Overview

I finally went through and created a Rolemaster character from scratch by reading the book and not using the ERA or having someone else help me do it. Here’s what I learned.

I’m going to try to provide bullet point lists and page references with parts of the sheet I did. Hopefully this will be helpful.

I find Rolemaster to be a supremely rewarding role-playing game because you literally can do anything you want, given time and resources poured into skills. A fighter could learn to cast spells, and a spell caster can learn to perform arts. However, the scary part of Rolemaster is the up front character builder options and decisions to make. This looks imposing as the character sheet is near tax form level, but once you get your initial build down, and a couple advancements, you’ll be chucking dice real fast.

Some other neat things about Rolemaster is that the Critical Tables in the Arms Law are fun to use in any other role-playing game and the Spell Law is usable as well as is with nearly any game. It’s real neat.

From here on out, I’ll be referring to Rolemaster Unified as RMU.

Pre-build Supplies

Before jumping into your character build, players should have the following supplies ready to build the PC and record any purchases.

• Grid Graph Paper
• Pencil with eraser
• One to three sets of d100 dice.
  • One is a 1-0, and the other is 10-00.
• Character Sheet(s)
  • One or two copies of the character sheets.

One thing that can make this helpful is pre-filling out the skills sheets with the various Profession advancement costs and professional skills already marked. However, this would depend on your GM or the community to provide something like that.

You could totally use a digital tool like Obsidian, Notion, LogSeq, or JoplinApp to do the character creation record as well.

RMU Build Process

Power Level

• RMU Core Law p.244-245 - Section 12.1 Power Levels

For most of this explanation I use the Superior Power Level, which is one step above Average. A GM or the Players may want to do more of a Heroic pulpy game or a more higher level game. Discuss this before hand. The default assumptions seem to be Superior. In my opinion, you have room to grow for longer games.

The Power Level also impacts starting stats, skill bonuses, talents, and magic. I would say to try a Superior game first, then see about starting at higher levels as desired.

Character Concept

• RMU Core Law p.18-20 - Section 2.1 Background.

Because RMU is a “generic fantasy” game, and is flexible with how characters are built, just like GURPS, HERO System, Basic Roleplaying, or Genesys, it is important to have a character concept to build and lean into. Other games use classes to provide a pre-planned progression path. So, take sometime, talk with the GM and understand the setting. If you’re playing solo, generate your setting, and then build your PC to fit.

Something to do will be to look over the Races, Cultures, Professions, and Talents to help inform what is available, unless your GM is making custom elements of their game.

Character Race

• RMU Core Law p.20-49 - Section 2.2 Races.
  • RMU Core Law p.21 - Table 2-2a Races
  • RMU Core Law p.48 - Table 2-2b Race Sizes

This choice will be based upon your character concept. Your character concept is probably informed by this choice as well. The information on the tables are useful for those who know what they want and where to put the data. For those who are shopping around, or are new to the game, the pages between are useful for learning more about the implied setting and tone of RMU.

For my first build, I’m choosing a Human, Common since it is fairly easy to work with as the only notable thing that this race gets is extra Development Points or DP. The Race Sizes table isn’t real useful for me, but it is nice to have to fill in and give yourself some reference points to imagine the size and form of your character.

Character Culture

• RMU Core Law p.49-52 - Section 2.3 Culture.
  • RMU Core Law p.51 - Table 2-3 Cultures.

Race is what you’re character was born as, but Culture is what your character grew up doing before taking on the mantle of adventurer. The table on p.51 is useful for quickly assigning Ranks to your Skills, but reading each Culture has some extra Skills suggested for skills that have multiple specializations. Of course, you’re free to do whatever you want that you think fits in your Culture’s tropes.

Make sure to read p.49 because it details some good information about Lore Skills and Language Skill. Language Skills are split between Spoken and Written ranks. The languages available are defined as part of the setting you’re playing in.

Character Professions

• RMU Core Law p.53-70 - Section 2.4 Professions
  • RMU Core Law p.58 - Table 2-4a Profession Skill Costs.
  • RMU Core Law p.59 - Table 2-4b Professional Skills.

This section is where we pick what our character will be good at. Ideally, this is defined in your character concept and informed a bit by your Culture. However, you’re free to deviate and be weird, because we all do it in our lives. The tables listed yet again provide quick build access for those who know what they want, but each Profession has a detail section, Professional Skills, and the Skill Category Costs for this profession. Later on when purchasing skills, leaning into these Professional Skills listed will help define and give your character niches to work within for the rest of the party.

You also get to give a 1 Bonus distributed among 10 Professional Skills. This bonus is equal to number of ranks in the skill, up to a max of 30. Make sure read the examples on RMU Core Law p.53!

Then pick 2 more skills, and give those a +5 Knack bonus. This is not a rank, but just a +5 bonus.

