Is role master worth getting into?

Classic fantasy or magic world

I like it.
The Development Point mechanism for advancement means that you can build pretty much any type of character, despite it being a class based system.
Want your sorcerer to be a rapier wielding dandy? No problem, just have to put points into social and weapon skills, which reduces the points available for your magical skills.

I've played this since the 80s.

It is not a tactical game. The randomness of the crit charts turns combat into a terrifying and frustrating clusterfuck of clenched sphincters.

Its fucking glorious.

Its editing is Hell. They seriously need an editor to make it easier to find shit.

That being said. The character creation system and the way critical hit charts make every weapon lethal means every character will be different.

Read the rulebook. Then read it again. Get those stickies that let you tag pages. USE THE FUCK OUT OF THEM. Number them and keep an index of your own creation. You will need it.

Forget the idea of called shots. Doesn't work.

Just enjoy the randomness of where you got hit, and pray for no E 100 Slash results. cringe.

Sounds like it is going to be a fuck fest

Do you still play this or it was replaced by other system?

any story if heroism or fuckery you can tell us?

a beautiful one. a couple of stupidly lucky rolls and you one shot a dragon with a thrown broadsword.

or the gm rolls well and a drunk farmer slashes open your 9th level fighter's throat with a broken bottle when he takes offense to the fighter trying to pull traditional That Guy in a tavern bullshit.

What you need to understand is that its a d100 system. Characters have a skill based Offensive bonus and a Stat and Item based Defensive bonus.

Roll d100, add OB, subtract DB and compare the result on a chart that ranges up to 150. That will give you an amount of raw HP damage and probably a Critical severity (A through E) and chart (slash, crush, puncture, fire, electricity, cold, etc).

The chart runs 1-100, and gives more HP damage and specific injuries like broken bones, bleeding, stun, crippling and straight fucking death right there.

Helmets and shields not only make a difference in DB, but can make a difference in the critical results. Some effects are ignored if you have a shield or helm, depending on the results.

Yes. Some old friends still use it, but generally with other old grognards. With newer players we use something else.

We taught a new guy to play and he picked it up pretty quick, even with all the mods we made to use the modern version for Walking Dead.

The two examples of the bar and the dragon were both from actual events.

Had another where we fought a giant cockatrice in its lair. The assassin was on its back rolling poorly (we all were). It finally gets sick of him and snaps at him.

Several high rolls later the critical is E severity (the worst) on the Slashing table. Rolled 100 on the crit chart.

"strike to foe's groin area. All vitals are destroyed" Plus a shit ton of stunned and unable to parry.

Note, that critical, in that edition did not specify that the target is dead.

We decided the Cockatrice just snapped at him and trimmed off his shlong. We had to root through the filth in its lair looking for the "fallen member" of our party.

Oh my god, sounds like a lots of fun

Would you say it is a story driven game or more like OSR?

Also how high it is in the crunch spectrum, 0 being free form and 10 FATAL

I would say anima beyond fantasy is a 7(They said it was inspired by rolemaster)

It can be either story or crunch driven. Characters are mechanically detailed, but you gain experience from skill use as well as combat so you can level up (slowly) by just being good at your job and doing it often.

Most of the crunch is in character generation and leveling. During play, there's light bookkeeping that everyone should do for their character because its a lot to dump on a GM.

Give you an idea of the skill system for crunch.

You have categories. For example-1 handed slashing weapons (swords of all kinds, daggers, knives, long razor blades). Any 1 handed weapon that you slash with (or thrust, like rapiers) fits in this. You can buy up your skill in this category and the whole lot gets better. But its fucking expensive.

In that category, you have individual weapon types like Dagger, Longsword, Rapier, or Chakram (HTH only).

Each of those is a sub skill which are cheaper to buy up.

The catch, you can't dump all of your Development Points (which are based on your stats) into buying level after level after level of one skill. There's a maximum you can buy each time you level up.

This forces characters to spread their development around their 6 page, 2 column skill list.(this doesn't include spells).

Very quickly, players realize there are skills you buy every fucking level, skills you should buy because they're useful, but not every-session critical, skills that are becoming more useful, and skills that _your_ character should have.

You'll be able to get something in all of those groups every level. You will never get everything you want every level.

There's also diminishing returns on skill investment. At a certain point, you just get less bonus for the same dump of points. Just to represent how hard it is to improve at skills once one gets to a certain degree of expertise.

The first 10 ranks purchased of a skill give you +5 each. The next give you +2, then +1. Some don't do this, but they're much more expensive.

cont...

Not every skill has this diminishing return. Those that don't are fucking expensive.

Different classes have different costs for different skills. Every class can buy every skill. is correct. You want your fighter to take up spellcasting? It'll cost ya. I had a mage years ago (early 90s) who used a spear. Wasn't great with it, but it came in handy.

Magic is slow to cast.

Well, slow to cast safely.

