HARP Martial Law PDF

[Crothian]

NOTE: This is the PDF electronic download version of the printed #3001 Martial Law title.

How do monsters and magic affect weapons, armor, and fighting styles? Martial Law breaks new ground in the field of fantasy role playing combat rules. Martial Law expands the fast, dramatic combat of HARP to include detailed hit location criticals. The product also includes a section on creating and playing warriors in fantasy settings and cool new moves and equipment for fighters. Fully compatible and useable with RMFRP

This is a 4.5MB PDF electronic download and you will need the free Abode Acrobat Reader to open and view it.

 

[Crothian]

Martial Law

HARP is literally the game of High Adventure Role Playing. Martial Law, the book this review is about, is a HARP supplement. The simple statement to describe Martial Law is this is the book Complete Warrior and Sword and Fist should have been. It is all about fighting and combat and covers it all very nicely given a good amount of descriptions to a lot of different areas. The book is well written and well thought out. It makes one want to play a combat specialist of some type. That is important to me; I want the book to demand to be used. I see some books that are good but they just do not have the excitement in the words and descriptions in the text that adds an extra level to the reading experience and makes it easy to bring over to the gaming table. Martial Law does this for the HARP game.

Martial Law is a HARP book by Iron Crown Enterprise or ICE as they are better known. The one hundred page PDF is black and white with color first and last page, the covers of the book. The art and lay out are both good. The pages do have borders on them that can eat a bit of ink but printing them out was not that bad. The book is well book marked and they take a different approach to book marks then I normally see. In Martial Law the book marks are set up like the index with everything in alphabetical order. Normally I see book marks that are set up as like the table of contents so everything is in the order they appear in the book. The index book marks seem more precise as they have about everything book marked but will take a bit of getting used to for anyone like myself used to the other way book marks are done.

The book starts with a nice focus on role playing. It gives good recommendation for what races and cultures work with what types of fighting and what they lean towards. It has good information on personalities, professions, what statistics the character might want to have, talents, and equipment. It is really good chapters for beginners and for people just not sure what they want to create characters wise.

The book starts strong and just keeps it up. It has some good magical runes, ideas for skills and for unusual skill use, and fighting in different places. It has rules for fighting mounted, flying, in water, maritime combat, shield wall, this book has about everything.

On of the impressive things in the book is the table of different types of criticals that it has. The game has critical effects for certain hits and this increases the variety of them. It has cold attacks, electrical attacks and martial arts sweeps and martial arts strikes. There are pages of critical tables of the different types and for different body parts.

The book has some good ideas that can be used for other systems but it would really take some work to translate the rules. If one already uses a critical hit system the addition of the table in this book could be useful. This is a very good HARP book though a strong one in their line of books.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Upfront

I received Martial Law for free as part of the pdf review program. This is not a playtest review.

Role Playing Warriors

The first chapter is an introduction, followed by Chapter 2 “Role Playing Warriors.” This chapter gives some general advice on building warrior characters of different types. While the more general advice won’t be of a great deal of use to more experienced roleplayers, there are a number of HARP specific issues dealt with that will help players new to HARP get the most from their character creation choices.

Battle Runes

Chapter 3 covers a new type of battle magic. While only two pages long, the subsystem for using Battle Runes as a new type of magic seems pretty easy to implement. While HARP magic typically uses a different skill for each spell, Battle Runes use one skill, but requires a higher level of ability to use the stronger runes. This is a nice way to give warriors access to some simple magic, while still letting them spend most of their ranks on more combat oriented skills.

Fighting With Style

Chapter 4 includes new skills, training packages, and a summary of the current and new combat maneuvers. The skills include new fighting styles and martial arts styles, as well as expanding on some existing ones. There are only 8 new training packages, but they do a good job in filling in some gaps for warriors in the existing packages and illustrate how to make a training package devoted to a particular fighting style or philosophy. The new combat maneuvers also introduce new maneuvers available to those with a certain number of ranks (20, 40, or 80).

This chapter is probably the backbone of this book. It’s very well done and I’d recommend it to any GM whose HARP game sees frequent combat.

Melee & Missile Combat

Chapter 5 begins with advice on handling the more common “special” situations in rpg combats. Next is a brief outline on handling mass combats. Finally, there is advice for designing and running different types of combat encounters. Like chapter 2, this is well done, but will be of more use to new players or players just new to HARP.

Weapons & Armor

Chapter 6 is kind of a mixed bag for me. I feel the weapons section is a bit much. Some weapons are renamed from their historical names to what the HARP default races refer to them as. This just seemed unnecessary. I do like the nice, simple guidelines for adding new weapons.

I did like the second half of the chapter better. There are loads of new materials and rules for the quality of workmanship for weapons and armor. There are also charts detailing the rules for armors with all the new materials.

Orders & Organizations

Chapter 7 covers creating new groups for warriors to belong to. How to get in, what they do, how they work. While most of the examples are martial to one degree or another, much of this would apply to building just about any organization, such as a Wizard’s Guild or a Church. It’s good, I’m just not sure why it’s in the combat-expanding book.

Critical Tables

The main focus of chapter 8 is the real engine of HARP combat -- the critical tables. These tables have been expanded to include results for hit locations. At first, they look rather intimidating compared to the basic critical tables in the core HARP book. However, the revised layout also gives an easy, standardized layout for finding the damage, stun, bleeding, and death time (where appropriate) for each result. I wasn’t to sure about these at first, but after taking some time to review them, I like them better than the originals.

The only thing that really gives me pause is a section talking about how the new charts are written assuming the target has reinforced leather armor. You need to adjust damage up or down if the target is poorer or better equipped. This is the one thing I really just don’t get. The way HARP damage works, better armor already makes it harder to score better hits. Why provide even more of a bonus (or penalty) beyond what the defensive modifiers provide? Again, this isn’t a playtest review, but I’m just not sure I like this.

Magic Items

Chapter 9 includes a number of new weapons, armors, and miscellaneous items a warrior would be interested in. A number of the new items are unique, but there aren’t even prices on the more commonly available ones.

Creating NPCs

Chapter 10 begins with some advice on making warrior NPCs. While this isn’t remarkable in itself, there are a number of NPCs fully statted out at different levels. Especially for those new to HARP, it’s handy to see what different types of characters look like at levels 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20. Of course, this also makes the GMs life a little easier by providing several types of warriors to use in encounters with fairly little preparation.

Bottom Line

I liked Martial Law and it is a good book overall, with the chapter on new skills and the new critical tables being particularly good. However, I don’t feel it’s essential for a HARP game. I would recommend it to someone who felt the basics of HARP combat weren’t detailed enough. For those who think HARP combat is just about right in the basic book, I don’t think this would be necessary.