Category: Rules

There are lots of features of the HARP skills system that will seem similar. We have the rule of diminishing returns where the the first ten ranks give a +5 bonus, the next ten +2 then all ranks after that give +1. No ranks gives a -25 for unskilled tasks.

Characters are allowed to buy any number of ranks in a skill each level but are capped at the total number of ranks they can have. This cap is 3 x level +3. So if you bought three ranks during adolescence and three at each level you would always be at your maximum skill bonus.

The unlimited buying of ranks though does mean that if you are 5th level and suddenly decide to change weapon, having just found a holy hammer of smiting that makes your broadsword look a bit lame, they you could rapidly buy up to 21 ranks when you next levelled up (3 x 6 +3). On the other hand as a fighter you would probably have put your professional bonuses into your broadsword up until that point so although you had the same number of ranks you would still be slightly better with the sword than the hammer for a few more levels.

This dual mechanism means that characters can rapidly become competent but it will take several levels for a ‘new’ skill to really equal or exceed a long established skill.

Another subtle change, and one I like, is the skill difficulties. We still get difficulty labels we are used to but the bonus and penalties are more regular.

Mundane No roll is necessary.
Routine (+60) Anyone could complete a maneuver of this type, given time and a bit of luck.
Easy (+40) An apprentice can complete the maneuver with little difficulty.
Light (+20) Given enough time, an apprentice could complete the maneuver.
Medium (+0) The average difficulty inherent in any situation.
Hard (-20) This difficulty level requires a character with expertise to accomplish this maneuver.
Very Hard (-40) Even an expert needs time to successfully complete these types of maneuvers.
Ext. Hard (-60) Only an expert of unparalleled skill, or someone with incredible luck would be able to accomplish maneuvers of this difficulty.
Sheer Folly (-80) Maneuvers at this level teeter on the very edge of natural human capability.
Absurd (-100) These maneuvers are a step above the normal possibilities of most humans.

The progression is logical and doesn’t need a table to reference or look up of what the penalties are. I see this as another table that could be stripped out of RM and another tiny simplification.

Buying skills

This section starts with a boxout telling people to buy hitpoints (Endurance, perception, powerpoints, weapon skills and resistance. Yes, you can train your resistance against disease, poison and magic!

In total there are 63 named skills in nine categories. Those 63 skills are frequently broken down into subskills such as Ride->Ride Horse/Ride Camel and so on.

Every character has typically four or five categories that are favoured and all the skills in these categories cost 2DP and all non-favoured skills/categores cost 4DP.

At character creation characters get 100DPs to spend buying skills. Normally they will get a fixed 50DP per level.

One way that HARP tries to mitigate against skills bloat is by having a dual nature to most skills. This is the description of Appraisal.

Appraisal
So you’ve looted your dungeon, retrieved the sacred staff
and grabbed a few valuables along the way. So, what are they
worth? Appraisal is a character’s bonus for estimating the
value of objects or goods. The character may take this as a
general skill, or he may specialize in specific types of items
or objects, such as weapons, gemstones, metals, animals, etc.

If the character specializes, then a successful Maneuver Roll
will allow him to determine the value of the item to within
5% to 10% of its actual value. If taken as a generalized skill,
then a successful maneuver will allow the character to determine
the value to within 15% to 25% of its actual value.

Different items will have different values within different
cultures. This, along with the general fluctuations associated
with the buying and selling of items, is what causes this skill
to produce such nebulous results. Failure when using this
skill most often results in the character being unable to determine
a value or determining an incorrect value.
(General – Re/In – Percentage)

So you can see that skills may be atomised into more detailed sub skills, which will please RM2 GMs that like their myriad of detailed skills but also satisfies people like me that prefer fewer broaders skills.

Another nice feature of the HARP rules is that the book is easy to read. Take a look at this skill description for Endurance. Endurance is HARP’s answer to Body Development.

