Quote from: CRKrueger;958733Once you get to where you can keep track of the Count Up initiative well (took us a few fights), the combat is really fun. Exploding damage, Nat 19s and 20s, rolls for defense as well as attack...all this works together to get people into the fight watching and rooting for every roll.  Never seen anyone tune out of a Hackmaster combat.  You know how soldiers always talk about armies rolling up the flank?  That shit happens in Hackmaster, it's awesome.

Let's face it, as slow as Kenzer puts stuff out, they're never gonna have much Buzz, but the game is damn fun, and I'd rather that was out there than one more version of D&D.  Hackmaster isn't full compatible, but it's damn close, not much harder than converting a Pathfinder product to B/X.

The combat is a whole lot of fun. I'd play again if someone streamlines the character generation.

While Hackmaster 5th edition is beautiful, between that and Mythras I run with Mythras and I've run both. Mythras is a little front heavy however it runs very smoothly and is so modular you can just use the components that you want to.

Yeah, Mythras is definitely my "goto" game for all things fantasy at this point.

If I were going to do some form of D&D, I'd probably use an AD&D 1 variant like Astonishing Swordsman and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, or Hackmaster 4e with the parody cut back.

If I were going to so some other form of OSR-like D&D I'd use ACKS or Hackmaster 5.

Now that Adventures in Middle-Earth line is becoming more fleshed out, I'll take a closer look at it to get a better feel of how much flex 5e really has.

But, my tastes these days move away from Class/Level systems.

Coincidentally, I'm trying to get rid of my Hackmaster 5E stuff.  Trying to pick up the rest of the D&D4E stuff I don't have.

Quote from: Imaginos;959219Coincidentally, I'm trying to get rid of my Hackmaster 5E stuff.  Trying to pick up the rest of the D&D4E stuff I don't have.

That's ok, not everyone likes Roleplaying Games.

Quote from: CRKrueger;959228That's ok, not everyone likes Roleplaying Games.

If you set it up on Roll20, it almost catches the realism of real roleplaying like WoW.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;959228That's ok, not everyone likes Roleplaying Games.

KA-POW!!!  Right in the kisser!

Dude, that made me laugh, thank you:)

Hackmaster 5e has become our go-to RPG over the past year.  It's extremely crunchy, but after learning it's combat system every other combat system feels boring.  It feels like it's taken us hostage, because sometimes we want less crunch but no other game can satisfy our thirst for tactical combat.

I ordered all three core books (plus an extra PHB) this summer and ran a handful of games this fall. The books are gorgeous and while combat is complex it is very dynamic and interesting. The count up does keep people very engaged, we were just starting to get used to the game when I got fed up with trying to heard the rabbits that were my players schedules.
The kenzerco forum is pretty active and if you have specific questions about the rules you are bound to get quick and solid advice. I'd certainly run the game again, but some of my players may not have been up for that level of crunch. Character generation is certainly complicated and time consuming.
I might have actually been better off trying a few sessions with pregen demo characters first. There's a lot of decisions and until you've played it's hard to know if your decisions make any sense.

How are you guys finding the wound system to work in play? Besides the skill system, the one thing that makes me leery of trying HM is the thought of how finicky it would be to track healing times for injuries. I do like that it's more a more realistic take on HP than most games that use such health systems, but I can see some of my players balking at the bookkeeping involved.

Quote from: Brand55;1030364How are you guys finding the wound system to work in play? Besides the skill system, the one thing that makes me leery of trying HM is the thought of how finicky it would be to track healing times for injuries. I do like that it's more a more realistic take on HP than most games that use such health systems, but I can see some of my players balking at the bookkeeping involved.

It certainly feels realistic. But it can get quite complex. Someone made an excel file for this, but personally the last thing I want to do is use something like that at my table.

For those who don't know the system:
Each wound is recorded individually, which is the easy part. If you take a 6 point wound you just write 6 on a handy part of your character sheet.
Healing happens to all wounds simultaneously. Healing spells are usually applied to a single wound, and you can heal faster with a first aid provider and a particular talent.

With none of that stuff:
Each wound heals by 1 after a number of days has passed equal to the damage.
A 3 point wound heals by 1 in 3 days, reducing to a 2 point wound, after another 2 days it reduces to a 1 point wound, and after one more day the final point of damage is healed. So a three point wound takes 3+2+1 = 6 days to heal.
A 5 point wound takes 15 days to heal completely.

All wounds heal simultaneously.

Given healing spells and such this can go much faster and thus gets pretty complex. You can spend quite a bit of time on it.


I've run through it in full twice after a retreat by players from a significant series of injuries. Once with players, and once after a session on my own. I've been tempted to just pick a handful of the worse wounds and see how long those take. It seems like if you have a cleric around anything longer than 2 weeks to recover would be unusual, as you'd focus healing to reduce the worse wounds first.

I, like Brand55, would be interested in what anyone else does.

Quote from: Thondor;1030461It certainly feels realistic. But it can get quite complex. Someone made an excel file for this, but personally the last thing I want to do is use something like that at my table.

For those who don't know the system:
Each wound is recorded individually, which is the easy part. If you take a 6 point wound you just write 6 on a handy part of your character sheet.
Healing happens to all wounds simultaneously. Healing spells are usually applied to a single wound, and you can heal faster with a first aid provider and a particular talent.

With none of that stuff:
Each wound heals by 1 after a number of days has passed equal to the damage.
A 3 point wound heals by 1 in 3 days, reducing to a 2 point wound, after another 2 days it reduces to a 1 point wound, and after one more day the final point of damage is healed. So a three point wound takes 3+2+1 = 6 days to heal.
A 5 point wound takes 15 days to heal completely.

All wounds heal simultaneously.

Given healing spells and such this can go much faster and thus gets pretty complex. You can spend quite a bit of time on it.


I've run through it in full twice after a retreat by players from a significant series of injuries. Once with players, and once after a session on my own. I've been tempted to just pick a handful of the worse wounds and see how long those take. It seems like if you have a cleric around anything longer than 2 weeks to recover would be unusual, as you'd focus healing to reduce the worse wounds first.

I, like Brand55, would be interested in what anyone else does.

Natural healing only really comes up for us between adventures, so we just calculate how long each player's worst wound will take to heal and say that's how long their downtime is.  Or, if we don't even want to calculate that, we just say "you all rest for 2 weeks and are fully healed".

Huh, that's pretty much how Sword Bearer did damage.

It's taken from Aces & Eights. Which is a great method for natural healing in a gritty/"realistic" Wild West campaign with no supernatural in it. It's a really shitty healing system to have in a game meant to emulate D&D.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1037850It's taken from Aces & Eights. Which is a great method for natural healing in a gritty/"realistic" Wild West campaign with no supernatural in it. It's a really shitty healing system to have in a game meant to emulate D&D.

While in some literal sense, you are correct about it's origins, Aces and Eights was the trial run for the house system they always intended to use for Hackmaster once the AD&D licence was lost.

Having said that, it is pretty pointless once you get past very low levels, as magical healing is readily available and quickly supersedes the complex, slow natural healing system.

Talking about Kenzerco and Hackmaster generally, the horrible way the GMG and HoB II pre-orders were (and, in the latter case, still is being) handled have completely soured me on the company.