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I want to help, too! I promise that—unlike a review—I can probably finish this in less than a year.
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Dec 17, 2014 11:21
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potatocubed posted:OK! Alright, here we go. Welcome to…  Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing (RMFRP) is almost entirely just an organizational repackaging of the previous edition, Rolemaster Standard System (RMSS), an attempt to make the books less intimidating to newcomers. I'd say it does that job as admirably as anything could while not actually changing anything of substance. RMFRP was and remains the "latest" version of Rolemaster, part of the last gasps of Iron Crown before it went bankrupt and was later bought and sort-of-revived by fans. They have since released "new" Rolemasters that are further repackagings of even older editions. They also released High Adventure Role Playing (HARP) which was an honest-to-god attempt at "Rolemaster lite" that I guess mostly succeeded at being what it was meant to be. This system, in all its iterations, continues to have a reputation for crushing complexity. While sometimes overstated or misaimed, this criticism is pretty fair when it comes to character building. Thanks to you, we have already completed Step 1 of Part II • Creating a Character—Character Design Summary, which is "Decide what type of character to play." That was easy! On to the harder ones! Let us start with our Glam Conspiracy Wizard. 2) Make your initial choices. Since I want to pursue a character concept above all else, any supplement is on the table. That means we're going to be delving into Character Law heavily, because the core book is severely pared down for this edition. Where in the core we have five races and nine professions (classes), Character Law (and some relevant spell supplements) add seven more races, plus five more cultures for Men, and 11 more professions. This brings us back up to the total of 12 races, 16 cultures and 20 professions that was found in the core product of RMSS. To be ultimate in our glam, especially since this is definitely One of the reasons Character Law is important for this is because of the pretty restricted options on profession in the core RMFRP. A lot of the 20 available professions are right out just because of our character concept. The most appropriate ones are Magician, Mentalist, Dabbler, Illusionist, Sorcerer and Magent. I'm going with Magent, and here's why: quote:Magents are Semi spell users who combine the realm of Mentalism with the realm of Arms. Their base spells deal with information gathering, subterfuge, and performing stealthy missions. Oh, good, more stuff to explain. In Rolemaster there are typically four "realms of power." The realm of "Arms" is just your "martial power source" a la D&D4—your Fighter, Thief, half of your Ranger, etc. There are then three realms of magical power: Channeling, Essence and Mentalism. Channeling is your divine magic, your spells are prayers to or gifts from a god. Essence is raw magical force, often manipulation of the elements. Mentalism tends to be defined as just expressing personal willpower in a magical way, but it has a lot of overlap with Essence. That said, the three magic realms remain remarkably distinct even though there are literally thousands of spells spread over dozens of spell lists with a couple dozen spells each. So, we're a High Elf Magent, a Semi spell user profession, making our realm "Arms/Mentalism." Phew! 3) Generate stats. quote:Use 660 point or 600+10d10 points… Oh, you know what we must do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIf6NYn4jh4 Here we go: 4, 7, 1, 6, 5, 10, 8, 5, 2, 10, for a total of 58. Aw, we're pretty average. Our race doesn't matter too much right now, but our profession is super important during stat assignment. Every profession has two "prime stats." You can assign as little as 20 points to most stats, if you want to suck, but each prime stat has to get at least 90 points. Stats are notionally a 1-100 trait, but the book also says they go up to 101, and the stat bonuses table covers stats at 102+. These points you get translate one-for-one into a stat's rating, up to 90. There's an increasing point cost per rating above 90. As a Magent, our prime stats are Reasoning and Presence. Now before we assign points to those and the other eight stats, let's learn a little about them! Development Stats and Primary Stats Stats in Rolemaster are like Abilities in D&D, only they pull a lot more weight, and also there're 10 of them. They are divided evenly into two important categories. Development stats, in addition to providing