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Message: <blockquote data-quote="der_kluge" data-source="post: 4590716" data-attributes="member: 945">I used to have a great love of HARP, and ran a game of it at the DC game day, with Rasyr at my table, to boot. I have a lot of the books, and even tried my hand at doing some freelancing for them for a time, but that didn't pan out unfortunately. I LOVE the character creation system. It really is a thing of beauty. You can create any kind of character you want - you could make a fighter, for example, with just enough ranks in one spell, like telekinesis. So, if you wanted a fighter who could pull people towards him, and then slice them in two - you could do that fairly easily in HARP. Such a thing would be nigh impossible in D&D, because you'd be a multi-classed fighter/wizard, and you'd have to take 7 levels of wizard to pull of something like that. In 4th edition - forget it.The combat system really is the stumbling block for me. I can appreciate it, but it's not for me.  Thing is, you have to roll for everything, even spells. But the good part is is that you could roll *well* and have a spell do more than you expect. But, you can also fumble a spell. The lethality is also much, much higher. So, you can die a horrendous death even as a powerful PC with a few bad dice rolls. The combat is also a lot more complex - it's all percentile, and everything is in a table that you have to look up. And then there are rules for stunning and parrying that make it that much more complex. For as simple as it is, I like D&D's "I roll to hit, and I do this much damage" kind of a system.  HARP is more like "Ok, I'm using an edged weapon, so I roll, and look up the edged weapon chart, and I do a stun and a certain amount of damage..." and I don't know exactly. It's been a while since I've ran it.The character creation system is a thing of beauty, but it can lead to a bit of min-maxing. For example, you could make a wizard and you could dump every conceivable skill point you have into "mana" at the expense of neglecting things like "saving throws" which are also skills, and BAB, which is also a skill, and even hit points - which are also a skill. So, you could essentially have a 20th level wizard with +1 to his BAB, +1 to all his Saving throws, and 6 hit points - but with enough spellcasting power to choke a damned kingdom. I used to have a fairly in depth review on here if someone wants to look for it.</blockquote>

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