In the spirit of "the manifesto", i'm going to be taking a weekly look at an RPG mechanic. I'll discuss the mechanic itself, what it does, how it does it and the impact is has on the game. Hopefuly, this will illuminate those who have never played the game in question and prompt people to post their feelings about it and their experiences.

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Rolemaster Critical Hits

The Game

I first became aware of Rolemaster through advertisments in White Dwarf. Along with the ads for Palladium stuff, it really gained my attention. Here was a game where you had 20 base classes! That was loads more than ad&d! However, it wasn't until 1993 that i picked up a boxed set of RM II. This contained Character & Campaign Law, Spell Law and...Arm & Claw Law. I remember reading the books on the afternoon that i purchased them and being overwhelmed initially by all the tables. Then, after a few days, i realised that at heart, the system wasn't that complex. It was just different.

We started playing a couple of weeks later. The first game was a 1 on 1 affair and i killed my flatmate's 1st level character within 2 sessions. Oops! But it served as a learning experience. I've gone on to GM 2 long campaigns with RM. One lasting about 2 years and taking characters from 1st to 20th level and the second campaign took characters from 1st to 13th level. My group loved the choice that the system offered, however, that choice came with a price; the RM companions took that choice to extreme levels and, professions apart, we never used all the extra rules contained in them.

So, to the subject at hand.

Rolemaster criticals

To d&d players like my group, the combat system of Rolemaster came as a bit of a shock. To those who don't know about it, i'll talk my way through it now.

The Rolemaster rolling mechanic is d100. During character creation and advancement, players allocate developement point (derived from 5 of their statistics) to any number of skills. One of those areas of skills is combat. Once you've used your points up, you tally your skill ranks, add your level bonus and your stat modifier to get your total skill bonus. You have to advance each weapon seperately. You aren't naturally profficient in all weapons. Once you've done that, you now have a weapon OB (offensive bonus). For example: Longsword OB 57. In combat, you add this OB to your d100 roll and subtract your opponents DB (defensive bonus) from it. You then look at the weapon chart (each weapon has it's own!), find your opponents armour type and cross reference your modified score to discover if you have hit and if so, what the damage is.

Now, unlike many other games, damage in Rolemaster isn't just a number of hits taken from your hit point total. You get a number and a letter. The number is removed from your hit point total, but the letter denotes whether you have inflicted a critical hit or not and ranges from A through to E typically (although you can go beyond E with some spells or things such as falling damage). A is the lightest crit and E the most damaging.

So you could get a result of 12B. This means that you have scored 12 points of damage to your opponent and inflicted a B critical on him as well. This is where Rolemaster combat gets both more involved and removed from other combat systems. You get to roll a d100 and consult the relevant critical chart. Results from this chart are what really effect your character. Example: B critical (Slash from a short sword). Having hit his foe, the critical roll has come up as 43. Looking at the criticals tables, we find that along with the 12 points of damage already inflicted, the injured party has been hit on the arm and has taken another 5 hit points of damage, is bleeding at 1 hit point a round and is stunned for 2 rounds. (that was made up BTW, so no looking in your RM books!)

Combat results in Rolemaster mean that not only do you lose hit points, but your effectiveness is reduced as you take wounds. You get hit by a critical and chances are you're in trouble for a while. Although you can die from lack of hit points, you can also die from criticals whilst you have loads of hit points left (i had an NPC who dies from a critical result when he still had 113 hit points left!).

So effectively, you have a written description of the battle hard-wired into the game. The criticals say where you are hit and what happens to you. It was a shock coming from d&d where combat was "you are hit for 6 damage" to RM, i can tell you. The mechanics didn't come without a cost however...

1) As mentioned above, you can die with loads of hit points left. Not only that but the effects of criticals can take you out of the action of the game for some time. Not always a welcome side effect.

2) The way the system worked meant that players quite rightly made an effort to make themselves as hard to hit as possible. In the game, this meant having a high Defensive Bonus. DB is derived from shields and the characters Quickness bonus (the modifier derived from his Quickness stat). Which means that players always have a high Quickness. Add to this that Quickness also affects Initiative and it's a no brainer. Quickness is always in the 90s.