bonuses to related rolls, are the five stats that you average to determine your per-level Development Points (DP) that you spend to gain Skill Ranks. "Primary" stats are the ones that provide bonuses to related rolls and don't do anything else. That's why they're called "primary"! I'll list and talk about the stats in order of development stats first, then primary stats. • Agility (Ag) is manual dexterity, aka "dexterity, deftness…stealth, dodging ability…" This is despite the fact that Quickness is the stat that forms your basic "dodging" bonus. Agility actually figures in heavily to weapon attack bonuses. • Constitution (Co) is exactly what you think, aka "health, stamina, endurance…physical endurance…" It influences resistance to diseases and poisons and how many • Memory (Me) is information retention and recall, aka "intelligence, wisdom…I.Q.…" Memory and Reasoning figure heavily into "lore" types of skills. • Reasoning (Re) outright states that it's a little redundant with Memory, but it also covers using information to come to logical conclusions, aka "…study ability, analysis rating…wit, judgment, I.Q.…" • Self Discipline (SD) is pretty self-explanatory, aka "will, alignment, physical endurance, faith…self control, determination, zeal." It adds into your Those were the development stats. • Empathy (Em) which is what it says, and also covers mystical connectedness to primal energies for the realm of Essence. In addition to aiding in casting and resisting spells, it (and the other magic stats) help determine the amount of • Intuition (In) is a "combination of luck, genius, precognition, ESP, and the favor of the gods…" making it the stat tied to the Channeling realm of magic. • Presence (Pr) is "control of one's own mind" but isn't Self Discipline, and also "self esteem, charisma, outward appearance…vanity…" and is tied to the magic of Mentalism. • Quickness (Qu) is "raw speed, reflexes" and is the one stat that figures into your natural defense against attacks. • Strength (St) is just like in D&D, except also "stamina" because whatever. Like Agility, it figures into weapon attack bonuses, and it also helps determine carrying weight limits. And those were the primary stats. Now, like D&D, a stat's rating translates into a bonus that is used mostly to increase the results of rolls. This is a nominally percentile system, using a d100 for most things, so it makes sense that the bonus increments that stats translated into were +5's. RMSS and RMFRP don't have time for that simpler math poo poo. Here, each stat's rating will tend to hover around 0-4, and instead you combine three of them to apply to each skill. So, for example, in older editions you'd add a +10 Strength bonus to your Swords skill and a +5 Agility bonus to Bows, but in this edition you'd add a +7 Strength/Agility/Strength bonus to Swords and +5 Agility/Strength/Agility to Bows. Exciting, I know. Because of the flattened individual stat bonuses, there is a lot of dead space between each increment until you get into the ratings above 90. There's almost no reason to pick 71-74, when a rating of 70 will give you a +1 bonus just as good. This will figure into how I assign points to determine our starting stats. Of course, those dead ranges can still figure into how many Development Points you get out of your development stats, but it's honestly pretty negligible unless you hamstring all five at once. Oh, but there're also two kinds of each stat. You see, nearly all of this has to do with temporary stats, which are what your stats currently happen to be at any given time. Later during character creation, you use these ratings to determine your potential stats, which are the maximum ratings you can have in them. Your temporary stats can go up and down quite a bit…potentially  This is why our Glam Wizard is going to have Presence 98 instead of 99, because that one point costs a hell of a lot more to buy and provides no greater stat bonus and only minimally increases our chances for a higher potential Presence. Okay, so, time to actually spend our 658 stat points. As a Glam Conspiracy Now, this being D&D: Calculus Editionbut not really, our combat stats are paramount. Oh, also, we are Stats.................Rating...Bonus...Point Cost Agility (Ag)..........85.......+4......85 Constitution (Co).....38.......+0......38 Memory (Me)...........55.......+0......55 Reasoning (Re)........90.......+5......90 Self Discipline (SD)..45.......+0......45 Empathy (Em)..........70.......+1......70 Intuition (In)........70.......+1......70 Presence (Pr).........94.......+7......106 Quickness (Qu)........80.......+3......80 Strength (St).........31.......