Endurance
“You know the worst thing about the dwarves? They never tire.
Sure you can outrun them, on the first day, or the second. If
you have a horse you can keep going for a few days more, but
they’ll just keep on coming, following your trail, never stopping.
And each time you rest, because you aren’t a dwarf, he
gets a bit closer. And he’ll get you.”

A character’s Endurance skill bonus is, simply put, his
Concussion Hits, a measure of how much damage he can take
before passing out. This skill’s total is comprised of the skill
rank bonus, the stat bonuses listed for this skill, and the Racial
Endurance Bonus listed on the Racial Characteristics Table.

Example: Jorg, a human, with a Endurance bonus of +30
has 12 ranks in Endurance, a Self Discipline of 90 which
gives him a bonus of +8 and a Constitution of 90 which gives
him a bonus of +8. Jorg has a Concussion Hit total of 100
((10 ranks * 5 = 50) + (2 ranks * 2 = 4) + (Co bonus 8 + SD
bonus 8 = 16) + (30 Racial Endurance Bonus) = 100). This
means that Jorg can take 100 hits of damage prior to falling
unconscious.
(Physical – Co/SD – Special)

So you get the little vignette before the skill description, the description, an example and then a brief summary of the category, stat bonuses and skill resolution type. These little vignette scenes are scattered throughout the skills chapter, typically one or two brief ones per page to break up the list.

Training Packages

Training packages are not actually mentioned in the Skills chapter, they come in in chapter 7 ‘Talents & Other’ but I want to mention them here.

I am not a massive fan of Training packages. I generally lump them into the same bracket as skills bloat, profession bloat and talent bloat. On the other hand I have played in a game where they were done really well and I can see the benefit of them when done well.

HARP training packages give a 25% discount on buying the same bundle of skills individually.

HARP Fantasy gives the rules for creating TPs and seven examples. It also includes the fatal flaw with TPs that turns me off.

Players can also create their own TPs. When doing so, they should collaborate with the GM on creating a background story for the TP so that the GM may work it into the campaign world with as little trouble as possible. When a player creates a TP, the GM must always approve it before the character may actually purchase it. This also allows the character to be more involved in the campaign world.

So the flaw is that if you allow players to create their own TPs then the natural born min/maxers will create a character concept and then cram as much as possible into the training package for that concept. Hey presto! in a single action they are getting all their skills 25% cheaper than anyone else. If you are particularly clever you put all your most expensive skills into the TP to get the maximum saving. “Ah yes I am playing a fighter but when he was young he was apprenticed to an investigator at the mages guild and so I created a magical investigator TP with all these magical skills as he had to know about these to investigate magical crimes.”

When TPs are done well I agree that they can add flavour to a campaign. In the game I played, it was Sci Fi, we were the crew of a spaceship and we were offered a single TP for our station on the ship. We had no control over the contents, we bought it or not. For the GM it meant that they could up the competence of the first level characters and the medic had decent medical skills, the pilot really could fly and not kill everyone and so on. It meant that although I was the medic I could still choose any profession for the character.

So I am in favour of GM created TPs but not player created TPs. They should not be a vehicle for min/maxing a character but they should be a way of creating more rounded characters that can have the background lore or social skills relating to their lives and backgrounds without them having to compromise too much on the skills that make them adventuring heroes.

So at the end of the skills buying process HARP characters will probably have six ranks in all their core abilities. So fighters will have six ranks in a melee weapon and a missile weapon, six ranks in endurance, six in perception and so on. Typically a starting skills then in these core areas will be in the ball park of +45, +30 from skill, +12 to +16 or so from stats.

In total skill ranks they will have 20 ranks from their profession, 20 rnaks from their culture and they can afford 25 (all non favoured) to 50 (all favoured) with their DPs assuming they do not buy any talents. This means that a skills based character, such as a rogue can have a really solid base in many skills. On the other hand if you want to specialise you can still be really competent. A starting HARP character is definitely more competent than a starting Rolemaster character.

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
1-90	1
91-95	2
96-100	3
101-105	10

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!

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.

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.