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HARP Stats & Culture

So this time I want to cover two chapters of HARP Fantasy, Stats, Race and Culture.

The biggest difference here is that there are eight stats and they are on a scale of 1 to 105.

The rules give three options for generating stats, the first is roll eight d100 rolls and then assign them to the stats. You have your profession so you already know where you should traditionally be putting your best rolls.

The second option is heavily promoted as the recommended option and that is point buy. 550 points spread over the eight stats. There is an increasing cost for higher stats.


Stat Range
Cost per Point
1-901
91-952
96-1003
101-10510

The same costs are used for stat gains on leveling up but you spend DPs on stat gains at that point.

The final option is 500 point to spend plus 10d10. 

Development points are either fixed at 50 per level, recommended, or based upon stats. There is a boxout that warns that some players will spend their DPs to increase there stats to get more DPs in a virtuous circle and/or arms race.

Stat bonuses are work out to be stat-50/5 rounding up. So a stat of 51-55 gives a +1 a stat of 76 gives +6 and 100 +10. Above 100 the bonus increases at +1 per point to a max of 105 giving +15.

The stats are largely the same as Rolemaster stats but we have lost Memory and Empathy. Intuition has be renamed Insight but apart from that you will be entirely comfortable with the stats and their impact on skills.

Races & Cultures

There are six pure races available Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Gryx, Halfling and Human. They get a mix of stat bonuses ranging from -2 to +5. They all come out roughly as having a net bonus of +10. Human’s though are treated differently. The player can assign up to 10 ‘pluses’ to any stats as long as no stat gets more than a +3. This means you can have tough northmen or intellectual urban dwellers without having to define new races and then of course that muddies the idea of setting neutral rules.

In addition to stat modifiers each race gets resistance roll modifiers, an endurance point bonus and a Powerpoint bonus. Endurance points are HARPs #hits so dwarves are the toughest at +40 and elves the most fragile at +20. Everyone else fits in between.

In reference to one of the RMU discussions every stat has at least one race that has a bonus in that stat. Also bowing to common stereotypes Elves and Gnomes get the biggest powerpoint bonuses but I was pleased to see that even Dwarves get a bonus. These powerpoint bonuses are in the region of +10 to +40 with humans getting +30.

The racial descriptions are definitely adequate. You get about eight paragraphs of background which would be useful to a new player or GM but then you get a description of the ‘blood talents’ that make the race different. Every race has three blood talents.

These blood talents are really cool. At the end of the racial descriptions is a list of blood talents. There is a lesser or greater blood talent for every race with a description of the effect on the character. Each lesser blood talent costs 5DPs and a greater 10DPs. At the time of character creation the player can add a dash of another races blood to their gene pool by buying the matching blood talent. If a parent was of that race then you would probably take the greater blood talent but if it was a grand parent then just a less blood talent. So with this a la carte method any combination of base race plus mixed blood can be created. Here is an example…

Dwarven Blood (Lesser)

The character has a bit of Dwarven blood in his ancestry, marking him with slightly Dwarven features. The player may also select any one of the following Special Abilities to replace any one of the character’s normal racial Special Abilities. Once selected, it cannot be altered.

  • Dark Vision (Greater)
  • Dense Musculature
  • Stone Sense

Dwarven Blood (Greater)
One of the character’s parents is a Dwarf, making him half-Dwarven. His features are heavily marked, denoting his Dwarven heritage. The player may select any two of the following to replace any two of the character’s normal racial Special Abilities.

  • Dark Vision (Greater)
  • Dense Musculature
  • Stone Sense
  • The character’s Dwarven blood has a strong influence on his physique, determination, and lifespan.
    • Constitution Bonus: +2
    • Self Discipline Bonus: +2
    • Average the lifespan of both your races.

I think this is brilliant, simple and elegant.

The rest of the chapter is taken up with some tables for typical height, weight, ages and base movement rates for all the races.

Cultures

The cultures section gives a description of each of the featured cultures and the number of starting ranks in languages. Although it does emphasise that Dwarves, for example, normally come from Deep Warrens there is absolutely no requirement to stick with those norms. 

So cultures are given a paragraph on Location, Clothing and Demeanor of that cultures members. but then there is a table of free adolescent skill ranks.