It takes three rounds to cast a spell. Or you can shorten that and increase the possibility of Spell Failure. Its like Fumbles for magic. It will end badly. I had a Paladin suffer a stroke. Cost him the use of the left side of his body and his magic use.

Fumbles are mostly harmless, but they can get god awful. And the player who fumbles gets to roll for the result. Those high rolling dice fuck your ass sideways when it comes to fumbling.

Monks are unholy instruments of pain. They get cheap access to Adrenal Defense. A skill that boosts your Defensive Bonus to absurd levels of untouchable.

Martial arts are pricey but the payoff is solid.

You really only get one weapon category, as the others are stupid expensive. But that one category is cheap.

If DnD monks are Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse, Rolemaster monks are Bruce Lee in a bad mood.

For some reason, people don't play them much.

For a GM, I strongly advise photocopying the attack tables for each weapon the PCs are using, and the critical tables that go with them. Put them in a binder with dividers for each character name. This will cut down the page flipping.

People complain that there are soooooo many charts that combat takes forever. They just haven't gotten used to it, and lose track of which chart is on which page.

Its a front heavy rule system. The learning curve is steep and long.

But when you get it, its like standing on the top of a mountain, looking not down, but outwards.

if I think of anything else, I'll post in the morning. I'll check for questions then too.

Sounds nice when you know well the system, i might give it a try

Any example of play to get a better idea of how the system works?

Is it possible to play a ninja?

Which edition should i start with?

What would you tell a group of dnd 5e players and light games players?

I prefer systems that don't use multiple tables for every single attack.
>Defensive modifier table
>Offensive modifier table
>To hit table
>Critical table (maybe)
>Fumble table (maybe)

Just let me roll a fucking die and do some quick arithmetic.

Rolemaster is the game where each supplement adds new classes, new rules and new items to the game.

Classes were all highly specialized and numrous. For example, in the magical classes you would have magicians, arcanists, wizards, archimages, sorcerers, cabalists, demonologists, druids, oniromancers, psionics, spell throwers, necromancers, cartomancers, necromancer assassins, lunar mages, herbalist, dark wizards, inquisitors, spellblades, magus, crystal mages, houri, astral travelers... We used to joke that the psionic ninja-lumberjack was missing in the list.

After a while official directory supplements came out just to find which class and which rule where in what supplement.

The system is extremely detailed with charts for about anything. This game is the rule lawyer's wet dream, but it is really tedious to play. Character are climbing a mountain, they have to do like 20 climb rolls (a roll per x-meter).

IMO Rolemaster would do for a pretty good video game in the style of Baldur's Gate or Fallout as everything would be automated. For a TTRPG it is too complex and too tedious.

Also every critical hit you take makes you suck at everything. Once the dice fuck you over in combat, that's it. Start looking for a way out, because you're just going to miss everything and get your shit pushed in for the rest of the fight.

It sounds 'difficult' and 'lethal', but those buzzwords can eat a dick. Combat just turns into a game of stacking penalties until there's no point even trying to do anything anymore.

And then you get to spend in-game weeks waiting for natural healing to take those penalties away. Make sure to divide the total penalty by whatever number of days a table (another one) tells you the healing will require, and keep track of the diminishing penalties day by day.

Chartmaster is pretty awesome.

I had one of my best games as a player in.it but I had no idea what the fuck was going on most of the time.

I mean you start character gen by rolling like 18 d100 to represent two sets of stats one potential one actual and go from there.

I was some noble wizard with 15 gp a month income which was meant to be a disgustingly huge amount bossing all these peasants serfs and stable boys who were the other characters around with the other noble.

I don't think I cast a spell once. Most of the campaign was just sleeping in inns with the odd fight against a fairy.

Nothing but charts for days and the only sense of balance is that anything is potentially life-ending, no matter how prepared.

Related to anything involving Rolemaster

youtube.com/watch?v=DOgtY7vMeDo&feature=youtu.be&t=2123

>a d100 system.
More importantly, it is an open-ended d100 system.
On paper, the throat-slashing peasant wouldn't stand a chance against a 9th level fighter. Along comes Lady Luck, drunk and drugged out of her mind and throws up on the dice, and voila; it's time to roll up a new character.

It is glorious. And I'll probably never play it again.

Conversations by people who have never played the games they are complaining about.

No examples that I can think of. Youtube might have something. Did a quick look and remembered that RM is popular in northern Europe. Many of the vids are not english.

You could play a ninja, depending on what you define as a ninja. Historically possible ninja? Yes. Anime ninja? No.

May as well start with the latest edition as its possible to find it complete. Older editions are harder to get the core of Character Law, Campaign Law, Spell Law, Arms Law and Creatures and Monsters ( or whatever they may be called or combined into in various editions).

I would tell them that its not rules light, character creation is not casual, and most of the heavy lifting during play can be done by the GM.

You mean like Dnd? With the exception of a fumble table, DnD has all of those. They're just much smaller.

