Rolemaster
Rolemaster UnifiedBest For
Groups who want a long fantasy campaign with granular character building and combat where weapon, armor, and each wound carry mechanical weight. It suits tables comfortable resolving attacks and injuries through table lookups.
Core Mechanic
Most rolls are d100 open-ended: 96–00 is rolled again and added, and a first roll of 01–05 is rolled again and subtracted. A maneuver adds the skill bonus and a difficulty modifier, and a total of 101 or higher succeeds. Some maneuvers allow partial success or partial progress on lower totals. An attack roll opens upward only, adds Offensive Bonus, subtracts the target's Defensive Bonus, and is read on the weapon's attack table in the column for the target's Armor Type. A hit gives damage and sometimes a critical, resolved by a separate d100 roll on a critical table.
Most actions use one roll: open-ended d100 plus a bonus, read against a fixed threshold or a table. Character development, combat, and magic are each a deep system of their own. An attack shows the pattern: it is read on one of 39 tables by Armor Type and can add a critical that becomes a tracked injury. The systems interlock through penalties that carry from one roll into later ones.
- Free to tryNothing freeNo free rules or starter
- Get it nowSold newIn print or as a legal PDF
- ✓IndexFind any rule by page number
- ✓GM guidanceA chapter on how to run the game
- ✓Examples of playRules shown in action at the table
- ✓Quick referenceCheat sheet or summary tables
- –Cross-referencesRules rarely point to each other by page
4 of 5 book tools found in the core book
Highlights
Armor Type selects the column on each attack table, so armor changes both the damage a blow delivers and the total needed to score a critical. Profession sets what each skill rank costs, so a Fighter can still take magical skills at a higher cost. Spell Law organizes magic into 171 lists of 25 spells, and a caster buys ranks in a list to reach its higher-level spells.
Considerations
Core Law and Spell Law have no bestiary or treasure tables, which Core Law assigns to the separate Creature Law and Treasure Law volumes. Resolving one attack can take an attack-table lookup, a critical roll, and tracking of bleeding, stun, and injury penalties. Without magical healing, injuries can take days or longer to recover, and Core Law advises scheduling significant downtime between combat sessions.
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