Every culture gets 20 free ranks including every culture getting at least one rank in melee weapon and at least one rank in missile weapons. The most militaristic culture gets 2 and 3 ranks and most get 1 and 2 ranks in some combination.

So by now your character has 20 ranks in their professional areas from their profession and 20 ranks across a wide range of categories from their culture and then languages on top. This is before anyone has spent a single development point.

So next time I will cover skills and we get to spend some DPs!

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Chapter 3 Professions

The first step when creating a HARP Fantasy character
is to choose a Profession. Much like a career, a Profession
reflects the focus your character has given to training and
development. A Profession also determines how difficult it can
be for you to learn certain skills. Some of the special abilities
found in HARP Fantasy are only available to characters of
a particular Profession. Finally, a Profession can also offer
insight into a character’s demeanor or motivation in life.

Not sure I agree with the last sentence but I will let that ride as they do say ‘can’ not ‘does’

So professions…

As mentioned last time, there are nine professions. The first thing I noticed that was ‘odd’ and un-Rolemaster was the prime stats for the professions. Clerics have two key stats, Insight and Reasoning but fighters have four key stats, Strength, Agility, Constitution, Quickness. Harpers have 3, Reasoning, Insight, & Presence. So rather than everyone has two prime stats HARP makes a more logical decision of actually highlighting the stats that are really most likely to be useful to that profession.

What you don’t get is an automatic 90 in the key stats if you have rolled badly so key stats are very much just information only.

Another difference is professional bonuses. In HARP they are called Professional Abilities but they are the same thing. RM2 has +1 to +3 per level in specific categories. RMSS has the whole thing up front as a boost to starting characters. HARP doles the bonuses out on a regular basis. A Cleric for example gets to add a +10 bonus to any one skill every 7 levels. A fighter gets to add a +10 to any combat skill every 3 levels and a +5 to any Athletic or Physical skill. Every profession has a customised list of where these bonuses can be added and at what interval of levels.

There is a very interesting section on Mages. Mages don’t get level bonuses they get a different ability which I won’t go into. What is interesting is that mages have access to 40 spells but only 33 are listed in the HARP Fantasy book. This effectively makes College of Magic non-optional.

So leaving that aside, each profession has a number of favoured skill categories. The number of favoured categories varies from profession to profession with fighters and warrior mages being the most limited at four categories each and rogues being the most flexible at seven categories.

As part of the skill rules not only do each profession have a number of categories but every profession gets 20 free ranks to spend in those categories. The distribution of those ranks is defined so you cannot pile all 20 into Broadsword for example. This is the Fighters categories and free ranks.

Favored Categories
Athletic: 2 General: 2
Combat: 8 Physical: 8

And in contrast this is a Rogue

Favored Categories
Athletic: 3 General: 3
Combat: 3 Physical: 3
Mystical Arts: 2 Subterfuge: 3
Outdoor: 3

And for a spell user the Mage

Favored Categories
Artistic: 2 General: 4
Influence: 2 Physical: 2
Mystical Arts: 10

So right from the start the new player creating a character is starting to fill in the skills on the second page of their character record. I quite like this but it does remind me of the original MERP character creation.

After the list of professions we get a few special rules.

The rules on attacking multiple targets, covered here under monks martial arts are virtually identical to RMUs multiple attacks. The only discernible difference is that the penalty is -20 per additional attack. In RMU I believe it is -25.

Now things get a bit more divergent from Rolemaster.

HARP allows multiple professions. The basics of it are that you spend 20DPs when you level up for the option to add a new profession to the character. From that moment on when you level up you choose which of your professions to level up. Once you have made that choice you spend your DPs using that professions costs. The next time you level up you can again choose which of your professions to level up, rinse and repeat.

Regarding experience the cost in EXP to level up uses the sum of all your levels so if you were 3rd level fighter and a 3rd level rogue then you would count as 6th level.

So that is the bulk of the content. The multiple professions is the give difference and it does allow you to make some interesting combinations. I also really like the way they have balanced professions. I kind of expected everyone to get six favoured categories and have two key stats and get 20 free ranks and get a +10 professional bonus every x levels but it is not like that. Everything has been tweaked and massaged to balance the professions and make them a little bit more differentiated.

