Story Time 5: The Goodberry Chronicles · 10:45pm Aug 22nd, 2013
For this one to make sense, I have to explain a few things about a little game called Hackmaster.
Hackmaster is 2nd Ed ADnD on crack cocaine, steroids, and antidepressants for good measure. You want tables? It’s got tables. It’s got more tables than you or your grandmother can handle. It’s got tables for everything. Want to make a character? 3d6 in order for stats, then roll some stuff on a table. You critically missed? The GM is going to peer at a table in his mysterious guide and roll dice for five minutes before he tells you how screwed you are. The answer: the longer he has to roll dice and look at tables, the more screwed you are.
The first serious tabletop game I played in, after a brief stint with 4th Ed, was a Hackmaster game. It was a great deal of fun, until I suffered my first character death (and, only, to date, I think), but that’s another story.
Our GM gathered up a group of players that were novices to Hackmaster, myself, M., and E.. M. and E. both had some tabletop experience under their belts, some with ADnD even. Me, I had two or three sessions of 4th Ed, which is so different from Hackmaster that about the only thing they share is a D20 roll when you want to hit something with your axe.
We rolled up our characters, and here’s what we got:
A cleric
A fighter
A thief
Not bad, right? But wait, there’s more. The GM, being a sneaky bastard, got us to pick weird classes. Here’s what we actually got:
A Zealot of [insert Sun God here] (which is like a cleric, except he can’t use the necromancy school, and healing is part of the necromancy school... sooo...)
A Soldier (which is like a fighter, except worse at killing things. Soldiers get more skills, because that’s totally what a fighter needs, right?)
An Infiltrator (which is like thief, except worse at being a thief.)
Through the mystical power of dice fudging, our Infiltrator’s ability to use a 12 gauge crossbow (it’s a beast) due to nobody reading the strength requirement, and our Zealot’s ability to critically succeed on heal (skill, not spell) checks, we managed to survive the first few levels.
M., the player of said Zealot, given that he could not actually heal, set forth to use his skills to develop modern medicine, not that far fetched considering that he stabilized a flayed open man who was missing a rib cage using an insanely good roll.
Ultimately though, what kept us alive, beyond good heal skill checks, was goodberries.
Goodberries is an oft overlooked spell that allows a Cleric or a Druid to turn regular type berries into lambas bread that also heals 1 hit point a pop; also, not part of the necromancy school. So, in addition to provisioning the party, goodberries were our primary source of healing. However, this was far more complicated than it sounds.
Anal-retentive stuff-tracking is an essential component of Hackmaster. If you want to wear armor to preserve your precious hit points so that you can survive to a notable level where you might have something magic, you’d better pack and track your use of armor oil to keep it maintained. Forget to maintain your armor? That’s cool, it’s a rusted heap now. Same goes for weapons. And you better make sure you have enough to eat. Did you buy a tent? Have some hypothermia. This isn’t some pussy 3.x D20 system where that kind of stuff gets hand waved more often than not.
Goodberries only last a certain number of days, and M. had a limited number of spell slots. He made a table to track the party’s goodberry consumption, with columns for each day. He built up long term reserves, and dispensed the oldest berries to be used for healing. Using nothing but his wits, his basic math skills, and a second level spell, he kept the party alive without real healing spells.
It was goddamn impressive.
He might have actually succeeded at creating modern medicine, but the GM tried to combine his two games, one with an evil party, and one with a good party.
It didn’t end well.
Oh lordy Hackmaster. I love playing AD&D but Hacmaster was not my thing. It is fun to know about tables, making them up, and using them once in a blue moon for fun but Hackmaster takes it to the extreme.
Goodberries are classic I remember having to use those to survive through the mournland since it prevented the use of traditional healing spells. Oddly in 2e healing spells are necromatic by school but not by sphere of influence.
How was the soldier class worse at killing? Did it lack weapon specialization? Granted in 2e D&D the fighter was probably better than the paladin and ranger though worse than the gladiator class so being worse than the fighter isn't that bad.
I personally would have liked more skills as a fighter but what am I giving up? I would not lose specialization it rocks in 2e.
1303135
They lost weapon specialization and something else that Hackmaster gave fighters that I can't remember. Given, the skills they picked up would be hard to train without being a soldier, but, they weren't as useful as they sounded.
Also, there was an experience bonus if you had the prime attribute at 15 or higher for the basic classes, but classes like Soldier didn't get that.
1303997
Ouch that hurts. Grand mastery was something that could make even low str fighters nasty. Giving that up for better skills is bad even to me.
Besides fighters actually did alright in 2e with prof since they start with 3 and gain 1 every three levels and their list was fairly decent. Even better with the right kit...