School of Hard Knocks: Upperclassmen

PT 1
In 1995 Rolemaster became the RMSS, Rolemaster Standard System. The biggest deal about this revision of the game, as far as the skill subsystem goes, was to make the skill categories meaningful in a mechanical sense. For the simplicity of explanation, in the earlier version of the game, you would get a +5 bonus per rank you had developed in a skill. (Again, I am keeping it simple. There were skills that gave you +1 per rank, variable bonuses per rank, etc... but most of them were of the +5/rank variety - up until diminishing returns kicked in at rank 10... jeesh!)

Anyway - RMSS brought the skill bonus per rank down to +3, AND!, allowed the development of SKILL CATREGORY ranks (a +2 bonus/rank to all skills in that category).
OK - so now development strategies are in place for both broad and specific areas - a warrior can develop skill with all one handed edged weapons in general and also focus on a short sword, rapier, whatever.

I liked this solution. Of course, I wasn't really playing at that time, just reading... So this is a big division point among RM players. Some people prefer the old way. Admittedly, each has it's merits and flaws, and everybody is gonna like what they like, etc.

So when I came back into gaming (2006? 2007, somewhere in there), I picked up the then current incarnation of Rolemaster, and was pleasantly surprised to find this change. I got a couple of my friends to agree to play (gamers both, but no exposure to Rolemaster. As Mr. Burns would say from behind his bony fingers cathedralled...)I'm afraid that I'm going to have to go on a petty tangent here. After examining the beautiful and effective art shown above (Monty, that is), I have to admit that the cover art for the School of Hard Knocks is WAY up on my list of least favorite RPG art. The cover art for most of the recent RMFRP (Rolemaster Fantasy Role Playing) ain't my thing, but this book in particular... ugh. I hope I have not offended the legions of appreciators who are certainly out there. It's actually the one game book cover that a non-gamer friend of mine saw and just started laughing at, and I had to join in. Anyway, big deal Kate - lots of good books have dumb covers!

The School of Hard Knocks was published for the RMFRP system. Specific skill and categorical development are ensconced. Another level of organization is introduced - Skill Groups (sets of associated skill categories). Groups cannot have ranks developed, but other modifications can be applied to the skill categories in a skill group.
(Fighters get +10 to the Armor Group. This means that the 3 skill categories in the Armor Group (light, medium, and heavy) get that +10.)

At this point there are:
12 Skill Groups,
55 Skill categories (note: not all categories are members of groups, or are groups of one...), and
242 Skills at an absolute bare minimum

Excessive? Insane perhaps? This game has shown a pair simultaneously evolving trends applied to the same subject: simplify by adding complexity. It very well could melt brains.

So, OK, I still haven't got to the book itself. I'll post a pic of it now and write about the book itself later because I have to work in the morning. It's the expression on the front of the head of the lion-faced guy holding a stick. Also his choice of attire (Mos Eisley Public Elementary #4)... enjoy!

Freshman Year in the School of Hard Knocks

(been wanting to write about this book forever, we'll see how this goes)

If you are aware of Rolemaster, then you probably know that it is a very skill-heavy game. Characters are defined by class & race, sure, but from the start (and only ever moreso as Rolemaster evolved over the years) these details of the character had the most relevance in terms of what skills a character could acquire, how quickly, and at what cost.

In the early days skills were broken down into 5 categories. These categories were organizational only, taxonomic (i.e. they had no 'crunch' in the game). Here then are the first five and the number of skills each encompassed: Maneuvering in Armor (4), Weapon Skills (6), General Skills (7), Magical Skills (5), and Special Skills (6). For the reputation that RM has, it really started out with a pretty small set of rather mundane skills.Of interest, right there in the first edition of Character Law, is section 14.11 WEAPON SKILLS FOR SIMILAR WEAPONS in the OPTIONAL RULES part of the book.
It makes sense, right? That developing some skill in the use and application of the broadsword might also mean that, should a sword of another variety be used, the broadsword experience might be applicable to it...

Again - Makes sense, right? Well, the seeds of future bloat are there from the start. (The next optional rule applies the same principle to the riding of similar mounts...)

