Topic: Some tweaks :)

[frenzyofmadness]

Hi everybody,
like a lot of people do, also my party and I have made some little personalization of the HARP rules.
My master made an herbal codex and a rule for the fear and sanity. Me, I wrote a manual for buildings, i realize the "Character's Agenda" with all the necessary information for players with all the skills, talents, combat styles & Maneuvers and all the ready-to-use tables and now i'm writing another manual for economics, transportation and commerce. For the moment i'm stack in the naval systems 
For the character's agenda  i introduce some new rules that i'd like to share with all of you.
First of all: Encumbrance
In the beginning, we didn't feel very comfortable with the standard method, because we found curious the possibility of an Halfling to carry the same weight of a Gryx (both same ST), who is twice taller and proportionally much bigger. So, i made a research and i found this:
In real world, all animals (except for molluscs, crustaceans, insects and arachnida) have approximately the 40% muscles mass in their bodies. Physically, all mammal muscle has a force production capacity of 1 kgms/cm3. Ergo, the assumption was easy:
1) Calculate the 40% of your character's weight. This is the Weight Base;
2) For every bonus point in ST and CO, you must add a 10% of the Weight Base to it, to determine the Maximum Weight Capacity.
3) Divide the  MWC in 4 to calculate the ranges.
I.e.: If you have a Human (Weight: 180, ST=+5, CO=+7) you will have the MWC of (40% of 180=72; 5+7=12*10%=120%*72=86,4) 72+86,4=158,4 lbs and a range of 39,6 lbs.
The rest of the rule is the same, so if you carry from 0 to 39,6 lbs = no penalty; 39,7 to 79,4 = -10, etc...
If you like, i would introduce another modification i made for my party: an alternative "weapon & shield" style.
Obviously, to use this style you need the "Trained Shield" talent.
This style is a kind of Two Weapon Combo, except for the fact that the secondary weapon is the shield. As TWC, you must learn it separately for each weapon/shield combinations. The character must have a minimum number of ranks with the style equal to 1.5 times the number of ranks with his weapon. Th character can attack twice a round. The first attack (with weapon) has made using the bonus for this style as his OB. The second attack is a shield bash, using the half bonus of this style, minus the Untrained Shield Bonus, as his OB. The character who use this style can receive only the Untrained Shield Bonus for his DB. Shield Parry is not affected from this style.
It affects instead the Missile Deflection Talent: it gives a +1 for each 2 points used parry missiles.
I hope you will like these tweaks i made and i hope you will enjoy it. I also invented the Dynamic Skill System but i will tell you that another time
For now: Ad maiora. 

[Glenn_Gould]

I know, it's an old topic, but I really like both of your ideas (came here as I found the original Weapon & Shield style a bit underwhelming as the shield attack being tied to the flat shield bonus alone renders it more or less useless on higher levels).

[Radimon]

Slight nit-picking thing here: Halflings have a -2 racial modifier to their strength modifier, while Gryx have a +4. If they have the same strength score, the Gryx will be able to carry 6 more pounds than the Halfling at each weight class (6 each time, not 6/12/18/24!). As the weight classes are 30/60/90/120 lbs. to start with, and there is no scaling for size, it begs the question how really big creatures can even wear their armor or swing their weapons. I agree that it would be nice if something would be done to address the issue, but I don't know if penalizing a small race like Halflings (who already suffer an overall penalty to strength!) isn't gilding the lily.

Then again, I like the idea of a bunch of humans belittling a Halfling for his size, only to find out that the wee warrior has 105 strength and the portage skills and giantism talents (and thus can lift far more weight than any of them can!). Then, the humans turn tail and run, thinking the little guy is some kind of demigod!

(BTW: I could totally see that as the trailer for a movie called "Little Hercules," about a Halfling born with superhuman... well, super-Halfling, I guess... strength. Bonus points to the director if nobody realizes the Halfling's got giantism because his base height was like 2 feet 2 inches to start with, and thus his final height is only 3 feet 3 inches!)