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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rasyr" data-source="post: 1855767" data-attributes="member: 2855">Ok, first of all, spells are divided into Spheres (each profession has its own Sphere), and each Sphere is a list of individual spells that a character may learn.Each spell is then learned as if it were a skill. With the character purchasing ranks in it. In order to cast a spell, the character must have enough power points (PP) available, and must have enough ranks in the spell.A character may only put an amount of power points into a spell equal to the number of ranks he has. For example, a Mage wants to cast an Elemental Bolt of Fire (Firebolt). The base form of this spell does a Tiny Fire Critical, and has a range of 100' for a cost of 4 power points.This means that the character needs a minimum of 4 skill ranks in the spell to be able to cast it. The character may scale up the size of the critical by paying an additional 2 PP per size increase. He may also scale it up in terms of range by an additional 50' for every additional 1 PP. At first level, a character may have a maximum of 6 ranks in any given skill, so a Mage could cast the Firebolt a total of 200' and do a Tiny Fire Critical, or cast it 100' and do a Small Fire Critical.There is a catch though. For every power point above the base cost of the spell, the mage receives a -5 to his casting roll. Thus both scaled up examples listed above are at -10 to cast.So, if maxed out on skill ranks, and the character had a +5 bonus for both the related stats, this would give him a total bonus of 40 for casting the spell, or 30 if casting either of the scaled up options listed above. If the mage wanted to do a Tiny Fire Critical, and only give it a range of 150', then this would cost him 5 PP total, and give him a casting bonus of 35 for this spell.In HARP, mages can also wear armor, however, the wearing of armor hampers the casting of spells, and thus requires that the caster expend more power points when casting a spell. If our Mage is wearing soft leather armor (which give a +20 to their defensive bonus), this would also require that all spells cost an extra 2 PP. In this case, the Mage would not be able to scale up the spell while wearing armor since to cast the base form would cost 6 PP (and thus require a minimum of 6 ranks in the spell). And yes, his casting bonus would be 30 while wearing the armor since it is 2 PP above the base cost of the spell.I hope that makes sense.Several other systems have, including the Action! system. However, I personally feel that WotC was the only company (except perhaps White Wolf maybe) who had the customer base to support such a move.Any other company that released their systems under the OGL is going to find that doing so will draw off some of their own customers without enough of a return to make it worthwhile. And since most rpg companies are already struggling (do to decreased distributor sales - which are down across the board), doing so is not really feasible. Now, ICE has no plans on releasing HARP under the OGL. However, ICE is very willing to license the system, at what I think are very reasonable rates, and to work with licensors so that doing so does not strap them. In fact, ICE has already received several requests regarding licensing of HARP, which is very cool, I think. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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