In this installment of my unofficial revision musings, I am going to cover Races & Cultures, and my opinions on how I think that they should be handled.
Races
My thoughts on races have not changed much. I still believe that a point system should be used to build the races for the game. Each race would have a number of different attributes such as stat modifiers, resistance modifiers, racial abilities (perhaps echoing talents or actual talents) as well as information on basic outlook, physical description, etc…
One thing that we did for Rolemaster Express, that I liked was the change in how Body Development was handled for hits. Where we gave the Max Hits, and a number of Base Hits and how many hits were gained with each rank of Body Development. This allowed for even low level characters to have a slightly greater survivability while still allowing those with a more physical bent to continue development, but it also closed hits off so that a character could not go on getting more and more hits each level in an endless spiral like some games give you.
One topic that has come up in the past Revision Musings on the ICE forums is the subject of Size. It is my opinion that Size should be included as an attribute, but not as a stat. Being an attribute, we can easily give a listing of what determines the size category of a character or creature, and have a table that lists modifications based upon that size. Things such as a creature that is of a Large size gains a +10 to Strength. For races, such modifications would be built into the actual racial attributes. This then can come into play in other aspects of the game, such as Talents and Creature Customization.
Balance is also an issue here. As I have stated before, I think things should be balanced. Mainly this is because there are many different styles of play, and we have to accommodate as many of those different styles as possible, and also because it is easier for a GM to adjust a balanced game (using balanced rules) to achieve what he wants than it is a game that is not balanced to start with.
This means that if there is a race who is more or less powerful than the norm (and humans would be considered the norm, the baseline from which everything else is judged), then there should be a cost to the player. This cost would be reflected in Development Points. If a player wanted to play a race that was below the norm, then they would get extra DPs to spend rather than having to pay DPs for a more powerful race. This would be a one time DP bonus/cost though, not a continuing bonus or reduction.
The core rules would also stick to the standard fantasy races, but there would be no half-races. Instead, there would be Blood Talents, which allow a player to be a mixture of races. This would work somewhat like it does in HARP, there would be a minimal cost for acquiring the Blood Talent, perhaps 3 and 5 DPs for Lesser and Greater Blood Talents respectively. The idea being that by taking a Blood Talent, you are changing your character from the norm, and that should have some sort of cost, even if the end result turns out to be less powerful than your Base Race.
It is also possible that we might charge DP fees for the swapping out of Racial Abilities to ensure that the balances remain. It all depends on whether or not the racial abilities have different values to begin with.
Cultures
Always in the past, Cultures have basically been part of the race itself. There are some specific occasions where they have been separated out, but those have always been more of options than part of the core rules.
I would like cultures to be part of the core. They actually control many different factors about a character, including anumber of role-play factors. For example, the culture can determine what weaopons or combat styles are learnable. The same for languages. The culture also gives the character certain basic skills.
Example: An Urban Low Class culture could give ranks in Streetwise and maybe trickery (for picking pockets) or Duping, while an Urban Upper Class culture would be more into giving ranks in Diplomacy and Riding, and even some weapon skills (i.e. fancing or just formalized training). Both would have the same basic languages availabe, but the Upper Class culture might have more languages to choose from and give more ranks in languages altogether.
Cultures should not be free though. Nor should they be forced on a player. In my opinion, a Culture should give about 20 ranks worth of skills (I would count ranks in linguistics as half their actual value, so 6 ranks would count as 3 of the 20). And the player would have to pay 20 DPs for the culture.
I can already hear somebody commenting on how that “isn’t balanced” on how that will always give one profession an advantage over others. My respone? “So what! The skill ranks in cultures are meant to represent what everybody from a given culture learns regardless of profession.”
Up above, I suggested a cost of 20 DPs for the culture, what I didn’t mention was that that was based on a character receiving 40 DPs per level. This means that even when taking a culture, the player still has DPs for his Adolescence Training in which to customize his character. And by giving 20 ranks for 20 DPs, we enocurage the use of Cultures without actually forcing them on the player.
Yes, a character with a Culture will have more starting skill ranks, but that is okay. You can pick your own skills and not be forced to follow the restrictions and other things that go along with a Culture, or you can be from a specific Culture and deal with the restrictions and other things that it imposes (like the free weapon ranks being only in specific weapons or styles).