So - Character Law goes through a revision. I do not have a copy of this one handy,
but here is where the skills start to really take off. At this point ICE begins to publish Rolemaster Companion books. These books have new classes, new spell lists, and optional rules to try out for virtually every aspect of game play. And from the first, more skills are explained.

By the time the second Companion arrives there are now more 160 skills listed, divided into 16 categories. Rolemaster Companion II really broke the flood gates - presenting optional rules for similar skills (harkening back to the early optional rule dealing with similar weapons), rules for complementary skills (using two skills in conjunction to resolve an action), and very importantly section 7.0 COMPLETE SKILL DESCRIPTIONS. Now I could see how to apply the Administration skill, the Herding skill, and the Sense Reality Warp skill among (many, many, many, too many) others.

If I had a scanner, I would love to show you 11.3 SIMILAR SKILLS TABLE, which is divided into those skills in the same category, and those in different ones. A character might apply 1/8 of their skill bonus in "star-gazing" toward attempts at "time sense", 1/4 of their biochemistry skill to poison perception, 1/4 of their skating skill bonus to any dancing attempts... man it got thick.

Optional Rule 4.3 in the Rolemaster Companion 2 gives some methods to limit the quantity of skills available to the characters. So there is now an optional rule to reduce the potential headache. The section begins "While it may seem that the number of skills now available are perhaps too great to easily handle..." (!)

I will end this part here and resume later. This was the state of Rolemaster during its big heyday (i.e. when it still had the Tolkien license and produced many magnificent Middle-Earth supplements). That state lasted for some several years, and constantly more skills appeared, more applications of those skills, more ways to relate them to each-other, more, more, more, more!

The next big change in the game (RMSS - SS = Standard System) I'll get to later. It was another organizational change, which also served to remedy some of the intensely over-wrought similar skill trees and such.

And eventually, I promise I'll get to the magnum opus - the School of Hard Knocks itself. Lovely book.

Instant Endgame

I've been kicking an idea around for a while now - or better, a bunch of ideas have been kicking me around, I'm finally getting fed up with it. I started up a free forum some time ago, thinking to myself that it would be good to start running a bunch of play-by-post games there.
Have not yet started any, though I've populated and emptied, populated and emptied it a few times with different setting info and introductions and whatnot.

Never stuck - so I never opened it up for perusal or membership.

I've been running a 'sandbox' style PBP game at Vin's Trollbridge for a while now (roughly 6 months) and enjoying the hell out of it - first time I've been able to run T&T in too many years. Been dwarfing it up in noisms' Warhammer FRP for just as long. So I think that I've become somewhat accustomed to the peculiarities of online play.

So - what to do with the forum space I set aside for running games? I still don't know exactly, but my thoughts on the matter are turning ever more frequently to 3 ideas.

1. An Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1e, mostly BtB, no UA) game with this premise: Characters are loaded on a boat at the behest of some Lord or King, who sends them to clear a wild island, to make it safe for further colonization.

2. A fantasy wargame. Rest assured, I do not intend to implement the 'game' presented in Galloway's Fantasy Wargaming book...(has anyone actually played this?) - no, I've been thinking instead that it would be interesting to have the players take on name-level roles, to determine their retainers and forces, fortifications and incomes and such, and play something more in the spirit of play-by-mail - where players have default orders, issue orders for their realm, and also decide on actions for their character as appropriate. Have no idea what game system to use for this - tempted to use Tunnels and Trolls, as it is the game I have the easiest time adapting to suit any purpose, but Rolemaster or AD&D could be serviceable also...with a dash of Diplomacy...

3. The Wizards War. Legends of many worlds tell of a time that wizards of great power came to conflict and brought wrack and ruin to each-other, wrought artifacts of awesome power, etc, etc, etc - 2 & 3 could really be the same game...

I dunno. I like the idea of refereeing a game where players are not necessarily co-operative, and maybe play-by-email is more conducive to this style, so that orders sent in remain private, and only published results offer information on the game-state.

Any interest, suggestions, thoughts, ideas, etc, are appreciated.
Cheers!