3) Fights can become a bit technical. With each hit, you have to roll another dice to find out the results, then note them down and tick off rounds as they go. Fights sometimes become more mathematical excersises.

4) Strange critical results. Being random, the critical results sometimes don't mesh with what is being attempted. A PC could be at the top of a flight of stairs and attacking someone coming up them and get a crit result of 'slash foes back' or even more strange, a house cat could kill you...

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So there you have it. A combat mechanic that can kill you whilst you still have hit points left, but writes the combat's story as you are playing it.

This is a condensed explanation of the rules, so i might have missed something. Ask away if you don't get something.

One of the main advertising tricks for RM, when i was reading White Dwarf was that Arms Law could be integrated into other games. I never did this as everything would have to be changed. Has anyone ever used RM combat in d&d or other games? How did it go?

Do your experiences with RM combat differ from mine?

Was RM the first game to split damage into hit points and game effects? What other games have done it before or since?

Would you make any changes to the combat and critical system and what would they be? Would it quicken things up, take a bit of housekeeping away, or make it less deadly?

The first character I made for Rolemaster died in his first combat. He fumbled his battleaxe and chopped his own leg off.

Surprisingly, this did not scare me off the game.

I think the critical tables were the most compelling reason to play Rolemaster. We moved on to Spacemaster, too. The crit tables for all the energy weapons were a lot of fun.

Remember too that you could always lower your OB and add the points to your DB. My players almost never used more than half of their OB for offense! They were too scared of the criticals. But this added a nice layer to the game. Do you want to fight defensively or go for the risky power shot to take out your foe quickly?

Sadly, I don't think I could play RMSS anymore. The amount of bookkeeping during that campaign was just crazy. You had to record every hp of damage you took and dealt. You had to record every critical you dealt to a foe along with the foe's level because all this gave you xp. You had to photocopy the weapon chart for each weapon you had along with the critical charts for those weapons so you didn't have to fight over the books.

We actually photocopied every critical chart, bound them in a ring binder and called it "Crit Law".

Don't be silly, the book keeping doesn't have to be that bad.  Because you already are tracking that stuff anyhow.

All you need is to note the player's name on the running total for the monster's hit points and occasionally note beside it who else did damage.  You also mark the level of crits done when appropriate, but keep in mind that crit points are only awarded if more than one character is involved in killing a monster and they are subtracted from the kill points.  For most mook fights it's a non issue and for most big monsters it's very little extra work.  Though I'll confess it took me a few years to figure out the best way to do it.  I tried markers and chits and complex control sheets.  But all it really takes is a few notes on the scrap paper where you're tracking the damage.

Similarly, the PC's are already tracking their own injuries.  Nobody forgets that E critical they took when it's worth 500 xp.

Whether you track their spell use and skills or they do is up to you but I've generally found it easiest to note them on the scrap paper.

One day I'll have to write a book on using Rolemaster and making it managable.  But nobody will want it, nor will they agree with it, and most people don't use that rule anyhow.

I did away with noting down what player did what to whom pretty early on. I simply doubled the monsters xp value (as the xp value of the monster was the upper limit of xps awardable by inflicting criticals on it anyhow).

It would probably help if you've got a bass player in your group. Remebering "EEEEEAAAAEEEE" comes natural to them

I only have played HARP, but when I played HARP, I thought:
"Why not go the full route, and play Harnmaster?"

Which brings me to my question:

Systems from the RQ line of tradition are mostly concerned with human(oid)s fighting human(oid)s. How do the Rolemaster crit tables interact with monsters?

Quote from: SettembriniSystems from the RQ line of tradition are mostly concerned with human(oid)s fighting human(oid)s. How do the Rolemaster crit tables interact with monsters?

No that well. There's a unified table for big monsters, IIRC. Its results are quite a bit more generic.
This is a general problem with anything using hit locations. Never bothered me that much, as I'm a big fan of humanoid enemies. And big monsters are really, really scary in RoleMaster...

Quote from: SettembriniWhich brings me to my question:

Systems from the RQ line of tradition are mostly concerned with human(oid)s fighting human(oid)s. How do the Rolemaster crit tables interact with monsters?

