Hello, I GM'ed my first HARP session today. Most of the game went smooth but the combats drag out too long and are too complicated rules-wise. Below are my questions, please tell me what you think and if there's something we did wrong? We are using the 2nd ed.(?) 192 page book.
I hope my players also register on this forum and make their own comments
1. Moving during combat, circling behind etc.: The rules state that you get +15 for flanking from the side. So if you're face to face with an enemy, why not just move a few feet to the side so that you can flank him, thus getting a -10 penalty for moving under 10ft but a +15 bonus for flanking?
We ruled that this is ok as it stimulates moving in combat and circling your opponent (as in boxing). We tried a test combat where you could not move without using the Withdraw From Melee action and this made the combats static and boring as anything. Nobody naturally moved at all
So this is not an option.
And relating to dancing around your opponent: Are there Attacks of Opportunity / Opportunity Attacks in HARP? We didn't find a rule so we figured no. But on the other hand we have Withdraw from Melee... so that had us confused: can we move in melee or not???
2. Actions in a single combat round? We are confused can you Parry and Attack in the same round? Can you Parry and Stand Up from prone? And if you can Parry, when do you state it? HARP lists a boatload of actions but it's very hard figuring out which ones can be used together and what can't be used together with other actions.
3. What are the penalties and bonuses for attacking a prone enemy and being prone and being attacked yourself?
4. THIS in my opinion is the most important question: What house rules you have for speeding up combat? And have you encountered problems where your game is basically just hunting a lucky roll of 96-100 to get something done?
At this point we think there are too many small rules (charge: you have to count feet which give you bonuses and penalties of +/-1 = make this a static +20/-20 if you charge from over 20ft away and +10/-10 if you charge under 20ft.). What rules/actions can we drop out? Even the different iterations of parry are so damn confusing and hard to keep track of (Parry, Full Parry, Multiple Parry). So how to streamline combat? I think the only viable MAIN actions in combat should be: Move / Melee attack / Ranged attack / Spell / A combination skill of Disarm-Trip-Grapple
The PC's are level 4-5 and already at this point we are starting to see the game shifting from rolling good numbers on a d100 to needing to EXCEPTIONAL numbers, aka, having to roll 96 or more to do anything meaningful to your enemy. The DB's of the characters are around 100 without spells and other activation type abilities and their DB's are 200 AND ABOVE with one round of buffing spells, activating monk abilities etc. Thus in combat you just have to wait for a lucky 96-100 so you can roll higher than DB and this becomes boring and scary as well - if it's like this at lvl 4-5, what will it be in the higher levels when you have more spells, more abilities to use, magic items etc.?
For example, our lvl5 monk could take on an Adult Dragon and probably survive many many rounds before running out of Chi Defense (15 rounds to be exact).
All in all, we will play this once more with some tweaks (and help from you guys) and if combats cannot be speeded up/simplified we just have to play an another system
But hopefully we'll get help in how to simplify the mechanics in combat.