So far there is nothing I don’t like and despite the more limited scope of HARP over RM2 I think there is great flexibility here.

My last thought is on College of Magics. I don’t own this book but it looks like I will need to buy it. I don’t think this is a hardship, it is only $15. Also there seems to be a ‘grass is always greener on the other side’ thing going on where RM players look on enviously at HARPs scalable spells and HARP players want RMs critical tables.

I will add CoM to my reading list.

Next time will be stats, races and cultures.

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Monkey See, Monkey Do

This is our latest 50 in 50 adventure and it is a great one to GM. If you are into making noises and impressions there are some great animal noises to make. If your players are the sort that immediate leap for the Spirit Mastery list and then try and interrogate the hell out of the first peasant/guard/goblin they get their hands on then they are out of luck. If they are the sort that like to put everything to sleep then given the numbers of attackers you can throw at them then they are out of luck. If they are motivated by gold, silver and things that glow under Detect Essence spells then they are out of luck.

In Monkey See, Monkey Do, the characters wander into an area dominated by some unusually aggressive and carnivorous apes. The apes react badly to the presence of intruders, and have a lair in a series of caves beneath the ruins of an old watchtower. The apes have a large enough presence that outright combat may prove to be hazardous.

This is aimed at d100 systems but is generic enough in nature to be adapted to others.

This PDF supports Adobe layers and the page backgrounds and images can be disabled to make printing easier.

The adventure comes with a 32″x24″ battlemap of the wilderness taking up twelve pages and a 32″x30″ battlemap of the caves, also taking up twelve pages, that can be printed out and assembled.

I will also point out that I do know that Apes are not monkeys but that would have ruined my title!

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HARP Fantasy Walk-though Pt1

When I first mooted this idea it was to do a chapter per post. Having looked at the rulebook there are 15 chapters but some are more substantial than others and some lend themselves to be discussed together. 

This is all based upon High Adventure Role Playing Fantasy, last updated 7th April 2017.

Chapter 1 was largely fluff and waffle about the history of HARP, what is an RPG and differences between versions. We can skip all that and get on with Chapter 2 Character Creation Overview.

So HARP describes character creation as a six step process:

  1. Choose Profession
  2. Generate Stats
  3. Race & Culture
  4. Buy Skills & Talents
  5. Buy Equipment
  6. Final Touches

Of the professions there are nine included in the book: Cleric, Fighter, Harper, Mage, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Thief, and Warrior Mage. I am curious about the Warrior Mage as I know that HARP allows multi class characters so what is the difference between a Fighter/Mage multiclass and a Warrior Mage?

Stats-wise HARP uses 8 stats: Strength, Constitution, Agility, Quickness, Self
Discipline, Reasoning, Insight and Presence. There is no appearance stat which I am quite pleased about. It always bugged me that RM claimed 10 stats then made you roll an 11th stat which was treated completely differently to the other 10 but was then not used anywhere else in the game.

The Race & Culture overview lists six races Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling and Gryx, with Gryx being Orc to you and me. There are no half breeds but I do know that HARP has some very neat rules for half breeding the races at both parental and grand-parental levels.

The cultures offered are Deep Warrens,  Shallow Warrens, Sylvan, Nomadic, Rural, Urban and Underhill. No Reaver which is a pity as that is a PC favourite. Cultures give characters a collection of free skill ranks that are added straight to the character sheet. Each culture gives a total of 20 ranks but more of that when we cover the cultures chapter.

Skills and Talents. Skills are grouped into categories, so no surprise there. Each profession then has a list of favoured and non-favoured categories. Within those categories each skill will cost 2DPs. All the skills in a non-favoured category cost 4DPs per rank. The ranks give the expected +5/rank for the first 10 ranks. You get 100DPs at first level and you cannot by more than six ranks for a starting character and no more than three ranks per level in later levels. This means that starting characters are going to be more competent than equivalent RM characters that would have been capped at four ranks at first level, two from adolescence and two from apprenticeship.

Talents are bought in the same way that we have seen in RMU and Chapter 7 has an extensive list. I will go into this in more detail in a separate post.

