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The HackMaster Player's Handbook 2012 PDF version is a PDF version of a book that will be available in hardcover in a few months. Kenzer & Company will be selling both the PDF and hardcover once the hardcover returns from the printer.
The cost is the estimated cost for the hardcover version; the PDF should be about $40 U.S.
Disclaimer: I have been part of the HackMaster Association since 2001 and I was an alpha tester on this book before its release for public playtest in August 2011.
The HackMaster Player's Handbook 2012 PDF version is the culmination of years of work by Kenzer & Company to create an old-school fantasy game that uses modern design elements to create an old-school feel with many character options. It is part of a quartet of core books for HackMaster.
The first book was HackMaster Basic, an introduction to the game and a way play without a lot of complexity. The PHB expands on the options in HackMaster Basic, while maintaining a high degree of backwards compatability. The Hacklopedia of Beasts, the monster book, has already been released. The Gamemaster's Guide is in progress.
The HackMaster Player's Handbook 2012 PDF version is a 401 page book, including the cover page and an index. Given its length, I'm going to focus in this review on things most gamers want to know about a system: character generation and combat.
HackMaster character generation offers many options by using building points (BPs) but at its heart it is a class and level system where a character's race matters.
The main character generation chapters are: Chapter 1: Character Creation, Chapter 2: Ability Scores, Chapter 3: Races, Chapter 4: Classes, Chapter 5: Clergy, and Chapters 9-11 for the Proficiencies, Talents and Skills.
Chapter 1, Character Creation, is an overview of the process. HackMaster uses 3d6 plus a percentile roll to generate each of its seven ability scores. The standard D&D ability scores appear, along with Looks (Comeliness if you're a Unearthed Arcana or Oriental Adventures player). 3d6 and the fractional score are rolled in order for each ability. You can keep the rolls in order for 50 extra building points, swap a pair of scores such as Looks and Constitution for 25 extra building points, or rearrange as you desire and receive no extra building points.
The chapter has clear definitions of the steps and a flowchart to help you generate the character. HackMaster characters take an hour or so to make, as you have several tough decisions. The game designers don't believe in free lunches and in playtest every time we rolled up a PC, we had to decide whether they needed a skill or a proficiency to survive our adventures.
Chapter 2, Ability scores, goes into detail on how the scores impact play. Intelligence, like in Aces & Eights and HackMaster Basic, is important for fighting as it determines the Attack modifier in part with Dexterity. Wisdom helps determine Defense and Initiative. Dexterity is part of the Attack, Defense and Initiative modifier. Characters with above-average Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma receive bonus building points, or BPs, to purchase skills using those abilities at character generation. Ability scores are adjustable by race and fall between 1 and 22.
Most PCs will have average scores around an 11, but an out was provided so no one is forced to play a useless character. The 'Shopkeeper' rule lets you name any character who either has no ability score greater than 13 or two ability scores of 5 or less before racial modifiers. You tell the GM the character's name, and then you get to roll a better character.
Strength determines damage in combat and how much a PC can carry and how well they open doors. It's still useful for melee warriors but not the only ability score that matters for them.
Constitution is the base for the character's hit points, after a racial adjustment and their class hit dice are added. Constitution also plays a roll in the Threshold of Pain check, a crucial combat mechanic.
Looks and Charisma seem like dump stats, but everything goes into Honor and terrible Looks and Charisma give really low Honor. I just rolled up a half-hobgoblin who has 12s through a 16 in the other ability scores and a Looks of 3 and a Charisma of 2 after modifiers. He has 1 Honor and is going to have to fight for respect throughout his career--with die roll penalties making it a greater struggle.
Chapter 3: Races gives you both 11 quality races to play (pixie fairies appear in the appendix as optional) and entertaining advice on how to play them well. You can play a dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, or half-orc if you're looking for a traditional non-human race. For newer non-human races, you can play a gnome titan, grel or half-hobgoblin; each of these races is a Kenzer & Company creation and all are quite playable from mechanical and RP standpoints. The PHB presumes you play in the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting, so there's a brief overview of the various human cultural groups (sub-races). As a human, your PC will know the native language of their region.
Each non-human race gets specific ability score modifiers, free skills and/or skill bonuses and preferred talents. Each non-human race also has favored classes. In HackMaster, you buy your class with BPs. Since you get 40 BPs to start with, you can play a dwarven mage, but it costs 75 BPs to be a dwarven mage. This means you either have to roll well, or take quirks and flaws (that discussion left for another time). Dwarves can be a fighter for 20 BPs, a fighter/thief for 25 BPs or a thief for 30 BPs, so you'll see those classes more often.
