Hackmaster Basic

Treebore · Nov 10, 2009

Ran my first game session of this last night. At first it felt a bit awkward, especially with how the initiative/rounds mechanic works. Its a count up system, meaning there are no rounds, you just keep counting upward based on how much you move, weapon speeds, etc...

My players and I felt confused at first, but by the 4th or fifth set of attacks and defenses we all started to see how it was working and are starting to take a liking to it, or at least be accepting of it.

No one played a thief, so we didn't get to see how the Luck rules work.

One big things I noticed is with the DR rules the fighter types are going to have a lot more "stamina" to make it through a lot more battles, so resting won't be as critical, nor will hit point recovery. Still important, just not critical.

For example, the Fighter and Cleric had leather armor and small shields, so a DR of 6 versus every hit. They were fighting wolves who did 2d4+2 damage, so at most they would take 1 to 3 points of damage, and several times took none. Plus the wolves had no chance of breaking the shields, which makes sense to me so no actual problem with that.

The wizard did deep slumber and put 3 of the 5 wolves to sleep, even with the HP limitation of the spell, and with save checks. He then spent the rest of the encounter going around a coup de grace the wolves. So the mage killed 3 wolves to the rest of the parties 2. Kind of cool.

I also liked how the skill system worked. Everyone was a bit questioning about them at first, because some had attributes of 5 and 7, but with using the +10 to -90 modifiers on the difficulty chart it worked real darn well, even for the Universal skill rolls.

Over all I think we are going to take a strong liking to the new Hackmaster.

jdrakeh · Nov 11, 2009

Thanks for the impressions. I've been interested in the new Hackmaster, but haven't had a chance to see it up close yet. This sounds like something worth checking out.

Treebore · Nov 11, 2009

I think its worth checking out.

The humor is gone too. Now they just have "attitude". The only strange thing is they have a whole chapter on dice, evaluating them for purchase, determining when they have gone bad, etc... I guess that is some kind of carry over from old Hackmaster.

If you get it the KotDT comic in it does a pretty good job of explaining combat and other rules applying in combat.

maddman75 · Nov 11, 2009

I picked it up at GenCon, and enjoyed it. Nice quick dungeon bashing adventure game, with some more modern rules than most old-school stuff.

For tick-based initiative, I heartily recommend using a Battle Wheel, which I first discovered for Exalted 2e. Essentially you make a clock and place a mini at the start position. When someone goes, you move them however many ticks on the clock. The GM then goes around the clock to see who goes next.

Eliminates paper work, easy to understand, and you can see at a glance who goes when. Best idea ever!

Treebore · Nov 12, 2009

maddman75 said:
I picked it up at GenCon, and enjoyed it. Nice quick dungeon bashing adventure game, with some more modern rules than most old-school stuff.

For tick-based initiative, I heartily recommend using a Battle Wheel, which I first discovered for Exalted 2e. Essentially you make a clock and place a mini at the start position. When someone goes, you move them however many ticks on the clock. The GM then goes around the clock to see who goes next.

Eliminates paper work, easy to understand, and you can see at a glance who goes when. Best idea ever!

Where would i find a "battle wheel"?

coyote6 · Nov 12, 2009

White Wolf has one here. We used a similar one, and it was helpful. Of course, I don't know the range of values used in Hackmaster, so the wheel's seven slots might not be enough (if there are actions that take eight or more ticks to perform, it won't be).

Treebore · Nov 12, 2009

coyote6 said:
White Wolf has one here. We used a similar one, and it was helpful. Of course, I don't know the range of values used in Hackmaster, so the wheel's seven slots might not be enough (if there are actions that take eight or more ticks to perform, it won't be).

Well, for an example, our last combat lasted 53 seconds. Plus you kind of need to keep track of what everyone is doing every second. It gets easier when everyone is engaged and not moving, at that point you only need to worry about weapon/spell speed time increments, which range anywhere from a low number like 3, to as high as 12, or possibly higher.

So I don't see how I can make the clock you linked be useful for such a count. Thanks though, Bob 1!

Bob 2

coyote6 · Nov 12, 2009

In Exalted, the way you use it is this: at the start of the fight, whoever won initiative goes on 0; the rest of the people go on 1-6. You put markers on the wheel to represent those people. Then, as people take actions, you move them ahead a number of slots equal to the speed of their action (i.e., how many ticks their action takes). You can also have a counter for the "current tick", like the dealer chip from a set of poker chips.

Example: A won init, so he goes on 0; B goes on 2, C goes on 4. A takes his action at 0, and it's speed 5 -- so you move his token 5 spots, to slot 5. Advance the counter to 1; nobody goes. Advance to 2, and B goes; his action is speed 4, so he goes to slot 6. C's up next at 4; his action is speed 5, so you advance him five spaces around the wheel, which puts him at slot 2. And you just keep going 'round the wheel.

It doesn't help you track how many ticks a fight has taken, at all. To do that, I'd want a wheel with slots 0-9 (or 1-10, if you start at tick 1), and you'd just tick off a mark every time you go 'round.

But if everyone can do something every second, it might not work.

Treebore · Nov 12, 2009

coyote6 said:
In Exalted, the way you use it is this: at the start of the fight, whoever won initiative goes on 0; the rest of the people go on 1-6. You put markers on the wheel to represent those people. Then, as people take actions, you move them ahead a number of slots equal to the speed of their action (i.e., how many ticks their action takes). You can also have a counter for the "current tick", like the dealer chip from a set of poker chips.

Example: A won init, so he goes on 0; B goes on 2, C goes on 4. A takes his action at 0, and it's speed 5 -- so you move his token 5 spots, to slot 5. Advance the counter to 1; nobody goes. Advance to 2, and B goes; his action is speed 4, so he goes to slot 6. C's up next at 4; his action is speed 5, so you advance him five spaces around the wheel, which puts him at slot 2. And you just keep going 'round the wheel.

It doesn't help you track how many ticks a fight has taken, at all. To do that, I'd want a wheel with slots 0-9 (or 1-10, if you start at tick 1), and you'd just tick off a mark every time you go 'round.

But if everyone can do something every second, it might not work.

So far the only thing that can be done every second is moving to engage, move away, etc... Once engaged, or attacking from range, then weapon speeds take over. I am sure the combat wheel concept can work, but I would need different numbers, like 0-9, plus the base initiative die can vary, from a d12, down to a d4, depending on various factors. Fortunately that is all spelled out on a nice little table, so its not as complex as it sounds.

So once I get a solid feel for how this all works I can make better judgements on what can be made to work. Plus I would like one that will also work for Aces and Eights, since it uses the same count up system, but with even more variables due to guns being added to the mix.

Agamon · Nov 12, 2009

This is what I do: I track the count with a counter. Some use a handheld manual counter, I use an simple app on my laptop. I track each npcs count number on a spreadsheet, each player keeps a set of percentile dice in front of their sheet showing the number of the next count that they can act. Works well. I believe Dave an Jolly do something similar.