What's in the future for FG RMC ruleset?

[JohnD]

Gavin, the Resolver as it already exists resolves rolls vs the appropriate table and applies the results of critical hits and fumbles automatically to the recipient. The CT then knows and automatically takes into account things like bonuses and penalties as well as bleeding, stun etc.... Things like broken limbs or movement penalties you need to adjudicate as a GM on the fly.

As I alluded to in an earlier post, largely I personally feel that FG does Rolemaster reasonably well considering the complexity. What the current Rolemaster ruleset needs to do better is Fantasy Grounds.

Way back, I was running a game with 8 players and a similar number of adversaries, and we often completed 6 to 8 full rounds of combat in a 2.5 to 3 hour session. Doing this will require the GM to have ideally some assistance from his/her players. Things like % Activity table for example, it would be very handy to have someone responsible for figuring those things out so the GM can concentrate on other things.

I have more to say but my defective brain just forgot it. Hopefully it will come back to me.

[Dakadin]

Hi GavinRuneblade,

The current RMC ruleset in Fantasy Grounds handles most of what you are describing pretty well. Let me see if I can address the points you bring up.

Can you explain a little bit more what this means? For example, does it mean knowing how to resolve both column and row? Would we need 20 tables for every weapon so it could resolve attack rolls against the correct AT? I assume there's no issue outputting the string of text to chat? Or is it that effects can't be parsed from the output? Or is it not handling a d100 plus modifiers on a 1-150 spread of results? All of the above?

I haven't tried RMC in fantasy grounds, nor CoreRPG, but my players and I stopped playing it because of the math making it so slow that story never happened. Here is what I know my players would want before they tried rolemaster again, and feedback from new players I tried to introduce to the game tabletop.

The biggest situation was how many mistakes were being made levelling up and spending development points on skills. I had to basically do it one-on-one with every player every time. Second was in combat when they had to add up all the bonuses on them, the penalties on the enemy, plus parry/attack choices. When I corrected their mistakes they'd end up preferring a different action. This bogged down combat to an unplayable degree.

With tables and a skill page that 1. Knows the costs per skill per character class and whether they are allowed to buy one, two or three boxes with each box cost correctly indicated 2. calculates the development points from the character's stats 3. applies them to skills in a checkbox manner like picking proficiencies in other systems 4 and finally calculates the total bonuses correctly with the diminishing returns. Just this one thing I know would be huge both as a coding effort and as an effect on new players' willingness to try the system.

For creating characters and leveling them up, there are a few tools that help with it.

Race and profession can be chosen using drop down lists for each of the fields. These are populated by the Character Law module. The race bonuses for stats and resistance rolls will automatically fill in the appropriate field.

All the dice rolls for stats can be done with just a few clicks from the main tab to open the Stat Generation window. It will automatically calculate the bonuses and development points for the appropriate stats and total them up. Stat gain rolls are handled by clicking the Stat Gain button to open a window where you can click one button to roll them all and another to apply them all to the character. Messages are sent to the chat for the initial stat generation and stat gain when they are applied.

The profession is used when you add skills to character to automatically determine the cost of the skill. There is a Skill Dev button that opens another window to help doing the skill development that basically helps with adding skills and allows you just put how many ranks to increase each skill while it totals up the development points spent on primary and secondary skills. It won't prevent going beyond the limits for a skill or the total development point though because I didn't want to prevent GMs from running games the way they want. A message is sent to chat with a summary of the skills gained when they are applied. Rank and total bonuses are calculated automatically for all except for a couple skills like body development because it requires manually rolling hit points for each skill rank and adding them to the field. It will handle the constitution multiplier for the body development skill though.

The ability to write my own effects and abilities into the character sheet to handle some automation in battle would be critical for me to be willing to GM in the system again. Like tracking that 2 hits/rnd and -20 to db for 3 rounds, or half speed for 1 round. etc. Having the binary "if target has <<area of body>> armor then" critical results automatable would be ideal but not necessary, defaulting to the "yes everyone is armored" value and making the DM take an action to add the heavier result would be good enough if it is possible for me to add the extra -2hp/rnd" from the "no body armor" result and have it deduct the total of 4 hp/round automatically.

I know part of the problem is likely to be non-standard wording (attack spell fumble table has "is stunned for x rounds" "unable to function for 6 hours" and "slips into a coma for 1 week" which all mean "this character cannot take actions" but parsing every possible variation into one effect would be... nightmarish.

Then how to even do an effect for "paralyzed from the waist down"? That one doesn't even have mechanics associated with it. So for all these things that rely on the GM storytelling and improvising, having an automated text reminder slapped on the target would be a really big time saver. I cannot talk and type something different than what I am typing at the same time. So play stops while I add a custom effect. A way to drag and drop text or have the parser say "this is an effect but it has no automatable mechanics so I'm just dropping it as text on the target" and do that automatically... this would be my biggest dream request.