+0......31 .......................................658 total Now for potential stats! One way of doing this is finding a range into which they fall on a table, then adding a fixed sum to them. For instance, our Self Discipline of 45 falls within the range of 45-54, and the fixed modifier for that is +28, so it would give us potential Self Discipline of 73. Or you can do what we're absolutely going to do, and determine them randomly. You look your potential stats up on the same table, but instead you get a base modifier that you roll some dice to increase. So our 45 Self Discipline gives us 50+5d10! Stats.................Rating...Roll......Result Agility (Ag)..........85.......90+1d10...98 Constitution (Co).....38.......40+6d10...57 Memory (Me)...........55.......60+4d10...81 Reasoning (Re)........90.......90+1d10...95 Self Discipline (SD)..45.......50+5d10...80 Empathy (Em)..........70.......70+3d10...89 Intuition (In)........70.......70+3d10...92 Presence (Pr).........94.......93+1d7....98 Quickness (Qu)........80.......80+2d10...97 Strength (St).........31.......30+7d10...65 You may notice a "1d7" up there. For Rolemaster, we use d10's exclusively, like it's White Wolf or something, which translates pretty readily into various multiples of 5 or 10. So, what do we do here? You roll 1d10, and anything higher than a 7 you just reroll.  You do the same thing with 1d8, instead of actually going and getting a d8. Awesome.Anyway, we can finally finish out this roughly three-page section by looking up our racial stat bonuses and figuring our totals. Stats.................Rating...Stat....Race....Total Agility (Ag)..........85.......+4......+2......+6 Constitution (Co).....38.......+0......+0......+0 Memory (Me)...........55.......+0......+2......+2 Reasoning (Re)........90.......+5......+0......+5 Self Discipline (SD)..45.......+0......-5......-5 Empathy (Em)..........70.......+1......+2......+3 Intuition (In)........70.......+1......+0......+1 Presence (Pr).........94.......+7......+6......+13 Quickness (Qu)........80.......+3......+6......+9 Strength (St).........31.......+0......+0......+0 At last, we are done with our stats! We might as well go ahead and figure out our Development Points before we leave off, by averaging our development stats (Ag, Co, Me, Re, SD), giving us 62 DP (62.6, rounded down). Here're some other racial bonuses for contrast: Stats.............Common Man...Wood Elf...Halfling Agility (Ag)..........+0..........+4.........+6 Constitution (Co).....+0..........+0.........+6 Memory (Me)...........+0..........+2.........+0 Reasoning (Re)........+0..........+0.........+0 Self Discipline (SD)..+2..........-5.........-4 Empathy (Em)..........+0..........+2.........-2 Intuition (In)........+0..........+0.........+0 Presence (Pr).........+0..........+2.........-6 Quickness (Qu)........+0..........+2.........+4 Strength (St).........+2..........+0.........-8 I've been kind of jumping around here, because a lot of this stuff is explained waaaaay later in the book, or not at all and you just have to figure this poo poo out on your own, even in our accessible, newcomer-friendlier RMFRP edition. I think that's mostly out of the way, now. Stay tuned for our next episode where we start digging into skills!
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Dec 17, 2014 15:04
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Rolemaster was my jam for a long time, years ago. I probably won't ever play it again, but I'll never sell my books and I don't hold any malice for it. I'm pretty specifically avoiding R&C and Construct Companion, and probably Elemental Companion (20XX). They feel kind of "other" from everything else in RMSS/RMFRP, what with being assembled by an entirely different crew after they revived the company. That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 11:51
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Plague of Hats posted:Glam Conspiracy Wizard, High Elf Magent. H'okay! In RMSS/RMFRP you have Skill Categories, Skill Groups and Skills. Skill Categories are broad groupings of similar Skills, like Athletic skills, Awareness skills, Weapon skills, etc. Skill Groups are sub-categories within Categories, so you have Awareness • Searching or Weapon • One-handed Concussion. Not every Category is broken down into Groups, but most of them are. Then, at the bottom of this hierarchy, you have individual skills, like Athletics • Endurance: Swimming or Subterfuge • Stealth: Hiding. Oh, and sometimes there are Specializations, which are sub-skills within an individual Skill. Despite these distinctions, the book constantly refers to Skill Groups as Categories. There are also three "tags" that can be attached to skills to change them further: Restricted, Everyman, and Occupational. Restricted skills cost twice as much as