rolemaster – Page 24 – The Rolemaster Blog

March 16, 2015March 14, 2015

Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun

Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun is a major player in the culture of Waterdeep. He is described in the source material as interfering in events often years into the future. To this end ‘my’ Blackstaff is going to be a Seer.

The sourcebooks describe him as just a ‘magic user’ but Rolemaster gives you plenty of different types of magic user to choose from. There are three realms of magic. The Eassence is Mystra’s Weave, Channeling is power derived from your god or deity and mentalism is that inner magic controlled by the mind of the caster. We are in Jedi territory with the mentalists!

Eassence is proably the most overtly powerful magic, this is where you will find your fireballs and lightning bolts and such. The three core magic users of this realm are the magician, illusionist and alchemist.

Channeling includes your cleric, animist (druidic type) and the healer. All Channeling casters have access to some level of healing magic with Clerics being able to raise the dead and healers instantly healing the wounded by taking the injury on themselves and then healing themselves with their magic.

Mentalists focus on the mind and bodily control for the most part. Their magic rarely effects more than one target at once and can be more subtle. The mentalists have a healer called a Lay healer and a Seer who can work with past and future knowledge. This is where I want to put Khelben Arunsun.

Don’t think for one second that a Seer is a push over. Mentalists are great ones for Telekinesis and he can easily pick up objects and throw them across the room with devastating effect (don’t think vase of flowers, think ripping up a cobble stone and throwing that 300′).

There were more options for my Khelben. In addition to those nine options Rolemaster has three ‘hybrid’ magic users that straddle different realms to give us a sorcerer, mystic and astrologer. These are really fun to play and Mystic was a really strong contender when considering this NPC. In Rolemaster terms Khelben is 39th level which does give a lot of scope.

It was while I was developing Khelben that it occured to me that although creating NPCs is a great way to learn the basics of any roleplaying game, for a new game master creating a 39th level character is not the best way to start. I would strongly recommend creating a fist full of lower level characters before tackling anything like these more powerful NPCs.

I would also say for NPCs don’t fall into the trap of always going for Magicans and Clerics as stock magic users. If you mix it up a bit and use the entire spectrum then you players will never know quite what is going to hit them next.

March 13, 2015March 12, 2015

Creating Waterdeep’s NPCs

Probably the most significant NPCs for any game set in Waterdeep has to be the Lords.

SPOILER ALERT!

I am going to talk about the D&D and Rolemaster levels and classes for some very significant NPCs so if you don’t want to know don’t read it.

We really have to start with Piergeiron. According to the City of Splendors source books he is 14th level or higher Paladin. So translating this into Rolemaster speak and you are looking at a 21st level character. That seems fitting as 20th level in Rolemaster is sometimes referred to as “Lord Level” so that was easy enough. Now the Paladin bit gives you a number of choices. The core rule books do not provide a Paladin class. The reason being that the flexible approach to character design does not really need to define every possibe flavour of possible PC. Now two of the Rolemaster Companions (Rolemaster Companion 1 & 2) do define the Paladin profession. General consensus seems to be that the Paladin profession is best reserved for a high powered campaign although I do not have a problem with them. The question is do we really need a Paladin class? There are three ways of creating a Paladin…

Option 1: Use the defined profession, problably from rolemaster companion 2, being the most balanced version.

Option 2: Use a cleric and spend more development points on the arms side and less on the magic.

Option 3: Create a fighter and invest in some slepp lists.

Options 2 & 3 require a slightly higher level of roleplaying as it would be very easy to abandon to the archetype of he Paladin and just buy the skills and spells etc that are the cheapest for the base profession.

In the game I am in the process of setting up I am not using the professions from the companions so option one is out any way so that only leaves me with 2 & 3 to play with.

For Piergeiron I am going down the route of the Cleric based Paladin. The only things I need to do is make sure I buy just enough Transcend Armour skill (a skill that allows the caster to overcome the penalties for wearing, in this case metal, armour and casting spells) so that our chap can wear his platemail and of course Platemail as a Maneuvering in Armour skill. Both of these skills are skills that can be built up little by little every level just s single skill rank every level. So what you get is a Competent warrior imbued with the power of his God. that pretty much is the very definition of a Paladin to my mind.

So lets look at the third option…

To be the classical Paladin of RPG yore you need to be able to lay on hands to heal people and scare the undead. There is pretty much it. There are really three spell lists that the character would find desirable. Light Ways, Purifications and Concussion Ways. Learning Magic is not going to be easy but with Rolemaster you can start to learn a spell list and let that investment of development points ride until you are successful. I would suggest that you buy just 2 skill ranks in the first spell list and then roll the spell gain roll every level until you get it. Two ranks equates to a 10% chance of success. Given those odds our 21st level Paladin would probably have made 22 attempts (characters get a chance at 0th level before starting play) so statistically getting those three lists is not impossible or even that improbable. As a player I would most likely be quite disappointed if I had not learned at least two by then.

