I should finished this post last year when I first built a character for the system. But after I fell off of the series somewhat, and now that most of my memories of the event have faded, I have decided to go back in for a refresher course. I hope this slightly less new system, not as new face is still an entertaining read- and I hope readers are buoyed by the fact that I have a climactic endpoint for this series in sight- just not yet.
Game/Context
High Adventure Roleplaying or HARP is another skill-based d100 system published by Iron Crown Enterprises, because I have a problem and need someone's help weening me off of this newfound drug. It was first published in late 2003, with a revised edition following soon after in 2004 to clean up a number of messy rules. There are two differently flavored rulesets for HARP; Fantasy and Science Fiction, or SF. Naturally, I went with fantasy.
HARP is to ICE's MERP what MERP was to original Rolemaster: the same core system, but considerably more streamlined than the last. HARP more-or-less replaced MERP after ICE lost the license to continue publishing Tolkien material, though I would have liked to see some sort of rework of the latter using the former. Maybe in an alternate timeline somewhere, there's a heartbreaker called MARP.
HARP also took some cues from the d20 system, since D&D 3.5E had just dropped earlier that year and the world was fast-approaching critical spinoff popularity mass. I'm sure there are grognards out there who can articulate the similarities exactly, but this influence was most evident to me in the ability to multiclass, as well as the Talent system, which is like a less limited Feat system from 3E. I also saw it in the way you can acquire a small pool of Fate Points that you can burn to provide bonuses to rolls in emergencies- D&D's Action or Hero Points, essentially.
Other than that, HARP is still very Rolemastery. You create a character from a combination of starting profession, species, childhood experiences, and cultural background. You build them up from there in a loosely guided, very granular manner using the Development Points you're rewarded on level-up. Pretty much everything you do is covered by skills which are in turn grouped under and governed by the eight statistics- Strength, Constitution, Agility, Quickness, Self Discipline, Reasoning, Insight, and Presence.
The HARP core rulebook provides everything you need to play, as well as some implied setting lore, mostly through species and cultures. But for a more explicit campaign setting (and the crunchy rules options that go along with it) we can look to the HARP products detailing Mithra--also called Gryphon World--and its main focus, the continent of Cyradon.
Cyradon
Cyradon is billed as having the key word "fun", according to its own overview and marketing blurbs. While the idea of being marketed as "fun" in detached quotes always manages to get a snicker out of me, I understand what they were getting at. It's meant to be a high fantasy, swashbuckling setting where even low-level characters (whom the first Cyradon book is designed around) can help reshape the world. There's big adventure to be had, and little narrative grimness to muck through despite the world having just survived another major cataclysm.
Humans went extinct on Cyradon long ago, and for centuries it was mostly barren and empty with few, unfriendly nations far apart. But all of that is changing as waves of refugees from other, more on-fire parts of the world arrive en masse through portals to the ruined city of Belynar, which just so happens to be under the care of a small gryphon community.
Mithra is also known as Gryphon World because of the major role that gryphons play in it. They're an ancient and wise people, second only to the dragons that have been around since the birth of the world. In the long background of Mithra, the winged and quadrupedal gryphons cast off enslavement and developed an advanced civilization that pops up time and again. You can actually play a gryphon in-game, helping to guide the newcomers and upstarts in Belynar and beyond.
Gryphons are playable alongside the other species that were either translated wholesale or tweaked and adapted from the base game. These include the brand-new human immigrants to Cyradon, the Sithi (elves), Mablung (dwarves), Rhona (gnomes), Arali (elves again except haughtier), Nagazi (lizardfolk), and the Gryx. You can also play a character of mixed heritage from any combination of the humanoid species above by purchasing Lesser or Greater Blood talents.
The Gryx are nomads who once hailed from the far eastern steppe of the supercontinent Anias. An unknown tragedy drove them from their ancestral home in great, migrating tribes that traveled or settled all across the world. Their attempted genocide at the hands of a xenophobic theocracy led to them being driven away again, and now many Gryx have wound up in Cyradon with all the other global refugees. Their autonym is G'Shul, meaning "the homeless" in their heavily glottal, clicking language of Taloc.
