In a thread started last week, a discussion of the HARP game got very sidetracked by a few people and PirateCat closed the thread while stating that he would be interested in seeing another thread about HARP in a few days as he is interested in hearing about it.
Therefore, having just returned from a long weekend (I really hate going to visit relatives - I spend the entire time driving from one house to another and that does not include the 10 drive to get there and the additional 10 hour drive to come back - ugh!), and not seeing another HARP thread started yet, I decided to take the initiative and start it myself.
Please be warned before hand, that I am the author of the majority of HARP and therefore am quite biased towards it (no kidding, eh?). I figure that I will start the discussion with an overview of the system.
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HARP Overview
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HARP (High Adventure Role Playing) is a generic fantasy game system produced by Iron Crown Enterprises. It is a percentile based system and is mostly compatible with ICE's Rolemaster games (there are some things that are balanced differently).
Stats - HARP contains 8 stats. These are Strength, Constitution, Agility, Quickness, Reasoning, Insight, Presence and Self Discipline. There are three methods available for generating stats, and the player may select whichever he likes. These include random rolls (roll until you have 8 numbers of 40 or above, rerolling those less than 40), point buy (550 points to spend on stats), or combo (500 + 10d10 points to spend on stats). Stats range from 1 to 105 (with increased costs for stats above 90). Stats are used to determine bonuses that are applied to skills and they also determine the number of development points (DP) a character has. DPs are used to purchase skills, talents, stat increases, and a few other things.
Professions - Each player selects a profession for his character (additional professions may be purchased later using DPs). HARP contains 9 basic professions: Cleric (see below), Fighter, Harper, Mage, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Thief, Warrior Mage. Each profession gains 20 free skill ranks divided among his Favored Categories (These are skill categories, all skills in a Favored Category costs 2 DP per rank, skills in non-favored categories cost 4 DPs per rank) plus one or more abilities that are tied to the profession.
Clerics - since there are no default deities in HARP, the play may select 2 categories as Favored Categories, and may define 20 spells to be his sphere of spells for his religion. These are supposed to reflect the nature of the deity worshipped and the GM has veto power over them. Alternatively, the GM could pre-define the clerical orders in his world and allow the player to select from those available. Paladins may be created by taking the Combat skill category as a Favored Category.
Races - HARP contains 6 races for players to select from: Dwarves, Elves, Gnome, Gryx, Halfling and Human. All are standard fantasy races, except for the Gryx. The Gryx are a fearsome looking race that is normally very gentile and non-hostile, however, they are excellent Fighters if provoked! Each race has 3 racial abilities, and stat modifiers. They also have modifiers to Endurance (hits), Power Points, and Resistance skills.
HARP does not contain any Half-races, instead, the player may spend 1 or 2 DPs to acquire a Blood Talent. 1 DP for a Lesser Blood Talent or 2 DP for a Greater Blood Talent. A Lesser Blood Talent means that there is a slight amount of blood from another race in their veins, while the Greater Blood Talent means that there is more (i.e. a half-blood). A character may have 1 Greater Blood Talent or up to 2 Lesser Blood Talents. A Lesser Blood Talent allows the character to swap out one of his normal racial abilities for one from the Blood Talent, while the Greater allows the swapping of 2 abilities (note: that the greater also allows the swapping of one ability for stat bonuses - this is one of the 2 allowed).
Thus you could have a Gryx who was 1/4 Gnome and 1/4 Human or a Dwarf who was aslo half an elf. The choice is up to the player. (Note: there will be a product out later this year or early next year which gives lots more Blood Talents).
Culture - Cultures in HARP are the next item a player selects for his character. While each race gives a default culture for each race, the player may swap it out for any other culture if he wishes. The available cultures are: Sylvan, Underhill, Shallow Warrens, Deep Warrens, Rural, Urban and Nomadic. Thus you could have a Sylvan Dwarf, or an Urban Elf if you like.
The cultures determine what languages that the character starts with and gives 20 free skill ranks (which skills these are for are determined by the culture). A GM could easily create a specific culture for each location of his setting rather than using the generic ones provided.
Skills - HARP contains approximately 60 base skills divided into 10 categories. Skills are gained by purchasing ranks in them. The more ranks the higher the overall bonus, however, the ranks use a mechanism of diminishing returns, which means that the bonus from each rank gets smaller with each rank. The progrssion of this bonus is -25*5*2*1 (no ranks means a bonus of -25; 1-10 ranks give +5 per rank, 11-20 ranks give +2 per rank; 21+ ranks give +1 per rank -- 12 ranks in a skill gives a bonus of 54 (10 x 5 = 50 plus 2 x 2 = 4 equals 54) before adding in stat bonuses. Each skill has two stats associated with it and gets those stat bonuses added to the skill rank bonus.