I would also say in my reinterpretation of the Realms that if a group of Paladins, such as the knights of the round table, rode out on a quest, to find the holy grail, that it would be made up of both types of Paladin with neither seeing any distinction between themselves. Every group is made of individuals of differing strengths and weaknesses. Going back the Waterdeep and the Lords Piergeiron is not the only Paladin on the council. Texter is 17th level (D&D)/27th (RM) and also a Paladin. Taking into account Texters feats then I would certainly make Texter a fighter based Paladin.

Whilst my versions of the Paladin are definitely less powerful than the Companion profession it does not suffer from the accusation of being over powered. If anything I would say that those characters would suffer for their convictions but as a GM I would compensate for that giving the characters access to support from their order and opening doors that may not otherwise be open to them. I have always rewarded good roleplaying and the Paladin definitely does give plenty of opportunities for that.

It also goes to show that although the companions do define some 70 or more additional professions you do not need to rush out and buy all those books and then read 1,000 pages of rules just to play the game.

March 9, 2015March 8, 2015

Giving Waterdeep the Rolemaster Treatment

I am very pleased that my game will be going from two long weekends a year to three weekends. Furthermore rather than my game being the Friday night/Saturday morning game it will be moving to the Saturday afternoon, evening and Sunday morning slot. In real playing terms that will mean 16hr+ hours of actual game play rather than about 10hrs. Over a year we are talking 48hrs play compared to 20hrs. The game is going to get bigger in another way as well. I am starting some players in Waterdeep this summer.

As you know I am primarily a face to face, paper and pen roleplayer. I have been dabbling with play-by-post (PBP or PBM) gaming and I have been enjoying playing that game. It is my intention to start a PBP game this summer set in Waterdeep but still in the same campaign as my face to face game. Geographically the centres of action will nearly 1,000miles apart so they should not interfere to frequently but there is always the chance that news will flow in both directions about significant events. What I do have to do is get Waterdeep ready for the players.

I am a GM that likes to have everything prepared. One of the really nice things about the forgotten realms materials is that it gives the race, level and class of all the significant NPCs. So right now I am creating all these NPCs as Rolemaster characters.

If you are new to rolemaster then creating characters is one of the best ways to become familiar with all the rules. As a GM it will be your responsibility to assist your players to create their characters so the more NPCs you create the easier it is to help other new players get started. It also helps, I think, to create many NPCs to make you faster at creating characters. It can take inexperienced players and GMs the best part of an evening to create their first characters if they do not know the rules.

I would have said that the biggest single difference between the systems (Rolemaster and D&D) is the way that magic magic is handled. It would definitely be to the GMs advantage to have created a few magicians and clerics before trying to help a player create their first PC magic user.

When you are converting the significant NPCs from the Forgotten Realms source materials then as a rule of thumb you should multiply all levels by about 1.5 so that a 12th level fighter in the D&D rules such as Helm Dwarf-friend, Master of Sundabar would be an 18th level warrior in Rolemaster. For a more powerful game you would make the NPCs higher level but as a rule x1.5 works pretty well.

Right now have a number of sourcebooks to re-read to refresh my self about this location and maybe fifty important NPCs to create before I can let any innocent PCs loose in the city. All the new players will be running around as solo characters initially, probably for the first couple of levels, ‘enjoying’ adventures created especially for them to let them bed in and get a feel for the setting. As always I will share as much as I can here.

March 2, 2015

PC Perils #5 Is that a burial mound I see before me?

So our intrepid heroes have fought their way through the abandoned mines/hill giant village, defeated what ever was was being resurrected in the pyramid and defeated the angry Active Tree.

Surely that is not a Barrow or burial mound just off the path?

Phot showing burial mound — Burial mound lost in the woods.

If you cannot quite see the mound here it is highlighted.

One of the scary things about this is quite how hard it is to see. It would be quite legitimate to camp just within meters of this and not ven know it is there. As a monster, everyone loves the undead, the seem to transcend every genre and every world setting from from Tolkien’s Barrow Wights, Forgetten Realms Wights and Spectres right through to a good old Zombie apocalypse in modern day campaigns.

From a Rolemaster point of view, just look at that undergowth! I would had to make some MM rolls to get out of the way of anything big and scary coming at me through there!

