Arms Law
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Arms Law is a supplement published by Iron Crown Enterprises in 1980 for the fantasy role-playing game Rolemaster.
Arms Law is a combat system initially designed for melee combat in fantasy role-playing games, utilizing only percentile dice.[1]
In summary, each character has an Offensive Bonus (OB), which takes into account one's natural physical adeptness, weapon skill, and other factors, and a Defensive Bonus (DB), which takes into account natural agility, the use of shields and "Adrenal Defense", the ability of martial artists to avoid blows seemingly without effort. In addition various modifiers for position, wounds, and other factors are present. An attacking combatant rolls percentile dice, adds his or her OB to the total, adds modifiers, and subtracts the defender's DB. The total is then applied to a table for the attacker's weapon. The attack total is cross-indexed with the type of armor (if any) worn by the defender and the result will be a number of concussion hits dealt, which are then subtracted from the defender's running total. If sufficient hits are dealt, the defender may go unconscious, but death seldom results purely from concussion hit damage.
In addition to concussion hits, however, a critical hit can be dealt by the result on the weapon table. These are described by type (slash, crush, puncture, etc.) and by severity (generally A through E, with E being the most severe). Critical Hits (or simply "crits"), can inflict additional concussion hits, bleeding (subtracted from concussion hits at the start of each new round), broken bones, loss of limbs or extremities, internal organ damage and outright death. If a crit is inflicted, a second roll is made on the appropriate critical table.
Publication history
- 1st edition (1980)
- 2nd edition, as part of Rolemaster boxed set (1984)
- As part of revised Rolemaster Standard System (1995)
- As part of revised Rolemaster Fantasy Roleplaying (1999)