normal to gain one rank; you can pay piecemeal to gain a half-rank if you want to buy a rank over two levels. Everyman skills gain two ranks every time you pay enough to buy one rank. Occupational skills gain three ranks for every rank's worth you purchase. I won't get deep into skill bonuses here, but I'll describe what's going on in broad strokes. In addition to all that stuff up above, there are various types of "bonus progression." In older editions, where you just had a big list of skills, each rank was worth +5 up until rank 10, then each rank was worth +2, and so on. Now, we have Standard progression, Combined progression, Limited progression, and Racial progression. Most Skill Categories and Skills are Standard progression. This effectively splits up the +5 bonus between each corresponding rank in a Skill and the Category/Group it falls under, with the higher portion under the Skill. For instance, rank 1 in Artistic • Active would grant a +2 bonus to all skills that fall under it, while rank 1 in Acting grants a +3 bonus to Acting rolls. Combined skills are those that have the whole +5, etc. progression for each rank in them, and the Categories they fall under can't be developed in the first place. Limited skills usually spell lists. Like Combined skills, their Categories can't be developed. Each rank provides a +1 bonus, which doesn't seem like much, but that's okay. Spell casting rolls, when they arise, have lots of big situational modifiers, and in my experience a lot of GMs will forgo them because they are often boring. Special Racial development covers pretty much just Body Development and Power Point Development. Like Combined and Limited skills, you don't develop the categories. Each category only has one skill in it, anyway. Each of these skills has a unique "bonus" progression based on your race. The differences here aren't too pronounced to begin with, especially for As a High Elf, our Body Development progression is 0•7•3•2•1, and as a Mentalism-user our Power Point Development is 0•6•5•4•3. That leading 0 is there for the 0th rank of every progression, I guess for thoroughness' sake. No one starts with 0 ranks in Body Development, though it's technically possible to get enough stat penalties in Constitution and Self Discipline that you naturally have zero or negative hit points, if you choose the right race, culture and profession combo. Woo! Oh, there's also an "untrained skill use penalty" for most skills, since having 0 ranks in something tends to impose a hefty penalty instead of just being a +0 bonus. In previous editions, things looked simpler, but they largely worked the same way. For this edition, they just codified what was going on. The part where a bunch of new complexity comes in with RMSS is that they piled in all the extraneous skills from all the supplements into the core game, and also changed how bonuses work a lot. They pulled back from that a bit with RMFRP, but only by paring down the skill list. It's still way more complex than it needs to be.  Anyway, at this point in character creation, we are ready for "Adolescence Skill Development", which is the first part where we actually put ranks into skills. Each culture gets a set of free ranks, many allotted to specific skills, to reflect the skills you learn by growing up in that culture. You also gain a chunk of "Hobby Ranks", which you distribute as you see fit amongst the Hobby Skills listed for your culture. There are a variety of human cultures that you choose from if you're a Mixed Man or Common Man. If you're anything else, including a Since Glam Conspiracy Wizard is a High Elf, he has the High Elf culture.  You can look at the table if you want to break down how the various cultures compare. It's pretty obvious that elves get some pretty sweet boosts, and despite High Elves supposedly being snooty elitists they have the best Communications Adolescence. And, of course, High Elves get the most free Spell ranks. High Elves also have the least amount of Hobby Ranks because I guess immortal elitists don't have time for that poo poo. I'll cover Background Options later. Right now, we'll get down to the choices we actually have to make with our Adolescence skill ranks. First, languages. Languages work pretty much like other skills, with an extra widget attached. Each rank indicates a level of fluency/literacy, mostly from 1-10. As indicated by the full-page chart explaining each level, rank 6 is "native fluency of the common man." Your dumb peasant. That's why PCs always start out with at least 8 ranks in speaking their native tongue, because no PC is a scrub. Rank 8 is "college level writing" and "fluency in related dialects." Rank 10 is complete mastery of the language and all