Identity and Rolemaster "Classic"

Classic refers to the first version of the game.

1. 'Universal' game material. Supplements to add-in to other systems to give a greater amount of detail. Arms/Claw Law for combat, Spell Law for magic, and then Character Law for character development. I wonder how many people used these products in their D&D games...I'm sure the critical hit tables were fused into games in various ways if nothing else...

2. With the "main-points" of RPGs covered, this then is a system of its own, internally coherent. Iron Crown stopped printing information about converting Rolemaster data to the number-scales of other games, and began packaging the books together as a stand-alone system.

3. Middle Earth. Pre-MERP - Iron Crown got a license to publish works detailing settings in Middle Earth. What a coup! With time, a spin-off game is developed, 'Rolemaster-lite' (*heh*) in the form of MERP (along with other products). Rolemaster itself continues to be supplemented by Companion products, and also a campaign setting called Shadow World. New character classes are introduced, spell lists after spell lists are elucidated, the effects of unique herbs with strange names are detailed, more skills, more skills, more options...

4. Tolkien License revoked. Bummer. Can no longer publish the stats of the Steward of Gondor...Good thing they'd been thorough while the license held. One thing you can say about Rolemaster - thorough! They'd already detailed Moria, the Woses, the Court of Ardor, etcetera.

5. A continuation of #3 above. The numbered general supplements come to number seven. Companions are produced for each realm of magic, for two 'new' realms of magic, for alchemy, and for spell-users in general. Three compendiums of creatures and treasures. A companion book for character talents and skills, for warriors and arms-use in general, for war, for sea, castles, for constructs, golems and autoamta (I'm bouncing around the editions at this point...Rolemaster is still being published). The Shadow World setting never did much for me - but detailed settings have always been thought-experiments for me, I've never run a game with much of a mind to remaining true to a setting...but I liked reading Greyhawk, Earthdawn - Shadow World never jumped out and pulled me in.

Here's the thing. I tend toward 'low-powered' gaming. Limited information, limited scope. With the amount of detail in this game, I found it difficult to put on the blinders, and focus only on the aspects of the game that supported a low-powered campaign. If the characters were playing dumb grunts in the middle of nowhere (trust me, they weren't...), I was nevertheless aware that there were world-spanning organizations - there was magic that would allow amazing feats of communication and co-ordination - and this was distracting. (The fault here I lay at my own feet).

Ugh.
Yes, I'm going to have to go through the numbered companions next.
:)

Rolemaster vs Tunnels & Trolls

T&T wins again!

But really, this is more on Rolemaster.
I apologize that my writings here tend to be somewhat meandering.

One thing about Rolemaster I always found interesting was that it was something of a toolbox right from the get-go. It was acknowledged in the books that there was so much being presented that most referees would want to not-include everything (sort of reverse house-ruling...sort of). Then, once the Companion books started coming out and the options proliferated, this observation took on new weight - for example, there were three or four systems presented to deal with initiative in combat, and you really couldn't use ALL four of them.

When it come to kit-bashing, house-ruling, etc, the idea of building complexity to a desired level from a simple foundation has great merit. My early experiences with Rolemaster, however, may have really developed in me a tendency toward the opposite - to begin with complexity and pare it down to desired level of simplicity. Or rather, to begin with comprehensiveness and reduce reduce reduce.

Both approaches have their pros and cons. I feel that I am at odds with general OSR-ness when my yang side of overdevelop-then-reduce comes out. Oh well. Different strokes for different orcs.

Now, I have a hard time imagining two RPGs farther from each-other on the dirt-simple <-> over-blowed-out number line than T&T and Rolemaster - the two games that have had the most telling influences on my 'gaming philosophy'. (This may have produced a certain schizophrenic
tendency in my gaming...I refer to the orcs mentioned above). In the privacy of my notebooks and hard drive, I still attempt to write over-arching structures, comprehensive systems, exhaustive lists, rational categorizations and such - but in play, I am coming more and more to appreciate beginning with simplicity, and generally staying there.

I think though, that there's a lot of grey-area between the two extremes. And I think also that I will not be able to stop this series until I've plucked the various gems out of Rolemaster to put them here on display.

