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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 5334016" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya.   I DM'ed a 4e Hackmaster campaign for about a year and a half to two years. Here's my thoughts.   HM4 plays primarily like a 1e base with some 2e ideas (I'm talking AD&D here). Stats all have a % associated with them, and when the character gains a level, they get to roll a die type (different for each stat, based on their class) for each stat. When a % of 101+ is reached, that stat goes up one point and 100% is removed from the %. Rinse, repeat. This allows a character's stats to increase over time. The beauty of this is that it is dirt simple to house rule in other ways of increaseing or decreasing stats via the %. For example, it's easy enough to rule that a character who gets laying-in-bed-puking-sick has all his stats % reduced by 50, or that a character can 'train' a stat up over time, getting +1% for every full week of training, etc.   Hit Points for low level characters have increased dramatically; a typical 1st level character would have around 25hp. Monsters also have increased hp, however, so players who expect to smack a kobold for 9 points of damage and have it die are going to be in for a rude awakening... While this does allow for a lot longer adventures, it also can drag fights out a little. Not too much, as the Critical Hit rules can easily take out a creature/character.   Classes have been greatly increased in the sheer number of choices, if you add in the 4 class books (Spellslingers Guide, Zealots Guide, Griftmasters Guide and the Combatants Guide), you have more choices than you can wave a dead gazebo at.   The biggest drawback to all of this is initial level of complexity. For the non-experienced, HM4 is likely too much to handle. Trying to keep track of some of the new innovations (Alignment Infraction Points, Honor Points, Threshold of Pain checks, etc.) simply are too much. For me, I ignored the AiP's, I simplified the giving/takeing of Honor Points, and a few other things. But that's one of the hidden beauties of HM4: very modular. If you don't want to deal with the complexities of the Critical Hit system...just say Crits do double damage. Don't like the Honor stuff? Drop it completely. Anything you change, drop or add isn't likely to have much (if any) effect on any other part of the game.   My suggestion: make a couple of characters yourself and see if you like where it's going. If so, get the guys/gals together and hand them a character and role-play a simple caravan attack, or 4-room cave/dungeon, etc. and see if you all like it. That's the best way to see if you like HM4; play it. It plays as serious or campy as you like. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ^_^ Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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