Or you could get someone with healing or go see one, like in every other fantasy RPG.

The reason i am looking for a new game its because i am currently playing 5e and damn you need about 4 encounters to even challenge the players and after that they just have to rest a day and they are good to go

Been years as on one near me well play "OLD" stuff.I remember armor being a rules hell (foe something that was to be rules light) but better, As in you could wear it and have it work. LOL Rolemaster was as well it just hidden it behind a book of charts. I remember it was all in one book which I liked. .. Damm been to long, sorry

Seen a level 10 in full plate taken out by a rat, he mess with into a corner LOL

Seen that with any group that know how to play. With one group we went thought 5 encounters in 3 hours. The group I in now we also TPK almost every encounter.

The last time I went to Iron crow site they sold ALL editions of the game. Thank god for on demand printing

Holy Jesus!

Sadly they don't have Rolemaster Companion 2 or 4.
RMC2 had a shit ton of classes and a lovely full list of all their skill costs in one long chart.

RMC4 had rules for making up your own classes.

Alas. The good old days.

Space Master is crazy stupid splattered all over the walls lethal. Ever wonder what happens when you load a support railgun with High Explosive Armour Piercing Depleted Uranium Shells and then burst fire it into an unarmoured human?

Space Master knows. Or so I've been told by grognards older than I.

Here's the tactical difference between the DnD games of all forms and Rolemaster.

DnD-Two groups form up and begin whacking away at each other until one side looks at their HP total and decides to run. The upside is that when things go wrong, they go wrong slowly, measurably and with calculated risk.

Rolemaster-two groups go up against each other and begin doing horrible things until someone gets luckier than usual and someone is very dead. At this point things go very bad fast. Fighting more than one opponent at a time is certain swift death. So, the fortunate side will now stomp the other side, unless someone gets VERY lucky and turns the tide.

Rolemaster adds player fear to combat. A sense of helplessness when things go wrong because they players don't have the tools to recover. They're already all in on combat. After a few fights, they start calculating averages in their heads, knowing where they top out, and where they usually will land. But just a tiny bit of luck, not much, just +10 higher on a d100 roll and its all fucking God given gravy.

And that's the rush of combat. The thrill. And that thrill is some of the immersion players seek. That little bit of weak knee fear makes us care just a little more about the odds, about what we take the risk for. And what other options beside kick in the door are there. Really solid planning happens.

Really solid planning that is basically for nothing. Any given roll of the dice is a crapshoot.

Not true. A spectacularly shit roll will fuck everything. A poor roll will make things harder. The point of plans in Rolemaster is to mitigate the poor rolls. Those rare super high and low rolls are just that. Rare. But they get all the attention because they are just so amazing.

I've fumbled plenty of times in my last campaign (Walking Dead). Recoilled an MP-5 into my face twice in a row. Not a problem because we had a plan to deal with things not going well.

I've fumbled stealth rolls and its a simple failure because I didn't roll crazy on the results.

It happens often enough to be believable, but not every session. Most of the time its just the details of a critical that give an opportunity to take a greater risk or push a little harder.

Its not like what people think happen with a Nat 20 where no matter how stupid, it works.

Crits and fumbles often grant a bonus to an attack, good time to go full offensive.

Stunned but able to parry? Full parry so your opponents can't take as much advantage of your condition. There's a good chance they'll go full out on your stunned self. Leaving them open to allies to go full out on them.

Its about risk management.

One thing that really added to the player fear in one of the RM games I played was our mage who specialized in area effect combat spells.

He used a fireball spell in melee, and had to roll damage on _everyone_. The enemy at ground zero? No damage. Most of the party? No damage, or light burns, nothing major, walk it off guys.

I was at the very outer edge of the area, the GM even gave me a bonus to resist because it should have barely affected me... then came the damage roll. Double zeros - it's a percentile system, so that means 100, and in Rolemaster, if you roll 96 or higher, it's an "open ended" roll, so you roll again and add that. 98. Dammit... rolling again... 35. Total of 233... the chart doesn't go that high.

There was nothing left of my character except the metal items he was carrying, which were left in a molten puddle of slag on the ground.

The only character deaths in the whole campaign were due to friendly fire. (Friendly fire is like regular fire, but it actually hits.)

I've been on the other side of that pain. Great to hit rolls, shit criticals. First time that I can ever recall someone, monster or pc, dying of hits delivered. No bleeding damage, just plinking away at the hp total.

Your mage sounds like a douche canoe

In his limited defense, that was the first time he'd ever used that spell.

Against his defence, he later killed _himself_ with an electrical area effect spell, and did it just as spectacularly as when he got me. (Just a poof of dust on the breeze...) His next character was a thief, and did not do magic. We were all relieved.

At least when _I_ accidentally killed someone in that game (fumbled an attack spell, hit the wrong target) they still had a corpse to be resurrected.

Rolemaster sounds fun if i play it with someone with experience first