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Rolemaster Moments for March
2002 - page 2
My favourite Rolmaster experience is not one of my characters greatest moments. Infact, it is one that I will never be able to live down.
In the Fantasy Edition of Rolemaster I played a Common Man Warrior Monk. My other friend a Highman Pallidan and our third friend that night a Elf Magician. We were all 1st level characters and we had to infiltrate a small outpost to scout it to see why there was no response from it for several days. So we slunk up to the fort and then managed the Palladin and myself managed to sneak up to the wall unseen.
The gate door was barred and we figure well we would climb the wall and then get a quick look and then get out fast as possible. Well...that would have worked if I had not managed to fail my climbing roll. I managed to knock myself out for 3 hours just steping up to the wall and falling backwards off of it. This alerted the guards and they stormed us and we barely managed to survive. From this adventure you would think that I would have learned not to climb walls. Nope. Next adventure we had to go check out a monastary and again they wanted to do it quietly and sneak up again. Well again I tried to climb the wall and again I failed on my first 10 feet, and again I was knocked unconscious for 3 hours. After this last attempt my friends would not let me climb anything: ladders, stairs, rocks, trees, they would throw themselves infront of me screaming NOOOOOOOOOO.
Not a single character I have ever played since has been able to climb anything, I alway seem to fall off. Monk, Magent, Arcanist you name it none of my characters has been able to get past a wall successfully on thier own since Ii started this game and that is one of the reasons that I love it so.
My favorite Rolemaster Moment is rolling up my character:
We all happened to be rolling our background options when it orrured to me that I was always rolling the one chart. I had these four things:
Before the game my name had been Cloud, but after this little incident I was known as Psyco Path.
The party I was GMing consisted of two players, a rogue and a nightblade. They were midway through negotiating a lich’s castle, when a third player wanted to join the game. Of all the things he could have chosen to be, he wanted to play a necromancer. Now normally the easiest thing I could have done would have been to have the new PC imprisoned within the castle and let the others rescue him from his grisly fate. However, there were already other necromancers in the service of the lich who were about to give the PC’s some serious trouble. So I thought it might be fun if the new player was to be found within the ranks of their enemies. To enable the PC to change sides there and then, all the necromancers were currently under the spell of the lich, which prevented them from having any free will.
Half way through the session the two PC’s encounter half
a dozen necromancers and a powerful magician. However, all the
spells being thrown at them quickly pins them down. As this
is happening, the lich’s spell loses its power over the
new PC and he realises his predicament. Standing in the midst
of all the magic users he chooses he does not want to be bound
again to the lich and decides to cast a Minor Death (C crit)
on all them by the way of using his spell mastery skill. Which,
on a successful roll enabled him to make the spell affect all
in the radius area of effect instead of a single target.
At this point I am thinking that if doesn’t get his spell
off really well he is going to be in serious trouble. I guess
what I was hoping for was for the PC’s to all run off together
once they had crippled a few of the bad guys and for the new
PC to convince the old of his new found loyalties. Then they
could have used guerrilla tactics to pick them off or found
a site where they had the upper hand. However, PC’s being
the heroes they think they are inevitably choose a pitched battle
over a drawn out affair in which the odds are more in their
favour.
In the end this is what happened. The necromancer PC managed
to roll really well for his spell mastery, and spell-casting
roll. Making rolls for all the surprised bad guys, all of the
necromancers managed to fail the difficult resistance roll except
the magician. I decided that the fate of all the necromancers
was going to be made on a single critical roll. Again the he
rolled well and they all went down in agony, only the magician
remained. Now, the magician had been preparing a spell for the
past two rounds, and he was ready to hurl it at the other PC’s
hiding behind cover. Realising the PC necromancer standing a
few feet away had just unleashed a spell that had taken out
all his allies he decides to throws his lighting bolt at this
new threat. The result? A lighting bolt at point blank range
that left a gaping hole the PC’s middle. Instant death.
The other PC’s took advantage of the situation by quickly
running up behind the magician to dispatch him and his other
incapacitated cronies.
I cannot say I have tried to introduce a PC into a game this
way since.