Equipment is bought using 10+1d10 gold pieces. HARP uses just four coins. Platinum which is ten times the value of gold, Gold which is the ‘gold standard’ and silver is one tenth the value of gold and copper that is one tenth of the value of silver. so 1pp is worth 10gp, 100sp and 1000cp. That has stripped out the bronze, iron and tin pieces that we are used to. Prices in HARP are pretty much identical to my copy of Character Law. A boradsword is 10sp and chain shirt 65sp in both games. Starting money in RMC is 50sp +1d100sp so on average 100sp and a max of 150sp. In HARP the absolute minimum is 110sp and the max is 200sp. So not only are starting HARP character better skilled but they are also better equipped.

The final step is of course the fleshing out process of personality, likes, dislike, attitudes and back story.

A boxout on the page tells new players about the importance of prime stats which is why profession comes before stat rolling. 

This first character overview chapter makes many references to the character record. I have put them below. I think any RM player would be instantly at home with them. Interesting to note is that Fate points are built in as a core rule and there are plenty of lines for multiple professions for those that have fond memories of the Fighter/Magic User/Thief. The second page includes every skill in the fantasy game and at least one blank line for something additional.

Conclusion

I don’t think that any rolemaster player would be overly put out by the look of a HARP character. I can see how the RMU categories with one cost per category could be be half way house between traditional Rolemaster’s one cost per skill and HARPs fixed prices for favoured and non-favoured skills. The crux being that old Rolemaster fans are used to an infinite array of professions and they want them all to be differentiated and HARP has few professions and few additions in its supplements. That isn’t really a limitation as characters can have multiple professions so an RM Magent could be a Mage + Rogue in HARP, for example.

Next time I will see how HARP treats its professions.

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Read Through Reviews

There is HARP, RMC/RM2, RMSS/RMFRP and there is RMU. Most of the readership here seem to be in the RMC/RM2 camp. Up until last month I had only a vague understanding of just how different RMFRP was to RMC.

I cannot say I like RMFRP but I can see that there are some good elements in it.

On the other hand I read the HARP Fantasy rules last year and I did like what I read. I have also bought HARP SF and Folkways but I haven’t even read them so I have no valid opinion.

So apart from admitting my general ignorance I thought I would steal someone else’s idea educate myself as well as anyone else that is interested. The idea comes from the TakeOnRules blog. What the writer did was read and discuss one chapter of the Stars Without Number rulebook in each posting. Trying to cover an entire game system in a single post can often miss some of its best features especially if you have never actually played the game.

So I want to do something similar with HARP Fantasy. We all know RMC/RM2 so I want to do a detailed walk through of the HARP rules relating them back to RMC/RM2. If this proves popular I would like to do something similar with HARP SF as my next Sci Fi game will be HARP SF. Finally, Folkways is probably the newest ICE publication I have and the one that the least people will have read so I thought a decent review of the actual book would be valuable.

This will not be a rigid “The next 20 posts will all be on HARP”. I am too scatterbrained for that. If something peaks my interest then I will write about it or if something is important then I will discuss it. I think there is a lot of HARP DNA in RMU so I think that these articles could be interesting to the whole RM community. I also think that it will give us RM players a better understanding of HARP.

TakeOnRules failed, in my opinion, in so much as they got about eight chapters in and then I don’t know if there was a loss of interest or the summer slowdown killed it but whatever happened the series has been stagnant since mid-July. I will take any feedback as we go on how to make these the most interesting reads that I can. We also have the advantage that HARP and RM are sufficiently close that something great in HARP could easily become a house rule in RM. As to the timings I may try and whizz through some of these faster than one post a week. Things still seem a bit slow on the forums so we can help fill the summer RPG vacuum.

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Hypothetically

In Hypothetically, the characters return to a village to find a note asking them to explore a nearby temple. The note mentions a small amount of money that is included with it, but the money is missing. Will the characters over react over what is probably not a lot of money for them?

They can also explore the temple itself, and a map of this is included.

This adventure hook has both a temple floor plan and monster stats for both RM and 5e for a new creature. If you players know C&T inside out then this one will have them guessing. I also wrote this just as I was starting to get into my recent revisiting of H P Lovecraft so there is a certain sort of horror element. At least there can be if you emphasis the sound qualities of the temple.

The other stand out features are the two significant NPCs. I would really hope that the GM has some fun with the inn keeper and the patron if he is ever introduced to your world.

