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HARP: High Adventure Role Playing Part 1 Part 3: Training Packages Before we purchase straight skill ranks with our Development Points, there’s a feature in the game called Training Packages. These are a themed set of skill ranks that you can purchase at a discount. For example, the Astothian Archer package gives you 2 ranks each in Crafting (Bowyer), Crafting (Fletcher), Mundane Lore: Astothian History, Stalking & Hiding and 4 ranks in Weapon Group: Bows. You total all of the skill ranks together, get their total Development Point cost, which can vary based on your character’s Profession and the corresponding Favored Category discount, then apply a 25% discount to the cost. Athan only needs 2 DP per rank for the Crafting, Lore and Weapon Group increases, then 4 DP per rank for the Stalking & Hiding, so that’s 28 DP total for all the skills in the package. Applying the 25% discount for getting the package would then reduce the cost to 21 DP total. The game does give out guidelines for how to use and create your own Training Packages: * No more than 1 Training Package to be learned per level * Any ranks in excess of the level cap will be wasted * The Training Package’s cost must be paid out in full in one go * A Package should not have more than 20 skill ranks * A Package should not have less than 2 ranks per skill * A Package should not have more than 5 ranks per skill * The skills in the package should all the related to some central theme The book includes sample packages like a Martial Arts-theme, the Archer theme that I mentioned, one with scouting/survival skills, another for tracking and sneaking, one with sailor-related skills, a Con Man package full of social skills, and one for a “Sage” type character with half spell-related skills and the other half for lore. It’s not really as fleshed out as it could be, because the examples all miss the critical skills that were mentioned in the skill selection hints. I figure a more relevant Package would be something like “Footman Training” where you have 3 ranks each in Endurance, Weapon Group: Swords, Armor and the three Resistance skills. Or even handle it off-the-cuff: if the player buys at least 2 but not more than 5 ranks in one go, and they can link them all together in a theme, just consider it a new package right then and there and award them the discount. Part 4: Talents Talents are feats. Let’s not beat around the bush. They are exceptional/supernatural/bonus abilities that are purchased for a flat amount of DP ranging from 10 to 30. You have things like Ambidexterity which eliminates the off-hand weapon penalty when dual-wielding, Dark Vision to let you see in the dark, Quiet Stride for a +25 bonus to Stalking checks, Bane to let you deal additional damage to specific creature types, and the aforementioned initiative bonus from Lightning Reflexes. More interesting talents are Dense Musculature that adds +5 to attack rolls and defense at the cost of increased weight and a Swimming penalty, Giantism for 50% more height and weight and a +5 increase to Strength bonus (not even the Strength value) or Reduced Sleep Requirement to make 4 hours sleep the equivalent of 8 hours. “Multi-classing” also rears its head in the Talents section: for 20 DP, the character can purchase the Additional Profession talent, which makes them lose their current Favored Categories and instead gain the Favored Categories of a different Profession. As well, they gain just one of the new Professional Abilities/Talents of the new Profession - a Mage that decides to become a Fighter can select either Lightning Reflexes or Shield Training, but not both. This seems to be something similar to old D&D’s “dual-classing” where from this moment on you start gaining benefits as if you were that new class, except here in HARP you don’t need to “re-earn” your old class. Perhaps one bright spot in this whole deal is that as far as I can tell, while some of these are situationally very useful, none of them are really numerically weighty enough to be critical for combat. Fate Points are a feature of the game also mentioned in this section. Every character starts with 3 Fate Points. They can purchase more Fate Points at 5 DP per point, or the GM can award them more as a reward for “good roleplaying/good gameplay”. A Fate Point can be spent to add +50 to any one roll, which is of course a 50% better chance of success, or even 2 points can be spent for a +100 and a guarantee of at least basic success. They can also be spent to add 50/100 to a character’s defense, or to reduce an incoming attack’s damage roll by 25/50 (more on combat specifics when we get there). One note about the use of Fate Points though is that they should only be used “in situations where success or failure will have an immediate and important impact on the character”, presumably to prevent it from being used in mundane tasks like crafting. Part 5: Items and Equipment Every character starts out with 1d10+10 gold pieces, and it’s a decimal conversion system, so 1 gp = 10 silver pieces, 10 sp = 10 copper pieces, and 1 platinum piece = 10 gp. There are extensive tables of everything. And I mean everything. Significantly, the item tables also denote how long it takes to craft/manufacture something, such as a Bastard Sword taking 4 days to create, while Plate Armor takes 4 months, just so you don’t fall into that old trap of a baseline rate to create something based on its cost that then doesn’t make sense once you expand it out to everything else. The item tables also cover the possibility of piecemeal armor sets, such as only a plate helm while your bracers are chain mail and your boots are of rigid leather, but how this interacts with combat we’ll get into later. With an average of 15 gp/150 sp as starting gold, we could probably buy a set of Studded Leather Armor for 25 sp, a Full Shield for 7 sp, a Long Sword for 18 sp, a Short Bow for 6 sp and some arrows, and then a pack of 20 arrows for 4 cp and still have 92 sp left for various adventuring accoutrements. And finally there are the encumbrance tables: 0 to 30 lbs is unencumbered, 31 to lbs is Light, 61 to 90 lbs is Medium, and 91 to 120 lbs is Heavy. Light encumbrance limits you to a “Fast Sprint” and gives you a -10 penalty to all checks related to Agility and Quickness, and higher encumbrances limit the pace further and increases the penalty by another -10. Your strength modifier directly affects the encumbrance brackets, so Athan with his +6 Strength would be Lightly encumbered at 37 to 66 lbs. For perspective, the armor, shield, long sword, short bow and arrows all add up to a total weight of 60 lbs. Next: Basic non-combat / adventuring tasks
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