Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
This work is made for the game(s) of the DCMetro Rolemaster Group, shared out
to the various GMs who wish to use it, and the Players in those games. It is not
meant for any sort of commercial use, nor intended to infringe on any copyright.
The only reason that the Creative Commons tag has been used is to make it clear
that my personal work cannot be resold without my permission, I make no claim
to anything owned by Iron Crown Enterprises.
A long time back, our group discovered Rolemaster (1982!) and as we got to know it, the GMs
naturally thought of additions and ‘improvements’ to the system. Most of those worked out (we’ve had
some really great GMs over the years), a few didn’t, and one in particular, grew into a monster; the Skills
list, which dominates Rolemaster Companion 2. It was a great tool for its time, but there were over 150
different skill costs for each profession, and those cascaded out to more than 450 when you took all the
permutations and nested skills into account. The only thing that really made it workable was the great
job that Iron Crown did in laying it out in ROCO 2, so that it was fairly easily accessible.
But what ICE couldn’t do is keep up with all the skill costs. There were a number of attempts
made to improve the skill systems (Rolemaster Standard System, and Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying
System) but neither of them had the success of the original. Even with those attempts to herd the skills
into logical hierarchies, it ratcheted out of control before leaving the distributer with development
packages, talent packages, and whatnot. With Rolemaster Classic, ICE returned back to the system that
worked so well, but at a cost of losing out so many of the great skills which extended the capability of
each Player.
In 2008, we began experimenting with a revised skill cost system which had fewer costs per
profession than Rolemaster Classic (once you included Secondary Skills), yet gave the Player access to all
of the old skills with the potential to easily add as many more as the GM desires or needs for his game,
without having to calculate out the costs for every profession. That’s what you have in your hands now.
It’s been playtested and tweaked for years and has proven to be robust and fairly simple.
Here’s how it works; There are 15 Skill Categories, and each Profession has a total of +12 per
level of Level Bonus Points which are distributed between those Skill Categories. These define with
clarity the purpose of the profession by showing what tasks it’s geared towards.
Within each Skill Category are one or more Skill Costs, with a list of skills beneath each one. All
of the indented shaded skills have the exact same cost as the unshaded Skill Cost above it. This groups
like-costing skills (not the same as Similar Skills, but rather, skills which cost the same amount of time
and effort to learn based on the focus of the profession) together and a GM can easily add any new skill
into an appropriate Skill Cost section.
For example; A Fighter’s Skill Cost to learn Adrenal Actions is 2/6. That means his cost to learn
any of the Adrenal Moves beneath that Cost will be the same; 2/6. Whether he’s learning Adrenal Move:
Strength, or Frenzy, the cost for a Fighter is the same; 2 for the first rank and 6 for the second, learned in
a single level of development.
Likewise, for that Fighter, if he wants to learn Herb Lore and Weather Watching, both are under
the Skill Category of Lore, General, so his development point cost will be 3 points per rank.
Note: The 'shaded' skills are the same skill cost as the primary cost they are indented beneath
Note: The Skill Categories correspond to the Skill Categories on the Level Bonus Chart Creative Commons Licensed by
Note: Skills in red are newly added or combined skills (e.g. Read Tracks and Tracking are now just 'Tracking') Singh Khanna, 2013, CC BY-NC-SA
Rolemaster Skill Costs Revised v.6