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Adventure Structures

Whilst I quite liked the RPGaDay as it forced me to think about questions I would not have otherwise asked, it can be a bit of a task master. With the month over I can now write about what I want to write about as and when I want to. Today it is about how we structure adventures, not from a playing at the table perspective but the written page and how we present them to the GM. I raised this topic last week and  have been thinking about it ever since but now I want to throw it open to a wider audience.

There are two fashionable structures. Scenes and Locations.

Imagine a simple adventure where an urchin gets caught trying to rob a PC but then says he was planting a letter on them. He had to do this as his parents are being held captive by thugs. The thugs work for a crime lord. The contents of the letter incriminate the PCs in a coup against the current ruler, planned for tomorrow.

So lets play with this adventure.

In the Scenes method each scene has a brief outline and a scene objective. You then describe the scenes that make up this adventure. The players may proceed from scene one to two to three sequentially or they may leap from scene to scene. Rather than random monster encounters you can have a collection of ‘interrupted scenes’ that may or may not happen.

So…

Scene 1: “Caught Red Handed”

Objective: introduce the adventure to the party
Props: Incriminating Letter
Cast: Urchin
Location: Street or Market
Synopsys: An urchin tries to plant an incriminating letter. When caught confesses that he had to do it to save his parents.

Scene 2: “Fire In The Hole”

Objective: Rescue the parents and learn who is behind this plot.
Props: none
Cast: Uther & Annie (the parents), Vignir (half orc knifeman), Barny (human wrestler) and Mildew (Elven archer)
Location: Squalid backstreet terraced house
Synopsys: The players need to rescue the parents. Vignir, Barny and Mildew have orders to kill all three members of the family once they know the letter has been planted. The thugs work for Maris Piper the harbour master and suspected black market racketeer.

Scene 3: “The Viper’s Pit”

Objective: Confront Maris Piper
Props: 
Cast: Maris Piper (Elven Bard), Sailors deck hands and salty sea dog type thugs.
Location: Probably at the Harbour Master’s Office or attached Warehouse
Synopsys: The players may try to confront Maris Piper. Maris will try to claim innocence of the whole affair but if the confrontation turns violent will call for help from dock workers in his employ. The players may learn that Maris is himself just a pawn and has been paid by an unnamed foreigner to sow civil unrest.

Interrupted Scene: “What’s this then?”

Objective: complication
Props: the letter
Cast: Town Guard
Location: Anywhere in town
Synopsys:If the players are carrying the letter then they may be stopped by a patrol of the watch and subjected to a search. The letter is by its very nature incriminating.

…and so the adventure goes on. I would create scenes for each ‘action point’ and interruptions for any time where the adventure could be extended, if things are going too smoothly then a complication could be fun or if I wanted to showcase a particular piece of the world culture.

Practically I would put one scene on a single page so the extra white space is usable for notes or tracking adlibs.

The scenes are intentionally non-prescriptive. The party may cast a powerful sleep spell over everyone in the house and rescue the parents that way without any conflict or use telepathy to read the thoughts of the thugs and then walk away. As long as the objective is met then the story moves forward. A hack and slash game could approach the scenes one way an investigative game completely differently but the game notes remain the same.

Locations as a method is slightly different. You would still have the plot hoot of the urchin but then we would describe the terraced house in detail. The harbour master’s office and warehouse would be described and mapped and the possibly the location of the coup (Throne room?), a guard room in case the characters are arrested and anywhere else characters may go.

So now it doesn’t matter which order the players visit these locations. They could go from the introduction to the hovel to the guard house, tak their way out of trouble then to the harbour or they could get descriptions of the thugs from the urchin, ask around on the street and then head to the warehouse that night, bypassing everything.

The numbering of scenes tends to imply a sequence of events and the accusation of railroading but in reality the scenes should cover all possible scenes, a director’s cut if you like. What happens at the table could be completely different.

Old style (1980s) D&D modules were very much location based. Those from the 1990s and 2000s were more scene based. Five years ago Scenes were certainly all the rage but I have seen Locations being touted as the new best thing in some very recent releases.

There is no intrinsic reason why Locations have to be dungeon crawls or why Scenes have to be railroad tracks.