dialects. GMs who want to screw their players can decide that Ranks 11+ matter for untangling super complex ideas in the language. Like, I dunno, string theory? That seems like it'd be better covered by the Science skills. Whatever. We're a conspiracy-monger and, pursuant to GLAM, also a socialite, so we want to focus on high-falutin' languages. Our culture's language entry has this to say: quote:Language: Starting Languages: High-elvish (S10/W10), Grey-elvish (S8/W6), Common-speech (S8/W6). Allowed Adolescent Development: Grey-elvish (S10/W10), Common-speech (S10/W10), North-speech (S6/W6), Elvish (S8/W8). This means we get a free 10 ranks in each of Communications • Languages: High-elvish (Spoken) and Communications • Languages: High-elvish (Written), and likewise eight and six ranks respectively in Grey-elvish and Common-speech. For some reason we're not allowed to learn the High Man's High-speech, yet. loving High Man, always keeping us High Elves down.  Well, we're not left with much choice. Might as well max out Elvish, costing 16 of our 20 points, then spend our remaining 4 points to bump us up to "college level writing" in Grey-elvish and Common-speech. So, apart from High-elvish, we've got ratings of 8 across the board in Common-speech, Elvish and Grey-elvish. The excitement is palpable!We get three ranks free in the Region and Culture Lore skills pertaining to our homeland. Then, because High Elves are best elves, we get four ranks in one Open Mentalism spell list. Spells in Rolemaster come in huge lists. Each list goes from 1-20, then 25, 30 and 50, but some of these slots can be blank, meaning you have to develop them but get nothing for doing so. There are 10 Open and 10 Closed lists for each realm of Essence, Channeling and Mentalism. Then there are six Base lists for each Semi, Pure and Hybrid spell user profession. Everyone, even pure Arms professions, can learn any spell, but the more removed your realm(s) are from the list, the more DP it costs. Technically. There's a big table of costs involved, and multipliers based on how many different lists you're trying to develop in a given level, too. For instance, it's super-cheap to develop many ranks in your own Base lists, but super-expensive to develop the Base lists of another profession. In particular, the costs for non-spell users to develop high level spells or any Base list are so great that it's effectively impossible without shenanigans. Typically, your Fighters and Rogues can only learn the first five spells of their own realm's Open lists. For Mr. GLAM, we have the following options: Anticipations, which involves bullet-timey stuff as well as guess-based divination; Attack Avoidance, which is more overt defensive magic, including hampering arrows that aren't even aimed at you; Brilliance, which starts out with "palm flashlight" and quickly ramps up to lightning bolts (psionics!?); Cloaking, which is personal illusion-biased stealth; Damage Resistance, using mind-powers to endure or ignore harm; Delving, i.e. postcognition; Detections, with spells like Detect Mentalism, Detect Emotion, Detect Traps and Detect Evil; Illusions, which is duh; Self Healing, again duh; and Spell Resistance, once more duh. There are some pretty obvious candidates for which we should pick for a Conspiracy Wizard, but I'm going to keep this short and say we're going with Detections. Our four free ranks will get us Detect Mentalism, Detect Essence, Detect Channeling, and most important Detect Emotion. This last one just outright tells us what, if any, extreme emotion a target is feeling, which seems like a useful tool for a conspiracy-monger. Next up, the all-important Weapon skills! As you may notice from the table above, our culture determines what weapons we can choose. This is rarely much of a restriction for most characters; the lists are pretty big. Here we go: High Elf Cultural Weapon List posted:Dagger, broadsword, mace, composite bow, long bow, flail, two-handed sword, quarterstaff, javelin, lance, falchion, foil, main gauche, rapier, bastard sword, irgaak, kynac, long kynac. Those last three are weird fantasy weapons from the Greyhawk of Rolemaster, Shadow World. Since we want to be subtle and low-key, and also we're a wizard, let's go with dagger and composite bow for our available free ranks. Finally, we have six Hobby ranks. These are like the other free ranks above, except it's just a ball of ranks we can distribute however we please amongst the list below. Well, not however we please. We can't put them in skills it would cost more than 40 DP to develop during normal leveling, nor can we gain more ranks than we could develop when leveling. This will be nice and quick since we're a High Elf and so don't have time