Gryx are basically the setting's stand-in for orcs, though with a far more peaceable temperament than most other turn-of-the-century depictions. They even lack the overtly martial warrior culture that other, more heroic orcs often have, in favor of being private, pastoral, perhaps a little dour, but above all wishing to avoid trouble.
Unfortunately for the Gryx, trouble tends to find them, in part because of their "monstrous" appearance. They are huge and musclebound as a rule, so much so that they have a racial penalty to swimming because of how dense and prone to sinking their bodies are. They are endowed with prominent brows, blotchy skin, tusks, flat noses, and everything else that orcs tend to get depicted with. Many of them also possess forehead ridges of protruding bone, giving them more than a passing resemblance to the Orsimer of later The Elder Scrolls installments, or particularly pointy Klingons.
Every step of the way out of their lost homeland, the G'Shul left totems planted in the ground. Each totem possesses a unique but fierce visage often likened to a monster or demon face by outsiders. They are all erected facing east, toward their ancient homeland. No one knows why they do this and the G'Shul don't speak of such things, but the most popular theory is that they raise them in defiance of whatever evil drove them out- or perhaps as an apotropaic ward to keep it from spreading.
This is 200% my jimmy-jams, so that's what I'm picking.
Streamlined, but not quite Svelte
Instead of MERP's 10-step character creation process that requires you to flip back and forth throughout the book, we get a slightly smoother and more straightforward 6.
- Choose a Profession
- Generate Statistics
- Choose a Race & Culture
- Buy Skills & Talents
- Purchasing Equipment
- Final Touches
There are a lot of professions to choose from in HARP, owing to their relative simplicity. Each profession is essentially a bundle of free skill ranks, a list of relevant skill categories you have to pay less to improve, and one unique ability. For example Fighters get a few free general and athletic skills, a bunch of physical and combat skills, cheaper future purchases in all four of those skill categories, and then finally a bonus to combat skill rolls that scales with level. As with previous skill-focused games, your starting profession does not set a hard limit on how you choose to build and grow your character.
I have been neglecting magic for my entire stay in d100 land thus far, so I think it's finally time to remedy that by picking a spell-caster. That doesn't narrow the list down as much as you might expect, though.
There are 9 professions in the core book, and of them 5 have native spellcasting- Cleric, Harper, Mage, Ranger, and Warrior Mage. Mage gets subdivided into 5 different specialties in the College of Magics supplement; the generalist Magician, Elementalist, Necromancer, Thaumaturge, and Vivamancer. There are also the Adventurer, Mystic, Shadowblade, and Druid presented in The Codex, each of which has a spell sphere. There's a scattering of another half-dozen professions across HARP's other publications, including the Harper's Bazaar series that ran from 2004 to 2008, some of which have been reprinted elsewhere in more official forms. There would be even more to choose from, but I don't have a copy of HARP's dedicated religion book, Beyond the Veil.
Professional Indecision
To help narrow things down, I need to hone my concept a little more. I personally like that a single idea can be mechanically executed in multiple ways, and would rather have that than the opposite problem, though I understand why some might find the redundancy undesirable in a system.
Gryx aren't very prominent magicians or priests in the lore of Mithra- none of the religious or magical orders described in the books are founded by or have a significant Gryx component. Paradoxically, they are noted as being very pious, sometimes superstitious people who venerate many deities- they were even instrumental in revitalizing worship of the so-called Shrine Gods of the Juras Mountains that they just sort of picked up and took with them during their flight from the steppes. The dispersed nature of the gryx tribes probably lends quite a bit of internal diversity and syncretism to their practices, though that's just my reasoning.
What does seem consistent about Gryxian religion across the board is that it is deeply animistic, and many of their gods such as the aforementioned mountain gods might actually be yazatas- powerful nature spirits that gryphon scholars hold to be different from deities. They might technically be correct, but that isn't a great concern for the Gryx who already venerate nature.
The Shaman from HARPer's Bazaar Issue 06 ends up looking like my best choice, as they directly interact with spirits and totems on a regular basis. Shocking for me to pick a shaman, I know. Just go ahead and ignore the time in this same series where I already made an orc shaman. It's totally different this time, I promise.
Now that I've settled on a profession, I need to choose the Mana source for my magic. I also need to choose a couple of Spell Focus Styles- the techniques or gestures you use during casting.