A character's hits are determined by his Endurance skill, his Power Points (for casting spells) by his Power Point Development skill, and his Resistance Rolls (RR) (Saving Throws for those who are more familiar with d20 - a given here) are determined by the Resistance skill (which must be taken 3 separate times for each type of RR (Stamina, Will, Magic).
Several skills may be taken multiple times with a different focus each time (i.e. Resistance, Crafts, Weapon skills, Spells, etc...). As mentioned above, the profession of the character determines the cost of any given skill.
Training Packages (TPs) - TPs are groups of skills related to a specific group or job that they character joins/learns. HARP contains a few example TPs, but the actual creation of them is left to the GMs and the players (GMs must approve player created TPs). The character gains a discount on the DP cost of the skills involved in the TP. The percentage of discount is fixed, so the actual DP cost of the TP is determined by the profession of the character purchasing it (based on whether or not a given skill is in that profession's Favored Categories). HARP contains all the rules needed for creating TPs.
Talents - These are special bonuses or abilities that a character may have. They cost a fixed number of DPs and characters may purchase one or more talents when they go up a level (remember, everything is purchased using Development Points, so those who buy up lots of talents will end up with almost no skills, or very poor skills).
Combat - HARP uses a single roll resolution for combat. You roll, add in your character's OB, and subtract foe's DB. If the result is positive, then you have hit the foe hard enough to do damage (note: this means that if the result is negative, you may have hit foe, just not hard enough to hurt him!). The result is then modified by the size of the weapon and the adjusted result looked up on the proper critical table (yes, this means that EVERY hit that hurts a foe is a critical hit). There are options in HARP to run combat without using the critical tables for those who do not want them. Combat also presupposes that the character is parrying (placing some of their offensive bonus towards their defensive bonus) to some degree. A character who does not parry is quite often a dead character - combat can be deadly!
Combat rounds also last only 2 seconds and thus combat is very fast (as compared to Rolemaster), and I have had players tell me that it is faster than combat in D&D, but I have not made a direct comparision, so have no data to substantiate this
Spells - Magic in HARP is, as mentioned earlier, skill based. Each spell is a distinct skill. Each magic using profession has its own list of individual spells known as a Sphere of magic (Mage Sphere, Ranger Sphere, Warrior Mage Sphere, Harper Sphere, etc.) Clerics has a Sphere as well, but when selecting a Cleric, the player must select 20 spells (half of which must come from the generic Cleric Sphere) to be his Sphere of magic. Only those characters of the proper profession may learn the spells from a given Sphere normally. However, a character may purchase an Additional Profession (talent) to gain access to a Sphere, or may purchase the Arcane Power talent (more expensive) to gain access. Each method has its own drawbacks and perks, so it is up to the player to decide which way he goes.
In addition to the Professional Spheres, there is a Universal Sphere of spells. These may be learned by ANY profession (yes, including Fighters - even though it is more costly for them).
The spells themselves are scalable. This means that you can increase the power of the spell at the time of casting by expending more power points (and having the proper number of skill ranks). The spells themselves do not have a level rating like many other systems, but they do have the requirement that you cannot put more Power Points into a spell than the number of ranks you have in that spell (i.e. you have to keep learning that spell to get to be able to power it up a good bit!). The HARP expansion product, College of Magics, includes rules for creating your own spells.
Monsters - I just want to note that Monsters in HARP are extremely tough. Monsters have racial abilities and stat blocks just as the player races do. The Monsters are also all buitl as Fighters of their given level. This means that a 1st level Kobold is about as tough as a 1st level dwarf or human. Monsters are also all built with uniform stats (all stats have a 75 in them).
Being built as Fighters, and with the given racial information, this makes it extremely easy for a GM to add more levels or to create monsters of different professions from the ground up.
Experience Points - In HARP, experience point awards are based on accomplishing goals. There are Major and Minor goals, both Party and Personal (the GM determines the validity of Personal goals), and HARP gives examples. XP awards are also based upon the difficulty in achieving the goal as well.
Goals could be "slaying a dragon" or "negotiating a peace treaty" or anything else that the GM determines. THe Major Goal is the primary objective of the party, and the minor goals are the steps that need to accomplished to achieve the Major Goal.
The GM is also encourage to award bonus XPs (up to a certain amount) for good ideas, daring actions, etc...
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Okay, I figure that this is a good start.....