If we think back to Octomancer. You could have that as a set of scenes, “In the Marshes”, “The Watcher in the Gatehouse”, “The Librarian says Shh!”, “Invitation to the Palace” and the showdown “Splish, Splash we were having a bash!” or we could just detail the marsh, the gatehouse, the library, palace and the cistern system and just let the GM manage everything.

So is there any advantage to one over the other?

I think if you are an improv style GM then scenes work well. As long as you have the objective and the few key facts from the summary to hand you can go completely off piste and yet guarantee the story moves forward by creating opportunities for the objective to be completed. If the objective is to impart a key piece of information but the archer nails the NPC in the first round before they utter a word then you just need to create a new way for that information to get into the players hands.

With locations it sometimes becomes obvious when you have gone off piste when suddenly the rich descriptions that are used in some locations can trail off as the GM no longer has the full details in front of them or the players just do not know what or where to go next.

The flip is that scenes can assume that an NPC is still alive in Scene 3 but the players killed them in Scene 1 or that the big showdown is meant to take place on the docks, at night in a raging storm but the players attack at dawn when the villain is on their way home.

Writing location adventures can take a very long time to details hundreds of rooms, taverns and crime scenes but then they never get used. The same can go for NPCs as well. If you put the NPC’s stats in with the location but the players meet them somewhere else then the GM has to page flip to have the right stats in the right place. If you put all the NPC stats in a single reference then the GM definitely has to page flip to run every single encounter.

So what do you think? Do you have any preferences? Does it vary with game style? Do Scenes work best for fantasy genres but locations best for modern day games?

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Naga, Naga, Naga!

This is the latest 50in50 adventure with one of Adrian’s brilliant battle maps of the central location. I was on form when I wrote this and even found the corresponding 5e monster, right down the the correct variant!

In Naga, Naga, Naga nagas have taken over a farm and killed the inhabitants. They are now preying on any who pass on the nearby road. The characters may be investigating the missing, camping nearby and get attacked or visit the farm itself and be lulled into a false sense of security.

There are lots of plays of playing this adventure. You can vary the numbers of Nagas, the location of the encounter or the tactics to change the challenge level.

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RPGaDay2018 Day 31: Share why you take part in RPGaDay

August is a bit of a dead zone for RPGs in general and the ICE forums in particular. I think there were something like 3 posts on the forums yesterday and they were pretty much ‘me to’ or ‘thankyou’s.

We [Rolemasterblog] are the ICE forums, ugly friend. If you cannot get a date with the ICE forums then people come here instead. So if the ICE forums go down [I really wish I hadn’t made that dating reference now) then our popularity leaps up and like now when no one is posting on the forums then people come here for their daily dose of Rolemaster.

So the prompted 31 posts in 31 days is a great way of giving the RM community something to read and hopefully react to. I know that most of the comments are from the stalwart followers but we had Voriig Kye comment on the post about Land of the Blind with a valuable contribution and a misguided comment from someone blaming me for breaking RMU. I have done many things but that you cannot lay at my door. I rather like RMU, just not the size rules but as with everything I will have a work around but the time I play. (Composite attack charts with all the size results built in go most of the way and dedicated combat tables for +1 and -1 sized weapon will complete the task).

If you read 10 blogs on the same day you would get 10 very different interpretations of each question. RM is by far my favourite fantasy game but I do like to dabble with other game systems some times. If I ran something SciFi right now then it would probably be HARP SF and if I did something modern day then it would be GhostOps. So mentioning other systems seems perfectly reasonable to me. I also think that most GMs would happily transplant rules or mechanics they like from one game system into RM. Why not, rpgs are great for customising and RM is such an easy system to modify.

On that point there was one discussion this month that has my imagination working. You all know that I am not a fan of Spell Law and realms of magic. I had also mentioned that I liked the Champions supers rpg. So there was a discussion about Hero System and Shadow World. So Champions uses points to buy super power type effects. So 5 points would buy you 1d6 of damage but those costs could be modified with advantages and disadvantages so if you were trying to model a fire attack then you could reduce the final costs by taking a disadvantage that it doesn’t work underwater. Champions/Hero System also had three ways of grouping ‘powers’. The first was a multipower where you had a pool of points and then defined slots that utilised that pool in different ways. You paid for the pool and then a smaller cost for each slot. Only one slot could be active at any one time so it was a good way to model one ‘thing’ being used different ways. So if I wanted to model a sword then I could have one slot as a killing attack to represent the edge of the blade, a second slot as a stunning attack to represent using the flat of the blade to subdue and I could have a slot that added to my defence to represent parrying.