Generating character stats

• RMU Core Law p.70-73 - Section 2.5 Stats.
  • RMU Core Law p.71 - Table 2-5a Stat Bonuses

This is the initial meat of the character. Roll d100 three times, taking the highest for Potential Stat, middle for Temporary Stat, and discard the lowest. If any of the stat rolls are 11 or lower, re-roll that stat roll until you get a value higher. Depending on power level, this minimum value may change. Make sure to follow the steps and recommendations on p.72 for generating and raising low stats. These stats are important later in the skills portion, but any low skills can have their temporary rating raised to their potential rating. High potential ratings mean that the character has the chance to get better if their temporary stat is low.

Stat Bonuses are calculated based off of the Temporary Stat Score. This is important as your character progresses in life.

Character Skills

• RMU Core Law p.73-74 - Section 2.6 Skills & Talents, 82-112 - Chapter 3 Skills.
  • RMU Core Law p.82 - Table 3-0a Skill Summary.
  • RMU Core Law p.84 - Table 3-0b Skill Ranks.

As you can see by the large page count in the Skills chapter, it’s kind of important. Characters start with 60 DP plus any Racial DP as well. I interpret the spending as, your character gets 60+(Race DP Bonus), but you can only use up to 25 of your Racial DP until entirely spent. So for a Common Human with 50 extra DP, this means that they would get 85 DP for the first two levels to help give them a bit of a boost in life. After that, they’re at the same 60 DP like everyone else.

Filling in your skills is important as ranks in certain skills inform other parts of your character such as Basic Movement Rate, Hit Points, Defensive Bonus, and Offensive Bonus, plus a few others. Skills cost a number of DP per Rank when improving. These usually have two numbers listed, the first is the first rank’s cost, the second is the second rank’s cost. The way I read this is that if you only have two numbers listed, you can only buy ranks twice per advancement. I recommend leaning into your Professional Skills first until you’ve bought 2 ranks in each. Then you can get into what I call “hobby skills” or things your character may have picked up along the way in their life.

Fill in the Skill Category’s Bonuses by using the Stat Bonuses listed. Then for each skill, fill in the default score. Some of them may be positive, some may be negative. It’s okay! You’ll have chances to grow out of these negatives and offset those by putting ranks in those skills. As noted on p.83, any skill that doesn’t have a rank associated with it starts at a -25 bonus to any rolls. These are offset by Stat Bonuses, or by Culture Skill Ranks. Rank vs Score or Bonus mean different things. Ranks use the Skill Ranks table on p.84 to calculate the bonus, and Bonus or Score simply add the value to the end result Skill Bonus.

Some skills will have specializations. Work with the GM to define the Lores, Languages, and if your crafts, vocations, and other specializations are relevant.

Spells, Power Skills, and other magic related skills have a different way to figure out their skill bonuses, but that’s covered in RMU Spell Law. (see further on in the article for more information).

Character Talents

• RMU Core Law p.114-122 - Chapter 4 Talents.

IF you have extra DP to spend, and it fits your character concept, and the GM allows it, your starting character may purchase a Talent or few. These are boons and banes to your character. Boons cost DP, and Banes give you back DP.

I didn’t focus too much on Talents during my character creations, so I don’t have much in the way of experience or advice.

“Finishing Touches”

• RMU Core Law p.74 - Section 2.7 Finishing Touches

This section is a bit of a lie, because you’ll have to buy gear, hop around and fill in other spots, so it’s kind of a cop out of providing an entire comprehensive list or how-to when doing character creation. So, that means we need to read more of the book carefully in order to fill in various other spots on our character sheet. However, that’s why I’m writing this.

Basic Movement Rate

• RMU Core Law p.74 - Section 2.7 Finishing Touches, p.128 - Section 5.3 Movement

BMR is defaulted at 20 feet plus half Quickness Bonus rounded-up and modified by Stride.

Hit Points

• RMU Core Law p.74 - Section 2.7 Finishing Touches

Hits are equal to the character’s Racial base plus Body Development Skill Bonus. Then modify based upon the character size if not medium.

Defensive Bonus

• RMU Core Law p.74 - Section 2.7 Finishing Touches

The Defensive Bonus, DB, is equal to 3x Quickness Stat Bonus.

Endurance

• RMU Core Law p.74 - Section 2.7 Finishing Touches, p.129-130 - Section 5.5 Fatigue

Encumbrance is equal to Body Development Skill Bonus plus endurance modifier for the character’s race.

Encumbrance

• RMU Core Law p.74 - Section 2.7 Finishing Touches, p.128-129 - Section 5.4 Encumbrance.

Equipment

• RMU Core Law p.134-149 - Chapter 6 Equipment.

Characters start with a certain amount of Silver, sp, as listed in Table 6-0a Starting Money. My character was Poor, so they started with 10sp. This was enough to buy somethings, but there were in debt a little bit by the end. All the more reason to go adventuring. I’m not sure why it’s 10sp per level when I’m starting at level 1, but I suppose this is if you’re starting at a higher level than just 1.

Typically, a nice GM would create a “starting pack” or some sort to get characters going. This could also be part of a benefactor that the characters work for.

Gear

• RMU Core Law p.137-139 - Table 6-3 General Equipment.

