paladin.

Daughters of Inis: Assassins, seducers, dancers, Middle-Eastern, exotic, silk, razor sharp, beautiful, deadly, incense, jewelry. Spell List. RM Profession: Dervish, Dancer, Rogue, Assassin, Nightblade.

Order of the Sun: Haughty, arrogant, Kings Guard, Knight, Sun, Templar, plate armor, gold. Spell List. RM Profession: Paladin.

Battle-Priest of Z’taar: Beserker, barbarian, hermit, unkempt, unbalanced, rabid, frenzy, Kurgan (Highlander), Vikings. Spell List. RM Profession: Fighter, Barbarian.

Under RAW RM, these should all be “Clerics” but as you can see they really are a variety of other professions or new professions. (The RM Professions noted are really just approximations).  Does a player even need to be a “Cleric” to be a high servant of their God? Some of these could be considered Semi-Spell Users under normal RM rules. We don’t worry about it and I have the flexibility of coming up with any creative ideas for a NPC, organization or group without worrying about which profession it can or can’t be. Likewise my players can create any PC they want without being limited by an arbitrary profession system.

However, if you have Professions shouldn’t the Clerics of varying gods be given the same consideration as Fighter or Mage variations?