Oh yeah - the Castles & Ruins supplement for Rolemaster is magnificent!

Rolemaster and Alignment

Fortuitous Bandwagoneering!

Rolemaster, at first, had little to say about alignment. The book dedicated to character development actually has no use of the word in it! Regular Garden of Eden...

Evil showed up in Spell Law, where there were lists of spells that were supposed to be available to evil magicians, clerics, and mentalists. Spell Law provided the game's 'take' on Good vs Evil - which was essentially a small blurb that left it up to the Referee to decide what the terms meant in their game-world! How about that!

Enter the Companion products (of course!). Early companions were essentially fan-projects - optional rules and sub-systems submitted from players across the world - of course someone out there would submit their version of alignment for Rolemaster. It was inevitable.

Now, the latest version of Rolemaster has two pages dedicated to it, with three tables occupying one of them. It gives a variety of binary pairs (good vs evil, law/government vs anarchy/rebels/opposing government, law/principle vs opportunism, religion vs atheism/other religion, free enterprise vs cartel/guild/monopoly/socialism, asceticism vs hedonism, altruism vs egoism, spiritual vs materialist, metaphorical vs literalistic). This table, while interesting, is a simplification of an earlier table, which contains 'Personality Traits' set up in the same fashion (as pairs of extreme traits). A character was to roll on this table. Lets say this roll is 58 (yes, I rolled!). 58 gives us "Valorous, Brave, Bold, Audacious vs Timid, Cowardly, Craven".

OK. We roll again to determine where the character stands in this abstract scale (where low rolls are closer to the Valorous, Brave, etc end, and high rolls cleave to the Timid, Cowardly and Craven heights) - and get 50!. Really (again - I rolled!) How appropriate. So this particular character stands exactly midway between Valor and Timidity, as Brave and as Cowardly as the average Josef.

How about a roll on the alignment table? 71 - this will determine the character's alignment on the scale of "Metaphorical vs Literalism". OK - 32 puts him much closer to the metaphorical than the literal. A man, then, of average bravery, prone to metaphorical interpretations and understanding of the self and world.

Alignment? Apparently this character does not acknowledge a struggle between universal good and evil. Nor is the importance of individuality defined - or the value of whatever groups he associates with. Granted, with different rolls on the table, a closer approximation of AD&D alignment could have happened. And dispensing with the die-rolls altogether would simply that further...

I didn't grow-up gaming with this approach, though - it's AD&D alignment that has that honor. Honor? Anyway - ZZARCHOV has posted his approach, and it is similar to mine (though I do use Neutrality - in fact, variations on Neutrality comprise 75% of alignments). The important part is that alignment defines the positions an individual takes on the issues of self/group and selfish/altruistic - in a purely social sense. This is where I prefer alignment - as definitions of relations of self/group and then relations of groups to other groups. At this point I would have a hard time demanding that a player choose an alignment (unless the class dictated it). Alignment is something I use generally just to generate conflicts between individuals and groups.

Let's populate hex #5437 with two dwarf tribes, both Neutral Good. What stories are there in this hex? Two Dwarf tribes co-exist because of similar temperaments and mine high quality iron ores, etc. Great. Sounds like a decent place to rest and recuperate while wandering the wilds.

Why are there two Dwarf tribes fighting over in hex #7853? Because one was randomly generated Chaotic Evil and the other Neutral Good. So an antagonistic relationship between them is not hard to imagine here, the details of which could be left to development until such a time as the area is entered: which tribe is encountered first? How do they cast their differences with the other tribe?

These kinds of things could be modelled anyway you wanted - give each hex a Conflict score or something... the point of this ramble has become pretty much lost to me. Oh yeah - just that alignment has become shorthand for hex map filling, city populace factions, etc. I kind of cringe when players try to bring alignment into play...

Now. Universal powers in unending struggle...There's a wonderful thread on OD&D that is probably what got me hooked on the boards.

