HARP is a 194 page product from ICE (Iron Crown Enterprises). HARP (High Adventure Role Playing) comes in three forms – hardbound, softbound, and .pdf. This is a .pdf review, but the softbound product (of which I also own) is essentially the same product in physical form. The HARP pdf sells for $10.
You can also download “HARP Lite” for free at
http://www.harphq.com – HARP Lite is just like HARP with lots of extras removed – it has far fewer classes, removes gnomes and the Gryx from the races, reduces some of the skills available, and removes, well a little bit of everything. It does provide a good overview of the game, and for free, you can’t possibly go wrong. If you like it, you can then purchase the regular game, which includes all the classes, races, spells, and skills.
The HARP pdf is essentially a digital version of the book, and thus has no bookmarks, or anything like that. It would also be a tad bit unwieldy as a pdf, and if you were going to play the game, like a D&D PHB, you’d probably want a physical copy at the game table. As such, printing out the pdf is not terribly taxing. There is a border along the outer sides of each page, and there is a fair bit of art, and most of it is really good. It’s all black and white. The cover is b/w as well, and it would have been nice to have a color cover, but it’s not.
Before I delve into an actual review, you must first understand what HARP is, and what it is not. First, HARP is not d20. It makes no attempt to be d20. Also, HARP is not rolemaster, although I can only assume that it is somewhat Rolemaster-like, although I admit that I am not familiar with Rolemaster. This is not an OGL product, and is completely licensed by ICE, and has no affiliation with WoTC whatsoever. HARP stands for High Adventure Role-Playing, and while the rules are designed to be generic enough to use for any setting, it is specifically designed for us in fantasy games. I suppose the same could be said of D&D – you could use the PHB to play a space game, but it’s not really designed for that. In this review I will attempt to draw a corollary to D&D, since that is the position most readers here are going to be accustomed to. Please don’t think that I’m trying to compare the two products, because the two are quite different in many respects. But, for purposes of this review, you can consider it “HARP, from a D&D player’s perspective”.
HARP is a percentile-based system. As such, all you need to play is two ten-sided dice. The layout of HARP is not unlike the D&D PHB in that it has a chapter for classes, races, equipment, etc. It’s a role-playing game, folks. We’re not exactly treading into unfamiliar territory here.
The first chapter covers the basics “what is an RPG”. Personally, I’m getting kind of tired of reading these kinds of chapters, and every RPG has them. I understand why they are there, but I’d also argue that it’s fundamentally impossible to learn how to play an RPG just from reading one. But I digress.
Chapter two is brief, and just covers the basics of character creation, which I’ll explain further in my description of chapter 3.
Chapter 3 (long wait, huh?) covers character creation. One of the minor annoying aspects of HARP is that it tries very hard to not be d20. One of the ways it accomplishes this is by renaming things people have grown accustomed to. Like, in HARP, classes are called professions. What are professions called? Training packages, but more on that later. There are 9 professions in HARP – cleric, fighter, rogue, thief, harper, mage, ranger, warrior mage, and monk. Unlike D&D, the clas, er, profession descriptions are very brief. One thing that is noticeably different about professions in HARP, versus classes in D&D is that professions are really just a collection of skill points. HARP is a skill-based system. Everything in HARP is a skill. Using a weapon is a skill, casting a spell is a skill, making a saving throw is a skill, and even how many hit points you have is a skill. In D&D, a fighter includes certain assumptions about these things – fighters will advance on a certain progression with fortitude saves, they will increase their base attack bonus every level, and they will have d10 hit dice every level. HARP makes no assumptions. If you want to make a fighter with very few hit points, good will saves, and is a master herbalist, then you’ve found the right system. HARP is very flexible in this regard. Furthermore, HARP’s professions all have the same number of skill points. So, creating new classes which are perfectly balanced with the core classes is a snap, because all you have to do is give them 20 skill points, and then say which category the skill ranks fall into. And that’s basically it. So, there really aren’t any issues with balance issues here, since all classes are essentially the same. There are even variant rules on the HARP website to eliminate classes altogether.
