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Invocation & Sanctification. Expanded Channeling in your Shadow World campaign.

It’s been a while since I blogged about Channeling, so I thought I would revisit one topic and discuss another: Invocation and Sanctification. As I’ve discussed, the Channeling Realm raises a lot of issues about setting, spell access and the role of Dieties that aren’t present in the more agnostic realms of Essence and Mentalism. That’s one of the reasons that Peter and others have just eliminated the Channeling Realm and rolled it into Essence. Again, this is really driven by the metaphysical underpinnings of the setting.

Shadow World, however, does have an established pantheon to connect to the Channeling Realm and Rolemaster suggests that Channeling spells are “passed” to the spellcaster, or at the very least, a god gives tacit approval for spellcasting of higher level spells. This raises a host of issues: the behavior of the caster, their role in the religion, the difference between “Clerics” and other members of a religion.

For example, members of a religion could be broken down to a number of types–here are just a few examples:

  1. Follower. A regular person that believes/follows a specific gods and attends the local temple/church. Should/could a follower get access to Channeling spells? Maybe low level Open lists?
  2. Administrators. A religion doesn’t run itself, and high level “management” may not actual perform ceremonies or other priestly functions, but are still elevated worshipers. Should they have Channeling spells?
  3. Priests. When we think of Priests/Clerics in RPGs we think of travelling adventurers representing their gods, not Clergy that stay in a church or temple and perform religious ceremonies and “tend to the flock”.  If we make that distinction, RPG Clerics are more “Pilgrims” than “Clergy”, and as such should have different types of spell lists.
  4. Monks. Devout, monastic followers of a god are typically represented as martial artists, but religious monks could be scholars, seers, astrologers as well.
  5. Holy Warriors. Paladins are the common trope, but Holy Warrior could be any warrior granted special powers by the God.
  6. Chosen. A God could bestow or grant powers to any follower or believer in return for obedience. These powers will probably depend on the task or purpose.

So what does all this mean? Channeling spells could be granted to a variety of worshipers based on their role in the church and the needs of the God. This a very different criteria than standard RM spell acquisition.

Given all that, we utilize two other aspects of Channeling.

Invocation. It seems apparent that any follower should be able to pray to their god for aid. This is no different than an athlete whispering a quick prayer or plea before a game or challenge. This might be a general prayer or a frantic call in a dire situation and IS NOT a spellcasting. Of course, there is no guarantee a God will respond, and if they do, what that response looks like! Leaving it up to a GM is too much a deux ex machine–an easy way to bail players out of a bad situation. That’s why I use this CHART and also further guidelines based on the various Kulthean gods. The major factors are the devoutness of a character, the personality of the god, and the frequency of such pleas.

Sanctification. The second aspect of Channeling that we use is the concept of “Blessing” a holy place; making it sacred to a particular god. Mostly this is done at holy temples, churches and shrines. Sanctifying a place does several things: it allows easier casting/praying for followers of the specific God and it makes it harder for followers of opposing gods to cast spells in a sanctified area.

Here is an example of a Sanctify spell from BASiL:

7. Sanctify I – This spell will make an area/altar/shrine “Holy”. The caster will recieve +10 to Spell Casting, Rituals or Invocations, and followers is the area will receive the benefits of Bless I and Prayer I. The spell must be cast once/day/lvl to prepare the area. Caster can only have 1 Sanctified location at a time.

Invocation gives players a mechanism to relate to their chosen Diety that impacts gameplay. Sanctified areas can dramatically increase the power of Clerics in their own temples and greatly reduce the power of others on the same ground. Both, can add depth to your Channeling players in your Shadow World adventures

 

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Rolemaster Character Creation in 15 Minutes.

Search around the internet for Rolemaster discussions and you’ll see that a lot of people gripe about how much time it takes to make a 1st lvl character. Much of this complaining is grounded in the deadliness of the system: it sucks spending an hour or two on creating a character only having them die with a bad fumble or high critical roll in their first outing. I get it.

