Topic: Human Racial Traits?

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Five free ranks in any skill. That must be Favored.
A +10 bonus to any one skill. (Which may or may not be one of maximum three allowed.)
A five point discount on a 20 DP Talent. That most characters only take once, if at all.

HARP Sci-Fi offers the same deal, except they allow Professional Adaptability to be swapped out for the ability to treat a single non-Favored skill as if it belonged to a Favored Category.

Humans may get the lowest stat modifiers of any PC race in the game, but they make up for it in their ability to assign those modifiers as they see fit. Their racial talents, however... there's nothing to be done with them except to immediately take Blood Talents to replace them.

I've been considering something.

What if we combined Bonus Skill Ranks with Skill Flexibility? Humans gain 5 free ranks in any one skill, and that skill would always be considered Favored for them, regardless of Profession.

Skill Specialization is great as long as it doesn't count against the three Skill Specializations a character is allowed to have in his life. So it doesn't.

And Professional Adaptability. Instead of giving them a 5 DP discount on a 20 DP Talent, give them the 20 DP Talent. At 1st level, they pick out their Culture and their Profession, all of their Professional abilities and all of their adolescent ranks. Then, before they spend their DP, they pick a second Profession and gain one Professional Ability from it-- as if they'd taken it at 2nd level-- and for 1st level only, they can purchase skills as if all of the Favored Categories from both Professions were Favored. Starting at 2nd level, they can advance in either Profession, one Profession at a time, as normal. If they want to pick up a third Profession-- which I have never, ever seen a character do-- they can purchase Additional Profession again at the full 20 DP cost.

[Ecthelion]

IMO the races given in the HARP core rule book are well balanced. I agree that Humans have Talents that might not be too attractive, but OTOH they have a the unique ability to assign their stat bonuses as the players sees fit. I think it only gets problematic when Blood Talents come into play since these allow a player to swap out less attractive Talents of the base race with more attractive ones of another race. And this only for 1 or 2 DPs. You might reduce this effect if not only a character would have to pay the 1 or 2 DPs for the Blood Talent but also the difference in cost between the two swapped Talents. E.g. if for a Human character the Professional Adaptability (which I think is worth only the minimum of 10 DPs for a Talent) should be exchanged for an Elf's Nightvision ability (a Talent which in the Master Talent List costs 20 DPs), then the character would have to invest 1 DP for the Lesser Blood Talent plus 20 - 10 = 10 DPs for the costlier Nightvision Talent.

Just an idea.

[Viktyr Gehrig]

So you think the problem lies with the Blood Talents and not with the Humans' abilities?

I don't know. It seems to me that stats play such a very minor role in the game that the Humans' ability to assign them at will is very minor. Aside from Endurance/PP balance and RRs, the real meat of a race comes from its racial talents.

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Be neat to see someone actually choose a Human talent, though, instead of the other way around.

[masque1223]

Be neat to see someone actually choose a Human talent, though, instead of the other way around.

I have some characters who are Dwarf/Human hybrids, 4 brothers.  The primary race jumps around, so I have actually chosen human talents, for the ones whose dominant race is dwarf.

[Ecthelion]

The Human Talents are IMO all worth "only" 10 DPs while the Talents of other races are often worth 20 or up to 25 DPs. So from a powergamers perspective it mostly makes little sense to select "lesser" Talents from the Humans in exchange for the better Talents of the existing race. As I said before IMO the most interesting aspect of the Human race in HARP is the option to assign stat bonuses - and that is not a Talent.

[Maelstrom]

Be neat to see someone actually choose a Human talent, though, instead of the other way around.

I've taken the 5 free ranks with a gnome/human before.  5 ranks beats a +10 bonus any day!

[Maelstrom]

And Professional Adaptability. Instead of giving them a 5 DP discount on a 20 DP Talent, give them the 20 DP Talent. At 1st level, they pick out their Culture and their Profession, all of their Professional abilities and all of their adolescent ranks. Then, before they spend their DP, they pick a second Profession and gain one Professional Ability from it-- as if they'd taken it at 2nd level-- and for 1st level only, they can purchase skills as if all of the Favored Categories from both Professions were Favored. Starting at 2nd level, they can advance in either Profession, one Profession at a time, as normal. If they want to pick up a third Profession-- which I have never, ever seen a character do-- they can purchase Additional Profession again at the full 20 DP cost.

Well that would be a compelling reason to take a human.

[Karizma]

Huh.  Humans are my favorite race in HARP!

I love the ability to assign stats.  It REALLY makes Humans look more appealing.  In fact, a majority of my players have picked Human because it's so flexible and the advantages are immediate and certain.  Darkvision is nice, but only when it's dark.  Five free ranks and a +10 never goes away.

I have allowed players to use "Skill Flexibility" instead of Profession Adaptability.  And that seems to have done enough for my group to make Humans the favored race.

[bottg]

I tweaked the Profession adaptability so that extra professions only cost 10DP.  When we first started playing HARP, all of the human characters swapped this one out for blood talents.  However, as soon as they gained a few levels, most of them were wishing that they had kept it, because they all wanted extra professions!