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Rolemaster Moments for Sept 2002 - page 2
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I've mentioned Codi before in previous Rolemaster Moments, but today I've decided to show how Codi came to be. Codi was born to middling nobles in Kaitaine (Shadow World setting). Her mentor was a Baron as well as a respectably powered Sorcerer.
Codi's only real combat ability was with a short bow, so she was played as a real manipulator. She became fast friends with a Warrior Mage in the party who followed her around like a lost puppy.
Now, one of the things that Rolemaster does is give Experience Points for just about anything that is meaningful to the character; damage taken, damage inflicted, criticals, travel, spell casting, skill use, etc. First level characters require 10,000 x.p. to go up a level.
Codi managed to get to second level with only 1,000 xp of combat points. The other 9,000 were from getting eviscerated by a Rune of Disemboweling, having her spine snapped by a Land Drake and having her neck broken by a Shalish (sand lion). In all, she received AND SURVIVED four, count 'em, FOUR "E" criticals before she hit 2nd level.
With the skill points gained at 2nd level, Codi wisely chose some more combat skills. Using these skills she was able to make the ratio of "Criticals received" and "Damage inflicted" a little more reasonable.
Then there was the whole fiasco of her shooting the party's healer, and a few other misadventures. Basically the woman was a real "rhymes-with-witch".
Finally, the Sorceress named Codi (now 4th level), had a change of heart. In the middle of a furious combat, she decided to "snap-cast" a spell, instead of using the proper amount of spell preparation time. For once, the manipulator was going to HELP her comrades.
In return, she failed her Extraordinary Spell Failure roll and proceeded to "brainfry" herself into a 3 month coma. Without the proper aid, she passed to the next plane.
When this occurred, the quote around the table was something to the effect of "Well, that'll teach you to be nice for once!"
I once had a player who was playing a "merchant", with actual profession of Layman and no real useful skills whatsoever, except, perhaps, trading. But being the merchant, he was sent into a particular town to buy stuff, which happened to include weapons for the weapon master, who was a very honorable chivalric fellow.
So, the merchant walks into the Weapon's shop, walks up to the counter and starts debating the price of a crossbow. Having just purchased Gamemaster Law, I turned right to the "Purchase Static Maneuver Chart" and had him roll.
The player rolled a 66, which reads: "You discover someone who has exactly what you are looking for, and his prices are fair. However, in the middle of the transaction, the merchant dies. The GM should determine the exact cause of death."
This blindsided me a little bit, so I said, "As you are negotiating the price, the merchant collapses behind the counter, clutching his chest. He twitches a few times and lays still." The player looks over the counter, slowly. "I check to see if he's alive."
"Nope," I respond.
The merchant looks around, seeing nobody. "What's all here?" he asks, non-chalantly, so I pick up my dice and make a general roll for goods in the store, rolliing a 100.
"Well, there is this intricatelly carved, magical looking Two-Handed sword hanging on the wall in the back of the shop."
The merchant then grabs the sword, takes off out of the shop and back to his companions in the woods nearby. He immeditally presents the sword to the weapons master a sly grin on his face. The weapons master looks at the quality of the sword, knowing that it well out of the price range of the party.
"How did you get this?" he asks, suspicously.
"I'm a merchant!" he responds in a huff, "I talked him out of it at a very fair price."
I have been running a Rolemaster campaign for over 6 months now and we have had several noteworthy moments. This is one of my favorites.
The party started as a small one with just three players, (it later grew to 6) but when they started I filled in the holes with NPC's to make the game work. One of these NPC's was a cleric. The cleric had good stats, but couldn't make a roll to save his life. . . or anyone else's for that matter. I have never seen one character with as many critical failures as this priest. Within the first month he killed 2 of the players and nearly tore the broken arm off a third by trying to heal them.
Later, thanks to a magical device that generates random effects he was struck by lightning, which could happen I suppose, but the party was underground at the time. The next four times he tried to cast a spell, he wound up getting hurt in some way. The fourth time was particularly bad because the failure was some where in the -400 range before I just stopped rolling. The force of the failure blasted him into a cliff wall and knocked him into an 8-month coma.
After much pleading and use of one of their fate points I allowed the party to find a priest and revive their beloved cleric, who, for some reason or another, they had grown quite fond of. When he awoke, he tore the medallion from around his neck and ran away, sobbing. He gave up on his priesthood and kept muttering to himself that his god hates him.
One of the PC's is an evil mentalist (Don't tell the other players--they make a living fighting evil) with the spell "forget" which could permanently erase 10 minutes of memory from the cleric. She decided that removing the memory of his last failure might get him back into the praying business. So she goes under the guise of supporting her friend in his time of need and casts the spell, unfortunately, she failed her spell roll as well. I wanted to help the party out, but the description of the spell failure clearly stated that she was unaware of the spell failure. So in plain view of the rest of the party the mentalist put her arm around the priest and said, "I am SO sorry. . . by the way do remember the time when your god smited you and blew into that cliff wall."
To this day, she is not allowed anywhere near their ex-cleric, who travels with them searching a new meaning to life.
This is a story that shows that even the most experienced character can get caught of the moment.
A hafling thief named Shank Lightfoot, came over a set of brand new, superbly made climbing gear. As the eager thief he was, he couldn’t wait to use this in a daring escape. So, as he was getting away from a rather successful burglary, he decided to take the short way out of trouble. And that was out of the window. So he put on his gear, fastened it to something inside, and started the fantastic descent. At least he thought so.
And as the kind GM I was, I let him throw the dices, surely, it was a grand success. But then again.. how hard could it be to climb out from a window on the ground floor?
Needless to say, there was laughing involved. And we have not let him forget that incident. :-)
One of my favorite things to do is to try and melt the GM's brain. In one world, one of my fellow players had the unfortunate luck to get bored with his characters class. So he persuaded the GM to let him change it. A few weeks later and he was bored again — this time with his race. Some more begging and pleading proceeded and the character remained basically the same, but his race was altered.
Then through a series of unbelieveably screwed up rolls involving a few demi gods, at least one dragon and a few of the Fey Folk the character managed to change class three more times and race at least twice—all the while remaining basically the same twisted personality behind all of it. Finally, the GM had had enough. After the last change he laid down the law—in the form of one of the Elder Gods of his world that this particular character was forever locked into his current race and class. The player wasn't too happy, but the GM was...for a time.
Now, at a very low level my character had the misfortune to meet one of the Elder Gods' Predecessors. They were simply known as the "Old Ones"—they weren't even supposed to exist anymore! My character did this Old One a favor—quite by accident—and ended up releasing a whole slew of "Old Ones" on the world. In return for releasing him the Old One gave my character a potion that when drunk would allow the imbiber to change their race and class permanently to most suit the area that they next teleported into.
So the other player and I were reviewing our now high level characters' stuff one night and hatched a plan most devious. His character would drink the potion and then teleport into a group of people who's class & race he wanted to become.
He announced to the GM:
Player: "I want to change my race & class."
GM: "Can't do it! Remember that Edict."
Player: "Ok, I want to drink this potion that Varnix gave
me."
GM: "Alright - you drink it.... what does it do?"
Player: *EVIL GRIN* *slides over description of potion*
GM: *stupefied look as GM realizes we've outsmarted him and gotten
around the Elder God's edict* "!$###@$#$! I knew I shouldn't
have given you that potion!!!!"
The player got his class & race change - not what he expected, but at least we melted the GM's brain for a night.
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