Even if you are an experienced RMer, you can easily spend an hour building a character and filling out the multi-page character sheet. But what if it only takes 15 minutes or so to make a character in Rolemaster? We’ve simplified and modified the rules enough that character creation is flexible, easy and quick…and…a player can make virtually any character type they want. The key is using “packages” to replace the normal Adolescent and Apprenticeship skill picks. We combine this approach with our own ‘no profession‘ rule set, but it can work for the standard professions rules as well. It’s also not an “all or nothing” proposition; players can still go through individual skill buy for character creation if they want, and normal skill selection is still used after the first level.

We recently added a player to our group so I had the chance to test my newer rules out. So how do we do character creation? First, I have a player sketch out their character concept and review the various skill packages (cultural and vocational—we’ll get to that in a bit). They now have strong idea of the character they want to play and probably a solid plan moving forward. This was done prior to, on their own time and I didn’t add it to the creation time, but, that conceptual planning certainly makes the quick creation time possible.

Step 1. Roll Stats. I have the players roll 11 sets (appearance stat is used) of 3 rolls. The lowest roll in each set is dropped, the next lowest is the temp and the highest the potential. There is no minimum threshold and there are no prime stats that can be replaced with 90’s, but the player can assign the stat roll sets as they see fit. We have started adopting innate stat skills, so every stat now has some important use. Time: 2-3 minutes.

Step 2. Choose a race & culture. Like RMU we use preset skill packages for various general cultures, races and specific SW societies. This replaces the original “Adolescent Skill Pick” step in RM. You can see some of the choices HERE (need RM Forums account to download).  Time 2-3 minutes.

Step 3. Choose a vocation/profession package. We have over 40 regular vocations to choose from, plus another 20 SW specific vocations. This replaces the “Apprenticeship Skill Pick” step in standard RM and represents the time spent after childhood in teen and early adult years. Vocation packages include cultural notes, type of training, years spent at vocation, skills, spell lists, established relationships, experiences, starting equipment, and wealth and property. You can see some of the choices HERE. Time: 2-3 minutes.

Step 4. Special Skill Rank Bonus. Players have 6 “points” that can assign as skill rank bonus(s)—sort of like aptitudes and replaces the normal assigned profession rank bonus. They have the choice of: (1) +3 OR (2) +2, OR (1) +2 and (3) +3 OR (6) +1 to assign to specific skills of their choice. This gives the player flexibility to really shape the character’s abilities and talents! Time: 2-3 minutes

Step 5. Pick Spell Lists if applicable. Cultural and Vocational Packages will give general and/or specific spell lists but some choices might need to be made. We individual spell pick. Time: 0-5 minutes.

Step 6. Calculate HPs and PPs. Calculate rank bonuses, special bonuses and stat bonuses for skills. Time: 5 minutes.

Step 7: Fill in character sheet. Add equipment, calculate encumbrance and DB. Time: 2-5 minutes.

Obviously with a spreadsheet version, steps 6 & 7 are almost automatic, reducing time further. In my player’s example, he chose a Fustir-Gost Shaman which gave him a good range of outdoor skills,  fighting ability, and practical Channeling magic. It took him 21 minutes to make complete his character.

A couple of points to emphasize:

  • After the 1st lvl players follow normal skill selection (50 DPs)—the packages are only for adolescent and apprenticeship.
  • New cultural packages are easy to design and introduce and can be effective in framing a particular race or culture’s comparative advantages or unique attributes.
  • While we use around 50 vocational packages, the possibilities are infinite. For example, a Fustir-gost fisherman will have a different profile of skills than a Sulini fisherman or a soldier from Eidolon will have different skills than a soldier from Rhakhaan.
  • Vocation packages include more than skills—it provides a variety of resources and background cues to flesh out the character. Here is a rough outline for several of the “Militia” professions:

Vocation Packages Sample

Quick character creation doesn’t mean generic characters—50+ cultural packages and 50+ vocational packages allows for thousands of unique combinations. For us it’s a great solution for simplifying and shortening the Rolemaster character creation process and it may be a good bolt in when introducing new players to the game.