Therefore, having just returned from a long weekend (I really hate going to visit relatives - I spend the entire time driving from one house to another and that does not include the 10 drive to get there and the additional 10 hour drive to come back - ugh!), and not seeing another HARP thread started yet, I decided to take the initiative and start it myself.
Please be warned before hand, that I am the author of the majority of HARP and therefore am quite biased towards it (no kidding, eh?). I figure that I will start the discussion with an overview of the system.
*************************
HARP Overview
*************************
HARP (High Adventure Role Playing) is a generic fantasy game system produced by Iron Crown Enterprises. It is a percentile based system and is mostly compatible with ICE's Rolemaster games (there are some things that are balanced differently).
Stats - HARP contains 8 stats. These are Strength, Constitution, Agility, Quickness, Reasoning, Insight, Presence and Self Discipline. There are three methods available for generating stats, and the player may select whichever he likes. These include random rolls (roll until you have 8 numbers of 40 or above, rerolling those less than 40), point buy (550 points to spend on stats), or combo (500 + 10d10 points to spend on stats). Stats range from 1 to 105 (with increased costs for stats above 90). Stats are used to determine bonuses that are applied to skills and they also determine the number of development points (DP) a character has. DPs are used to purchase skills, talents, stat increases, and a few other things.
Professions - Each player selects a profession for his character (additional professions may be purchased later using DPs). HARP contains 9 basic professions: Cleric (see below), Fighter, Harper, Mage, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Thief, Warrior Mage. Each profession gains 20 free skill ranks divided among his Favored Categories (These are skill categories, all skills in a Favored Category costs 2 DP per rank, skills in non-favored categories cost 4 DPs per rank) plus one or more abilities that are tied to the profession.
Clerics - since there are no default deities in HARP, the play may select 2 categories as Favored Categories, and may define 20 spells to be his sphere of spells for his religion. These are supposed to reflect the nature of the deity worshipped and the GM has veto power over them. Alternatively, the GM could pre-define the clerical orders in his world and allow the player to select from those available. Paladins may be created by taking the Combat skill category as a Favored Category.
Races - HARP contains 6 races for players to select from: Dwarves, Elves, Gnome, Gryx, Halfling and Human. All are standard fantasy races, except for the Gryx. The Gryx are a fearsome looking race that is normally very gentile and non-hostile, however, they are excellent Fighters if provoked! Each race has 3 racial abilities, and stat modifiers. They also have modifiers to Endurance (hits), Power Points, and Resistance skills.
HARP does not contain any Half-races, instead, the player may spend 1 or 2 DPs to acquire a Blood Talent. 1 DP for a Lesser Blood Talent or 2 DP for a Greater Blood Talent. A Lesser Blood Talent means that there is a slight amount of blood from another race in their veins, while the Greater Blood Talent means that there is more (i.e. a half-blood). A character may have 1 Greater Blood Talent or up to 2 Lesser Blood Talents. A Lesser Blood Talent allows the character to swap out one of his normal racial abilities for one from the Blood Talent, while the Greater allows the swapping of 2 abilities (note: that the greater also allows the swapping of one ability for stat bonuses - this is one of the 2 allowed).
Thus you could have a Gryx who was 1/4 Gnome and 1/4 Human or a Dwarf who was aslo half an elf. The choice is up to the player. (Note: there will be a product out later this year or early next year which gives lots more Blood Talents).
Culture - Cultures in HARP are the next item a player selects for his character. While each race gives a default culture for each race, the player may swap it out for any other culture if he wishes. The available cultures are: Sylvan, Underhill, Shallow Warrens, Deep Warrens, Rural, Urban and Nomadic. Thus you could have a Sylvan Dwarf, or an Urban Elf if you like.
The cultures determine what languages that the character starts with and gives 20 free skill ranks (which skills these are for are determined by the culture). A GM could easily create a specific culture for each location of his setting rather than using the generic ones provided.
Skills - HARP contains approximately 60 base skills divided into 10 categories. Skills are gained by purchasing ranks in them. The more ranks the higher the overall bonus, however, the ranks use a mechanism of diminishing returns, which means that the bonus from each rank gets smaller with each rank. The progrssion of this bonus is -25*5*2*1 (no ranks means a bonus of -25; 1-10 ranks give +5 per rank, 11-20 ranks give +2 per rank; 21+ ranks give +1 per rank -- 12 ranks in a skill gives a bonus of 54 (10 x 5 = 50 plus 2 x 2 = 4 equals 54) before adding in stat bonuses. Each skill has two stats associated with it and gets those stat bonuses added to the skill rank bonus.