In Clarification of Rolemaster

Well, strictly speaking, Andreas, they could populate empty spell lists from scratch, so it wasn't so much spell invention as it was stitching together pre-existing spells to form new groups. The class was called an an Arcanist - it was actually in Rolemaster Companion II methinks (maybe III). What they did present in the first Companion was 'Arcane' magic, a new uber-realm of magic which allowed its practitioners to learn lists from any realm (called an Archmage). At first, Arcane magic was an escape route from the division of magic into discrete realms. Later versions of the game changed Arcane magic into 'just another realm', with it's own professions and their base lists, etc. The Arcanist, then, was a spell-user of the arcane realm that could build lists of spells from all of the pre-existing spells.

Lucky guys!

Ok. Godsdamn* this spell system! I love it - but whew! Too much! Anyway, non spell-using characters had to choose a realm of magic, even the grunts, sages and swashbucklers. This decision could have some in-game consequences for them, but was largely superfluous. Spell-using classes had their realm (or realms) pre-determined. Here was the first clash - the Monk. By-the-book, a Monk is a semi-spell user of the Essence realm ('essence' is a term analagous to 'ambient magic', 'the force', it's practitioners those who learned formulae and methods to coerce specific effects into being). Early on, a player wanted to make a Monk, and saw them as belonging squarely in the Mentalism camp (mentalism: remember the magical field of the Essence? Yes. Well, it is uneven. Living beings form nodes in this field, and Mentalist casters tap this personal allotment of magic). I agreed. These realm divisions are semantic, or at best/worst, settling elements - and so in my game, the Monks were Mentalists.

*

In Praise of Rolemaster

Spell suites.

1. Spell Lists
Rolemaster magic is love/hate, but one thing that stuck from its spell system was the mechanical exposition of increasing spell effects at greater levels. Where AD&D used spell name and then Improved spell name, this was more obvious. AD&D also had a lot of spells in which increased caster level provided better results. Again - nothing new in a revolutionary sense, it was really just the exposition. Spells were presented in lists of levels, with (usually) 23 elements - these lists being a few related spell effects stretched and stepped out. Oh yeah - when a character 'learns a spell', they really learn 3-5 spells...yeesh - OK, I am trying not to explain the magic system wholesale here - the important point is that it got me thinking about scaling spells of similar effect (and has since contributed to my desire to dismiss spell levels entirely).

2. Lists of Spell Lists
There was a body of common spell-craft, but each class (profession in Rolemasterese) that could cast spells had 6 lists of spells (base lists in Rolmasterish) that were generally considered unavailable to other professions.

Reading through Kellri's Greyhawk Spells got me thinking about this - particularly the grouping of the 'named' spells from Greyhawk. I am assuming that at least some of the lists of named spells came from the actual negotiation of the originial players and Gygax, and not so much 'after the fact' padding put in by TSR (I may be wrong) - but the lists are generally themed. The spell inventors weren't trying to make toolkit magic, they were creating spells that fit their characters (though not without utility). (Link to Kellri if you need it - read the CDD's, and everything else too!)

X. An early publication after Rolemaster caught on was the Rolemaster Companion I. This contained a new profession that could build his spell lists from scratch. Oh yeah, and a new realm of magic that basically allowed you to ignore the division of magic into three 'realms'. Have I not mentioned the 3 realms of magic yet? Good! It's a fine concept, an evocative organization tool,
but as soon as they could, they published a supplement that included a way to 'unify' the divergent realms. Rolemaster had a vast profusion of ideas and options, simultaneously publishing ways to simplify and complicate...I feel like Rolemaster is a great game for NPCs.

In Praise of Rolemaster

I'd already moved on to Rolemaster by the time AD&D 2nd edition came out, early converted by MERP – converted through sheer force of will really, my friend Ernie foisted it upon me, and we both being thorough Tolkien geeks...it was important to us. But I had read Arms Law, Spell Law, Character Law during their early printings (plastic bags, no glossy covers). I can't say that I could grok the system as a whole until very much later, not until MERP made me do it. It was not presented as a system at first, more as sub-systems (big ones) to tack on to your AD&D game. Very big ones – replacements really. I cannot help but think that Fenlon & Co. were designing a full system from the get-go.