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BASiL Deep Dive: Automaton Spell List

Part of my deconstruction of Spell Law was to come up with simpler rules for various alchemical processes that could be more easily used “in game”. One of the appeals of original RM was the framework for creating magic items, but the time and effort involved in making items needed to occur outside gameplay. The alchemist was better as an NPC or the spells should have been shifted to Closed lists (like the detailed healing spells lists in the Channeling Realm).

What sort of alchemical processes could be simplified to be usable in actual game play?

  1. Simple Alchemical Formulae or Devices:  acids, grenades, glues, glow lanterns etc that can be made in hours or a day.
  2. Single use simple embedded items: charms, candles, elixirs, salves, lotions, oils, powders that are consumed when activated.
  3. Basic constructs: drones, miniatures, robots, engines, machines that can be powered and controlled.

With #3 above in mind, one of my favorite new spells lists is “Automaton”, a Closed Essence list I created as part of my BASiL project. My intent was to create a very simple and flexible spell list that allowed for basic automata: motive power (movement), direction (control), and agency (sensory data). Basically simple robot capability with a few lines of programming code.

All of my BASiL spell lists include 1-2 pages of GM/player notes that provide more detailed direction on use and limitations but I didn’t include those in my file uploads to date. I’ve had a few questions about this list and we’ve grappled with some in game usage with one of my players so I thought I would dive deeper into the list as I envision it.

  1. First, the list isn’t just limited to a “robot” or stereotype anthropoid construct found in RM “Creatures and Treasures”. This spell list could function on any mechanical or compound device: a propeller, pulley, wheel axle etc.
  2. The spells do not create structural integrity or range of motion–functionality must be built into the object or target. For instance, animate dead might create a skeleton undead and it’s assumed that the spell “binds” the bones together into a coherent form again. These spells do not do this: cast on a stone statue it wouldn’t imbue flexibility or fluidity to solid stone. However, this spell could animate a corpse. A GM will need to adjudicate some items. For instance its conceivable that a paper origami dog has flexibility to move it’s legs, neck  or wag it’s tail.
  3. The strength and durability of the target is not improved or increased by this spell. (The paper dog would be destroyed if it got wet, a glass rod would still shatter if exposed to hard surface or torque).
  4. Tasks and Triggers should be seen as simple computer code. “And”, “If” and a few word sentence. This spell does not impart sentience or even basic A.I.
  5. Animate has a duration, otherwise it could create a perpetual motion machine or free work. Because of this duration (and perhaps spell list accessibility) it isn’t practical for a primary drive system in skyships, airbarges, paddle boats etc.
  6. Animate spells are constrained by the size of the object powered–not by the size of the moving part only.  So you can’t use a Animate I to power a TINY engine to drive a 120′ warship. Basically I’m trying to tie in concepts of HP & torque into the RMU size framework.

One of my players has really been clever with this spell list and while occasionally he pushes it’s use, I feel the size and duration limitations balance it out well and make it useful for in game play.

You can download the list here (Peter still haven’t figured this file thing out yet)

Automaton

 

 

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Encumbrance

This is a topic I have touched on once or twice in the past but it must be a year or more since last time. It was also something that Intothatdarkness mentioned in a comment yesterday.

I do not use the Encumbrance rules as written. Initially I just junked them and left it at that. Then when I was reading the players character sheets in preparation for a gaming weekend I realised that a couple of the characters would barely be able to walk and the both the warrior mage and the sorcerer probably could not cast a single spell with the amount of metal they were hauling around.

I needed a way of reining it in but without slapping the players with the full encumbrance rules out of nowhere.