for personal interests  High Elf Standard Hobby Skill list posted:Acting, any Armor skills, Attunement, Body Development, Dancing, Direct Spells, Embroidery [Crafts], History (famous weapons, enchanted creations), Jewelry-smithing [Crafts], Languages, Leadership, Meditation, Metal-crafts, Observation, Play Instruments, Poetic Improvisation, Public Speaking, Read Runes, Riding, Sewing, Singing, spell lists, Star-gazing, any Weapon skills, Weather-watching. Again, there are some pretty obvious candidates, especially once you look at a given skill description to see just what it does. Acting is what you might expect, covering stuff from stage presence to impersonating people and covering up your own reactions to things. Direct Spells is the "weapon" skill used to aim poo poo like lightning bolts, so we're going to ignore that one, at least for now. Leadership is mostly about group morale and inspiration, which might be relevant to our character concept, but not nearly as important as other choices. Observation is about actively peering around to notice ambushes or secret doors, so that's a good choice. Public Speaking is about enrapturing and manipulating large groups. Attunement is mostly "sense a magic item's powers" skill, and Read Runes is "use magic item" for spell scrolls. Well, we don't have much room anyway, and some stuff gets expensive later, so let's game the system a little. This is a lot like the Bonus Points/XP situation with some White Wolf games. I'm going to put one rank into the Open Essence list Lesser Illusions, to get the spell Ventriloquism, which is the only place it shows up. It's a really nice spell, especially for a conspiracy dude. With our precious Development Points, this one low-level spell from a different realm of magic would've cost 35DP, which can be nearly all of a starting character's DP. Here it costs a single Hobby rank, just the same as if we'd bought a 1DP rank in some other skill. Our remaining Hobby ranks will go into our Base spell lists, because even though they're our own Base spells the costs build up quickly. Our choices are: Assassination Mastery, which covers concealing objects, setting up fall guys, and True Strikes; Disguise Mastery; Escapes; Gathering Secrets; Misdirections; and Poison Mastery. We'll go with three ranks in Escapes, which gives us Locklore (  ), Unlock I (not bad), and Ungag (safeword: Utility spell). This is mostly a cost-saving measure since we're aiming for higher spells on this list, namely the 5th rank spell Unlock II. We'll put our other two ranks into the spell list Gathering Secrets, netting us Copy I, which allows us to duplicate the text (but not handwriting) of a piece of paper, and Listen, which is a pretty standard eavesdropping spell.Holy poo poo, we're done! Let's summarize our progress so far: Stats.................Temp...Potent...StatB....RaceB....TotalB Agility (Ag)..........85.....98.......+4......+2........+6 Constitution (Co).....38.....57.......+0......+0........+0 Memory (Me)...........55.....81.......+0......+2........+2 Reasoning (Re)........90.....95.......+5......+0........+5 Self Discipline (SD)..45.....80.......+0......-5........-5 Development Points....62 Empathy (Em)..........70.....89.......+1......+2........+3 Intuition (In)........70.....92.......+1......+0........+1 Presence (Pr).........94.....98.......+7......+6........+13 Quickness (Qu)........80.....97.......+3......+6........+9 Strength (St).........31.....65.......+0......+0........+0 Skills..................Ranks Athletic • Brawn..........1 Athletic • Endurance......1 >>Swimming................2 Athletic • Gymnastics.....1 Awareness • Perceptions...— >>Alertness...............6 Awareness • Searching.....1 Body Development..........1 Communications............4 >>High-elvish (spoken)....10 >>High-elvish (written)...10 >>Common-speech (spoken)..8 >>Common-speech (written).8 >>Elvish (spoken).........8 >>Elvish (written)........8 >>Grey-elvish (spoken)....8 >>Grey-elvish (written)...8 Lore • General............3 >>Own Culture Lore........3 >>Own Region Lore.........3 Outdoor • Animal..........1 >>Riding (horses).........1 Outdoor • Environmental...3 Power Awareness...........2 Science/Analytic • Basic..2 Spells • Other Realm Open (Essence) >>Lesser Illusions........1 Spells • Own Realm Own Base (Magent) >>Escapes.................3 >>Gathering Secrets.......2 Spells • Own Realm Open >>Detections..............4 Subterfuge • Stealth......2 >>Hiding..................2 >>Stalking................2 Technical/Trade • General.1 Weapon • 1-H Edged........1 >>Dagger..................1 Weapon • Missile..........1 >>Composite bow...........1 Next time, we'll cover Background Options, finishing out our Adolescence Development phase!