These past ‘Perils’ posts, the abandoned mines, the pyramid and this one are genuinely fell within a single 1hr dog walk. The active tree and the seal beach were all within 8 miles from home.

I will be on the look out for more ways to scare the bejesus out of your PCs soon!

February 23, 2015

An update on Rolemaster Character Design

I have been creating some rangers and monks this weekend following on from last week’s post on non-random spell list acquisition. Character Design is a very personal thing. Some players like to have a few skills to as high a score as possible whereas others like a nice wide skill base but accept that they may fail more often. I am in the second camp and I build characters with many skills.

When it comes to semi spell users there is another issue to consider. Do you lean towards your magical aspect or the physical? I think the strength in the semi spell users really lies in their magic use when combined with their non-dependence on magic. What I mean is that if you can fight all day and all night just using sword, armour and shield, you get through doors using your skills with a lock pick and tools, and track your foe back to their favourite haunt just through tracking and observation then you are an effective member of the team. If on top of that you can heal wounds, always find the fastest path and slip by even the most observant guards then that is over and above what a meer mortal can do. My rangers almost never run out of power points because they are just using their magic to accent their existing skills.

Another question is when to start learning magic. I like to leave it for the first four or five levels. Get a good solid skills base in place, learn to use your armour and sword. Learning magic is expensive but once you have 10 ranks in a skill you are in the realms of diminishing returns so it makes sense to spend less on those skills and divert those saved points to your spell lists. Probably the to most useful spell lists for a fledgling ranger are not the ranger base lists at all. I think they are concussion ways and detection mastery. The simple act of being able to heal your own hits and keep on fighting or even restore some hits to the parties primary fighter can make all the difference. Detection mastery is excellent for scanning a room or hoard and looking for magical items, If you cannot carry it all then you may as well take the best. You can also use it to sweep for a hidden magic user if you know what realm you are looking for,

So results of my testing were that it really depends on how many points you want to put into spell lists. That may sound stupidly obvious but it isn’t. Under the pure rules as I call them (5% per rank and no stat bonuses) you can only find 12DP per level then you will learn spell lists faster than a character using non-random learning. If you can muster 20DP then it makes very little difference. The pure rules character generally learns a list a level sooner than the non-random counterpart but a couple of unlucky rolls can wipe that out. It is not reliable. Statistically you will learn lists faster under the pure rules but in my testing I only created six characters (three monks and three rangers) and worked them up to 10th level buying the skills I really would have wanted. The character with the least magic did have rigid leather armour, spear and a decent ambush skill and decent subterfuge skills. The most magically able version just had soft leather armour, no ambush skill and could not pick locks or detect traps.

It all comes down to choice and the type of character you want to play. It even depends to some extent to the initial stat and potential stat rolls. I used the same stat rolls for all six characters and the character started with 33DP and went up to 40 by 7th level and then down to 39 where it stayed through to 10th. Your DPs are variable but the cost of buying that magic 5 ranks a level is fixed at 20DP. Poorer stats can make a huge difference to the other skills you can buy. This was doubly true for the monk characters. Rangers have a lot of useful skills that cost just a single DP and you can round out a character with a handful of those skills. The monks have very few one point skills which limit them significantly.

I am not sure what my conclusion is. I would have said that if you are in a skills heavy game then pure spell list acquisition will give you more magic in the long run but if the GM is looking for characters to be proficient at magic then non-random will only give you that if you are prepared to spend at least 20DP a level and every level to get those spell lists. I am not convinced this is a good thing and would rather not tie my players hands that way but each GM is their own boss.

February 20, 2015February 19, 2015

How optional rules affect character design

The other GM and I have been doing all this optional rules checking and testing over the last two weeks. Where we differ the most is over magic and the implications that has for character design.

My setting is what I am calling Community Magic. By that I mean that every community will have some access to magic. It coud be that there is a mad witch that lives in the woods that can arrange everything from love potions to revenge to healing or it may be the local priest. In towns and larger settlements than more ‘respectable’ magic users may be found. In Shadowdale, which is where the party are still hanging out there are at least six suspected magic users including a seer, a bard, a cleric, an alchemist and two monks. The bard is itinerant and the monks are part of a different adventuring party and as such are just passing through. That still leaves three resident magic users in a town of under 1,000 people.

The other GM is using what I call Family Magic in that most families will have at least one magic user. The whole fabric of society is interwoven with magic and its use is common place and unsurprising.

These two world views have an impact on our character creation or design rules. I do not allow stat bonuses to be added to the spell acquisition rolls meaning that spells are harder to learn and everyone has less spell lists. Two magic users of the same profession are likely to have different lists and may have very little cross over. There are far more lists than most magic users will ever learn. The other game has magic as something that is much easier to learn.