The ruleset handles the penalty, hits/round, must parry, stun and stun unable to parry effects. It doesn't handle the coma, death, paralyze and other related effects except to keep track of them on the combat tracker. So you can see that someone is "paralyzed from the waist down" because you applied it from the critical table. It will just be one of the listed effects on the character but it doesn't have any automation around it like apply a damage each round for hits/round or automatically reducing stun each round.

Being able to roll an attack and have it resolve automatically both the hit and the appropriate crit would be pretty much mandatory to shave enough time that combat becomes playable again. This includes having some fast way for reminding players and GMs of all the bonuses and penalties to be applied to the roll. Doesn't have to be as fancy as the way 5e effects can automate things, but if the bonus or penalty is in the formulas at the bottom of the table, a player or GM needs some way to set it as an effect or ability or button to click in the modifier box or something (yes I know those are all using FG 5e terms).

Let me see if I can give you a better idea of how this works. The PCs would have all the basics calculated ahead of time for their OBs on the Combat tab of their character sheet. When the GM drags the character to the combat tracker (BTW I leave them PCs on the combat tracker all the time), those OBs and even the shield bonus is added to the combat tracker and linked to the character sheet. Unlike most rulesets the PCs do their attacks and parry amount directly on the combat tracker. Other modifiers for range, flanking, etc would need to be added using the modifier stack. Then the PC targets an opponent and rolls the attack. This will add the attack to the table resolver. The GM then chooses which attack to resolve which will show the roll and all the modifiers (including the defenders modifiers) with the total for the attack. The GM can make modifications to the modifiers and the attack table will automatically open and select the appropriate row and column based on the current results. From there you just drag the result to the token on the map or the target in the combat tracker. It will apply the hits automatically and put a message in the chat. For the criticals, you right click to resolve them from the radial menu. This allows the handling of large, super large, additional or multiple criticals like a J lightning bolt critical. When you select the appropriate critical it opens the table just below the attack table. Have the PC rolls 1-100 and drag the results to the critical table and it will select the appropriate cell. Just drag that to apply the critical results to the target just like you did for the attack results and it will add a message in the chat.

Unmodified rolls are handled automatically including fumbles. For fumbles, you right click to open the fumble table and drag a 1-100 result to the table. Unfortunately, these can't be applied directly to the PCs/NPCs at this point. What I do to handle them is drag it to the chat, right click on the target to add a blank effect, drag the text from the chat to that effect, and then add the stun rounds in the stun column for the effect. It is something I plan to add but haven't done it yet.

If RMC as it exists already does this, great I can talk to my players and maybe get some to try it. If it doesn't then I already know none of them will give it a shot, and I can't play a story that moves that slow again even with new players. I need some automation to make the system faster. No matter how much I love shadow world, I just can't GM another campaign where every encounter takes 2 sessions to resolve.

You will find that combat can be much faster using the RMC ruleset for FG so you can spend more time in the story. At first combat will be a bit slow but once you get the hang of it you can resolve combat pretty quickly. I can run a combat that would normally take 3 to 4 hours in about an hour to an hour and a half using FG.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
Dakadin

[GavinRuneblade]

That's a lot more than I expected. Thanks I'll have to find time to play with this.

I have literally dragged all my rolemaster books with me from California to Iowa, from Iowa to Washington, and from Washington to Hawaii without playing them. I just kept them because I couldn't bring myself to let go. Some of them are held together by duct tape after surviving a fire.

[Dakadin]

Yeah, as JohnD mentioned it handles Rolemaster very well. It just has a few quirks that have developed over the years as FG has continued to evolve and doesn't have some of the bells and whistles but it can make the details of running Rolemaster go a lot smoother.

That's great news that you still have the books.

Please let me know if you have any other questions and I will try to provide you with specifics.

[Elvedui]

The only thing the ruleset doesn't handle for combat at the moment are calculating range penalties for thrown or missile weapons, special abilities of certain weapons and armor (such as extra criticals for a special weapon or leather armor that protects like chain - you have to deal with that manually). Also spell casting non-elemental attack spells isn't automated as much, but elemental attacks work well. And I am not sure any ruleset automates bonuses for flank attacks or downed foes, but there is an extension that helps. Otherwise the ruleset handles combat well. It is helpful if the players know the rules and can deal with activity % which is a huge challenge I have since most of my players don't know the rules and I get bogged down trying to manually do that as well.

[Majyk]

Agreed having range boni calculated from targeting a token on a map would be sublime!

Another is keeping “Hide Roll” functionality when a skill is dragged to the bottom of the screen(hot bar). Currently, it doesn’t do this and so one has to continually swap back to the Skill tab to roll Perception(Gen. Perc.) or Subterfuge skills(Hide/Stalk) that can be in use dozens of times / session.

