Other House Rules

Brawling Skill Crossbow Skill Experience Points

Brawling Skill

Brawling is available to all characters as a favored skill. Whether learned from the roughhousing of childhood or by being on the recieving end of the attentions of the town bully the basics of brawling are available to all characters. The GM may make exceptions for characters who's backgrounds do not provide for any exposure to such, but these exceptions should be vanishingly rare. Most of these exceptions would apply to female characters with a very few male characters - and in those cases there should be some justification whereby no bully had access to or dared to trap the character in some quite spot and give him a sound drubbing. All characters start with one (1) rank in brawling.
Remember that in Whent, much like midieval and renaissance Europe, life is cheap and brutality is common and often casual.
Note: Intelligent beings with natural attacks may choose to use their natural attacks forms when brawling.

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Crossbow Skill

Crossbows are both much easier to learn to use and less accurate at longer ranges than bows. Therefore the following house rules will be used with regard to crossbows:
1. The Crossbow skill is considered a favored skill for all characters. The 'point and shoot' ability of crossbows is fairly easy to learn relative to other skills.
2. All range increment modifiers for crossbows are doubled. [+0 at RI 0, -20 at RI 1, -40 at RI 2, etc.] As was historically the case crossbows are quite literally murder at close range, but an equally skilled bowman will out shoot the crossbowman at long ranges. This does not decrease the maximum range of the crossbow bolt but it does account for the lesser likelihood of an effective hit given the shorter, thicker and heavier shaft of the bolt relative to an arrow and the resulting loss of aerodynamic effectiveness.

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Experience Points

One of the options discussed in the HARP Forums is the idea of basing levels on Development points earned rather than experience points earned. I like this idea quite a bit since, among other things, it allows me as the GM to give out Development Points during an adventure as they are earned so the characters can improve their skills as they gain the development points rather than not gaining any skill until - POOF - they gain the next magical number of experience points. With that said...

1. Characters start first level with 80 DP plus their Bonus DP from Stats. (See #4 below)
2. A character's level increases by one each time the character gains a total of 60 Development Points (DP).
3. After first level no more than a total of 30 DP may be spent per level on Talents and/or Improving Stats, and the standard maximum of 20 DP spend in improving Stats as mentioned in the HARP rulebook still applies. Exceptions may be made but such exceptions require both GM approval and an in-game justification for the exception.
4. Each time a character gains a level they gain a number of bonus DP based upon the character's stats using the following chart. Add the bonus DP from each stat together to determin the total number of Bonus DP from Stats. These bonus DP may be spent as the character wishes subject to the limitations of #3 above. Bonus DP from Stats are not considered part of the 60 DP needed to raise the character's level.

Stat	Bonus DPs
56-65	1
66-75	2
76-85	3
86-95	4
96-101	5
102-103	6
104	7
105	8

5. Non-heroic characters' (average NPCs) levels increase by one each time such characters gains a total of 40 Development Points (DP).

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