Another nice thing is the separation of the rogue from the thief. There is also a Harper (a nice little play on the title) which is essentially a bard, without the musical abilities. It’s sort of like a spellcasting rogue, but with a unique spell list. I would have been happier if HARP just left out the monk class, but in a weird ironic twist, while HARP tries to be as different from D&D as possible, it also tries to be as inclusive as possible, and works very hard to attracting people to the game. Their biggest market is D&D players, so they’ve made every attempt to include corollaries where possible. The monk actually eats up a sizable amount of space in this game, since there’s a whole slew of skills which are pretty much monk-specific, so axing the monk would have meant the product could have saved about 10 pages. That’s my preference, but obviously not everyone will share this opinion. Like d20, all classes also have the same XP progression chart. Unlike d20, the XP requirements are much lower (only 350xp needed to get to level 2), but XP is calculated in a different way. XP is gained by completing goals, not just by killing monsters or acquiring phat lewt. These are more story-oriented XP awards, and I much prefer this method of XP award anyway, and it’s how I run my D&D games. Rather than tabulating the number of XP at the end of a session, I can just say “ok, now you’re all 2nd level” at the end of the dungeon complex. This is a simpler approach, and a unified XP chart allows this to happen.
Chapter 4 is character statistics. These are the ability scores. HARP has 8 statistics (don’t call them ability scores!) – strength, constitution, agility, quickness, self-discipline, reasoning, insight, and presence. In D&D speak, strength and constitution are as you expect. Insight would be wisdom, reasoning is intelligence, and presence is charisma. Dexterity is broken out into two separate stats – quickness and agility. Agility involves more physical things, and quickness determines movement, and reaction, and armor class. Self-discipline has no D&D corollary. It is important to monks, and represents “inner resolve, dedication, and stubbornness” It is also one of the primary spell-casting stats. Statistics in HARP are based on a scale of 1 to 105, with anything over 100 being really good, obviously. Like d20, a stat has a bonus modifier, like a 12 in D&D is a +1. So, in HARP, a 51-55 is a +1 modifier. In HARP, statistics have a huge effect on character creation, because not only do they modify skills, they also determine the number of stating development points or DPs a character gets. DPs are used to by things called talents (feats), can be used to augment skills, or even increase statistics (attributes). So, a character with high scores will start with more DPs than a character with low scores. This character in turn can use the DPs to bump up his scores, which will mean that he’ll get even more DPs the next time he levels up, further increasing the divide between him and his lower-scored friends. This is why I highly recommend using a point-buy system for characters to determine their statistics. Or, just assign a flat number of DPs per level regardless of the statistics. I do feel like the current system (while realistic!), is not very balanced, and could generate some unhappy players.
Chapter 5 covers races. All the standards are here, including a new race called the Gryx. The Gryx is a corollary to the half-orc, except it’s a peaceful, secluded race, though big and ugly. Each race has some bonuses to the stat modifier. Now, that’s to the stat modifier itself, not the stat. So, a dwarf has a +5 to constitution. If you have a 51 constitution, which is a +1 modifier, you get a +6 modifier with a dwarf, not merely a 56 constitution. So, some of these modifiers can have a very drastic effect on your character. Each race also has a base number of endurance (hit points) and some base modifiers to the saving throws (stamina, will, and magic). For example, dwarves have a base endurance of 50, whereas elves have a base of 20. All races have a 30 points allocated among the three saving throws. Like D&D, races come with some prepackaged abilities. Like, dwarves have “stone sense”, “dense musculature”, and “dark vision (greater)”.
Most of these abilities are talents, and have costs assigned to them, so if you wanted to make a dwarf without dark vision (greater), you could easily swap out that ability for some other 30 point talent. One negative is that not all of these abilities are given as talents, like “stone sense” or the gnomes” natural camouflage”, so swapping these out for something else is not as easy. The abilities aren’t balanced among each race as clearly. So, the dwarves abilities cost more than the elves abilities (even assuming a nominal price for stone sense). So, creating a new race is a little trickier to balance, since the races are a bit more of a “black box” than the classes are.
Chapter 5 also has “racial hybrids” which is a great concept. There is no half-orc or half-elf in HARP - instead you can take half of one thing, and half of something else. You could create a half dwarf, half-gnome, or a half-human, half-gryx. These come in the form of “greater” and “lesser” blood. To do this, you start with a base race, and then either add “greater” or “lesser” blood abilities from whichever race is present. Doing this results in a half-blooded character, or a quarter-blooded character. For example, you could start with dwarf and add lesser blood gnome, and lesser blood Halfling to reflect that you’re dad was a dwarf, but that your mom was a half-halfling, half-gnome.
Lastly, chapter 5 covers “cultures”. These are backgrounds for your character, and reflect where they grew up. Examples include “urban”, “rural”, or “sylvan”. Each culture affects starting languages, though most are identical, and assigns “adolescent skill ranks” accordingly. These provide a few nominal points in various things that you might have engaged in as a child. GMs could choose to skip this step entirely, since the few skill points gained ultimately will have little effect on the game play, but it’s a nice touch.