Each non-human race also has extensive roleplaying advice. The halfling advice, which mentioned a halfling being mistaken as the local grocer amongst a group of adventurers, immediately inspired me to create a halfling thief who was stealing to fund a grocery store chain. Now this is old-school and the no-free lunch Kingdoms of Kalamar setting, so half-orcs, half-hobgoblins and grel face severe social prejudices. Elves and dwarves don't like each other much either. So, you know what to expect when playing that PC--in most 'good' groups, a new half-orc PC could be killed on sight if they didn't play right. We whacked a grel two sessions in--my human thief only completely about the deceitful actions of the elven thief used to justify the killing.
Humans, like in old-school D&D, are the base. Their bonus is that they have no modifiers and all classes are 20 BPs for them. They also get the Merchant's Tongue language for half price.
Thus, the race chapter gives you a lot of options. If you don't play in Kalamar, you could always adjust a few things around to fit the campaign world.
Chapter 4: All of the classes you can play for 20 levels! Each level is about half that of AD&D or 3.0 D&D and its variants, so by about level 20, you're at the point where PCs start attracting followers. Levels beyond 20 will be covered by the class guides. As your character levels, they earn BPs per the training chapter, increase their fighting abilities based on their class, increase class skills and increase hit points. The half hit die method of HackMaster Basic is continued. Every level, you roll a hit die. At even levels, if you rolled better than at the previous odd level, your PC gains the difference between the rolls. If both your half hit-die rolls are less than half the class hit die, you get half the class hit die.
Example: Baak Eagle, a thief, has a d6 hit die. At level 1, he rolls a 2. At level 2, he rolls a 4. Since the level 2 hit die is hit die 1.5, he takes the difference of 2 and adds it to his hit points. If he'd rolled a 1 or 2, he'd add 3 to his hit points since a thief gets at least 3 points for every full die. At level 3, he gets a new hit die and at level 4 he gets a chance to beat that! So, hit points are smaller, but you do get a chance to improve them every level unless you maxed out the dice early.
A key combat concept is specialization. You buy bonuses to Attack, Defense, Speed and Damage with weapons. The cost is based on your character's class and the weapon. Each class has a set BP cost for specialization and each specialization must be improved to the same level, such as +1, before a new level in any of the elements is bought up to say, +2.
Classes has the non-cleric classes. For the fighting men and women, you have fighters, barbarians, rangers, knights and paladins. The first three are base classes: the fighter is vanilla until you customize them but is essential to an effective party, the barbarian is a powerful superstitious fighter from a wild tribe and the ranger calls forth memories of Aragorn and Robin Hood and is always good. Fighters who are lawful can become knights at level 6 or later and knights who are lawful good can become paladins at level 10 or later. The fighter group has the cheapest specializations; fighters pay 5 BP base per bonus and rangers pay 4 base for several ranged weapons while the chaotic barbarians pay a varying rate depending on the focus needed.
The mage group is the loneliest group right now, as it consists of the mage and the fighter/mage and the mage/thief. All cast spells using Spell Points, building off the system in HackMaster Basic. Mage types can use weapons and specialize, but their main role is to cast spells and aid the party. Nonetheless, since Intelligence is important in hitting, a mage with a ranged weapon and brains can be dangerous even when out of spell points.
The thief group has a lot of interesting options. You have the thief, the typical fantasy thief specializing in sneaking, trap disarming, noticing stuff and backstabbing. In HackMaster, the thief has the best initiative, so they also are great scouts. The thief improves 4 different core skills per level, so even a sneak thief will pick up some other skills as they level because they can't dump all their skill into one area. Rogues are a jack-of-all trades able to learn magic, backstab and do social activities well. Rogues aren't great at any one task and in fact were hit by the nerfbat late in playtest. However, a rogue would be great in a social campaign; they aren't greatsword-wielding bards. The fighter/thief and mage/thief trade off thieving skills and the skills of the other class to be a combination. This is HackMaster, so focusing on your class means the hybrids aren't as powerful as other games' multiclasses. Still, a fighter/thief in light armor or a mage/thief can be very effective additions to a party. Thieves, multi-class thieves and rogues have the Luck class ability. Each level they get Luck points to spend on keeping them alive. These modify dice rolls for skills, for their Defense rolls and saves and for damage they take. Luck ensures that the roguish types with pluck survive and it's a great roleplaying element--you have to describe why your thief-type got lucky such as 'The monster was so busy tripping over its own feet the last few seconds that it just couldn't get in rhythym.'
The assassin is the lone thief-group character that does not use Luck. They don't really need it. Assassins specialize in killing humans and near-human creatures from giants to pixie-fairies. They slit throats faster than thieves, hit harder than thieves and negate some of an opponent's Threshold of Pain. Non-evil assassins have the Nagging Conscience quirk, because killing people for money, which is their job, is evil. Assassins learn a few thief skills, but will mainly use Acting and Disguise to get within 20 feet so they can assassinate. James Bond is a good example of an assassin. . .