I did this in three stages. Firstly I got the players to note the location of each piece of equipment on their equipment lists. When they got to the third sword they started to see the problem. Suddenly their horses were carrying a lot of spare equipment.

Secondly, I tallied up the amount of metal I thought the spell casters were carrying and just started to mention that they had a penalty on their BAR rolls. I did it casually once or twice as if I had always applied this.

What had actually prompted this in the first place as a habit one of my players has. He detests the book keeping element of RPGs and seeing as he is Dyslexic I completely understand his not wanting to write much. When it comes to the party loot his aversion to bookkeeping had him suggest that the party just keep a common list of what the party had found rather than constantly updating their character sheets with things that they were going to sell or dump as soon as they had had time to appraise them. The other players all thought this was a good idea so I had no objections at that time.

Two or three sessions on I had a thief NPC who wanted to steal a particular item from the party. This item was on the common treasure list as no one had claimed it as their own. Not all the party were together when the item was stolen so I just randomly rolled which character had the item and my roll said it was with the characters that were being targeted. Well the theft went unnoticed at the time and the item taken. Immediately afterwards when they were all together again and they got to someone who could appraise the item they couldn’t find it. I described that they found a pouch that had been obviously cut open on a seam and the item was gone. At that point the players all protested and claimed that the item was always safely with the character who had remained behind and could not have been stolen.

I just said that if it was with a specific person then they should have it on their equipment list.

That made me question the common loot list and a glance told me that there was a further 200lbs of kit that was unaccounted for on that sheet. I made a simple sheet up that was divided into sections for each character and that now serves as the common loot list. It saves them constantly having to change their personal equipment lists. Whenever there is a short break in play I look at the loot list if it has changed and jot down a quick guestimate of the weight of each persons share.

Now this hodge podge solution works for us but I freely admit it is not ideal and would never suggest it as an alternative for other GMs. My group only gets together a couple of times a year and as such there is a lot of pressure to spend as little time as possible on character maintenance and book keeping as possible.

The only encumbrance rules I apply are those from table 10.4 Static Actions and the encumbrance penalties there. I don’t do all the body weight calculations. That of course is just what works for my game and group.

So does encumbrance play a big part in your games?

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Blog Intro Death and Dismemberment

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Dyson’s Dodecahedron as a great source of maps. Today I thought I would mention Lloyd Neill’s occasional Death and Dismemberment blog (http://deathanddismemberment.blogspot.co.uk/).

Neill is an OSR/D&D and Rolemaster enthusiast and house rule fan which is kind of a prerequisite for Rolemaster GMs I guess.

This is relevant particularly given this weeks discussion on OSR. Last year there were some interesting discussions on House Rules. I am not a fan of OSR roleplay as it, in my opinion, just a thief tax but each to their own.

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Can Professionless provide all the detail of RM2?

I know that many people love the minute detail that the full spectrum of RM2 professions provided. The professions were basically a package of individual skill and base lists.

Keeping the base lists within professionless and level-less RM is easy.

The individual skill costs are completely compatible with level-less but I am open to ideas about how to create that flexibility with professionless gaming.

BriH has pitched the idea of getting rid of skill costs all together so that every skill costs 5DP (I could be wrong about who came up with that idea but that is not the point). I was thinking of playing with the idea of going to the other way.


As you can see the standard No Profession  character doesn’t have any real strengths.

How about allowing the player to juggle a few points around? So let’s give each player 10 points they can move about to make some skills cheaper and others more expensive. If no skill could cost less than less that 1 point for the first rank and 2 points for the second and no skill can cost no more than 3/6. This stops players from ‘dumping’ points into a skill they have no intention of every buying.

I would love to have peoples opinions on this. If you like all the old professions would the option of tweaking the skill costs at level one appeal?

To make it fair when you are thinking about this you should bear in mind that all characters get 50DPs. You do not have to buy Body Development (that is free), there is only one armour skill that costs 2* and in total there are only about 45 skills not the 200 from all the companions. You need that to know just how far 10 points would go in tweaking those costs.