Chapter 6 is skills. Because HARP is a skill-based system, understanding the skills is very important. One minor downside to this chapter is that the important skills are just lumped into categories with things that are not as useful. This could ultimately lead to some confusion for first-time HARP players, or players new to role-playing games in general. For example, “endurance” is listed right alongside “jumping” and aside from a boxed text section listing which skills are important, it can be easy to overlook the fact that “endurance” is the number of hit points (called “concussion hits”) you have. Knowing which skills are important is the key to making a good character. It is, in fact, quite easy to make a perfectly balanced, yet absolutely pathetically inadequate character in HARP! All you have to do is ignore the important skills, and put lots of points into basketweaving and herbalism (or, whatever; you get the idea). The number of ranks you have in a skill is based on two separate statistics’ modifiers and your ranks. Most skills in HARP are based off two statistics (attributes), not just one. For example, “play instrument” is based on presence and agility. So, in this sense, it is based on your manual dexterity, and your personal charisma. So, even though you might have the swiftest fingers in the galaxy, you’re musicianship will suffer if you’re ugly. (hey, no one likes an ugly guitar player!). I like this approach, and discourages people from min-maxing their characters. In HARP, having a few weak scores can greatly offset your few good scores. Skills in HARP are also broken out into specific categories, such as “artistic”, “athletic”, “combat” and others. This is where professions come in – professions are ranks of skill categories. For example, a fighter gets 2 points in “athletic”, 2 points in “general”, and 8 points in both “combat” and “physical”. Any skills in categories other than these, the fighter must spend twice as many points on, so in essence these are “cross-class” skills – called “favored” or “non-favored” categories. The cool thing about this is that fighters can spend points learning to cast spells, but because it’s not a favored category, he just can’t do it as well as someone who has it as a favored category. Because such points are precious, spending lots of points in a non-favored category can quickly make you a useless character, so do this with caution!
Another neat thing about the skills section is that a lot of the combat styles like “Blind-fighting”, “two-weapon fighting” or “disarming” are skills. In HARP, you have to learn how to fight blind, or how to disarm an opponent, and you can improve these skills like any other skill. Weapon skills also work a little differently. You put points into learning a weapon group such as long blades, or short blades, etc. You choose one weapon in this group to be a primary choice, and then anything else in that group is used at a -10. You can use other weapons within the same “class” at 25% of your total bonus. This means that even if rapier is your primary weapon, you’re not at a total loss if you have to pick up a hand-axe, which is also in the “1 handed edge” category.
Chapter 7 is talents. Talents are like feats, except that they don’t all cost the same. Talents are also a little more innate to a character. Whereas in D&D, feats often represent learned things, talents in HARP are a bit more “who you are” kinds of things. You can purchase feats at any level increase with DPs, but some are quite expensive, and are therefore only purchased at 1st level (when you have a premium to spend) or after saving up for a few levels. Examples of some talents include “ambidexterity”, “lightning reflexes”, “familiar” (aka, wizard’s familiar) and “speak with normal animals”. There are also skill-increasing talents, which can be used to really boost up important skills. There is also a talent called “additional profession” which must be purchased if the player wishes to multi-class.
The last part of this chapter covers training packages. Training packages are a great concept. Essentially they are packages of related skills which are purchased at a discount. Anyone wishing to maximize their character’s potential will most definitely want to purchase a training package. Essentially you calculate the cost of all the skills in the package as if you purchased them normally (taken into consideration skills which are from non-favored categories as well) and then take a 25% deduction from the whole lot. You have to take all the ranks in training package as written, and you lose any ranks that would take you over your maximum. For example, say you have 3 ranks in a skill, and training package has 4 ranks in that same skill, as well as ranks in other skills. The maximum ranks you can have in a skill at 1st level is 6, so taking the training package means that you’ll be losing out on 1 additional point in that skill that you can’t use, though you still have to pay for it. This can lead to a bit of min-maxing, and can make character creation take longer. So, in this example, the player will probably move one point in that skill into another skill so that he can get the full benefit of the training package. One should apply training packages first, to avoid this complication. Creating characters in HARP can be a bit of an artform.