Chapter 5: Clergy has the cleric classes. In HackMaster, all cleric classes have the Divine Lore skill and Religion skill for their deity. Then the variation starts, for each cleric class has unique powers and a unique spell list. There are 14 cleric classes in the game, representing all of the alignments. Since there are 43 deities in the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting, a list of all them is provided. You can expect the other deities to appear in later publications.
The 14 cleric classes are a good mix. On the Lawful Good roster, you get the clerics of light and undead slaying (Eternal Lantern), the clerics of Justice (The True). For Chaotic Good you get the freedom-fighting Face of the Free and the Temple of the Patient Arrow, a hunting class. Neutral Good is represented by the Traveler, a good wilderness class, and the Church of Everlasting Hope, the clerics with the best healing in the game. Lawful Neutral clerics work for Thrain, the deity of Wisdom, your neutral clerics are really druids of the Bear and Chaotic Neutral clerics are evangelists for Risk/Draper. Even the evil clerics are playable, from the murderous House of Knives that is nigh unstoppable if they get into assassination range, to the Overlord who promotes slavery to the Temple of Strife who is your crazy chaotic flail-wielding bringer of bad luck. The last negates Luck points used against them and thus is a counter to thief-types.
What is expected of each cleric and all the basic religious information needed to play them is present. Since you cast specific spells at specific levels, the cleric list is alphabetical.
So, ability scores, class and race are important. These old-school elements are combined with proficiencies, talents and skills in chapters 9 through 11 to determine what your character can do.
Proficiencies are either/or abilities. Weapon proficiencies have a BP cost based on weapon complexity and class. Every fighter and every thief can use a club, but using a longbow takes 6 BPs base, so the fighters and rangers learn it easier than the mages. Then there are proficiencies for things NPCs typically do, like Laborer and Maintenance/Upkeep. All fighters have Laborer, because most got experience in the military and the military in the KoK setting does a lot of road repair work (think Roman soldiers). Then you have proficiencies for cultural advantages such as Bilingual, Local History and Style sense. These can be learned later with BPs.
Talents are raw powers, but can be bought later with BPs. These include bonuses to combat with particular weapons, the ability to reduce effective range to target, the ability to quickly pick up languages and the ability to survive combat better. My half-hobgoblin has Tough As Nails and Tough Skin, making him harder to knock out with a large blow and giving him an additional point of damage reduction--these were half of because of his race.
The list of skills is broad, as there are more than 60 and several have required specializations. This means you'll never have every skill in the game. Some skills are universal, meaning every PC has them but rolls at their lowest ability score in the skill if they don't improve it. Listening and Sneaking are universal skills, for example. Each skill roll is a d100 roll against the skill; you want to roll low unless directly opposing another character (roll high then). Modifiers are provided to make it easier to succeed on routine tasks, for even a novice in Cooking/Baking should be able to boil water given ample time and no pressure. Skills improve on the basis of a mastery die and an ability score modifier. The mastery die is based on how good the character is a the skill. It starts at a d12p and goes down a d3p as the character becomes better at the skill (p being penetrating--check out the dice conventions). The modifier is often modified by class, so a thief with terrible Wisdom or Charisma studying preferred thief skills such as Identify Trap or Glean Information will learn these skills more easily than their poor aptitude based on raw ability indicates. Each class has some skills as part of their mix.
Useful skills will vary by campaign, but Listening, Observation and Scrutiny are always useful for detecting things and Language and Literacy skills aid in communication. A bonus to being literate at all is a character then gets Cartography as a universal skill. . Given the nature of combat, a party without First Aid will die like fools. Those with Laborer can do simple tasks with direction by a skilled PC, so they are skill multipliers.
Combat: There are about 40 pages on combat and an illustrated combat example using the KODT characters will be available soon, if fans haven't already posted it, so I'll be brief here.
Combat has several systems that make it difficult for experienced players to learn but the combat system is robust and worth the reeducation.
Combat begins when one side can see the other and act. If one side is ambushing, they begin combat with an initiative of 1. The other side may not even get to roll initiative.
Combat uses a 'count-up' mechanism introduced in Aces & Eights. That is, each character can't act until their initiative is reached. They are doing what they are doing, like a deer caught in the headlights. Characters in classes where reaction speed matters like thieves and fighters get faster as they level--mages well it's a good thing the thief can share initiative with the mage and take their average. That way, the slow mage with help can let loose with a Fireball sooner. . .
Once their initiative comes up, a character can act. You can move all the time and actions take the time to complete them that would in real life. To cross a room, you need to know how big it is, what's in the way, and how fast your character is moving. To eat some trail rations, well how long does it take you to nosh on some granola? Weapons have speeds and spells have casting times. Moving can happen throughout combat, but moving too much while engaged in melee means your PC is fleeing and gets whalloped, especially by a thief.
So, in practice combat is tactical but simple for the fighter types until they can clear away their opponent and move on.
