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When I first tried my hand at Rolemaster, a few problems surfaced. I felt the system was an interesting alternative to the sometimes stagnant feeling of d20. I loved the skills system, loved the herbs/poisons, but felt there were limitations mechanically to how smooth a gaming session could go. Countless modifiers, sometimes unwieldy combat, and a glut of charts had the potential to really bog things down. Such were my troubles with Rolemaster, though I still enjoyed it overall. With d20, easily the most-played system out there, I still had fun, but sometimes felt like my characters were expected by the game’s character generation to conform to a specific archetype, and that dissension from this was not made easy or routine.
When I heard about HARP (High Adventures in Roleplaying), my first impression was that it would simply be a stripped down version of Rolemaster. Nothing could be further from the truth. With HARP, I have discovered a system that I believe I will play more than any other in the years to come. HARP has managed to combine the best parts of Rolemaster with a wonderful character customization and maneuver system that rivals anything I’ve seen.
We start with a player’s basic stats. There are eight, and the scores in each of them are not only added (or subtracted) to various skill roles, but if you have a high enough score in any given stat, you receive a number of Development Points. These Development Points are later used for character customization—training packages, skills, and talents. But more on these in a moment.
Your basic fantasy races are included, and one of the things I loved best were the fact that these races are presented in a neutral enough manner to be adapted to any fantasy world. If you want to play your quintessential D&D half-elf or half-orc, you can spend some of those Development Points later to be half or even quarter-blooded of a certain race. This makes for some very interesting possibilities, indeed. It’s important to point out that race and culture are separate, so you could have an urban dwarf, sylvan human, or rural elf if you so desired. This idea really stops that dreaded pigeonholing right in its tracks.
We should go back to professions for a moment. The basic professions in HARP are as follows: Cleric, Fighter, Harper, Mage, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Thief, and Warrior Mage. Now, if these classes sound a bit elementary, don’t despair—Training Packages soon enter the picture. Training Packages are a way to spend Development Points so that your character receives skill groupings and abilities of a certain curriculum or job, purchased at a discount. For example, your character could train in anything from being a sailor to a con man. There is also an insanely easy template with which to make your own Training Packages. When you also consider the myriad of Training Packages available at www.harphq.com, there truly is no end to the possibilities.
One of the cool parts of the skills system is that each profession receives 20 starting ranks, divided among their favored skill categories. (For example, a fighter has 2 ranks to spend in the Athletics category, 8 in Physical, and so on). This is a nice change from systems that assume martial professions have fewer skills—HARP on the other hand, recognizes professions just have skills in different areas. Your academic and skill-driven professions make up for this equality at the beginning by having more skill classes available at a lower cost. For example, a fighter’s skills categories are Athletic, General, Combat, and Physical. He can pick a skill from another category, but it will cost him double. Your rogue profession has seven skill categories. He has his initial ranks spread more thinly, but his development point cost to take skills is lessened. This system works great, and keeps the perks of a certain class available without pigeonholing your character.
Skills are improved by buying ranks with your development points. A further word on Development Points—you don’t just have to improve Skills with your DPs. As I said before, DPs are the way by which you improve your stats or gain “talents” as well.
And so on to the Talents section. Talents are little perks you buy to let you do everything from heal faster to sense magic to claim a half-dwarven lineage!!! This section is one of the key areas to customizing your character. Between Training Packages, Skills, and Talents, your character will definitely stand apart.
Combat and maneuvers—with Rolemaster, this was both a vexing and enjoyable part for me, depending on whether you were discussing means or ends. What ICE has done with HARP is take some of the more complex calculation out of skill/maneuver rolls and combat, and streamline the entire procedure quite nicely. Be they skills or combat, your rolls consist of percentage rolls, with 96-100 still open-ended, meaning one gets to roll again. To determine success or failure (or what scale of either), one merely rolls the percentile dice and adds any modifiers. When in combat you roll versus your opponent’s DB, or Defensive Bonus (Quickness Bonus x2, plus any modifiers from armor and such). If your total attack roll beats their DB, congrats, you’ve hit them. Then you check on your critical table to see how badly you’ve hurt them. The crit tables aren’t as fun as Rolemaster’s, but there are recommendations available to use RM’s charts for HARP, and the two systems do work together pretty well.
Magic is one of the high points of this game. The magic system seems to be geared towards combating munchkinism without removing the fun. Here’s how it works: You buy ranks in a given spell. You must have as many ranks in a spell as PP, or Power Points it costs to cast. So, if you have 2 ranks in a spell and it costs 2 Power Points, you can cast it.
One of the best parts of the entire game is the magic scaling. Scaling a spell is a means of not having to have 40 levels of spells in order to get a spell to do what you want it to. Instead, say you know how to cast Dispel Magic, which works in a radius of 10 feet. However, you wish to cast Dispel Magic in a 100-foot area. Looking at the spell, you see you can scale it upward for the cost of 1 Power Point for every 50 feet. So, in order to get to 100 feet, you’d have to use 6 PP for the spell instead of the usual 4. But wait! You just noticed you only have 5 ranks in Dispel Magic. Sadly, you can only use as many Power Points as you have ranks, just like before. So you can either cast Dispel Magic now at a range of 60 feet, or wait until you can put another rank in the spell for the 100-foot area. The system works, eliminates the need for spell charts with 50 levels, and encourages creativity with its great scaling techniques.
Equipment included in the game is basic, but entirely serviceable. As I said earlier, many RM supplements are easily adaptable to this system, which just makes it that much better of a product.
All this is included, in the revised print version, in only 192 pages. Not much fluff, but still easy to pick up and comprehend. This system is simply of the best I have seen, hands down. It not only reduces the hassle of earlier percentile systems, but also allows awesome character creation, flexible setting adaptability, a magic system that is fantastic in its simplicity and customization potential, and the best customer/company support out there. Best of all, the entire game seems to take me back to the time when I was first discovering RPGs, anything was possible, and fantasy gaming was new and exciting. That was perhaps the best feeling of all, and worth every bit I paid.
If you still aren’t convinced, visit [url]www.harphq.com[/url] and see for yourself. There’s also plenty of free downloads, including the 98-page version of HARP Lite, an introduction to the game. Better yet, the full-version in PDF only costs $10!!! The revised 192-page paper softbound edition costs $25, and is an amazing bargain.
This one gets a rating of 5 on substance from me. I cannot give it any higher recommendation. The only thing I marked down for is on style, because the art won't knock anyone's socks off, but I'm not buying it for the pictures. It’s changed the way I game, and brought new and exciting gaming ideas to my table—let it do the same for you.
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