Rolemaster Classic Conversion.

[Marrethiel]

Hi all,

I've been pondering how to overlay Legend onto RM. The players would like to keep classes/skills/magic items and spells. I (as gm) would love to ditch the combat system and use the Legend mechanic for skill use. So I'd apprciate some imput.

I think skills could level up normally but instead of getting a fixed bonus based on the number of ranks in a skill, you get the Legend skill increase check. This should be a relatively easy change. I'd drop profession bonus' to keep skills at comparable levels. Hit points in RM is a skill. Do I keep RM hit points or Legend? RM hits will allow for easier converting of spells, Legend for weapons and armour.

I'd like to drop the Arms Law system completely so I'm heavily leaning towards Legend combat. However this has some complications when spells are introduced. There are many spells that deal with the effects of RM combat, dealing with Stun and Bleed and Negative Skill Check results.
I haven't had a lot of experience with Legend Combat. Would it work that one level of success on an oponent deals stun, bleed or nsc and allow the other CM's when you get two levels of success or a crit?
Magic drops easy enough into the tree realms, Chanelling = Divine, Essence = Sorcery, Mentalism = Spirit Magic (the least best fit admitedly). However, this is where things start to get more iffy. If I use RM hit points the spells will be a good fit still. Legend hit points will mean I'll have to make rules for converting spells like Regen 5, where the player regenerates 5 hit points a round.

There should be a way to fit these venerable systems togther... ?!?!

PS: We do a very high power level RM / Middle Earth game and are having a break but the players want to go back to it.

 

[randalzy]

I have some experience in both RM and RQ, and honestly I would try to convince players to switch from one system to another and focus on how to convert the characters instead of try to live with a mix of both systems that will crash some day.

How to convert the current characters can be a funny thing, it allows to spend some time to analyze the focus area of a character, what abilities are important for the players and this sort of things. But really this could only be fun if players want to convert "the essence" of the characters, and not fight for every 1% in every ability or every spell as if they were a valuable family heritage.

 

[danskmacabre]

I used to play RM a LOT many years ago.
And have also played a lot of the various incarnations of RQ (The Mongoose version is now called Legend) as well.

I think they would be difficult to merge. RM is a very level based system where as you get more powerful, you get more HPs, Power points etc.
RQ just isn't like that. I see you want to drop RM arms law and go with Legend, but spells are geared towards lots of HPs are characters level up.

I personally think it would take a lot of work to get this working properly. I agree it would be better to go straight with Legend 100% than trying to make a mish mash of both.

I see you want to preserve spells, but I suppose you could go through the Legend spells and sort of "Rename" some of them to similar sounding RM spells, but use the Legend mechanics.

The RM Skillset is VERY extensive as well, far more skills than in RQ, so you'd need to add more points to allocate to development than in standard Legend and the core mechanics of Legend depend on certain skills existing you you will run into problems when you scrap all the Legend skills.

Mentalism (RM) and Spirit magic (Legend) aren't similar at all really either IMO.

I think many of the magic items will fit ok tho.

Legend does use Stun (when you take moderate wounds and major wounds and also via CMs)
And Bleeding, via CMs

 

[Marrethiel]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll have to ponder some more.