Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372926Harnmaster is similar to BRP.

Actually it is not as far as damage goes.

In Harnmaster you don't have hit points. Instead you suffer injury which subtract off your attributes or multiplied by 5 to subtract off your skills. (Harnmaster uses a percentage system).

The bad effects happened when you blow one of the various injury rolls. It could be passing out or up to death. These rolls are usually rolled against a characteristic. For example a wound may call for a S4 roll which mean roll 4d6 against your Agility modified by your current injury. If you roll higher you stumble onto the ground.

It is rare but possible for both combatants to make all their injury rolls and literally be stumbling around  the field flailing at each other with weak blows. Which is something that other system don't replicate very well.

The system works well in practice. The key element is a well designed chart that Columbia Games designed.

You can read up on it here

http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/zoom.cfg?product_id=4001

and the combat chart is here.

http://www.columbiagames.com/resources/4001/harnmaster-combattables.pdf

The basic procedure is

Attacker decides what aspect of his weapon he is using (point, edge, blunt)

Defender picks a defense of Block, Counterstrike, Dodge, or Ignore.

Both roll and compare relative success. (Critical Success, Success, Failure, Critical Failure). The critical are easy to know any % roll ending in a 0 or 5 is a critical.

From the chart you find out how many dice of impact you do.  You roll that number plus adding a factor for the weapon you are using.

You roll hit locations You can aim high or low in addition to a general location.

You subtract the armor of the location that is hit off of the impact.  If greater than zero then you use the injury to chart to find out what type of wound was suffered this tell you how many injury points and what saves that need to be made.

It is a rules heavy system but I found it to be one of the fastest and best of the "realistic" systems out there including GURPS.

Here at Bill Gant's Warflail site

http://www.warflail.com/harn/index.html

is a d20 vs harnmaster comparison of combat.

http://www.warflail.com/downloads/HMCvsD20.zip

Quote from: estar;373151Actually it is not as far as damage goes.

True. To summarize your points, Harnmaster has a much more detailed damage system, and it does a better job of distinguishing both penetration and effects of point/edge/bludgeon type weapons. Relative to BRP it changes cumulative hit points and hit-location hit points to cumulative impairment and saving throws for both general and location-specific effects.

But as far as how armor interacts with being hit and how armor interacts with raw weapon damage, on the way to the injury subsystem, it's very similar to Runequest, the only wrinkle being that weapons cause different amounts of impact depending on whether you use them cut, stab, or bludgeon, and armor absorbs different amounts of impact according to the same criteria. (Note: going from memory with HM 1e. HM 2e/3e is different somehow, but I can't remember how, just that I like 1e's approach better.)

In terms of its treatment of armor, HM is closer to RQ than it is to a game that has any of the features:

• Armor which makes it harder to hit you, but has no effect on how much damage you take from a hit. (Except for frequency of criticals, which are often tied to chance-to-hit.)
• Games where armor absorbs a variable amount of damage.
• Games where weapons that hit have to do a check to "bypass" armor, and will do full damage if and only if that check is successful; otherwise, they do no damage.
• Games that use ablative armor.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373159But as far as how armor interacts with being hit and how armor interacts with raw weapon damage, on the way to the injury subsystem, it's very similar to Runequest, the only wrinkle being that weapons cause different amounts of impact depending on whether you use them cut, stab, or bludgeon, and armor absorbs different amounts of impact according to the same criteria.

Well the Armor is rated for the different weapons aspects as well. For example chain+quilt has Blunt 7, Edge 11, Point 7, Fire/Frost 5.

GURPS likewise makes a similar distinction however not as eloquently as Harnmaster. In GURPS the varying effectiveness of armor are written as exception to the DR rules.  I long had a house rule that have players write out the armor Harnmaster style to make play go faster at the table.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373159(Note: going from memory with HM 1e. HM 2e/3e is different somehow, but I can't remember how, just that I like 1e's approach better.)

2e/3e reduced the number of aspects. 1e had Blunt, Edge, Point, Fire/Frost, Squeeze, and Bite/Claw. 2e/3e just had the the first three.  Plus 2e/3e treats injury much more harsher with the penalty coming all at once.

Hmm interesting.
Have only played HM once, though I think I could see two possible problems with the damage/armour system.
1) multiple armour layers. I liked that this was possible (unlike most other systems) but I believe protection ratings were cumulative -it looked like it really needed some sort of diminishing returns system.
2) It doesn't seem to actually modify weapon damage from Strength, for the most part. I saw a minor rule where you could get +25% damage by having a high STR and buying a extra-heavy weapon, but I didn't think it was really tight enough modelling.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;373184Hmm interesting.
Have only played HM once, though I think I could see two possible problems with the damage/armour system.
1) multiple armour layers. I liked that this was possible (unlike most other systems) but I believe protection ratings were cumulative -it looked like it really needed some sort of diminishing returns system.
 

There are some who advocate the square root of a sum of squares system. I find the encumbrance penalty to work as an effective check. It works similarly to injury levels that high encumbrance reduce some of your skills and attribute saves.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;3731842) It doesn't seem to actually modify weapon damage from Strength, for the most part. I saw a minor rule where you could get +25% damage by having a high STR and buying a extra-heavy weapon, but I didn't think it was really tight enough modelling.

Strength also factors into the skill levels for weapons where strength is a primary attribute. For example strength plays a bigger part in calculating the skill for a two handed axe than it does for a dagger. So strength influences the system in more than one way.

That's a good point, especially considering that higher levels of success generate more impact points.

Hmm true. OK, I'll concede that seems valid.

...Hang on, scratch that. Reconsidering.
From what I remember the critical chance is a fixed proportion of the to-hit chance in HM (any roll ending in 5 is a critical). So out of any hit, 20% of them are criticals and get the extra damage die? (barring rounding)
If that's the case, then assuming you hit, your average damage will be exactly the same regardless of whether you're Conan or his grandma.