Chapter 8 is equipment. There isn’t much to say about it, other than the fact that weapons don’t have damage dice. Weapons have an attack size/type and a fumble range. For example, a mace is “medium crush” with a fumble range of “01-02”, and a longsword is “medium slash” with a fumble range of “01-03”. More on this in chapter 9. One other interesting aspect of HARP is that armor can be purchased piecemeal. You can purchase bits of chain, plate, or leather, and sum up the DB (defensive bonus) to get a cumulative total. Another noteworthy piece of information is that shields require a “shield specialization” talent to be used properly. Shields have two DB (armor class) ratings – one for trained, and one for untrained. Shields are much less effective if they are used untrained. Armor use is also a skill, and to effectively use armor, one must have ranks in the armor skill. The more DB armor provides, the higher the skill ranks you need to use it.
(It’s hard to believe, but we’re not even halfway through this book yet!)
Chapter 9 is titled “Adventuring” and covers the basic mechanics of the game, including skill resolution (called maneuvers), light sources, drowning, grenade-like attacks, and a host of other sundry game-related things. The key from this chapter is that not all skills are resolved the same way. Some skills are percentage, like craft. When you succeed, you produce a percentage result, and thus with more successes, you’ll eventually get to 100% (theoretically, at least). Table 9-1 is the “maneuver table” and is central to any skill resolution. All skills are rolled, and then compared to this chart to determine the result. I’d like to have seen a system that didn’t rely on this chart, and it seems like it would have been easy enough to do that, but that’s the mechanic nonetheless. A check is made by rolling the dice, adding any modifiers, and if it exceeds 100, it is successful. Maneuvers are modified anywhere from “routine” (+60) to absurd (-100). So, obviously in order to get a 100 on an absurd roll (-100), you’re going to need some serious skill bonuses.
Chapter 10 is Combat. In HARP, a combat round is two-seconds long. In HARP, all players declare their action before rolling initiative. This is realistic, but certainly means that combat is going to take more time. Fortunately, combat in HARP is also pretty deadly, which means it shouldn’t take very long! Essentially combat is resolved with a formula OB – DB. Each character has an offensive bonus (OB) (or, base attack bonus), and each character has a defensive bonus (DB) (or armor class). Your weapon skill, strength, and other relevant scores will affect your OB, and your armor, quickness, and other relevant factors will increase your DB. Because weapons don’t have their own damage rating, the amount of damage that is dealt is the difference in these two numbers. So, in this sense, armor is absorbing, rather than reflective. Having heavy armor means you take less damage. If the OB – DB exceeds 1, you hit. Then, you have to look on a chart to determine damage. For example, say the result was a 35. You’d need to then know what type of weapon you have, and how big it is. Bigger weapons do more damage. Medium weapons are the defacto standard, and thus impose a whopping +0 to the charts, so that’s easy. Say we hit with a mace, and the OB – DB is 35. We’d look at the crushing criticals (in HARP, any hit is called a “critical”) table. There, in the “31-40” entry we read: “Hefty strike bruises leg muscles and bones.
Foe takes 11 Hits and is at -5.” So, the opponent took 11 “hits” (hit points), which the target would subtract from their total. They are also at a -5 to all their strength, agility, and quickness maneuvers. This could end up changing your DB, if a big chunk of your DB relies on you being fast, rather than just well armored. A character can also “bleed” which causes them to lose additional “hits” for a number of rounds, or be “stunned”. In HARP, stunned doesn’t mean paralyzed, it really means “dazed and confused” and means that the character can’t attack, but can parry, and perform other simple actions. In addition to criticals for crushing, slashing, and piercing weapons, there are criticals tables for heat, cold, electrical, and poison damage.
Chapter 11 is “Magic & spells”. In HARP, like everything else, spellcasting is a skill. There are a couple of major differences between HARP and D&D when it comes to spellcasting. The first is that each spellcasting class gets its own spell list. And there are not millions of spells like there are in D&D (ok, admittedly an exaggeration, but…). In fact, the Mage, who has the most spells, has 33 spells – period. There is also a Universal sphere which anyone can pull from. This sphere has 23 spells, which increases the Mage’s total to around 56 spells total. There are also no spell levels per se. Spells in HARP are cast using power points (PP). There is a minimum PP cost to cast a spell, and unless you have at least that many skill ranks in the spell, you can’t cast it. You can also spend more PP in a spell when you cast it to create what are essentially meta-magic effects. Each spell has its own augmentations defined which are unique to it. For example, “arcane bolt” the standard magic missile-esque spell costs 2 pp base. For every additional 2 points, you increase the damage dealt. Adding another +1 pp increases the range by 50 feet. Another +4 pp adds an additional target, and another 4 points will cause the spell to add a round of stun to the target. So, spending 2 (+ 2 + 1 + 4 + 4) power points gets you an arcane bolt that deals additional damage, a round of stun, affects two targets, and has an increased range. Pretty slick, huh? With such a spell, it isn’t necessary to continue learning new magic, when just increasing the ranks in a favorite spell can provide long-term use. The above spell would also require 13 ranks to cast, since you’d need that many ranks to apply all those options. Utilizing such a system, having a wizard learn a ton of spells is actually detrimental, because in the long term you won’t have enough skill points to increase all of them to the point of being quite useful. However, some spells don’t require a lot of augmentation, for example “light” doesn’t require a lot of extra points, since the basic light spell (although curiously expensive) doesn’t require a lot of oomph to be useful, so even a high level wizard could be perfectly happy never advancing such a spell beyond the minimum number of ranks required.