There is an option for non random spell list acquisition. You buy a number of ranks and when you have enough you get the list automatically. The threshold is set to 10 ranks to learn a list to 10th level (what is called a ‘b’ list). In my game you would have to buy 20 ranks to guarantee to learn the same list.

excerpt from spell law showing the optional rule.

For pure spell users each rank costs one development point and most PCs have about 30-35 available. It is not unreasonable for a character to be able to spend 10 points per level or even a few more on magic.

So for pure spell users in my game after three levels worth of spending a magic user would probably (statistically speaking) two spell lists and maybe if the dice had been particularly kind a third one. In the other game the same character would have three lists and would be on the way to a fourth list. Not a huge difference really if the character is a well-rounded one with two-thirds of their points spent on other things than just spells.

If the character is a hardcore magic user and spends 20 points per level and sacrifices most other skills then i my game they are guaranteed the three lists but in the other game they have a guaranteed six spell lists. It is certainly possible to build such a focused character. The remaining 15 points you spend on some body development (hit points) perception and maybe stalk and hide. Everything is fine as long as you never run out of spells and have to try to fight for your life as you will have sacrificed all your combat training. I think this would be a fairly selfish character relying on other party members to carry them figuratively speaking.

If we look at what are called semi spell users, these are your rangers, monks, paladins etc. Their spell lists do not cost one point but four points a rank. If we dedicate 12 development points to spell lists then under my rules statistically the character would have a 90% chance of one list, a 30% of two lists and 5% of three lists or there about. Under the other rules system the character would have a 0% chance of any lists at all (three levels at three ranks per level equals nine ranks, one short of the magic 10).

It appears to me that an optional rule designed to make magic more common actually makes magic harder to learn unless everyone is a pure spell user which seems unlikely.

I am going to design a bunch characters under this optional rule to see if what I suspect is actually reflecting in the reality of the characters created. I will feed back next week.

February 16, 2015

Rolemaster Classic

Last time I wrote about how we are attacking all the optional rules. My fellow GM has some of the oldest rule books in the known world, I think, and I convinced him that seeing that his ipad is basically welded to his hand anyway why not go for the pdf rules. He conceded and now is the proud owner of Rolemaster Classic.

I have been using the pdf Rolemaster Classic for a while now but most of my other books are on paper or home scanned versions.Just so we are both singing from the same hymn sheet I bought the Rolemaster Classic Arms Law, Spell Law and Creatures and Treasures this week.

In my mind Rolemaster (RM2) and Rolemaster Classic are pretty much the same game but I was shocked to see that the date on the RMC Spell Law was 2011! I always think of Rolemaster as a quality game from the 80s not something that new.

I have been reading my nice new rule books and I have to say I am even more impressed than I thought I would be. I loved the new and updated rules section in Arms Law but Spell Law is by far my favourite updated rulebook.

There is only one fly in the ointment and that is Creatures and Treasures. A lot of my time is spent converting creatures or monsters over from AD&D as they are native to Faerun. The rules for this have disappeared from Creatures and Treasures. I still have my old books so it is not a show stopper but it ould have been nice to be able to just have the four books and say that is it, everything I need to run my game.

On a side note I bought a cheap android tablet to accompany my new rules from Amazon and it cost me just £70. It is no ipad but it will only b used for displaying pdf rules and running combat minion. I have run the minion freebie version on my phone so I am pretty certain that the tablet will be up to the job. All my NPCs are in pdf format all ready as these are created using the RCU and printed using cutePDF writer. and the adventures are all in PDF format too. I think the next game session could be entirely run from the tablet. Up until now it has all been books, files, a laptop and copious print outs. I feel like in the last four months I have been ushered into the 21st century and have lost me preconceptions of pbp gaming and now I have bought my first tablet (I could never see the point of them before this).

February 13, 2015

Optional Rules Options

The way our gaming group is set up is that we are a group of five that meet regularly and when we meet we normally play two games, both Rolemaster. Up until recently that has been one Shadow World and one Faerun/Forgotten Realms.

When we next get together to play; the Shadow World game should come to an end as we are about to take on the ultimate bad guy and either save the world or die trying with no other options on the cards.

What this means is that we need a new game and it is someone else’s turn to GM. As it happens the new GM has not game mastered Rolemaster for many years (in fact his rule books are so old his spell law is printed in a hand written style font in blue ink, what was going on with that?). What we are doing is taking the opportunity to go through ever single companion and every single optional rule and skill and between us trying to unify exactly what options we are using.