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Dec 22, 2014 09:47
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Plague of Hats posted:Next time, we'll cover Background Options, finishing out our Adolescence Development phase! I'm sad to inform everyone that this post isn't going to be nearly as fun as I had anticipated. I had misremembered how crazy the Talents & Flaws optional system from Character Law was. It's mostly a huge grab-bag of poorly balanced combat powers, with a few workhorse non-combat extras. There are still enough things in there that do better to highlight our role as a Glam Conspiracy Wizard than anything else in the system, though, so we're still going to use them. I just thought the list of social/status Merits and Flaws were more extensive. Oh, well. Just so you can see what we're missing from the core game, here's the Background Options (BO) table:  You spend one Background Option to pick one of the rewards on the table. In the optional system of hosed-up Merits & Flaws, which we will be using, allows you to spend your BOs in a variety of ways. There're actually a huge amount of suggested options for dealing with this, but I prefer the one that serves creating the loving character we want best, so we're going with Talent points. This is where your BOs are replaced by a larger number of points, and you spend them to buy Merits, and you get some back by taking Flaws. Or, according to the book, being assigned Flaws by the GM. There's actually a moderately complex system for creating races (in a different book), where you point-build a race/culture and this revolves around Talent points, which are then translated back into BOs if you want to use those. As a High Elf, our 3 BOs translate into 30 Talent points. We're going to take the two Special Status "Talents" of Noble and Patron, Significant (Greater). "But wait," you say because you have memorized the many hundreds of entries in this optional subsystem, "that totals up to 40 points!" That is correct, rear end in a top hat, we're going to exploit the hell out of some Flaws! You might get a sense of where I'm going with this character because, first, I'm picking Sense of Duty (Major), and the entirely different Flaw Duty (Major). Haha! Exploitative! We're also going to go with Secret (Minor), which is the level between Lesser and Major that means we wont' be executed if someone figures us out, but we will be imprisoned. Then, Secret Identity. Finally, to liven up our glamorous lives, we're going to pick up Rival/NPC (Minor), who will be the "party interested in uncovering our secret identity." Total Talent Points "spent", now: -20! What to do with these extra points? Well, there's still the Wealth optional subsystem. Normally, a character begins with 2gp worth of coins or, for elves, precious gems. Then, you can spend Background Options to roll randomly for extra monies. In the case of spending Talent points, we spend more points to determine our starting wealth level, then roll on a corresponding column on a wealth table. Your starting wealth roll gains a special modifier based on which column you choose, and then you can spend further points to gain more rolls for more ducats, without the special modifier. 20 points can buy us "Rich", which is one step below the tippy-top "Very Rich", and as our starting Wealth we roll with a +30 modifier. I rolled 67, so I got the result "97 - pg(1mp)." That means I have a precious gem worth 1 (one) mithril piece, which converts to 10 platinum pieces, which translates to 100 gold pieces. So, instead of starting with 2gp like usual, Talent points have allowed us to start with 100gp from a pretty average roll. Hm! Allow me to just loving quote all these new traits: quote:Noble–You are a member of the nobility. You were either awarded nobility, or inherited it from your parents. You and your GM should determine your title and the extent of your noble powers. [Minor, 10] Even with that padding, there, this post is going to be pretty short. Don't worry, the next one is Apprenticeship Skill Development, which in my experience is the biggest barrier to entry for this game!
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Dec 23, 2014 11:34
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Poil posted:Are you planning on taking the noble training package too? Maybe. I'll almost certainly take Spy. TPs can really eat up your starting DPs with mostly uninteresting poo poo, and spells are expensive. (I did consider taking a Talent to make some spells Everyman, but I didn't want to be that huge a dickshit.) quote:You can say that again. I recall fondly the default "giant fuckoff random roll, alphabetically sorted tables" that were the only presented option for RMSS--in the core book!--until Talent Law came out. "Dave, you happened to get +10 to Lookin' at things skill as long as you're holding a feather. Jerry, you rolled +8 to a stat of your choice."
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Dec 24, 2014 01:00
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