The second grouping was called an Elemental control and that allowed you to group closely related (thematically) powers. You paid the full price for the first power and then all the others were at half price. Each could be used simultaneously if you wished but they had to be part of a conceptual whole. So if you had control of gravity, for example, you could bundle the ability to fly (antigravity), telekinesis (manipulation of gravity) and a protective force field (superdense gravity) all into the one elemental control.

There was a third grouping and that was the variable power pool. Here you paid for the pool of points but you could redefine how those points were used and shared between powers on a round by round basis. If I remember correctly there was a skill based roll required to redefine how the points were used. In a supers game for example Batman’s utility belt would be created as a variable power pool which is why it always contained exactly the right thing at the right time.

So if we imported hero system’s point system (say 1 RM Development Point gave 5 hero system character points) you could have each spell list defined as some combination of Multi power, Elemental Control and the 50th level spell would be the Variable Power Pool. So Sudden Light, Shockbolt, Lightning bolt, Corner Lightning and Following Lightning would all be slots in a multi power as they are all discrete. Light, Shade, Darkness etc would all be part of an Elemental Control. You wouldn’t need Light I, Light II etc. as these effects would be controlled by how many powerpoints you used to put into the power.

I could easily see how all the spell lists could be converted to Hero System powers. The advantage would be that all spells would be inherently balanced as they were built from a menu of effects that had already been priced for balance. The second advantage would be that there would be no concept of realms, magic is magic. If your magic only worked when you had an opportunity to pray to your deity then that would be a ‘disadvantage’ and it would make your magic cheaper to buy so you could buy more with your development points.

What is more is that new lists could be build easily as all the components are off the shelf components. Hero System has something called an Energy blast and it doesn’t care if that is fire, radiation, pure magic or lightning. The special effects are then either purely cosmetic or used to choose advantages and disadvantages. So you could use an advantage of a powerboost against metal armours as an advantage and a penalty against organic armours as a disadvantage on a lightning bolt.

For us the special effects would define the critical table. That would help tie the system back into Rolemaster so it still feels like RM and not like Hero System.

The more I think about this the more I think the hero system parts would have to be under the hood and not on display. RM has a bad enough reputation for being rules heavy and the version of Hero System that I have has about 250 pages of powers rules. Imagine adding 250 pages to Spell Law and then having all the lists on top of that! No, I think one could redefine all the lists as Hero System powers and resent them as completed things. What you would really gain is something as flexible as the HARP scalable spells with the flavour of RM lists. Rather than learning 1-10 and then 11-20 you could learn either the elemental control or the multipower or you could choose to put more DPs into either one to make the spells more powerful (effectively the same as granting the I, II, III… lord versions of the same spells). The top slot would then be the variable power pool. 

I think this idea has mileage and I would like to talk to anyone who has blended RM and Hero System in the past. Luckily for me the Hero Games forum looks nice and active. Incidentally I just did a quick search of their forum for rolemaster and it returned 60 results and more for Shadow World. So if I am lucky there could be a solution already out there. I will add this to my todo list!

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RPGaDay2018 Day 30: Share something you have learned about playing your character

That they never end up with the personality that I imagined they would have.

I find the very first session with a new character quite hard. I have to sort of grow into them a little. In some ways I am ultra conservative. I always play humans for example and always male. In other ways I am always pushing limits. I like to define my characters fledgling personality by using two seemingly contradictory thoughts and then see how the character rationalises them.

I have seen some people do very similar things but using random personalities, you roll two traits and see what you come up with. That is not what I do. I was more inspired by the insult “Military Intelligence, there’s an oxymoron!”

I know perfectly well that real people can hold completely contrary view points at the same time and have no problem with that. My wife, if you asked her would proclaim herself a socialist, she reads the Guardian and votes for left of centre parties but at the same time as soon as something annoys her her point of view leaps to quite right of centre. I think you could sum her up in “We need to build more social housing but not for people who are not prepared to help themselves.”