Mana, everybody's favorite misunderstood Polynesian concept, returns in HARP as the power source for all magic. It is latent in pretty much all things in the world, and comes in the flavors of Personal, Ambient, Granted, or Fixed Mana. Personal mana is what you've got in your own body, Ambient mana is plucked right out of the land and air around you, Granted mana is gifted to you by a higher power source like a god, and Fixed mana is sucked out of magically potent spell components like prepared herbs, gems, or animal parts. There's another type called Pure Mana, but that's only accessible around leylines when you're mucking about with big, dangerous High Magic stuff.
Each type of mana tapping has different advantages and disadvantages, and requires a talent to use. Fortunately every new character receives one tap talent for free.
Because I'm picking Shaman, the responsibility of building an entire Gryxian religious order with membership benefits, structure, and dogma is taken out of my hands- as is access to Granted mana, which is the cleric's whole schtick. Personal mana is the most common type of tap in the world, basically amounting to a personal magic bar that you can deplete. It has a secular connotation though, which I don't think fits my Gryx.
I'm left choosing between Ambient and Fixed mana, both of which feel equally valid for an animistic expression of magic. At first I was tempted to go with Fixed mana because my shaman would always try to have plenty of ingredients for traditional alchemy or charmcraft on hand- but then I got to thinking about it and decided that might be too much dependency on finite resources, and so opted to pick Ambient. There are mana-poor areas that make casting harder, but that's a tradeoff I'm more comfortable with than being caught with no means at all, especially at low and money-starved levels.
Now to decide on my two free Spell Focus Styles. Each Spell Focus dictates the way you weave magic sigils. When you use your technique properly, you get a small roll bonus; if you can't use it, you risk massive penalties and even fumbles. Not all magic needs to be cast using Somatic components in HARP, although that absolutely is one option.
Besides Somatic, there are Gestural (only need one hand but you don't get the potential bonus Somatic offers), Song/Music (a la bards and the like), Trance (monkly micro-meditations), Verbal (exactly what it sounds like), and various focus items like wands or a warrior mage's weapon. I will pick Gestural because it is the easiest requirement to meet on the fly, as well as Trance because while it may have been written with martial artists in mind, trances and other altered states of consciousness are often important in shamanic traditions.
And there we have it! Step 1 done in a paltry... 800 words. I promise it'll go quicker than this.
Generating Statistics
There are three ways to generate your 8 main stats: make percentile rolls until every result is at least 40 and assign as you like, use a 550 point-buy system where stat costs start to ramp up at 91, or use a 500 point-buy plus 10d10. After some consideration I decided to go with method 1 and roll everything. I thought it might inject some fun and interesting decisions into what would otherwise be a very safe, evenly spread array.
That's what I thought.
But then I started thinking that my interpretation of the rules-as-written might be a little off. In retrospect, I should have listened to that instinct. "Make 8 percentile rolls until all results are at least 40 or higher" reads to me like I'm supposed to throw the entire set out if a single result is 39 or below. This means each set of 8 has a 0.01917073 probability of being legal. I should have just quit and rolled individually until I had 8 qualifying rolls, but as evidenced by this series and the continued existence of this entire blog, I am committed to my bad ideas.
A few hours later, I finally came up with this:
Perfectly serviceable. Very slightly better on average than if I had taken the 550, and without any negative modifiers besides. Almost boring, in fact.
Unlike the casting professions from the core rulebook, the HARPer's Bazaar zines never actually stated what stats the Shaman uses to cast its spells- my guess is that was a bit of writer/editor oversight. But following convention of classes using a combination of Self Discipline and one other pertinent stat, I've gone ahead and picked Insight for the shaman- in many ways it is like Wisdom in a d20 system.
With that in mind, I will arrange my stats as follows: 50 Strength / 54 Constitution / 62 Agility / 67 Quickness / 95 Self Discipline / 69 Reasoning / 97 Insight / 68 Presence.
Converted into actual modifiers and then added to Gryxian adjustments, that array takes the shape of: +4 St / +4 Co / +3 Ag / +4 Qu / +11 SD / +4 Re / +10 In / +4 Pr.
Presence isn't really listed as an important stat for the Shaman, but I expect I'd want to be at least a little bit diplomatic with spirits or members of my Gryx's tribe whenever possible. Shamans have as much social responsibility as they do spiritual, and often the two are inextricably linked.