Do you think that will make PCs more varied and do you think it would help you build the character you would want to play? After all that is the whole point of having a detailed character creation process in the first place.

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First Level Shouldn’t Suck!

If we’re soapboxing, I’ll jump  on one of mine: First Level shouldn’t suck! The whole premise behind first level should be giving a player a character who’s gone through her formative years and experiences and is ready to set out on her own, not some abstraction of early adolescence who can’t survive being stung by a bee, let alone a minor encounter with a wild dog. The old joke about D&D magic users having to hide behind fighters until they were about fifth level has a sad basis in fact, and Rolemaster (in my opinion) seems intent on turning first level into a collection of those magic users. Continue reading “First Level Shouldn’t Suck!”

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Random Musings: Dealing with Undead in Rolemaster.

Like a lot Rolemaster’s content, much of the mechanics around Undead are design artifacts from D&D; more specifically the issues of “Turning” and “Draining”.

Turning. It’s generally accepted in RPG’s that Clerics have the holy ability to “Turn” undead: basically, repel or even destroy them based on the level of the cleric. In D&D this is a class ability and in Rolemaster was converted to a Base spell list which is essentially the same thing, an implied core ability of the Cleric/Priest class.

There is a lot of talk on Turning in various D&D blogs—here is a good summary and discussion. Like many accepted fantasy tropes, once you step back from Turning as a core ability of the priest it’s pretty obvious that this power should be granted to specific types of priests—ones who follow or worship the god of life or death. In other words, an aspected list. Why should a Priest of the God of Fire have the ability to affect Undead? In fact, I moved Turning ability into a separate list Repulsions—basically a closed list.

I feel there are a lot of problems with the original Rolemaster repulsion spells—they try to maintain some of the elements of the D&D system by organizing undead by Class and then having spells affect a certain # of Class types. It’s just complicated for no reason. Why not treat Repulsions like a sleep spell? Any targets within the AoE must make an RR with the effects (cower, flee, destroyed) be based on the Fail? Higher level Undead will either resist or not fail by much while lower level Undead could easily be destroyed. You get the same solution without the complications of counting up the # of Classes present. Instead the spell is driven by the attack level and AoE.

Draining. The original RM had Undead causing Co drains. Later Companions introduced Life Levels with a corresponding spell list to regain lost life levels. D&D has LEVEL DRAIN—that was crazy. Why even try “Life Levels”? A while back Peter wrote a blog post touching upon stat drains as an effective Undead effect. I like the oringal simplicity of stat drain and a corresponding mechanism to regain the lost temp stat through time/rest or a restorative spell.

Stat drain is a great universal effect that could be applied to a number of agents besides Undead:

  1. The Unlife. The Unlife could drain a non-physical stats like Self-Discipline or Presence.
  2. Different types of Demons could drain different stats.
  3. Unholy Objects. Cursed or “evil’ weapons could leach stats point when used in general or when a specific power is used.
  4. New spells could allow a caster to drain and use a targets stat points for their own use. (like in Runelords).

The Undead don’t have to be complicated or identical to D&D–simple mechanisms and solutions work best within the flexibility of the Rolemaster system.

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Rolemaster Combat Hack: Expanded weapon modifiers for Rolemaster.

Even in the earliest editions Rolemaster Arms Law contained a detailed chart of weapons with a variety of data: mods to hit ATs, length, weight, speed, notes etc. Beyond any additional to hit bonuses we never really referred to that chart at all–but it did give hints to useful information that could be incorporated into combat.

Recently RMU expanded various “combat maneuvers” and combat situations into the rules. Some of these set penalties can be offset by the appropriate combat maneuver skill (contra skill) or are just specific penalties based on certain situations (close quarter combat). Two situational penalties did take the actual weapon into effect: subdue and close quarters, but the rest just set a base penalty. (rear attack, protect, etc). It seems obvious that this concept can be expanded much further; that each weapon or weapon type should have custom penalties based on it’s speed, reach and style. For instance, the effort to strike behind (rear attack) should be much different for a martial artist than someone wielding a 2-hand sword.  Or the penalty to protect should be lower for someone wielding a polearm than someone with a dagger.