One thing I know would be a time killer is going through all of the criticals and adding +1 round of Stun for “foe stunned *NEXT* round.”
As it is, once a player’s round or turn occurs, the Stun total in the combat tracker decreases this number and so misapplies the correct duration for these to occur, where one(especially NPC foes where someone might not be watching) slips out of being incapacitated sooner and thus a threat sooner, too!

I keep posting to Dakadin’s wish list, though, as often as ideas come up so make sure to check there for further broken/not-so-broken things the community would like to see for all the eyeballs fixed on this thread.

Thanks for everyone’s time involved. <3

[Dakadin]

The only thing the ruleset doesn't handle for combat at the moment are calculating range penalties for thrown or missile weapons, special abilities of certain weapons and armor (such as extra criticals for a special weapon or leather armor that protects like chain - you have to deal with that manually). Also spell casting non-elemental attack spells isn't automated as much, but elemental attacks work well. And I am not sure any ruleset automates bonuses for flank attacks or downed foes, but there is an extension that helps. Otherwise the ruleset handles combat well. It is helpful if the players know the rules and can deal with activity % which is a huge challenge I have since most of my players don't know the rules and I get bogged down trying to manually do that as well.

Additional criticals for a special weapon like heat criticals on a flaming sword are already handled in the ruleset. I just used it on Saturday for an additional code critical. To set it up you need to add the additional critical table to the item here:
Item_AdditionalCrit.PNG

Then when resolving the criticals by right clicking you can select the additional critical here:
TableResolver_AdditionalCrit.PNG

You do have to resolve each critical separately but it does work.

Base Attack Spells are partially automated. You just need to add it from Spell Law to the character sheets.
Base Attack Spell.PNG

It will pull up the Base Spell Attack Table(BSAT) with the row select for the roll but you will need to select the appropriate column manually. Then you can right click on it to bring up the RR table. It will select the row and column of the RR table so you can see the RR target number. Then you can just drag the modifier from the BSAT to the modifier stack, roll an open ended roll, and then compare it to the RR table target number.

None attack spells don't have any automation since you roll a d100 and just try not to roll a 1 or a 2 so you don't fumble with a normal casting.

For activity % there is a field on the combat tracker. It doesn't do anything except reduce it by 100 after your turn. I use it for those actions that will take longer than a round. For 2 rounds of spell prep and casting on the 3rd round, I enter 275 in the activity %. I allow them 10% activity the round they declare it since spell prep normally uses 90% activity. The activity % field will then reduce to 175. The next round I tell them they have prepared 1 round and give them 10% activity again. The activity % reduces to 75. On the third round I know they are casting because there is only 75 left in the activity % field which is the activity needed to cast a spell. It doesn't really automate anything but it can help keep track of things.

Also I drag a copy of the Activity Percentage table to the hot key bar so I can pull it up quickly and I just tell the players how much it takes when they describe their actions. You can find the table in Arms Law's Quick Combat Reference:
Activity Percentage.PNG

Hopefully that helps.

[Dakadin]

Agreed having range boni calculated from targeting a token on a map would be sublime!

Another is keeping “Hide Roll” functionality when a skill is dragged to the bottom of the screen(hot bar). Currently, it doesn’t do this and so one has to continually swap back to the Skill tab to roll Perception(Gen. Perc.) or Subterfuge skills(Hide/Stalk) that can be in use dozens of times / session.

One thing I know would be a time killer is going through all of the criticals and adding +1 round of Stun for “foe stunned *NEXT* round.”
As it is, once a player’s round or turn occurs, the Stun total in the combat tracker decreases this number and so misapplies the correct duration for these to occur, where one(especially NPC foes where someone might not be watching) slips out of being incapacitated sooner and thus a threat sooner, too!

I keep posting to Dakadin’s wish list, though, as often as ideas come up so make sure to check there for further broken/not-so-broken things the community would like to see for all the eyeballs fixed on this thread.

Thanks for everyone’s time involved. <3

The adding +1 round of stun issue that you are encountering might be resolvable with a preference change. I am guessing that you stun something that has already acted for the round and when the round ends it reduces the stun by 1 round for everyone so they never actually miss their turn. In the preferences try changing Effects at End of Turn field to Yes instead of No in the Combat Tracker Options.
Effects at End of Turn.PNG

It will then apply bleeding and reduce stun when someone completes their turn instead of at the end of doing it at the end of the round for everyone.

[Dakadin]

BTW I do check those postings to the wish list so please keep adding to it. I love it when someone comes up with something that never occurred to me but can definitely be added to the ruleset.

[Dakadin]

Hi Blackmage,

Are you referring to RMC or RMFRP since some of the things you are mentioning seem to be from RMFRP?

The current ruleset is based on RMC. Ardem created an extension for RMFRP that makes some basic changes but isn't a full ruleset implementation.

Thanks,
Dakadin