Topic: Are the armour rules in Rolemaster broken?

[Druss_the_Legend]

Is it just me or are the armour rules unworkable?

The cost in development points required to wear most armour types is prohibitive.

What system do you use for armour? Do your pcs actually wear armour? The manauver penalties seem too harsh imo.

[Peter R]

I have condensed all the different armour skills down into a single armour skill that covers all types. I use the condensed combat system from the combat companion and that uses 10 armour types but the criticals make more references to whether the location is armoured or not. So in my game it costs less DPs to develop armour as a skill and it makes more of an impact on the criticals that people take. In the present party the the sorceress and mystic are in no armour, the cleric is in rigid leather, the warrior mage is in chain and the elemental warrior is currently clanking around in plate AT17 but only has a single rank in the armour but that is not his normal condition.

If for the heavier armours you allow strength bonus to mitigate some of the penalties then armour becomes significantly less difficult to use. Even without that even if you have a -50 or -60 to a maneuver roll that is no real hardship if your riding or climbing skill is up on the 100s. It just takes more time,  it doesn't stop you doing anything.

[Thot]

Encumbrance rules, no other maneuver modifiers except in very specific circumstances. There are no other armor rules in my games.

[Justin]

No DP are required to wear armour. DP are required to perform maneuvers flawlessly in armour--which only in power fantasies is that an expected ability.

[Witchking20k]

Broken IMO.  However, I do not think they are broken beyond repair.  One of the things I like about RM is that you do not pre-pay for abilities like you do in other systems.  So, if you make a fighter at level 1 in RM and decided to not wear armour then you don't buy ranks in armour.  In other systems (D&D specifically) you have the purchase of an armour proficiency built in to your archetype. 

To Justin's point- you don't need to pay to wear armour, you are buying off the penalty associated with wearing it.  I think that the cost associated with wearing heavy armours is so prohibitive that you cannot begin play using is.  I would rather see armour have 2 MM penalties: trained and untrained and maybe split into 3 tiers Light, Medium, Heavy then purchased as a talent.  The immediate response is that suddenly armour costs the same for everyone to purchase.  Yes.  But, wearing armour still affects individual characters differently- so, why does it matter?  A Fighters tendency to be physical in nature will balance off the effects of armour.  Wearing plate armour will make most "thiefly" pursuits almost impossible.  Spell casting has built in limitations.  So, with all of these limitations already core parts of RM why build a DP dump that further penalises PCs?

[Hurin]

Depends on which edition you are talking.

RM2? The armor rules have some problems, in that the penalties are probably a little too harsh and armors have a baked-in quickness bonus/penalty, which makes AT 1 better in many instances than heavier armors. I wouldn't say they are entirely broken though: so long as you remember that strength bonuses can cancel out the quickness penalty to the higher ATs, and so long as you have a good number of hit points, you can still find yourself better protected in AT 20 than in AT 1.

RMSS? I don't know enough, but from what I've heard, it might be even worse than RM2.

RMU? I think the armor rules are the best for any edition of Rolemaster. The problems of earlier editions have been largely solved, the baked-in quickness bonus/penalty has been removed, and the higher armors are very effective at protecting characters. The piecemeal armor rules have some idiosyncrasies and unexpected results, but these can be solved by rolling critical/location first, or simply not using piecemeal armor. Some people think the penalties are still a little too high, but I think when you play RMU for a while and appreciate how protective the heavier armors now are, people will come to appreciate how valuable armor now is. I think RMU has done a great job of fixing armor.

[Witchking20k]

RMU is definitely an improvement. 

[reitif]

I dont mind the armour rules at all. I have played since 1986 and ran about 10 years combined campaigns playing every weekend. What i do find is that guys dont tun around adventuring in AT 16 or At20, which, in my opinion, makes sense. These ATs are not for adventuring. They are for straight up fighting. Ever see Excalibur? they moved a little different than Schwarzenegger did in Conan. I mean I guess you expect 3rd level characters to run around climbing trees in full plate, yeah broken. I found typically AT 14 or 18 was as high as people would go. I was cool with that. I also started people off at level 5 and bumped everything int he world up to that level too, so maybe being first level does suck, but as someone pointed out: anyone can wear armour, it is just not so great to move in until you spend some time (DVP) in it. As pointed as well, high ST can cancel out qu penalties. I used extended stat gain roles from RMC IV, as well as backg
round options from RMC 2&4 so stat bonuses generally rocked. In fact I gave up on the whole try to keep everyone under powered thing, and let them all have amazing characters, then made the rest of the world the same and it sort of balanced out very nicely.

[Malim]

Problem for me in RM2 armours is that only a very few armour types are usable.
To high AT you loose to much QU to low its better to wear AT1.

[vector]

Is it just me or are the armour rules unworkable?

The cost in development points required to wear most armour types is prohibitive.

What system do you use for armour? Do your pcs actually wear armour? The manauver penalties seem too harsh imo.