A character's hits are determined by his Endurance skill, his Power Points (for casting spells) by his Power Point Development skill, and his Resistance Rolls (RR) (Saving Throws for those who are more familiar with d20 - a given here) are determined by the Resistance skill (which must be taken 3 separate times for each type of RR (Stamina, Will, Magic).
Several skills may be taken multiple times with a different focus each time (i.e. Resistance, Crafts, Weapon skills, Spells, etc...). As mentioned above, the profession of the character determines the cost of any given skill.
Training Packages (TPs) - TPs are groups of skills related to a specific group or job that they character joins/learns. HARP contains a few example TPs, but the actual creation of them is left to the GMs and the players (GMs must approve player created TPs). The character gains a discount on the DP cost of the skills involved in the TP. The percentage of discount is fixed, so the actual DP cost of the TP is determined by the profession of the character purchasing it (based on whether or not a given skill is in that profession's Favored Categories). HARP contains all the rules needed for creating TPs.
Talents - These are special bonuses or abilities that a character may have. They cost a fixed number of DPs and characters may purchase one or more talents when they go up a level (remember, everything is purchased using Development Points, so those who buy up lots of talents will end up with almost no skills, or very poor skills).
Combat - HARP uses a single roll resolution for combat. You roll, add in your character's OB, and subtract foe's DB. If the result is positive, then you have hit the foe hard enough to do damage (note: this means that if the result is negative, you may have hit foe, just not hard enough to hurt him!). The result is then modified by the size of the weapon and the adjusted result looked up on the proper critical table (yes, this means that EVERY hit that hurts a foe is a critical hit). There are options in HARP to run combat without using the critical tables for those who do not want them. Combat also presupposes that the character is parrying (placing some of their offensive bonus towards their defensive bonus) to some degree. A character who does not parry is quite often a dead character - combat can be deadly!
Combat rounds also last only 2 seconds and thus combat is very fast (as compared to Rolemaster), and I have had players tell me that it is faster than combat in D&D, but I have not made a direct comparision, so have no data to substantiate this
Spells - Magic in HARP is, as mentioned earlier, skill based. Each spell is a distinct skill. Each magic using profession has its own list of individual spells known as a Sphere of magic (Mage Sphere, Ranger Sphere, Warrior Mage Sphere, Harper Sphere, etc.) Clerics has a Sphere as well, but when selecting a Cleric, the player must select 20 spells (half of which must come from the generic Cleric Sphere) to be his Sphere of magic. Only those characters of the proper profession may learn the spells from a given Sphere normally. However, a character may purchase an Additional Profession (talent) to gain access to a Sphere, or may purchase the Arcane Power talent (more expensive) to gain access. Each method has its own drawbacks and perks, so it is up to the player to decide which way he goes.
In addition to the Professional Spheres, there is a Universal Sphere of spells. These may be learned by ANY profession (yes, including Fighters - even though it is more costly for them).
The spells themselves are scalable. This means that you can increase the power of the spell at the time of casting by expending more power points (and having the proper number of skill ranks). The spells themselves do not have a level rating like many other systems, but they do have the requirement that you cannot put more Power Points into a spell than the number of ranks you have in that spell (i.e. you have to keep learning that spell to get to be able to power it up a good bit!). The HARP expansion product, College of Magics, includes rules for creating your own spells.
Monsters - I just want to note that Monsters in HARP are extremely tough. Monsters have racial abilities and stat blocks just as the player races do. The Monsters are also all buitl as Fighters of their given level. This means that a 1st level Kobold is about as tough as a 1st level dwarf or human. Monsters are also all built with uniform stats (all stats have a 75 in them).
Being built as Fighters, and with the given racial information, this makes it extremely easy for a GM to add more levels or to create monsters of different professions from the ground up.
Experience Points - In HARP, experience point awards are based on accomplishing goals. There are Major and Minor goals, both Party and Personal (the GM determines the validity of Personal goals), and HARP gives examples. XP awards are also based upon the difficulty in achieving the goal as well.
Goals could be "slaying a dragon" or "negotiating a peace treaty" or anything else that the GM determines. THe Major Goal is the primary objective of the party, and the minor goals are the steps that need to accomplished to achieve the Major Goal.
The GM is also encourage to award bonus XPs (up to a certain amount) for good ideas, daring actions, etc...
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Okay, I figure that this is a good start.....
There is a wee bit of difference..
Why not a non stat bonus number? That way, I can add 5 here and 5 there is the party meets a particulary nasty orc. Now, I have to deduct 10 from most of the numbers if I want to create an 'ordinary' orc. Hopefully, Monsters: A Field Guide takes care of that...