The Cover of Rolemaster Companion IV — Rolemaster Companion IV

One of the nicest features of all the Rolemaster Companions after Companion IV is that they contain a couple of pages of tick lists with all the optional rules and how important that option is, whether it is considered a core rule now, is it highly recommended, does it add a lot of complexity to the game and so on. As two separate GMs we can complete the tick lists apart, see what is the same and then look at where we diverge and discuss those particular rules.

I think this is a brilliant concept of not only identifying every rule and where to find it but also how important the game designers felt each rule was. I am a bit of a miserable git at times and think that every optional rule I introduce has to add something substantial to the game, to pay its way so to speak.

The framework we create in the coming months will probably be our default game now for the next ten years unless I can convince them all to do a Rolemaster Unified Beta II play test.

Watch this space.

February 6, 2015February 4, 2015

Faerun Campaign Update

Today I am traveling to meet up with my players for the second weekend of my Rolemaster / Faerun campaign.

For the first session I only had three of the four players so the party looked like a Sorceress, Cleric and Warrior Mage. This time those three will be joined by the fourth player character and an NPC being a Paladin and a Mystic, The mystic is “Little Miss Defensive” from previous posts. I finally made up my mind on Tuesday night as to which version I was going to use and the mystic won out in the end.

All in all this is a very magical group of characters that is pretty much what I wanted. Every realm is represented to some degree and there is a little bit of cross over which is good. In my world magic users of all persuasions tend to have less spell lists each to force players into deciding what is really important to them. If you look at the realms of magic in this party you have essence/channeling (sorceress), channeling (cleric), arms/essence (warrior mage), arms/channeling (paladin) and essence/mentalism (mystic). Everyone is unique but at the same time they can share and learn from one another.

I have seen a few people on twitter talk about tweeting their game ‘live’. I am in two minds about this. Would it be distracting to be constantly picking up your phone to tweet? I think it will not do any harm to try it at least once so it is my intention to tweet the party progress tonight and if it seems OK then tomorrow as well. We will see how that works out.

I have given the stats for a few monsters that are common to Faerun but new to Rolemaster over the past three months. Once the party have met them, and that should happen this weekend all being well, I will share a few more creatures with you.

If you are a D&D DM considering trying Rolemaster then let me know any creatures you know and love and I will make sure you have the stats if they are not in any of the official books. The conversion process is pretty simple and not particularly time-consuming.

In the meantime there is a link to my twitter account to the left and look out for some tweets from me after about 6pm.

January 30, 2015January 29, 2015

Rolemaster and Faerun – A little Background

I thought I would share a little bit of background as to why I am so interested in Rolemaster and Faerun. The game I am running is not your usual Friday night gaming session. My players and I get together just twice a year for a gaming only weekend where we manage about 30hrs of pure roleplaying once you take out the time needed for sleeping and eating. The next of these mammoth weekends is just eight days away and I have been working up to this session since November last year.

The game is set in Faerun as you know and after the time of troubles. I have never played a game in the forgotten releams before but I do own a lot of the materials, picked up cheaply second-hand, and none of my players have adventured in there either. Due to the infrequency of the gaming sessions I wanted something that would keep the game alive between meetings. There are so many forgotten realms books now on kindle for free or so cheap as to be almost free

Forgotten realsm books on Amazon — 14 books fo 99p or if that is too expensive then you can have books for free.

that both my players and I could read about the world gaining in our understanding of the setting and its lore.

My players are familiar with Shadow World, a native Rolemaster game setting, and one of the features of Shadow World are Eassence Storms. Faerun after the time of troubles had areas of wild magic and for me I can make the two almost synonymous and give my players a point of reference they can identify with.

I hope you can see that as a setting the realms is an incredibly easy option even if like me and all my players you have busy lives and obligations and cannot devote the hours and days required to create a believable and rich bespoke gaming world of your own. I honestly believe that if you have never visited the realms and you are planning on starting a new campaign then it is definitely worth your consideration.

If you are coming from the D&D world then as a transition to Rolemaster it is easier to have as many familiar points of reference for your players and again the realms can serve you well. Not every monster or race has a direct one to one equivalent but that is one of the things I am addressing here. I am creating the Rolemaster statistics for anything I find in the forgotten realms that I cannot find in the Rolemaster rules and more importantly I am going to create them for the forth coming new edition of Rolemaster, Rolemaster Unified (RMU).

I have up until now been holding some things back. These are creatures and such that my players have not yet met and I do not want to reveal before the game session coming up just in case they stumble upon this blog. They do not know I am writing this and I am not going to tell them. Once they have met/defeated and have the measure of the next new monster on the menu then I will happily share the stats with you all.

I will of course share with you the parties progress as they get on with their adventures.