Anyway, sorry, I should probably stop sidetracking the thread.

True, but to get a skill equivalent to her grandson, and an equivalent chance of hitting let alone getting a "really good" hit, she's going to need more experience and/or training. Her SB will be lower, so she'll start with a lower skill, and raising it will also be harder. When she gets there, we can interpret her equivalent skill as meaning that she's compensated for her lack of strength by being better at aiming, feinting, etc. But Conan is still going to have an easier time increasing skill still further.

(I forget if HM maxes skills out at 100%. At that point you can't really rationalize any more--it'd basically mean that Conan has to arbitrarily stop learning even though he hasn't realized as much of his potential as granny has.)

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;373205(I forget if HM maxes skills out at 100%. At that point you can't really rationalize any more--it'd basically mean that Conan has to arbitrarily stop learning even though he hasn't realized as much of his potential as granny has.)

It looks like the max skill is 100% + Skill Base. You could adopt the rule that a 100 always results in a 1% increase. It will mean that situational modifiers will have increasingly less impact on you.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;373204...Hang on, scratch that. Reconsidering.
From what I remember the critical chance is a fixed proportion of the to-hit chance in HM (any roll ending in 5 is a critical). So out of any hit, 20% of them are criticals and get the extra damage die? (barring rounding)
If that's the case, then assuming you hit, your average damage will be exactly the same regardless of whether you're Conan or his grandma.

Harnmaster does take that into account by reducing the impact of a weapon for low strength. But is Grandma hits the right spot then her opponent is just as dead as if he was hit by Conan.  But on the average Conan is going to have an easier time learning weapons, and do more damage over time than Grandma.

Harnmaster has a lot of synergies that are not obvious.

Harnmaster is what I consider the most playable realistic system out there.

I consider GURPS + Advanced Combat + Martial Combat to most complete and realistic combat system that is playable. The main trick is to make sure you have a cheat sheet of all the manueveurs your character (and for the referee the opponents) like to do.  It isn't that any one part of it complex but there is so much that without a cheat sheet there is a lot of page flipping.

GURPS does have a unitary hit point. But... different types of damage does different things depending on it's type and where it hits. For example any impaling damage that gets past armor is double, tripled if it is in the vitals, and it almost certain death if done in the eye. Of course the vitals are -3 to hit using 3d6, and eyes can be -9 to -10 (if wearing a great helm).

Hits to the arms can do only a max of your Health /2 damage. So if you have a 12 health the most you can take is 6 points from a arm hit. Of course this leaves the arm cripple or even severed if the damage is high enough. Taking half of your health in a single blow is enough to trigger a number of rolls against your health that may result in you going unconscious.

QuoteHarnmaster does take that into account by reducing the impact of a weapon for low strength

Cool.

QuoteHarnmaster has a lot of synergies that are not obvious.

Go on...

QuoteHarnmaster is what I consider the most playable realistic system out there.

Fair assessment I think - not that I've seen everything. Quibbling aside, I don't think HM is a bad system. I can't think of anything more realistic that's remotely playable.

Trying to locate the original point, I guess HM could be classed as an 'armour that absorbs injury' system ?--even though injuries aren't numerically described.
(Also, anyone remember how Rolemaster did armour? I seem to recall it was a similar situation to HM, insofar as alot of 'damage' was in the form of defined critical effects rather than 'hit points')

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;373241Go on...

Attributes effect things in basically three ways.

First they factor into your skill base which is important for character generation and advancement. I believe a dagger skill base is the average of  STR DEX DEX, while a broadsword is STR STR DEX.

Second there are various special rules that use Attribute directly. This is pretty standard fare here. But in combination of #1 and #3 make for an interesting system.

Third, when you take injury and healing, different attributes come into play particularly for injury saves.  High Agility means that stumble saves are easier to make and so on.

Not to say that Harnmaster isn't without falult. Most Harnmaster GMs run hybrids between Harn Master 1, Harnmaster Gold, and Harnmaster3. HM3 and HMG are alternative versions caused by the split between N. Robin Crossby and Columbia Games. HMG is more complex and detailed than HM3 but HM3 fixes some issue with the system. In HMG and HM1 is not uncommon to get into a situation where two opponents have beaten each other down to the point where they are unable to hit each other. HM3 fixes by changing by tweaking when injury penalties are applied but is perhaps too harsh.

You can read about a HM3 game that I ran here

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2008/11/911-call-from-attic.html

So, i'm thinking of a damage track that looks like this.

Armour - Equipment (limited by Size of character) - Physical (Bulk of character) - Internal (based on the number of modules the character has)

On a character sheet it'll look something like this -

3-2-4-3

If the character takes, say 6 points of damage from an attack, that results in a Physical wound (6 overcomes both armour (3 points), and equipment (2 points), the sixth point puts it into the physical part of the damage track).

Had a look, interesting. And thanks!...actually I can totally steal the varying attribute-by-weapon thing for use with Dragon Warriors.
And the system for stumble checks/wound checks could work with Dragon Warriors too - its poison system works almost identically to 'kill' checks in Harn - though it'd need some work.

***

With the toys damage track, so the 'damage' is actually a roll to see which sort of damage you take?  It could almost work off an attack roll, D&D style - roll to hit and if you get their full AC they're hurt. Hit their 'touch' AC and it still gets armour or equipment, and a critical means an internal system? (sorry don't know what sort of dice rolls you're using)

You could lump 'armour' and 'equipment together - or 'equipment' and 'hit points' for that matter - since you'll probably need a roll to see which piece of equipment got destroyed anyway, you could include your 'armour' or 'hit points' on the list as an item.