Topic: HARP Stat increases

[Athelstaine]

Other than the 20 DP limit per level, is there a cap of how high a stat can be raised, (ala Temporary/Potential of Rolemaster)? From going through my book, i do not see anything. So theoretically, over time all stats can be raised to 105? The reason i ask is this, i am thinking of putting in a cap of how high a stat can be raised after an initial stat is determined. I am thinking around 20 to a max of 100, but allow two of a profession's key stats to be able to go to 101.

[Falconer]

I think your RM background makes 105 seem scandalously high, but there’s nothing wrong with it within HARP. Usually 100 is the highest you can attain at Level 1, and it’s a slow climb up from there.

Some math I’ve done (I’m not sure I can recreate this, so take it with a grain of salt) suggests a HARP 103 is equivalent to a RM 101.

[foilfodder]

...I am thinking of putting in a cap of how high a stat can be raised after an initial stat is determined. I am thinking around 20 to a max of 100, but allow two of a profession's key stats to be able to go to 101.

If your players are new to HARP they probably won't care much about such rules. Veteran players use to planning character development will want to know if your special rules for Stat Increase allow characters to train only Stats related to their current profession, or if they can also use DPs on Stat Increase for previous Profession;

example: Can a Harper who was previously a Fighter increase Strength or do they have to switch profession back to Fighter first (thus using even more DPs).

[Zhaleskra]

At best, I might prevent stat increases with DP at 1st level, and even that would be a soft limit. My reasoning? Why didn't you already do that with your "stats only" DP? At 2nd and beyond, raise to your heart's content within the limits, and buying anything else you have to buy first first.

[craig]

IMO you're over-thinking it.

While higher stats are (obviously) better, they really aren't that important, they're not that much better, they don't give huge bonuses anyway.

The best you'll get without spending a ridiculous amount of DP is around a +10 bonus....that's roughly equivalent to about +2 in D&D or other d20 game.  And while that bonus is applied to all skills that use that particular stat, it's still only a fairly small bonus to any given roll.  Racial stat bonuses add a little more but, again, it's not much. Nice to have, but not worth caring too much about.

As always in HARP, the limiter is DP, and characters never have enough of them.  There's always an opportunity cost - every DP you spend on one thing is a DP you can't spend on something else.

Ignoring race bonuses, to increase a stat from, say, 90 (+8 bonus) to 96 (+10 bonus) costs 13 DP. To increase again to 101 (+11) costs another 22 DP....and another 40 DP to increase the stat to 105 (+15).   All up, that's 75 DP just to get one stat from 90 to 105, for a total bonus increase of +7.   Spending DP on stats is limited to 20 DP/level, so that will take at least 4 levels.  You could start off with a slightly higher stat at character creation, but only by spending so many points on one stat that you have to cripple another....and it wouldn't affect the overall cost by much.

That 75 DP is worth 37.5 ranks of favoured skills (or half as much in un-favoured skills).

Unless you're crazy enough to use the old "DP per level is based on your stats" rule rather than a fixed 50 DP per level, this is a complete waste of DP, there are so many other, better things (skills, spells, hit points, power points, RRs, talents) those points can be spent on.   And even if that rule is in use (really not a good idea), it takes at least 5 or 10 levels before maxing a character's stats even begins to pay off.  In the meantime, the character will have hardly any skills and all of them with very low ranks - effectively useless: feeble attacks, can barely parry, misses most maneuver rolls - nobody wants Sir FailsALot in their party.

Skills and skill bonuses are far more important than stat bonuses. Characters should be spending DP on skills, not stats.  At least until all of their preferred/important skills have at least 10 or 20 ranks - at that point, the diminishing returns on skill rank bonuses might make it worthwhile to start slowly spending DP to increase stats. And even then, they're probably still better off buying a talent or broadening their skill base - e.g. buying a few ranks of a new skill (say, a new spell or another weapon type, or disarm, or dual wielding, or even trading or a crafting skill) will be of more benefit than adding +1 to a stat bonus.


If your players are spending all their DPs on stats, they're crippling their characters.  Instead of adding a cap, advise them to work out the maths on spending lots of DP stats. It's not worth it.


BTW, I mostly just aim for stat bonuses (including stat + race) to be multiples of 5 (0, +5, +10) just to get round numbers to simplify calculations in rolls...although rounding off like that becomes kind of pointless when the character gets to 10 or more ranks in any skill so the skill bonuses become un-rounded numbers anyway.