Quote from: Bill;678893The key elements of a level 5 fighter vs orcs:

AC: do the orcs need a 20 to hit him?

Damage: Can the fighter one hit them?

Numbers: 10 orcs? 20?  30-300?

Yep, that's important. AC 0 fighter vs 10 orcs? Fighter wins. But AC 4 fighter vs 20-30? Hm...getting dubious...

Quote from: The Ent;678892Yeah.
One of my players basically misunderstood the whole "unarmored people Are harder to hit" to hit table thing. He thought it'd mean his character would actually be hard to hit (to be fair, stuff with low OB like weak orcs etc did have a hard time hitting his character, but that's kinda unimportant...).

AT 9 or 10 has been by far the most popular AT at my table over the years. Gives decent protection, doesn't fuck up missile attacks by much and most importantly doesn't make you break your legs when you fail a move maneuver, because the MM penalty is quite easily overcome at a decent development point cost by most classes.

Quote from: Benoist;678886Oh RM criticals are harsh, yeah, don't get me wrong.

I played the game too and love it, for the record.

I just think the player's "D&D expectation" in this instance was dumb and could have gotten him killed in D&D as well.

TRVTH.

Also: my current group going through the Castle Delve campaign slew a Balrog/Type VI with six 3rd level characters (yes - badly played by me) but twice last game they were nearly killed, once by a pack of 21 giant wasps, another by 6 huge spiders.

Quote from: One Horse Town;678901AT 9 or 10 has been by far the most popular AT at my table over the years. Gives decent protection, doesn't fuck up missile attacks by much and most importantly doesn't make you break your legs when you fail a move maneuver, because the MM penalty is quite easily overcome at a decent development point cost by most classes.

I tended to go for hard leather (AT 9-10) myself for much the same reason.

It did make battles against big stuff like trolls etc a bit dicey mind. But heavy armor makes your character suck too much at M&M.

Quote from: One Horse Town;678901AT 9 or 10 has been by far the most popular AT at my table over the years. Gives decent protection, doesn't fuck up missile attacks by much and most importantly doesn't make you break your legs when you fail a move maneuver, because the MM penalty is quite easily overcome at a decent development point cost by most classes.

AT 10 FTW!!   My rolemaster fighter, Lothar of the Hill People, Wears rigid leather,carries a large shield, takes as many ads that increase DB as much as possible, and puts a fair amount of OB potential into DB in most circumstances.

The result is that it takes a lot longer to finish off a foe but I seldom get hit except by opponents I really shouldn't tangle with anyway.

I did play a Magus once who wore full soft leather (AT . He was quite a beast in combat for a spell user iirc. Sadly only got him to 5th level before that game ended.

Fun times...Shit, now i want to start a new RM game.

Is anyone excited about the public beta of Rolemaster?  I was disappointed - it looks like the same game, more or less, that I had in the 80s.  I still have that game.

I'd like to see something that takes the cool, distinctive things about Rolemaster (attack charts, criticals, everything's a skill) and does something new with it.

Quote from: fuseboy;678914Is anyone excited about the public beta of Rolemaster?  I was disappointed - it looks like the same game, more or less, that I had in the 80s.  I still have that game.

I'd like to see something that takes the cool, distinctive things about Rolemaster (attack charts, criticals, everything's a skill) and does something new with it.

I stopped being excited at game designers taking on the name of a popular game I actually like to fuck with it and come up with something completely different quite a few years ago. Original RM for the win.

Quote from: Benoist;678915I stopped being excited at game designers taking on the name of a popular game I actually like to fuck with it and come up with something completely different quite a few years ago. Original RM for the win.

Same here. I don't want Rolemaster changed, but I would love to have a practical pc/tablet app to roll the dice, crits, and show results.

Quote from: fuseboy;678914Is anyone excited about the public beta of Rolemaster?  

Nope. Design by committee. Sadly the talent pool responsible for the grand old game is no longer very good, Nicholas Caldwell apart.

Quote from: Benoist;678915I stopped being excited at game designers taking on the name of a popular game I actually like to fuck with it and come up with something completely different quite a few years ago. Original RM for the win.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Not sure RM 2e's ever been improved upon, later eds went nuts complexity vise.

D&D expectations can work for you as we'll. My only Rolemaster experience was a couple of sessions based in the Bree sourcebook. Not knowing better my first level party set up an ambush for the 3 trolls (would never have tried this in D&D).

In any case we got insanely lucky with some arrow crits and prevailed with only 2 fatalities. Of course next week the party was wiped out by a random encounter with a bear so there you go :-)

Yeah three relatively inexperienced adventurers get wasted by an angry bear...it can happen.

So can three relatively inexperienced adventurers successfully ambushing a troll.

You roll a unbelievably lucky critical roll and can wildly exceed expectations, and it feels real, because weirder shit happens in real life every day.  At the same time, when unbelievably lucky results don't happen, things kinda end up the way you think they would.

Rolemaster was definitely a whole lotta fun.

Quote from: Bill;678844His fighter took a arrow to the neck and dropped, crippled or dead.

The player was in shock.

It was priceless.

There's a herb that'll fix that, right?...

Quote from: Bill;678918Same here. I don't want Rolemaster changed, but I would love to have a practical pc/tablet app to roll the dice, crits, and show results.

Exactly what I would like. I ran the heck out of RM back when IC was making all that great Middle Earth stuff, with, at times, up to 12 players. I just don't want to deal with the mass pile of charts, even though those criticals were so much fun.