Certain creatures were listed as large or super large. The mechanical effects of this was that large creatures ignored A crits and super large creatures ignored A, B + C(i think) crits. So if you attacked a Troll for example and scored an A crit, you didn't get to roll a critical. What's more, there was a special Large + S Large crit table to roll on. These tables made it harder to damage monsters greatly and also made having magic, mithril, holy or slaying weapons more useful. So if you hit a dragon (super large) for a C crit, you'd just do the hit point damage indicated on the weapon chart. If you did a D crit, then you'd also roll on the super large creature crit table. Rolling a 50 would give you different results based on the type of weapon you were using. A normal weapon might even break, a magic one inflict a few more hits of damage and slaying one cause a bleeding wound etc.

There was very little in the way of "hit wing" of "sever tentacle".

Quote from: chaldfontI think the critical tables were the most compelling reason to play Rolemaster.

I totally agree.  The crit system in RM makes for exciting and surprising combats.

Harnmaster uses a system that is similar in spirit. It require more rolls but does away with hit points. You keep track of injury levels that progressively reduce your skill.

When you get hit you look up a special result that occurs as result begin hit. Most of these take the form of roll versus a stat. If you fail you will pass out from shock, fall down, or even die. Multiple small injuries tend to pile up and cause you to fail a shock roll even though it 1d6 versus a stat generated with 3d6.

Again the downside it has more rolls but combat seem to flow more naturally than Rolemaster with a lot of attacks, counter attacks, blocks, etc. Players appreciate being able to roll for their own defense and the individual injuries graphically shows the seriousness of combat.

Quote from: One Horse TownCertain creatures were listed as large or super large. The mechanical effects of this was that large creatures ignored A crits and super large creatures ignored A, B + C(i think) crits. So if you attacked a Troll for example and scored an A crit, you didn't get to roll a critical. What's more, there was a special Large + S Large crit table to roll on. These tables made it harder to damage monsters greatly and also made having magic, mithril, holy or slaying weapons more useful. So if you hit a dragon (super large) for a C crit, you'd just do the hit point damage indicated on the weapon chart. If you did a D crit, then you'd also roll on the super large creature crit table. Rolling a 50 would give you different results based on the type of weapon you were using. A normal weapon might even break, a magic one inflict a few more hits of damage and slaying one cause a bleeding wound etc.

There are also some creatures that reduce critical severities. For instance, every undead that isn't large or super large will lower all critical hits against it by at least one level.

The Large and Superlarge tables, despite their names, aren't restricted based on size. You could have a man-sized golem be super-large if it were tough enough.

The crits and the magic system were what drew me to RM, but primarily the crits.

Quote from: James McMurrayThere are also some creatures that reduce critical severities. For instance, every undead that isn't large or super large will lower all critical hits against it by at least one level.

The Large and Superlarge tables, despite their names, aren't restricted based on size. You could have a man-sized golem be super-large if it were tough enough.

The crits and the magic system were what drew me to RM, but primarily the crits.

Yep. Undead or particularly tough critters could reduce crits by 1 or 2 levels, but you'd still roll on the normal crit charts, not the large or super large ones.

They (undead and constructs) were also immune to most of the nastiest repercussions of criticals by being immune to stunning and bleeding.

edit: Of course, a Cleric with Repulsions as a spell list could pretty easily blow the undead up, which made them slightly less scary.

Are the crit charts progressive? How many are there?

Could you map them on to 3e like so:

x2....chart A critical
x3...chart B critical
x4....chart C critical

or something like that?

I wouldn't mind incorporating some descriptive crit scheme into 3e. I've sometimes used Hackmaster for this, with multipliers tied into die size IIRC. I wonder where I posted those mechanics on the internet...

My players hate coming up against undead. Not only are they immune to bleeding and stun, which is a big slice of what crits can do to you, but they drain your Constitution too! Nasty...

Yet strangely enough, in all my RM games, only one player has ever chosen to be a cleric. Got to 20th level, mind, so he was a terror against undead. Didn't help him against Kabis though. Mwa, ha, ha.