Hitting a foe uses an opposed attack and defense system. The attacker rolls a penetrating d20 plus modifiers and the defender rolls a defense dice based on their movement status for ranged attacks or a d20 as modified by their fighting style for melee attacks. Ties go to the defender. For missiles, a defender crouching behind a shield might be missed. If the defender is using a shield in melee, unless the defender wins by ten points or more or rolls a Near Perfect Defense or Perfect Defense, their shield is hit. Shields can break and damage can go through a shield, but generally a shield extends a character's life substantially.
Near Perfect Defense and Perfect Defense are automatic misses for the attacker. The Near Perfect Defense is on a natural 19 for non-thieves in most situations; if tey beat the attacker's roll on an NPD, they also get a free attack. They'll get a free unarmed strike or strike with the secondary weapon if dual-wielding defensively. On a Perfect Defense, a natural 20 on the defense roll, the attack misses. The defender whose total is higher gets a free attack with their main-hand weapon. Neither of these affect weapon speed--they just come in the sequence. Thieves with NPD and PD are scary--one halfling thief Cody looped them so while he wasn't hitting his opponent on his attack time in many instances, he daggered his foes to death during their attack time.
Defender fumbles give the attacker a free attack the next second. These are bad and often change the course of a fight.
Attacker fumbles can give the defender a free attack next second or roll on some tables in Hackjournal #31. I find the latter more fun, as I had one PC nearly kill a pixie-fairie PC with a fumble and my halfling grocer thief has a bad arm sprain in need of healing that's making me roleplay his pain and to-hit penalty.
Attacker critical hits, that is a natural 20 that beats the defender's total, do double damage dice or go to critical hit tables in Hackjournal #36. Again, I like the tables, because arm damage or crushed toes are more fun than 'add 5 more damage.'
Attackers always hit on a natural 20, unless the defender gets those Near Perfect and Perfect Defenses.
Combat can end for many reasons, but the most common is a failed Threshold of Pain Check. Each character that is subject to threshold of pain, both monsters and PCs, has a target number of damage which forces the check. If they take that damage in one hit, they must roll a Threshold of Pain check. Failure knocks down the character for 5 seconds per point failed, minimum of 5 seconds. Their throats can be slit now, they are not defending so you can attack them more rapidly (half weapon speed) and they are down so your fighter can disengage.
The Hackcooks group had three thieves-Cody, Baak Eagle and Durt. We let our fighters do the hitting and when they dropped foes, our thieves cut throats. This meant that our thieves weren't heavy in melee for long and that foes didn't come back as they were dead in three seconds after hitting the floor (plus our time to move there).
There are many advanced rules such as fatigue, mounted combat, firing into melee, momentum and special combat manuvers. You can run your combat as complicated as you like it, with our without a map.
Healing takes a long time, which is why First Aid after combat is crucial. Clerics aren't healbots of old, so you'll need to bind wounds and reduce their severity.
All in all, the combat system is integrated and once you get used to being active in combat instead of waiting for someone else's turn, you'll enjoy the game more.
Final Playtest Review Comments: The playtest process was very thorough. There were over 1500 tracked comments and public testing took 9 months. The authors responded with careful consideration to all fan suggestions; some were accepted as they made the game better. I personally began playtesting in the spring of 2011, so I saw a lot of changes along the way.
In the end, I could see a game where everything is made to work together, without one-roll mechanics. There are a lot of rules here, but they fit tightly.
Style: 4. It's well-laid out and has many good 'tips' in the sidebars and charts to explain complicated mechanics, so the authors do what they can to make it easier on the reader. However, the art is generally public domain heroic and recycled black and white line art. Most of the art isn't as evocative of old-school gaming to me as the art of the Brothers Fraim. Also, at present, there are no chapter links. Chapter links will improve the final product's useability and are planned to be added in with the final printer's proof shortly.
The hardcover should look pretty good in full-color, but I still don't think I'll find most of the art all that interesting.
Substance: 5. It's 400 pages of stuff for players which is well-edited and written in Garyspeak instead of a legalistic or tech support manual style. Garyspeak is like how Gary Jackson spoke in KODT, how Gary Gygax wrote from on a high horse, and parts of the HackMaster 4e GMG read. With this book, you know what game you are playing and how to play it; the foreward and introduction leave no doubt about the game's gritty nature. If you like the Garyspeak, as I do, you'll enjoy the text. If you don't like Garyspeak, it's still a well-edited book with the information logically organized for your use.
If you are interested in seeing the HackMaster PHB, please ask if anyone in your local area can show you the book and the game. Permission has been given to show the PDF, so if you want to know more, plenty of fans will help you learn more.
If you look at the HackMaster PHB and find it's not the fantasy game you were looking for, there are many excellent games out there. Play them and tell us why you like them. . .
