Topic: Skills differential HARP SF versus HARP Fantasy

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

There's been talk about how there are more skills in HARP SF than in HARP Fantasy. This is true but the gain in skills is not as large as you might think.

HARP SF adds:
Artistic 4
Athletic 3
Combat 2
Concentration 4
General 3
Influence 1
Scientific 11
Subterfuge 5
Technical 2
Vehicular 4

so 39 extra skills. However 3 of them are Dirty Fighting, Flying/Gliding and Frenzy first introduced in Martial Law, so actually 36 skills

HARP SF loses:
Combat: 1
Concentration: 4
General: 2
Mystical: 5
plus 6 further Mystical Arts skills from CoM.

Net gain: 18 skills.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[Mungo]

Hi,

Well, using this perspective you are certainly right. But for me the question is not so much about the total number of skills but the number of skills required by a player or the party to reach a certain degree of autonomy, i.e. so that they do not rely on NPCs all the time.

I haven't made this analysis in details, but at first glance:

For a fighter HARP or HARP SF does not make much difference.
An adept does most likely face a similiar situation as a mage in HARP.
A thief has more skills in HARP SF, as nothing useful for him disappeared but he now has to cope with the modern world.
A sage/scientist has the 11 scientific skills added, and he might not be valuable in a HARP campaign, in a HARP SF exploration campaign he is.
Healers have also now more skills to develop as before.

And then there are  two areas where there is no real equivalent in HARP:
Engineer and Pilot.
The pilot has only 5 or 6 skills, so he can take on also another role, i.e. this is not much added complexity.
But the engineer has 13 engineering skills (which count only as 1 in your list) to develop, of which only 2 (Civil and Chemical) are not so important in my eyes.

So the bottomline for me still is: the party has in HARP SF much more skills to consider as in HARP, simply because the importance of the dropped is much lower than the importance of the added skills.

BR
Juergen

[Cormac Doyle]

But the engineer has 13 engineering skills (which count only as 1 in your list) to develop, of which only 2 (Civil and Chemical) are not so important in my eyes.

If you're gonna put that much emphasis on "Engineering", you should expect there to be multiple engineers in the group!

[allenrmaher]

The difference of 13 additional skills is not huge, it is the additional categories that mean an increase in specialization.  This is fairly fitting for the genre.  The way I would compensate is to increase the DP per level slightly.  I would probably used fixed DP per level at 45 plus one per level (better education system... more access to information and training).  That is about 5 DP  higher than I typically use in HARP.  It also divorces the stats from DP (which I like)

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

allen - if any sort of option like that was used, there would have to be a cap on the maximum number of DPs as it gives an ever increasing upward spiral otherwise.

Personally, If I were going to put in a static DP per level, I would go with 50 DP per level for the sci-fi game. No bonuses for level, just a flat number.

[allenrmaher]

In HARP I would cap it at 60 for level 20.  I might cap this at 60 at level 15.

Your idea of 50 works out to about the same as what I would use in HARP.  I use a lower starting figure because it mimics the progression that naturally occurs from the point buy and DP from stats.  (average point buy characters start at 36 and progress to 45-50 by level 10)

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

A sage/scientist has the 11 scientific skills added, and he might not be valuable in a HARP campaign, in a HARP SF exploration campaign he is.
[snip]
But the engineer has 13 engineering skills (which count only as 1 in your list) to develop, of which only 2 (Civil and Chemical) are not so important in my eyes.

I would not expect characters to develop every single science skill or every single engineering option.

Best wishes,
Nicholas

[chk]

Our old 2300AD campaign had this kind of specialization. While everyone could shoot passably well, we had a couple of combat experts, a ship systems engineer, a vehicle systems engineer, a driver, a couple of rogue-like people, and (of course) a ships steward . It worked rather well for us.

In a high-tech world, people *die* in combat. In my experience, SF campaigns are more about the non-combat side of role playing, and as long as the SysOp is paying attention, character specialization still gives everyone something to do in most situations.