Reality Aberrant wrote: I have read a lot about the mechanics for combat for TROS and i am very impressed about them, i am looking forward to being able to get the book and the suplements only on that account.

I would like to know, how does TROS handles skills, character generation and advancement. What else is there beside the combat. Anybody care to comment?

Read right through the posts of this forum and you'll find all you want to know (and more). Another good source of info would be the "The Riddle of Steel RPG" forum on rpg.net, that's got some good stuff, most of us used to hang out there before we found this forum :-)

Finally, there are a couple of reviews at rpg.net that cover a lot of info. One is still up on the main review page right now, the other one is older and you'll have to do a search. Search for my surname (Leybourne) if you like, since the older one was written by me.

In a nutshell:

Skills: Skills are bought in packets, you get two of them (usually) at character generation. You might pick "Warrior" and "Clergyman" to have a templar-style character for example. Each packet has about 10-14 skills or so from memory. Your rank in a skill starts high and you buy it down, 13 being "totally untrained" right down to 3 which is "expert in your field". To make a skill check, you roll the relevant attribute versus your skill and tally up successes. For example, you might roll Agility/Ride to do some stunt riding, but you might instead roll Social/Ride if you're doing dressage and trying to impress onlookers. I think the skill system is pretty good.

Character Generation: This is done by a priority system. You have 6 categories (race, social standing/wealth, attributes, skills, proficiencies, gifts) and you have six priorities to assign, A through F. This way your character will be really good at some things, but you have to choose where he's really bad as well, A being really good and F sucking. Race determines if you are a normal human (low priority) or one of the fey or a magically gifted human (higher priority). Social standing/wealth determines if you are a knight, freeman, peasant, slave etc. Gifts determines if you start out with a few gifts, a few flaws, or one of each. The other categories determine how many points you get in attributes or proficiencies or your starting skill ranks.

Character Advancement: Is really cool. It's all based on your spiritual attributes and your roleplaying of them.. as you roleplay and they come into play, you get awarded with advances in your SA's. You can then spend down your SAs to buy up other things. The exception to this are skills - every time you use a skill you tick off a box on the sheet. Three ticks for a skill means you get to roll to see if it improves (the roll being harder the more skilled you already are).

That answers your three queries really wuickly. For more info, ask away or go and read the various places I suggest above.

Brian.

p.s: You mention that you like the combat. Have you downloaded the combat simulator from the webpage? Limited weapon selection, but it's not bad at seeing how battles play out.