So I like to start with two supposedly contradictory  points of view that I have no idea how to rationalise and then let the character evolve. I have had a medic who was surprisingly violent and ended up with a personality that you could describe as “It will be over my dead body that I will let anyone hurt my squad.”

My current PC grew up in abject poverty and is obsessed with earning money, that is his primary motivation in adventuring, but sends everything he earns back to his village because his family is still living in abject poverty. He is a blend of social philanthropist and avarice.

This way requires a lot of effort. You also need to play your character A LOT. I don’t mean frequently but you need to be in the room and engaging with the other characters, the NPCs and the world. It is only by facing challenge after challenge to these conflicting points of view that you get to square the circle or knock of the hard edges (are those metaphors contradictory?).

When you are in that mode of wanting to ‘role play’ your character, not roll play your own personality that you realise how lazy we can be. I have one player who keeps telling the other players how his character appears more educated and sophisticated than his dress and physical appearance implies. He looks like your typical highland warrior or possibly barbarian. The problem is that when he is describing his character’s actions he acts like a barbarian or at least an uneducated thug. There is no hint of this sophisticated and educated man underneath the wode and tartan.

There is a funny digression to this group. A few of the PCs were rolled up in a previous session and then on the day the game was due to start just two PCs need to be created.  So eventually we all settled down and we noticed that a few final details were missing off the characters we had made the previous week. So as we had character law there on the table and it happened to be on the page we rolled random height and weight for the two characters. I cannot remember if it was open ended or just extremely high but anyway I jotted down the 6′ 8″ height on my character record. At the first meeting we are told to describe ourselves. Our barbarian friend goes first and describes himself as massive and imposing and 6′ tall. Then the bard, who is slightly shabby and 6’1″, then the knight who is well dressed and 6’3″ and finally me, dressed like a dishevelled apprentice in ill fitting clothes, but that is because he is 6’8″. They simply do not make normal clothes for people that big. You may notice that the massive and imposing barbarian is actually the smallest member of the party. My character is a Lay Healer (mentalist) and I ended up with an 00 in Presence (bumped up using a background option) and I spent two to choose a skill at magic BGO so got a +25 also to my Presence. So I have a +50 presence bonus. We use dice roll + PR bonus as our Appearance stat so my appearance is well over 100 so and with a PR stat like that it was well worth buying a single rank in a basket of social skills. If anyone is ‘imposing’ it is not the barbarian but the rather charming chap looking down on him!

This PC party is quite nice in that as we are all still 1st level there are no really defined rolls. We were fighting skeletons a lot and weapon selection made a big difference so the knight with his sword technically had the bestt OB but was struggling. I was using my spear but at half skill as a quarterstaff. I also have Adrenal Move Strength (with my PR bonus and my SD is not shabby) I have a fair chance of rolling the skill. The +10 OB from Adr. Strength more than wipes out the penalty for using half skill. The crush criticals are much more effective than the slashes and punctures of the knight. So I have the dubious honour of being at the front of the fighting. The magician looks like a barbarian so we were pushing him to the front which is not where he wanted to be. The Bard had a run of open ended rolls and was beheading skeletons so we wanted him up front as well. The only person who was terribly was the knight!

Now the bard has been throwing some magic around when we are not in combat so he is looking rather mystical and although I am the healer when the party was nearly wiped out it was the knight with his herb lore and small stash of herbs that got people back on their feet. Ironically the last person they healed was me and I was the person with the most herbs, Concussion Ways and plenty of power points, but they were not to know.

So we have a scared barbarian, a magical musician, a healing knight and a heroic lay healer. Confused or what?

I am sure when we start to level up that our roles will become more defined. I already have enough EXP for 2nd level but this GM likes you to take a full break from adventuring and get training before leveling up. The way things are going I will be nearly 3rd by the time we reach anywhere safe. I am not complaining. Lay Healers get their first real quantum leap in power at 4th level. The regeneration spell is so much more efficient than heal 1-10 or 3-30 for example. Broken bones stop fighters dead but at 4th level I get major fracture repair. There are also some more useful open and closed lists.

But anyway I have digressed. So what have I learned playing my character? That is really takes effort and engagement if you want to really get into your character and role play like you mean it!

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