House Rules

[S Ferguson]

Just wondering what house rules people were/are using in running RMC. I for, example, use "double open-ended" rolls, for actions that have either a spectacular range of failure to that of stupendous success. like combat rolls. I also use Professions and as much as I can cram in, treasure tables, mythos, and as much as I can from Arduin (which I'm considering running as a RMC game). I also "borrowed" the contest-of-skills from GURPS (just made it percentile based) for some action resolution. For magic I tend to follow Arduin based spells, included in their own "Laws."

I'd be curious to hear of other "house rules" that people have incorporated into their game. I'm always on the lookout for good rules to incorporate into Rolemaster.

Any input would be much appreciated.

Regards,
S

[Resonance]

I have loads... although I wouldn't say that I'm 'running RMC'... I'm running a roleplaying campaign... but I can confine myself to mention a few of the simpler ideas that are easy to grasp and which the players seem expressly happy with:

Hit points are something you get from developing your Endurance skill.
(That part is pure HARP.) I've then renamed Hit points Shock Resistance, to signal a slight change in use... Whenever a character needs to resist stun, he does not make a skill roll (Stun resistance has been dropped for the same reason) but tries to roll below his remaining 'hits'. Ie. the more beat up, or just whiny, your character is, the harder it is for him/her to resist stun.
1 round - no penalty
2 rounds - penalty 10 etc

Also, since I'm using 2 second rounds (pure HARP) but find it unlikely that people can recover from stun, or tie up a wound, in 2 secs, or bleed to death from a 1 hit/round bleeding in less than 2 minutes; stun, bleeding and 'first aid/healing maneuvers' are still on 10 second schedules.

Meaning, that to sit down in the middle of a combat situation to dress up a bleeding wound is a choice you make, and a dangerous one, calling for the party to pull together and defend the two characters that are downed for at least 5 combat rounds, while attempting to dress the wound. (Every attempt takes 5 rounds/10 seconds)
It also means that you can be bleeding pretty hard- for example 10 hits per (not round but) 10 secs/5 rounds - and still be able to perform some vicious acts for a few precious seconds more, while you'll probaly go down from loss of blood alone, within a minute or so.
It finally means that people can stack a prodigous number of stun rounds, because each 'stun round' really lasts for 5 combat rounds. So from time to time, characters will need a breather between the killings, if the battle rages on for several minutes (30 rounds per minute - could be a month long engagement, real time ).

I'm using the same principle for power points; except they are no longer called power points, but focus points, and are not reserved for magic users, but signify a mental reserve that mundane people have a chance of being good at, and applying to their activities, as well. The skill is called Mental Focus, and is in itself nothing new. I've just put it to new and central use.
A character can choose to focus before an action, player declaring how many of his focus points he's willing to invest (max 10 if he forgets to declare). If the roll is below the remaining focus points, it's a success, and the amount invested is (subtracted from the total and) added to whatever skillroll he was attempting to focus upon.

And the same for Exhaustion points (also from the Endurance skill); when characters need to push themselves harder/run faster/keep up a frenzied pace, for the next combat round. (as always, when to use exhaustion points strictly, and when lightly, is a dramaturgical choice, on the GMs part).

best regards

Res

[Tiqon]

I like to have PC's who have some POW! so regarding character creation I have these deviant rules from RMC:

Development points
Flat DP : 40
ekstra only for secondary skills : 20

Race bonus to skills (like +20 to Stalk and hide for elves)

Spelllist progression: 1lvl in spelllist/rank. For a pure spell user 1 lvl in a spell cost 1 DP. For Semi 4 per lvl.

Power points: 10+(Stat/10) + Base (smoothed stat bonus, based on statbonus NOT stat) x lvl + (Rank i PP dev x base).

This gives player ALOT of PP. I know. But if I want to play a Mage I want to cast spells . Im VERY stingy with multipliers so that evens out.

Weapon skills is developed in categories not for each weapon. This is because normally players tend to stick to one or two weapons any way, and I don't have to go into the "what to put in the treasure; something they can use, or be strict and give what is random and they will just have to adapt or sell it" discussion. I can put a cool new one handed hammer into the stash and the ones who have developed one handed weapons can use it. KIS. Keep it simple.

Level bonus:

Use table 09-07 Under optional rules

also you get:

lvl did your profession get get 3,2 or 1 in the skill? Find it here and get the bonus instead. Eg a fighter get +29 level bonus to all weapons.