Weapons

• RMU Core Law p.141-142 - Table 6-5 Weapons.

Weapons do not provide Offensive Bonuses, that is based upon your Skill Bonus for the listed type of weapon. The weapon then is given a specialization category that enables the character to better wield the weapon. When attacking, the weapon’s Attack defines the Attack Table to use when resolving combat. This could be a melee weapon, ranged weapon, or if using simple Magic or Spell Law, spells as well.

Armor

• RMU Core Law p.140 - Table 6-4 Armor and Shields, p.148 - Table 7-2b Armor Types.

Armor doesn’t necessarily provide Defensive Bonuses, only shields do. What Armor does is provide an Armor Type, AT, that then informs Attack Tables how many hits and if a Critical Hit is achieved. Higher AT’s may get hit more, but they don’t crit as much, where lower ATs may get hit, but may crit a lot sooner.

Initiative

• RMU Core Law p.74 - Section 2.7 Finishing Touches

Initiative bonus is equal to Quickness Stat Bonus.

Power Points

• RMU Core Law p.74 - Section 2.7 Finishing Touches

Power Points, PP, is equal to the character’s Power Development Skill Bonus.

Resistance Rolls

• RMU Core Law p.74 - Section 2.7 Finishing Touches, p.131-132 - Section 5.6 Resistance Rolls

There are 5 Resistances. Each are based on a Stat Bonus, Level, Race and anything special. You get +2 per level, and +10 for resistance to magic of your own realm, like Essence, Arcane, Mentalism and such.

Other little gotchas

Some things I had a rough time figuring out without reading each page and scrutinizing all the tables were things like Passive Dodge, or Passive Block. These are listed in RMU Core Law's Arms Law p.167 - Table 9-5 The Attack Roll. Here, players would go down the table adding or subtracting values from the final roll.

Passive Block is +1 DB per Shield Rank, where a Full Block is just the Shield Skill Bonus. Passive Dodge is +1 DB per Movement Skill Rank, and a Full Dodge is the specific Movement Skill Bonus. Which movement skill? That depends on how you’re moving and whether or not you’re doing a run by, swim, climb or fly by.

Everything else on the character sheet first page is pretty self-explanatory where it provides the formulas to determine the values that go in there. These may be adjusted as characters advance and stats and skills go up or down.

Time to start play

Woof. Well, now that we’ve done all this, the rest of the game is simple. Roll percentile dice, add your Skill Bonus, and attempt to roll higher than the Maneuver Chart on RMU Core Law p.125 - Table 5-1 Maneuvers. If attacking, Roll the same as a Maneuver, but subtract the defender’s DB and then consult the Attack Tables in the RMU Arms Law section. The game is really simple, it’s just character initialization that is daunting.

As you play, and ask questions, the GM will make rulings as any other role-playing game, but after the session, the GM and Players should consult the various rule books and see if they can figure out if there is a defined rule for the situation in question. If there is not, make a ruling, write it down, and you’ve become a game designer. These home rules will most likely need tweaking, but try to not get hung up on exactness.

Magic Users and Spell Lists

So, you’re really raring to play a Spell Caster of some sort. There are a few realms of spell casting in RMU. There is: Channeling, Essence, and Mentalism. Each of these have Base, Open, Closed, and Restricted Spell Lists. I believe there is also an Arcane realm, but that’s a bit different. On the character sheet, you’ll notice RS+RS+ME, this is RS == Realm Stat. The Realm Stat can be found in RMU Spell Law p.15 - Section 2.2 Realms of Magic. For Channeling, this is Intuition (In) stat.

Spell Lists and Skills

• Spell Lists are chosen as Skills when choosing a Profession.
• Each Skill Rank in a chosen Spell List lets the caster cast spells of the same Rank/Level.
  • 3 Skill Ranks in Concussion’s Ways means the caster can cast Light Exposure Relief.

This is the playground for the magically minded player. So many choices. Depending on the amount of DP you have in the beginning and whether or not you buy any talents, you may need to start with one or two spell lists with at least one or skill ranks per Spell List. This would enable the spell caster to be more useful as they’re primarily focusing on their magic. Again, you can focus on whatever you want to develop character skill wise.

Final Thoughts

Kind of a misnomer, but these are some thoughts I have after doing this process twice, and learning more about the character generation. While the vast array of character sheets seem daunting and overwhelming, the majority of them are not used until you start investing development points into the various skills or getting magical items and gear. This means to me that most of the daunting work is in the actual character initialization and concept crafting. Professional Skills are there to help guide you in what you should specialize in, but you’re free to do whatever you want as compared to other games that bind you to one or two classes. The actual game play is fairly easy and quick to get going. Actual game play will come later on in another post once I get a few solo sessions in before getting players at the table.

If you’re still flabbergasted, there is something called an ERA or Electronic Roleplay Assistant, for Rolemaster. You need to buy the ERA and the various source material, but then creating characters is a snap in the program. However, I did find it more confusing trying to use the ERA before doing a couple manual character builds. Do the hard thing first, then the easy stuff will make more sense.