This system creates very unique spellcasters. It’s quite possible to have a party of nothing but spellcasters, where no two of them have the same spells. The same is true for clerics, whose spellcasting works the same way. Even “turn undead” is a spell, so you can make a cleric, and
not choose to turn undead. It’s highly effective, however. Aside from the “universal” and “mage” spheres, there are also spheres for cleric, harper, ranger, and warrior-mage. HARP does not have a druid class, but one could create one fairly easy by creating a ranger and taking the appropriate talents, and spending more points on spells versus combat.
Because magic is a skill, to cast a spell, you have to roll. You can therefore fail to cast a spell, even while not in combat (although modifiers make it easier). The benefit of rolling to cast is that you can also succeed greatly. If you roll excessively well to cast a detect magic spell, for example, it might last longer, or have a larger radius. So, even though rolling can kind of slow the game down, it can have positive effects as well.
Chapter 12 is a short chapter and covers “Herbs and Poisons”. The chapter basically just details herbs and poisons and their effects (positive and negative) to those who ingest them.
Chapter 13 is “encounters and monsters”. The chapter starts off with some monsters by terrain information, and an encounter table for random encounters. The monsters in this chapter represent the basic mythological stuff such as trolls, wyverns, undead, goblins, griffins, and the other sundry creatures. A monster entry consists of a level, size, movement rate, initiative, DB (AC), hits (hit points), and attacks (which is OB and size/type; e.g., +70 m/slashing). Also included is the number encountered, the creature’s “outlook” which says whether it might be friend of foe, a treasure code, and the creature’s saving throws. These are all detailed in a summary chart. Each monster then receives a more thorough description including some of the numbers which go into the summary so you can see how they arrived at some of the values.
Chapter 14 is “treasure”. This chapter is really not unlike the DMG’s chapter on magic items. Each item has a description, and there are tables summarizing the gp costs for each, which also double as a random item generators.
Chapter 15 is “Gamemaster Guidelines”. This chapter is really “DMG lite” in that it talks about the basics of running a game, dos and donts, customizing your game, and other things. It also covers charts on how to interpret things like the lore skill and the languages, and has rules on how to award XP. The chapter concludes with NPC classes such as “hedge wizard”, “artisan” or “urban craftsman”. An NPC class is not quite as a good as a PC class, and has 5 fewer skill points to spend. Curiously absent is a “commoner” class. Finally, there is a character sheet (2 pages).
Lastly, the book has a fully detailed index (8 pages long).
Summary:
HARP is a great product. It’s well written, easy to read, and has a lot of great ideas. I view HARP as D&D if you strip it down the core mechanic, and “open” up the system. There aren’t many black boxes in HARP, and it’s all easily understandable, and realistic. I was really sold on HARP’s flexible character creation system, and the magic system. HARP also has some great supplemental material including “college of magics” which adds more spellcasting types, and more spells, “monsters: a field guide” which greatly expands the monstrous menagerie, and “martial law” which expands the combat options. There are also Harpar’s Bazaar’s which add optional rules. Because HARP is so flexible and open, tinkering with it is much easier.
What I don’t particularly care for about HARP is the combat tables, and the skill resolution. It’s a bit more complex than I feel like it needs to be, and the combat requires all those tables, with a specialized table devoted to piercing, slashing, crushing, and anything-else-you-can-think of kinds of damage. It’s not overbearing, I created a “gm screen” as a quick, easy reference for all the tables to minimize the book time, but as an old D&D player, the concept itself disappoints. Still, HARP has a lot to offer, and I’d recommend that anyone disillusioned with 3rd edition and d20 to definitely take a look at it.
ENWorld’s 5 scale review system isn’t granular enough. If it were a 10 point scale, I’d give HARP a 9. Still, HARP fascinates me enough, and has so many great ideas, I can’t help but give it a 5.