3 2 1
1 20 10 5
2 23 12 6
3 26 14 7
4 29 16 8
5 32 18 9
6 35 20 10
7 38 22 11
8 41 24 12
9 44 26 13
10 47 28 14
11 50 30 15
12 53 32 16
13 56 34 17
14 59 36 18
15 62 38 19

Body Development you get a fixed bonus/rank depending on your race.

D10 = 8
D8 = 6

Total Hits = BD dev ranks * above + (CON stat/10) + Con Bonus + lvl bonus


These are what we use. I know it can get out of hand, but the one player I have who make his own PC I trust to make it balanced. The other PC's I make together with the players.

Long ago we made a "Rolemaster" system without professions and levels.... Ill let that sink in.... yeah... It was interesing but could not have been done without some pretty badass spreadsheets . We used that system for a couple of years, but drifted apart. Now we play again thanks to FG2. I have been thinking of tweeking RMC to our old Level/profession-less system again.... maybe some day.

[S Ferguson]

Long ago we made a "Rolemaster" system without professions and levels.... Ill let that sink in.... yeah... It was interesing but could not have been done without some pretty badass spreadsheets . We used that system for a couple of years, but drifted apart. Now we play again thanks to FG2. I have been thinking of tweeking RMC to our old Level/profession-less system again.... maybe some day.

I'm still letting that sink in. You must have been the knig of Excel

[S Ferguson]

Or the king of Excel, I'm just still flabbergasted.

[Tiqon]

Heh. Mind you this was like 12 years ago. I made it with my friend, hes brilliant, like a math shark and I just have the ideas I guess. We had NO idea how to do it to begin with and had NO programming experience so we did not do anything in VBA. We did manage to figure out how to record macros and used some of that, but mostly we had really complex ideas on how the system should work and Excell help us do the math. Working with that I actually got the drive to take an IT-exam and work after that as a programmer.

Anyway it was not very fancy, just... complex.

The basic idea was that anyone could learn anything. I had played Hero system for a while and really loved the point buy system, but loved the spells and combat in Rolemaster.

You got development points instead of levels, that was pretty easy to do. The cost for skill was changed around and the more you wanted to learn a skill the harder it got. You always use 1 DP on a skill but the bonus you get for the point got lower and lower the more points you put into the skill. So the first point gave you a neat bonus, the next a bit less and so forth. There was no limit to how much DP you could use on any skill.

You could take a profession like Soldier. you would buy it for a fixed amount of DP. For that you would get bonuses to a set of skill and more (don't want to go into that here). This is also how you would get access to spells. You had to take a profession like Magician. There was no limit to how many professions you could take. You just had to spend DP and do the time we had set to learn the profession (years).

As we had almost all skills in this system we could find in all the books, we made a matrix with synergy bonus. So eg the "rank" (remember we have no ranks, but lets just call it that) bonus of acrobatics gave a percentage to diving etc.

I don't have office installed on my pc at the moment so I can't look anything up. Google spreadsheet did not like the xsl file as it apprently had more than 400.000 cells :S. Mind you they must be mostly empty hehe... The online version of office you can access via Hotmail could not convert it either.

[S Ferguson]

You should throw it my way. I have Office Enterprise 2010 (never felt the need to upgrade). I could check it here. It would be an interesting thing to see.

[Tiqon]

The sheet was always a work in progress so (just like FG2 ) and was evolving. So somethings probably don't work. I'm pretty sure this one was an advanced one we worked on but never 100% finished. There are NO explanation what so ever, but sure you can have a look at it. Oh and for some of the functions to work i THINK you have to turn on some features in Excell. The names of those and where to find them eludes me as its 9 years ago I have edited the file :S.

You can grab it here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7273673/DUMMY.xls

Dammit man.... now I get all psyked about this and want to begin work on a program that can do this... must... resists.... don't... have.... time.... arrrrghhh!!!

[S Ferguson]

While you wallow in misery, I'll take a look at this. It has to be interesting .

[Resonance]

Heh, one of the roleplayers in my group is pretty excell-happy. I'd love to watch him get into that monsters lair...

But it sounds like we should be cautious not to wake the sleeping giant, here. That player will just end up sprouting rapid growing questions, and before we know it, Tiqon will get swept away into distant clouds, where enormous files are roaring for the lifeblood of mortal men...