Official ICE Forums
Systems & Settings => HARP => Topic started by: Colin-ICE on March 04, 2015, 12:17:35 AM
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Below is a list of the various changes between the original version of HARP and the current version:
HARP core rulebook
- The Professions have been rebalanced in terms of their professional abilities
- Flat 50 Development Points is the default for calculating Development Points
- Races have been better balanced in terms of stat bonuses, some racial abilities have been revised, and Humans now get Skill Flexibility (the ability to make a single skill in a NonFavored category Favored)
- Blood Talents have been rebalanced in terms of Development Point cost
- The Mandatory Subskills rule has been incorporated from HARP SF
- Four new Influence skills have been added from HARP SF
- New talents have been added from HARP SF and Development Point costs of existing Talents have been properly balanced
- The use of Spell Adders and Power Point Adders has been clarified
- Clarifications and improvements have been made to the rules for Light & Vision, Fighting Blind, Asphyxiation and Holding Breath, Drowning and Stat Loss
- Life Points have been removed and the Stun rules made consistent with HARP SF
- All of the spells have had their base costs and scaling options made consistent with the revised spell creation system (to be published in the enhanced College of Magics) and descriptions have been clarified in specific cases
- Herb and poison prices have been rationalized
- A new monster creation system has been used to rework the monster collection with some monsters being replaced with new creatures
- Several magic items have had their effects adjusted
- The guidance on customizing clerics and magic users has been revised to better fit with the rules given in the enhanced College of Magics and future envisaged sourcebooks.
- The Language Table and associated rules have been made consistent with HARP SF
- The Non-Adventuring Professions have been removed - these will return in the upcoming HARP Folkways sourcebook in a form suitable for PCs
HARP Martial Law
The changes to HARP Martial Law were more modest:
- Flying and Influence skills made consistent with both HARP Fantasy and HARP SF;
- Intuition talent removed, while Swashbuckler and Toughness talents made consistent with both HARP Fantasy and HARP SF;
- Underwater Combat and Maritime Combat updated to be consistent with HARP SF;
- Costs for superior and magical materials have been adjusted;
- Damage Adjustment by Armor is now an optional rule;
- The sample characters have been updated for consistency with HARP Fantasy;
- New sample characters have been added for the Cleric, Harper, Mage and Thief professions.
HARP College of Magics
- The Necromancer’s Favored categories were rebalanced
- Minor modifications to the Song, Music and Trance casting styles
- Significant revisions to the spell creation system, namely addition of new Aspects and deletion of some duplicate Aspects, costs of Attributes now varies according to the spell type (Elemental, Attack or Utility), simpler and cheaper costing system for spells with multiple effects, PP costs for scaling options also now varies according to the spell type making Utility spells more effective for fewer PP, and some scaling options have been recosted
- The Development Point costs of the new talents were rebalanced with the Potency talent and Inner Strength talents being rewritten
- A rule for variable RR and OB bonus from potions, runes, and circles has been added
- Alchemy, Charmcraft and Ritual Magic were revised to conform to the revised spell creation system
- The monetary costs for making Alchemy and Charmcraft items were rebalanced
- All spells were revised to conform to the revised spell creation system
- The set of Clean, Dry and Repair cantrips have been revised with some deleted and new cantrips added
All three books also have lots of great new interior art.
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By original you mean previous edition? I do have three versions...
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Correct - original is a reference to the previous release.
The very first original is one that was never fully developed and used.
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I gamed with it until previous edition came out.
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What are the different versions? My book is dated 2003, is this the oldest version or the previous one?
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The earliest HARP rulebook had 160 pages; it was replaced by a 192-page version within a handful of months. The current version of HARP is 203 pages and has ICE and GCP logos on the front.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
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Hi,I'll make this post my introduction to this Forum - I've been a lontime gamer (more than 30 years now) and played a lot of MERP back in the day (which was our main game next to Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu and two German rpgs that most people here wouldn't know). I had kind of left MERP behing many years ago, mainly because I felt that the system did a very bad job emulating Tolkien's world (even though the sourcebooks and modules were often great!).
Anyway, recently I felt a wave of nostalgia for my "old" rpg systems, including BRP and MERP - leaving aside the queston how middle-earthly MERP was, it was just fun! So I've been eyeing HARP for a while, since it looks in many ways like a slightly modernized MERP rules-wise (which also gets rid of the spell lists, an element of RM I never really cared for).
My question: I ended up finding a free pdf of HARP lite on the internet a while ago, about 100 pages published in 2004. Is this still a valid document to try out and get a feel for how HARP plays? Or are the changes from that version just too big?
And as an aside: does:
•Flat 50 Development Points is the default for calculating Development Points
mean that in the current Version of HARP, everyone simply gets 50 DP flat per level? Because deriving DP from the characteristics, as it is in HARP Lite, didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me in terms of game balance (if you have higher characteristics, you get more DP, which you can even use to buy more characteristics Points to get even more DP next level!).
I'll probably be buying the current HARP and HARP Folkways (the Supplement that really re-kindled my interest in ICE products) anyway, but still, can't hurt to ask some questions in advance.
Thanks and see you!
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Everyone gets 50 DPs per level (and 100 DPs at 1st level). The DP spiral of using stats to generate DPs to buy higher stats to generate more DPs was one of the problems fixed by the new enhanced HARP.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
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I'm getting back in to HARP here. Going to get the 2nd Edition PDF, and have a bunch of the "dead tree" first edition supplements (Martial Law, Monsters, College of Magics, Loot, The Codex; gotta love farmers markets). Are they all relatively compatible with 2nd edition, especially the ones not mentioned here? (Monsters, Loot, Codex)
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I'm getting back in to HARP here. Going to get the 2nd Edition PDF, and have a bunch of the "dead tree" first edition supplements (Martial Law, Monsters, College of Magics, Loot, The Codex; gotta love farmers markets). Are they all relatively compatible with 2nd edition, especially the ones not mentioned here? (Monsters, Loot, Codex)
Monsters will be significantly out of line but you can use it as long as you don't look too closely about where some of the numbers have come from. Loot is least changed. Codex is rather unbalanced in terms of some professions and spells.
Best wishes,
Nicholas
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The earliest HARP rulebook had 160 pages; it was replaced by a 192-page version within a handful of months. The current version of HARP is 203 pages and has ICE and GCP logos on the front.
Hmmm... I bought by copy several years ago from a local hobby store. Never got around to playing it, but now I picked it up and began to familiarise myself with it. Turns out it is the 160 page version. Is it worth it even to read this one?