This simple solution adds another layer to weapon complexity without any new rules, creates real differentiation between weapons for specific combat circumstances and reduces the problem of multiple weapons sharing the same attack table. An additional benefit is that if new combat situations are created or a new weapon added, it’s easy to expand the chart without any other design work (like creating a new attack chart). We’ve added these mods right on the character sheet for easy reference.

(Another category I’m going to add is a “Thrown” penalty for melee weapons and initiative modifiers for use with our initiative rules)

I’ve uploaded the chart in Excel for ease of editing.  At the top is a simpler version which classifies weapons into 4 categories based on weapon reach. Below are a breakout of individual weapons, and SW special weapons. (Pete, not sure I did the file upload process correctly…)

RM Weapon Modifier Chart

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Random Musings. Resistance Rolls in Rolemaster.

One of my recent posts discussed the basic concept of “Stats as Skills”. This ties into my whole experimentation with modifying the RM ruleset and creating a level-less game. Part of my research has led me to re-examining the whole concept of the “Saving Throw”. There has been a few other blog posts HERE and HERE.

Interestingly, Saving Throws are basically the same solution as Fate Points—a common house rule used by many RM players—but used IN ADDITION to RM resistance roles. Saving Throws were originally used to adjudicate powerful kill attacks (disintegration and dragons breath) predicated on a HEROIC assumption: unique and powerful individuals could somehow avoid a kill result based on luck, force of will or some superhuman effort. DnD established some arbitrary categories and situations that allowed for a Saving Throw and apparently in later additions switched to a stat driven resolution.

Rolemaster adopted the same conceit, but rather than a “all or nothing” approach, introduced a % of failure result (or the inverse of MM partial success) AND recognized the difference between “Resisting” a magical/metaphysical attack (RR vs spells) and “Avoiding” a physical/force attack (DB vs. Elemental Bolts). An improvement over DnD for sure, but is there a better way to handle RR’s?

Along the same lines, isn’t the use of both RR’s and Fate points allowing for double indemnity? It’s basically the same rule principle but gives the PC’s 2 mechanisms to avoid an unwanted effect.

I’m still playing around with various solutions, but have made a change in our upcoming session regarding Poison & Disease. Both Poison and Disease would seem to have little relationship to a PC’s level. They are physical, not meta-physical attacks, no different than an arrow or sword strike. A poisonous or viral attack is either delivered or not, and the impacts better addressed by the PC’s constitution and not level. So for Poison/Disease I’ve switched from level based attacks to the standard difficulty penalties to reflect the deadliness of the agent. (basically +30 to -100 although I use a broader, more graduated range). On the target side, the RR is now a Static Maneuver modified by the STAT (not bonus) plus any racial mods for Poison and Disease. So why the STAT and not the STAT bonus?

If the average player stat is 75 than a Routine +30 effect will be resisted pretty much all the time, barring a natural “01” roll. Results are than treated as a partial success/failure like any other MM/SM’s. A success still delivers the minimum effect since there was a successful bite/attack/puncture in the first place. Partial Success (76-100), Failure (26-75) and Absolute Failure (0-25) all induce the applicable effect categories.

Since I’ve moved Poison and Disease into a physical attack resolution all I’m left with for Resistance Rolls are Magic and Fear. I’m of the mind to make Fear also a level-less resolution, resolved with SD stat, with Fear attacks also defined by difficulty penalties like Poison and Disease.

That leaves me with Magic/spells. I’m still pondering this. Anyway, rolling Poison/Fear/Disease into the MM/SM resolution framework continues my push into a level-less game, better unifies game mechanics and doesn’t require any charts!!