Rolemaster is the only game that I know of that started off complex and has throughout the course of it's recent lifetime (through various iterations) sought to reduce its complexity to a more manageable level. It is to the point that the differences in organization do not form a pair of worse-organized to better-organized - they're both just as fiddly, just differently so...

1. The Resistance Roll Table – a matrix, comparing level of attack to level of resister. 1st level resistance provided 50% chance against 1st level attack. Smoothed out over 20 levels. This could be the only table ever used in a game – this table really is a very even-handed 'core mechanic'. Nothing unknown beforehand, mathematically – essentially the same concept as the magic resistance some creatures in AD&D had.

2. The division of character classes into three categories: Non Spell-User, Semi Spell-User and Pure Spell-User. This is not specifically accurate – there was a fourth category initially - the Hybrid Spell-User. This was essentially the same thing as a Pure Spell-User, the difference having to do with the categories of magic in the game. What I have retained from this, reinforced by my early playing of Tunnels and Trolls, was the division of character classes into no-magic, some-magic, all-magic.

3. Illusions. There was no disbelief a la AD&D. The caster of illusions manipulated the elements (even if that element were only 'light') and created effects that were real physical effects. Disbelieving illusions had always been a pet peeve of mine about AD&D. Broke the wall, as it were.

4. The Mentalism Companion is one of my favorite RPG books. It has some kinda bleh parts, (it's got 158 pages...) - but it has some very organized thoughts on some more outre fantasy role-playing accoutrements: time travel, 'the philosophies of illusion', natural languages, divination (of past, present, and future, each with their own treatment – jeez!), astrology, tarot, dreams...

Games I can't run? Rolemaster. As a referee, I, if not the players too, shied away from combat! It was too much to bear. In the end, character creation in Rolemaster is as far as I can go. It's kinda like Traveller that way – where character creation is itself a rewarding pastime. I even got to the point that I had 3 players create their characters in Rolemaster, and then I took their character sheets and converted them to my home-brew T&T for play! Gug!

Anyway, I'm sure I'll return to this later, one of those things. And it's given me an idea for a series of adventurous posts – Games I Can't Run!

Classes/Professions

Non-Spell Users   Semi-Spell Users
Fighter           Ranger
Rogue             Paladin
Warrior           Adept
Soldier           Monk
Swashbuckler      Warrior-Mage
Sage/Tradesman    Bard
Thief             Dabbler       
Warrior-Monk      

Pure Spell Users
Magician      Sorcerer      Druid
Illusionist   Mystic        Shaman
Priest        Warlock       Magus
Mentalist     Seer          Alchemist
Healer        Astrologer    Enchanter
Lay-Healer    Necromancer   

This is a list of the character classes I like to use, make available in games I run. It follows the general concept found in Rolemaster of categorizing professions generally by how they relate to magic-use. These 'class concepts' are drawn primarily from 1st edition RM (and the Companions - many of which are really great RPG books in a ridiculous feature bloat/cool idea way).
The presence of magic in fantasy games is really totally fundamental IMO. You can run a high-magic campaign, a low- or no- magic campaign - but EVERY campaign has to define it in some way. So it makes a convenient starting point to conceptualize classes/professions (among many other things)...
But I don't develop characters as RM characters - it just takes WAY TOO LONG. I use them as guidelines and write them into the campaign - usually using whatever base spell lists and skill group bonuses (as wonked into my game). I do run separate 'realms' of magic (a la RM), but default to magic just being magic when it is too inconvenient (example: 'detect magic' in RM is split into three (really more) spells, one to detect each specific realm - too much for me).
I used to have a much larger list of 'Non-Spell Users', but it's just too easy to get way too ridiculous - and this list (Pure-spell users particularly) is close enough.
I used to have this NSU/SSU/PSU profession-group:
laborer/tinker/architect (!)
Wonder why I've developed in a vacuum so much of my life?

The "System" (heh heh heh)

I say I'm running Tunnels and Trolls as a simplification. The truth is that I'm running a Frankenstein monster hybrid-game. The books I keep on or near the table during play: Tunnels and Trolls (5.5), Character Law, Spell Law, Player's Handbook (1e). I will try to explain what's what here. The fact is that during the last session, we never opened any of them...