A gripe I had with MERP was that after rolling your stats and adjusting for your species modifiers, you pretty much never use the raw numbers ever again except in extremely rare circumstances, making them kind of pointless. I'm pleased to say that issue isn't in HARP, because you can continue to increase your stats (and thus your stat modifiers) throughout your character's career. I still think it's kind of an extra step that could be simplified by cutting them out and only bothering with modifiers, but that's the nature of the system I chose to play with.
A point in the system's favor is that they really streamlined this part in the revised edition of the game. Once upon a time, the number of Development Points (DPs) you'd get with every level-up was dependent upon each of your statistic scores, swinging wildly between zero or minimum point rewards and significant progress depending on how big the numbers are. But you can invest DPs into raising your statistics even higher, therefore getting even more DPs the next time you level up.
This system rewarded a "spiral" of continual reinvestment at the expense of every other dimension of character development, resulting in very boring designs, uneven group dynamics, and in the long-term, characters that have grossly swollen beyond intended game balance. On the other end of the spectrum, was even possible for someone to roll so poorly on character generation that they were incapable of earning DPs!
Nowadays, you get a flat number every level.
I'm glad I only spent a couple of hours spreadsheeting optimal stat cutoff points before I learned about the revised edition.
Race & Culture
Gryx and Nomad. Boom. Next question.
Skills & Talents
Here's another crunchy section. Pretty much the entire game is skill-driven, so this is where my character's rough outline gets sharpened into definition. I have several free skill ranks from my profession and culture, plus 100 DPs to spend at 1st level. Skills in my profession's favored categories (General, Mystical, Outdoors, and Physical) cost 2 points a rank, while everything else costs 4 points. Max ranks in a single skill are calculated using the formula (3 x Level) + 3. At level 1 the maximum is 6; at level 30 it rises to 93.
You can also receive a discount on skill ranks by purchasing a Training Package. Training Packages are almost like prestige classes in a way. Each represents a specialized role or membership in an in-universe organization that your character has to be a member of, or join over the course of a campaign. Each package is a bundle of skills that represent the experience your character has gained from serving that organization or guild.
For example, if you want to be an Arcurias Bowman, you have to be a Sithi elf or descended from one. The package gives you ranks in Armor, Stalk & Hide, Sniping, Bows and one other Weapon Skill for a ~25% discount depending on how the favored categories line up- just the sort of thing a defender of the Sithi homelands needs.
The Gryx of Mithra have a few nice, flavorful packages that I want to shout out, even though I won't be using them yet. The G'Shul Rover is a hunter and scout who keeps the G'Shul tribes and their herds safe and fed during the migrations, while the Osh'Tahl Herbalist is a traditional healer skilled in herblore. My Gryx might pick up Osh'Tahl Herbalist someday to represent his increased attention to alchemy, but for now he's starting with the Traditionalist Mage package.
The Traditionalist Mage is a healer, soothsayer, and/or wise one for isolated settlements and nomadic tribes- perfect for a Gryxian shaman. The package gives 20 ranks in Cantrips, Divination, Healing, Herbcraft, Fauna or Flora Lore, Perception, Power Point (PP) Development, and Spell Casting, with Cantrips/Healing/Spell Casting optionally replaceable for Alchemy and/or Charmcraft. My shaman is going to want literally all of these eventually, so I'll gladly take the early investment now.
As part of the Nomad culture, he also gets free ranks in Animal Handling, Armor, Endurance, Herbcraft, Local Region Lore, Navigation, Perception, Riding, Stalking & Hiding, Swimming, Tracking, and one Missile and one Melee Weapon.
After a lot of tabulation, my final skills look like this:
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| It helps a lot if you get a spreadsheet for all of this. You can find one and a few other resources on the ICE forums. |
My desire to always have one rank in every skill I could possibly want in order to get that initial bonus before focusing on building important ones up came through pretty strong here. Untrained skills receive a -25 penalty, and that can be pretty crushing at low levels.
I left a few DPs unspent for minor stat boosts- mostly to bump up stats that were already right on the edge of the next modifier increase. It's that same kind of compulsion that you might get from staring at a bunch of odd-numbered ability scores in d20.