I don't consider the armor rules unworkable at all, but I have adjusted the min - max maneuver penalties for each armor type, eliminated the quickness penalty (already baked into the weapon charts), and added some skill specific armor penalties for things like Subterfuge - Stealth maneuvers.

[Malim]

Baked into the weapon tables? how so?
You get hit later the higher AT!

[vector]

Baked into the weapon tables? how so?
You get hit later the higher AT!

You get protection from criticals and less hit points, of course. Otherwise, armor would be completely useless. But, you do get hit much further "down" the table, which is to say hit far more easily.

After running Rolemaster for years I have to practically twist my players arms to get them into any armor. They all worship at the altar to the all powerful DEFENSIVE BONUS. They see it as far better to not be hit than to be hit a little more lightly.

Now I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with my players, but they have been voting with there character designs for many years now, and they lean heavily towards the idea that the armour rules in Rolemaster are broken. So I've tried to meet them half way by adjusting the maneuver penalties and removing the quickness penalty. The latter is a deal breaker for many of my players.

[Pazuzu]

In the around thirty years I've been playing, I think the rules work fine.

The accoutrements of war are meant for war, not skulking about in the catacombs.

I find that the costs and penalties involved are  a very good trade off. This is one of the things that makes RoleMaster a more realistic system.

It certainly helps keep a lid on players wanting to do ridiculous things like do cartwheels and flip down the street while in full plate.

The quickness and maneuver penalties are there for a reason. It is very unrealistic to expect 55 pounds (25kg?) of rigid steel plates to not slow you down and hinder your movement.

The nature of heavy armor presenting an undesirable penalty to quickness is a feature, not a bug. Not liking the Qu penalty, or finding it not worth it, is a stylistic preference, not a broken mechanic.

That's why when I make characters who wear plate, they generally don't care about Quickness, because they have none. For my characters that value Quickness, they wear light or no armor. It's just a trade off. Kind of like the dilemma of choosing to have your cake, or eating it.

[Spectre771]

In the around thirty years I've been playing, I think the rules work fine.

The accoutrements of war are meant for war, not skulking about in the catacombs.

I find that the costs and penalties involved are  a very good trade off. This is one of the things that makes RoleMaster a more realistic system.

It certainly helps keep a lid on players wanting to do ridiculous things like do cartwheels and flip down the street while in full plate.

The quickness and maneuver penalties are there for a reason. It is very unrealistic to expect 55 pounds (25kg?) of rigid steel plates to not slow you down and hinder your movement.

The nature of heavy armor presenting an undesirable penalty to quickness is a feature, not a bug. Not liking the Qu penalty, or finding it not worth it, is a stylistic preference, not a broken mechanic.

That's why when I make characters who wear plate, they generally don't care about Quickness, because they have none. For my characters that value Quickness, they wear light or no armor. It's just a trade off. Kind of like the dilemma of choosing to have your cake, or eating it.

Well stated sir.  My group is well entrenched in the same camp with you.  If fact, all of our players pretty much always wore armour.  I'm hard pressed to recall a player who went with only cloth AT, other than the spell casters.

Vector and Malim mention the points we weighed against AT vs. QU.  Get hit with a lower roll for minimal damage and more difficult for crit or have the QU, but take harder hits and crits sooner.  Our mantra is "hits don't kill you, the crits do" so we try to avoid crits. 

[Ecthelion]

Is it just me or are the armour rules unworkable?

With a bit of tweaking or easily available improved (better material and/or workmanship) armor the armor rules can work fine. Without this they don't work so well IMHO.

The cost in development points required to wear most armour types is prohibitive.

I don't think so. For non-spell users armor is quite cheap. For semis leather armor is always possible. That metal armor is quite expensive for semis is ok for me because semis aren't supposed to be good at everything. There have to be some trade-offs. For non-spell users it's IMO ok that armor costs are high.

What system do you use for armour? Do your pcs actually wear armour? The manauver penalties seem too harsh imo.

We allow to negate the armor's Qu penalty with the wearer's St and we also have improved armors (with the rules from Treasure Companion) readily available. Other than that we use the normal rules.

[Hurin]

We allow to negate the armor's Qu penalty with the wearer's St ...

That is actually in the rules too in RM2; some people just forget it or don't notice the little note about it.

[Peter R]

We allow to negate the armor's Qu penalty with the wearer's St ...

That is actually in the rules too in RM2; some people just forget it or don't notice the little note about it.

I think it gets missed because it is in the encumberance section rather than with the Armour stats. In my Arms Law the QU penalty is on page 11 and the St bonus cancelling it note is on page 41.

[Ecthelion]

We allow to negate the armor's Qu penalty with the wearer's St ...

That is actually in the rules too in RM2; some people just forget it or don't notice the little note about it.

The Rolemaster Rulings explicitly state that "Armor quickness penalties may not be reduced by high St. [5/15/00]". Perhaps they wanted to make this clear for RMSS/RMFRP. Therefore we included it as a house rule for our game that Qu penalty can be offset by St.