Well. There was time when I was young and inexperienced, just like you. I lived in great city of Tohran. I was bodyguard in those days. I worked for mages guild. One day they came and said that they need escort for one of their younger mages for a journey due south. I knew this mage. We were good friends. Many nights have we spent together in taverns of Tohran.
So we set on a journey. We wanted to go through mountain pass to save some time. That was a mistake. First we had a meeting with a giant, we escaped by a fraction of an inch. And then the real trouble begun. We were rushed by the mountain orcs. We ran, nowhere to hide. Finally! "The cave! Run there!" In the cave we recuperated. "Phew! That was close.". "GROAN!" the cave replied. "Did you say GROAN?" I asked my friend. And then we saw it. A giant white bear. "RUUUUUN!!!!!!". We ran. Outside orcs saw us "Unguga manguga!!!!!!" pointing to us. We were between two fires. Then my friend remembered that he had an orb which was given to him when we started our journey. They told him to break it when we arrive at Somwood where we were headed. We thought that that is a beacon of some kind for other mages to come to that point. And he broke it. A giant cloud appeared and after few seconds we saw a man in robe looking at us. You can not imagine how happy we were. An then the man said in slow deep voice. "If you are watching this it means that you have . . . . .".
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"
And then the orcs came.
And then it was dark.
And then there was silence.
And then I woke up with a bump on my head next to my friend.
I looked around. A cellar. "No bars?" An old man with beard approached me and said: "Hey, look this one is awake. You were brought here by our army which went to mountains to fight mountain orcs. You are lucky to be alive. Anyway, welcome to Somwood.".
My favourite experience as DM lays back about two years, but is still as vividly inside my mind as then...
The party, quite experienced with about six players at level 6 - 10 or so, happened to struggle into the realm of the Arcane Pope, a level 40 (!) archmage. He was planning to summon some greater evil in Urm, the country he was, well, possessing.
The party´s quest was just walk through the country, and guard a geographer while he was cartographing the country, taking notes on people and landscape - but, foolish as parties often are, they did not try to hide, instead - they seeked confrontation. So, only two days after entering Urm, they were arrested for planning a rebellion against the mightily, evil Arcane Pope...
As the DM I thought, well, you can't be so tough, you can't end it this way, the whole party condemned to death. So I decided to give them a fair chance to flee out of the archmage's prison.
They rejected. Heroism is a good thing, I admire it, but stupidity is another, and well, does it deserve mercy? They, regardless the Arcane Powers the Pope obeyed (which they DID were aware of, as they *happily* defeated one of his servants, the Minister of Pain, a lvl 30 (!) mage), attacked him.
First round: an antimateria ball dissolved one of them, including several feet of the stone ground he was standing on. Instead of fleeing in agony, the others continued. Second round, no crits taken yet by the arcane pope: another of them happened to run into a greater CALL FLAME, 20 by 20 by 20 feet, registering an crit "B" each round, and unable to walk after the first crit which caused him to be stunned several rounds...
In the third round, there were three characters left who were able to hit him anyway: a paladin of Pyron, lord of flames and war; a cleric of Motizia, the lady of death and darkness; and at last, a lvl 7 barbarian without armor but +120 on Axe. Can anyone become lvl 40 without intelligence? Doubt it. So the arcane decided to use his metalism skills in order to join the barbarian in HIS party...
Concluding, in round 5 the archmage hadn't yet lost a single hitpoint, using defending spells in order to protect against the Paladin's eager attacks. In this round, the barbarian's attacks against the paladin which quite constantly drew 30 E each round, had driven his opponent to 5 sole, remaining hit points, bleeding at a rate of 6 each round... and in this very moment the cleric failed his RR against lvl 40 (surprising? not at all...). He headed towards the paladin as well.
The Arcane Pope could not surpress a malovent smile...
Then, it was Andragon, Paladin of Pyron, Defender of Surpressed and Lord of Flame, who had to roll the dice. The next round, he knew he would die... so he screamed: For Lord Pyron! For Honor! and prepared to die the death of a true hero, with the sword in his hand...
... and rolled a 100. and rolled. and rolled.
The Arcane Pope, Archmage of Urm, burst into flames and ashes.
Paladin Andragon happend to live several happy months in glory, but was finally terminated by a lich - but this is another story.
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