I decided not to go for any talents, beyond what was given to me by default. Talents, which as I mentioned earlier act a little like d20 feats, cost anywhere from 5 to 50 DPs depending on power. They can give you a new profession, expand your spellcasting abilities, give you a stacking bonus to a skill or set of skills that is a little more efficient per DP spent than if you bought ranks outright, or radically improve your survivability or utility in other ways.
Purchasing Equipment
The standard fantasy RPG arrangement of 1 gold piece = 10 silver pieces = 100 copper pieces is in place in HARP. Unlike D&D, copper and silver pieces are the most common coins you'll be dealing in day-to-day, so most prices are listed in cp or sp. Even so, new adventurers in Cyradon begin with 10+1d10 gold pieces. I rolled a pretty lucky 9, giving my Gryx almost maximum funds to play around with.
The first thing I wanted to buy was a Gryxian war fork. They adapted these babies from simple pitchforks used to tend to their mounts and herd animals. It's basically a seven foot-tall, bladed bident with a knob on the butt that can be used with either the Staves or the Pole Arms weapon skill. It can also be used to deal a medium amount of slashing, crushing, or puncture damage without penalty. It's so versatile as to be a little busted early on, and I want one. I'll also get a shortbow and quiver of 20 arrows, mostly for hunting.
Next is armor, which I'll be far more austere about. The heavier the armor, the harder and more expensive it is to cast any magic. A full suit of soft leather armor offers some protection without too much of a drain, and feels most appropriate for someone whose culture probably makes extensive use of animal hide clothing.
The single biggest purchase he'll make is a mount to bear him across the steppes and beyond. Since he's already kind of heavy (well over 200 lbs. before equipment) I opted for a medium horse with a carrying capacity of up to 500 lbs. It should be able to carry any extra gear or maybe an ailing companion, while sacrificing no speed and only a little maneuverability- and it's not like my Gryx is about to pick up horse archery.
He'll call his mare Tlakhi. I've decided the "tl" is a palatal click consonant (not that I'm any good at pronouncing those).
After that comes an assortment of doses of Cyradon's native herbs to treat minor injuries and ailments out on the road. Orudin for helping fractures mend faster, sarpal for frostbite, halin to improve rest from a full night's sleep, and seras tea as an impromptu healing potion for emergencies.
Final Touches
I've sort of been doing this last step the entire time by adding little bits of characterization here and there, but there's still more to take care of! The book tells us to consider things like appearance, attitude, and motivation, to make this character more than a lifeless pile of stats.
Also, he probably needs a name. I feel like maybe I should have led with that. Let's go with R'Shoq. The ' represents a glottal stop, and the 'q' is voiced from somewhere down by the tonsils.
R'Shoq only has three rows of head flanges, unlike the usual four or five. As a result he has a fuller head of hair, but he lacks the "washboard" forehead that many of his people find conventionally attractive.
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| This is what peak G'Shul performance looks like. |
R'Shoq wears his dark brown hair in several braids to keep it back while he's chanting or hunched over a pestle. He is of average height, and not as muscular as most Gryx- not that that's saying much. His eyes are brown, in defiance of the common trope of magic users having fancy or unusual eye colors- but they do always look like he's just seen a ghost.
Speaking of ghosts, he talks to them semi-regularly. The Gryx's gods know what's up with the homeland and why they had to flee, but due to some meddling by a malicious third party, they can only communicate with their people in the most obtuse, vague prophesies. R'Shoq is following one of those prophesies right now, trying to weave together some of the disparate threads that have been left to his people on their journey west.
His tribe was one of the most mobile at first, stopping the least often and pushing the edges of their known world. As a result he acquired a smattering of knowledge about other cultures that they passed by- but only a surface-level understanding of them. As a result, he can be a bit awkward in his dealings with outsiders. While trying to be affable with strangers, he might be hundreds of miles off on a turn of phrase he thinks they might relate to.
Wrapping Up
I think this is the first d100 system I'd want to play more than a one-off with. I feel like I have more freedom with it than I did MERP, and more of an illusion of safety and control than Warhammer permits. I don't know how the numbers break down for mid-to-high-level play or whether anything starts to fall apart at that point, but I could see a low-level romp being crunchy and satisfying. The world is detailed, but also light enough on metaplot that neither me nor my nomad would feel totally lost during play.
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