3.5 vs Rolemaster

[Rackhir]

I'm surprised nobody has brought up how much fun it is just reading the crit charts for Rolemaster.

One tip for running RM, I've found is to make sure that everyone has the charts for the weapons/spells they use and just tell them the relevant info for what they are attacking. If you are the kind of DM who wants to keep all the info on the mosters to themselves, you will bog things down something fierce.

 

[Ron]

[...]1: Realistically being killed by a lucky foe sucks. The combat system adds a high degree of randomness and that works in favor of weaker characters/enemies. I should add too that having a significant chance of dying in every encounter is a bad idea when the character creation system is so time consuming.
2: Stuns. Some critical hits lead to stuns (Can move 25%. No attacks. Possibly no parrying) and frankly, this is an enormously bad idea. Stunning can throw the fight heavily in either direction and it sucks to have to sit out most of a fight, again, because someone got lucky on their critical roll. More randomness.

Yeah, it sucks to be killed by a lucky foe. However, in my experience, players are much more cautions regarding combat in Rolemaster and they try to solve the situation without fighting. If fighting is unavoidable, players tend to outsmart the enemies and try to get surprise or the advantage of terrain. I've seen this in a much more developed than in any D&D party (even with the same rolemaster players).

Also, being killed by a lucky incompetent foe is very, very rare. Usually, it becames a memorable experience to be talked about it.

3: Experience. The bulk of XP is earned by actually being the one to bring down a foe. Who cares if someone else spent the entire fight working it down? If you get the last hit, you get the XP. There are other ways to earn XP but they don't make up for this. My group had a long discussion on this and we moved away from the kill-based XP system when we realized that nobody was willing to heal or play a support character as they would be losing out on XP.

Rolemaster's rules for XP are really bad. I just disregard them interely and figure out myself when to let players advance a level.

[...]This is turning into a bit of a rant so maybe I should just sum it up. If you want realism go with RM, if you want a well balanced and easy to play system stick with D&D.

Perhaps you're playing the current edition of Rolemaster and thus you're considering D&D an easy to play system, I would never say that. But I will stick with my previous opinion that Rolemaster is better balanced at higher levels.

 

[Ron]

I'm surprised nobody has brought up how much fun it is just reading the crit charts for Rolemaster. [...]

Oh yeah, the black humour is just great. My favorite is try a spatula.

 

[Vargo]

Although I think this was from the MERP puncture critical tables, I think "All earwax removed" was my favorite.

 

[awayfarer]

Originally Posted by Rackhir
I'm surprised nobody has brought up how much fun it is just reading the crit charts for Rolemaster.

I forget the exact entry but my favorite is one that mentions something about tripping over your imaginary pet turtle. Actually I think thats on a fumble chart now that I think about it.

Originally Posted by Ron
Rolemaster's rules for XP are really bad. I just disregard them interely and figure out myself when to let players advance a level.

Agreed. My RM group basically hit "reset" on our campaign and started a new one. part of the changes are a house ruled XP system that splits everything more or less evenly.

Originally Posted by Ron
Perhaps you're playing the current edition of Rolemaster and thus you're considering D&D an easy to play system, I would never say that. But I will stick with my previous opinion that Rolemaster is better balanced at higher levels.

I will freely admit that I've never played high level in either system. My highest level character in an game RM was lvl 15 and my highest level character in a D&D game is currently lvl 10. We're actually plyaing the most recent (I think) edition of RM. I do think they improved it over the previous editions. The flaws/talents thing is neat and the ability to invest in skill groups rather than individual skills is a good addition.

Let me add that theres things I don't like about D&D either. It's just that my experience points to it being a much easier system to work with.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

One thing I did like about the RM XP system was the bonus/diminishing returns to repeated actions.

 

[Ranger REG]

The most recent RM was published back in the last millenium. Chances are they're reprinting them still, so there is no new edition or revision made in THIS millenium.

HOWEVER, they did come with HARP, which claimed to be a user-friendly version of RM, but without the label.

I also have a soft heart for RM, but I do not compare it to D&D which is my first love. IMSHO, they're both good in their own right. My only gripe is that although I appreciated ICE for doing HARP, I'd prefer they do a new edition of Rolemaster, label and all.

 

[Numion]

That's a negative on "less powergaming" and a negative on "more realism".

Well, ok, it might be more realistic, but it's still an unrealistic game. N+1 pages of gross critical charts do not a realistic game make.

 

[Kormydigar]

That's a negative on "less powergaming" and a negative on "more realism".

Well, ok, it might be more realistic, but it's still an unrealistic game. N+1 pages of gross critical charts do not a realistic game make.

Spot on good sir. We tried Chartmaster back in the 80's just for something new. We created some characters and ran combats to put the system through its paces. I don't remember all the details but the end result was that my friend's weapon skill was too high for him to ever miss but my armor skill was too good to ever really take damage. We fought for 15 to 20 minutes of furious action but in the end nothing really happened. The crit charts are fun to read but we didn't find it very playable.

 

[brehobit]

I tend to like RM better for fighting, but find the skill rules (in 3rd edition esp) to really really suck.

Also in D&D I can't make a real character above level 4 without a spreadsheet (or a few hours). In RM I can't make one at all without a spreadsheet. Thankfully both games have some great software for them.

For rolemaster you really need to be sure everyone has copies of the charts they need or things go way too slow.

Oh, 2nd edition rolemaster (and Runequest for that matter) have the situation that a housecat can crash your first level character in a fight. In 2nd ed rolemaster it isn't even a close fight, my illusionist would die to a house cat 2 out of 3 times at 3rd level (we tried it about 10 times). 3rd ed, for all of its problems (mainly skills) was much better at that.