Thursday, October 18, 2012

Zine Progress & Arms Law Playtest

Progress on the zine is coming along better than I thought it would, and I'm way ahead of schedule.  However, I've been working on a map, and hit a road bump in trying to decide what scale to make the map in.  It's an area map of part of a continent, and I've reworked it several times.  What do you consider a good scale for area maps?  I imagine it to be about a quarter the size of the continental USA.

ICE has released the playtest book of Arms Law, and things look to be coming along nicely.  There a few major changes,  one of which is that there are no longer 20 different armor classes.  There are 10.  In fact you can mix and match them, i.e. wear plate breast armor, and leather greaves on the arms.  This of course also affects the kind of crits you receive in those areas, unlike previous editions. 

Something new is how size affects damage and crits.  A halfling stabbing a dragon, isn't going to inflict as much damage as say a human attacking the dragon.  If a giant decides to smite the halfling later, assuming the halfling survives his encounter with the dragon, then OUCH.

The writers/developers of Rolemaster Unified do seem to be listening to the people on their forum, which I think is a good thing.  Upon looking at the weapon charts, I noticed there wasn't a weapon chart for throwing darts, or a morningstar. I posted about that, and received several responses.  Now further research, and some discussion on the thread lead to the conclusion that there's a lot of confusion as to what a morningstar actually is!  Is it a spiked mace?  A spiked flail?  Morningstar probably won't make the final cut.  However, my suggestion for a throwing dart or throwing spikes just might make it in!  And I think that's a good thing.

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