Hackmaster Basic a Review

 HackMaster Basic

It covers every thing you would expect of an old school D&D style game four core character classes Fighter, Magic user, Thief, Cleric. as well as four character races Elves Dwarves Humans and Halflings. it also includes every thing else you would need to play the game. Rules on character advancement, player gear and equipment a selection of monsters to get you started a brief but through guide to encounter creation & the truly amazing chapter on dice. Every thing exempt for an adventure 

however one of those & a couple of shorter encounters can be downloaded from the Publishers website as can the index for the book. The game uses a combination of d20 & d100 based mechanics systems with d20 being for combat & d100 for skill resolution both systems are well thought through and appear to work as intended as far as I have yet been able to test them out. Combat is however rather bloody & despite starting characters having hit point totals that look like those of starting D&D 4e ones that all damage uses an exploding dice roll mechanic means that characters can go down easily. Armour & shields work by reducing the number of damage points you sustain & can actually make you easier to hit. Surprise is harsh & combat sequencing which uses a derivative of the rolling strike rank with no round structure imposed over the top fighters are your best combatants with Thieves & clerics being significantly less capable though Thieves under the right circumstances can be almost as good. 

 The Rules on Magic have all the features one would expect from this style of game, spell books spell memorization etc, but with a number of nice twists such as being able to cast spells you have not memorised, ability to alter spells by increasing the spell point cost of spells & each in game religion having its own spell list. All adds up to a rather gity moderate to low fantasy style game where the characters are expected to rise from the common heard to become true hero's in the end. Truly epic....

Note that the Hard copy of the rules is currently unobtainable but  they can be downloaded for free from Kenzer and co along with a free adventure and some sample encounters.

Get HackMaster Basic here

More free Support for the new player here