As for the effect on the opponent, that has to do with your success, skill, and the opponent and his defense, with wounds ranging from a scratch to a lethal maim. As opposed to a hit point system where a good thrust with a greatsword could knock down some points, often without even the possibility of death or long term injury, removing strategy and tension. In real life, if you shove a sword in someone's face, it doesn't take well, and that's how some people like to play it (people didn't invent armour for nothing).
And in real life, a particularly aggressive person will get involved in about as many lethal fights in their entire lives as most PCs do in one scenario. Realistic combat systems will kill you.
I wanted to like Riddle of Steel. I really did. It is almost the greatest system ever. But its just too lethal to use, and small differences in dice pool are too important. And the magic system is
awful. Mind you, that's in many ways fair enough. The game makes it very clear that the game is about swordplay (well, weapons in general) and sorcery is just not the focus.
In short, great system for a gritty, realistic one off, not really suitable for a campaign involving any degree of character continuity.
@Clovenhoof: don't mix up rule heavy (d20, working by exception - ie feats) and table heavy (Rolemaster).
@warzen: I don't believe he is. I suspect that in most cases assessments of how complex a system is are deeply subjective, and based far more on familiarity with the game than any actual facts. With that caveat, I have played both a good deal (though not much Rolemaster recently), and I believe very strongly that d20 is entire orders of magnitude simpler. It has a very simple base mechanic, a very simple spell system and a very easy character generation system. Yes, there are quite a lot of feats, but you only have to care about the half dozen or so you actually have, and most of those are just plus 1 to this, plus 2 to the other. RM has a deeply arcane generation system, and is far more complex to play, with arrays of talents, bonuses and classes that make d20 look like Janet and John. And it was a total pain to run, because the wierd combat system made assessing threat levels of enemies largely a random thing. I lost PCs in minor preliminary encounters and had major enemies go down in one action. And losing PCs is bad, because entire days are needed to create another.