First off, character sheets look mostly like T&T, but there are a few more stats, 6(!) to be exact.
The stats are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intellect, Wit, Will, Power, Luck, and Soul. Characters have three 'aspects' (this for conceptual organization - not a mechanic/bug/feature):
Physical (Str.Dex,Con)
Mental (Int,Wit,Will)
Meta (Pow,Lk,Soul)

Then there are 3 derived stats
Charisma (average Str/Int/Pow),
Perception (average Dex/Wit/Luck), and
Discipline (average Con/Will/Soul).

Discipline is the odd man out. I have no idea what to do with this stat. I'm considering changing it into Health, or Determination or something. I dunno what yet. Characters with low Will are easily charmed/commanded. Characters with low Soul are easily possessed.

Stats are rolled with 2d6 + d12, in order.

Races DO NOT multiply stats. As of now race has no impact on stat scores, but I am considering different approaches here. I'm not using an 5.5 triples add-reroll stuff. At first I had plotted out stat scores giving bonuses/subtractions, but have decided not to do so anymore. Any, I'm not using Combat or Missile Adds. Or Speed. Or T&T combat. I'll explain more about that in a bit.

The race and class (along with 'social class' determine what 'categories' a character may choose skills from. There's a total of 13 'skill points' for a starting character: 3 from social class,
4 from race and 6 from class, and these 13 points are distributed among 9 'skill categories'. These categories are Combat, Magic, Stealth, Physical, Mental, Awareness, Social, Outdoor, and Technical. Here's a few lines from my table:

RACE/CULTURE COM STL MAG PHY MEN AWA SOC OUT TEC
Hillmen      1           1               1   1
Half-Elves           1   1   1       1

CLASS        COM STL MAG PHY MEN AWA SOC OUT TEC
Fighter      5           1
Thief        1   3               1   1
Priest               4               2
Warlock              3   1    1              1

SOCIAL CLASS COM STL MAG PHY MEN AWA SOC OUT TEC
Outcaste         1       1       1
Middle Class 1           1*          1       1*

Where there is an asterisk, the player chooses which category the skill point is used in.

Skills are varied. Some skills give constant bonuses. Examples:
Physical-Body Development - gives d6 or 3.5 Hit Points
Combat-Dodge - improves 'Armor Class'

Other skills apply bonuses to specific situations as a 1 rank:+1 on SR (Physical-Climb as an example)

Combat and Magic skills are a little more varied, and in fact, I think most skills could follow this same approach. A skill point can give a bonus (Combat-Blades: +1 to hit/rank) OR to allow
the character to perform an action faster (this gets into the time-frame of rounds which is a different subject, resembling Rolemaster FRP rounds (10 seconds, no phases, but each action takes up some minimum time of that round). Magic Skill points can be used to learn spells, to improve some parameter of a known spell (like decreasing the casting time, etc)...

I've tried to keep these things vague, hoping that players will come up with variations and improvements. I made a short list of skills by these categories, but stressed that these lists are by no means exhaustive.

Characters have hit points. These are initally the same as the character's CON score, but can be increased with skill points.

I use 'armor class' in the sense of how easy/difficult something is to hit. Rolls to hit are made on 2d10, trying to roll the target's AC or better. I'm trying the bell curve in combat. So far, I like it. Base armor class is determined by size.

Tiny creatures   AC 15  (fairy) 
Small creatures  AC 13  (halfling, dwarf, goblin)
Medium creatures AC 10  (human, elf, hobgoblin)
Large creatures  AC 7   (say, ogres, bugbears)
Huge creatures   AC 5   (say, giants)

I am using T&T weapons and armor, so there's Hits Taken. Which is good. Since there's no comparison between combat totals, weapons do A LOT of damage. For the unfamiliar, a broadsword
is listed as doing 3d6+4 damage. In standard T&T, the combatants roll damage, the lower roll is
subtracted from the larger roll and the difference is applied to the loser of the round. This is not the way combat is working here. There is initiative, attacks are sequential. Being stuck with a spear means taking 4-19 points of damage...