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H​ealth​ ​A​ction​ ​M​itigation​ ​S​kill Player Handbook

Version 1.2.2

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Character Creation
3. Skill Basics
4. Skill Construction & Balance
5. Points Management
6. Hikes, Fights, and Rests
7. States & Death
8. NPC Construction
9. Roleplaying
10. Acknowledgements

Introduction
HAMS is a free, no-dice-required tabletop RPG that's appropriate for all ages and adaptable to
any campaign! The only materials you need to start a game are this manual, a pen or pencil, and
paper.

HAMS is also an acronym- it stands for your four main stats, with which you'll do everything in a
game session. These are ​H​ealth, ​A​ction, ​Mi​ tigation, and ​S​kill. With just these four attributes and
a few simple ideas, you can be up and running with a new character in no time- and with
minimal investment, using the same process, a DM can set up whole bestiaries and populations
of NPCs for you to interact with.

In the next section, we'll take a closer look at what it's like to set up a character for the first
time.
Character Creation
Setting up a brand new character is easy in HAMS, and it all starts with filling out a few fields.

First, choose a ​Name​ for your character. This can be a nickname, a code name, or your
character's legal name- it's simply whatever they'd like to be called.

Next, name your character's ​Class. ​Unlike many tabletop RPGs, HAMS asks you to think up your
own class and, through the Skill system, develop your own mechanics for it. It's simpler than it
sounds, and a lot of fun!

Finally, name an ​Artifact​ for your character. This can be anything at all- a trinket, a piece of
armor, a weapon, a memento- throughout your adventure you'll develop this artifact, and when
it's complete, it will confer a special bonus to your character!

If you'd like to play a character with a pet, or a set of twins, a character possessed by a ghostly
companion, or a married couple- whatever the case, HAMS offers ​Character Splitting ​as a means
of appropriately balancing your individual power while allowing you to live out your dreams of
being a dynamic duo. One character will be the recipient of all the experience the duo gains, but
whenever you gain enough experience to level up, you can decide which character will receive
the level. A level 1 character's companion is considered level 0, and has no Skills or stats until a
level is earned and added to them.

No matter how many characters you control, only one can act when it's your turn during a Fight.
You can choose which at will and have them set each other up for success, but characters that
share experience in this fashion can never rely on each other for a Team Maneuver. For more on
these concepts, refer to the chapter on Fights.

Once you've established the first three simple things for your character, the next step is the
distribution of your HAMS points- at level 1, you'll have 10 to distribute across all four stats in
whatever arrangement you like. Each time you level up, you'll gain another 10 to distribute in
the same way. Every stat is unique and important to the success of your character, so manage
them wisely.

Health​ represents how much damage your character can take before they can no longer fight or
function. If your health reaches 0 or less, your character is considered ​downed​. A downed
character can still take hits, up to a value equal to their level, before dying completely. While
downed you can take no actions except to spend points out of your other stats to bring your
Health back above zero. While downed, other characters can also lend you points to revive you-
but any damage beyond your downed limit is considered lethal, and your character will not
recover. For more information, refer to the chapter on Death.
Action ​is a measure of your capacity to do things in the world. There are four ways to think of
taking an action in HAMS:

∙ Attack: ​This is a basic attack move meant to do damage. More Action points spent will
cause more damage.
∙ Operate: ​Picking a lock, operating a vehicle, and other technical activities will require an
investment of Action to successfully complete.
∙ Balance: ​When enemies inflict States upon you, there may be an Action cost to recover
from the effects of that State before you can return to combat.
∙ Run: ​When leaving a Fight before it's finished, you will have to spend Action equal to or
greater than the enemy's level in order to leave it safely.

Mitigation ​represents your ability to avoid, absorb, deflect, or deny damage to yourself. As your
only stat usable at-will on the enemy's turn, it serves first and foremost as a barrier against
attacks. When mitigating the damage of an incoming attack, you may spend as much Mitigation
as you like to either reduce or eliminate the damage.

Skill​ is the stat governing the most important feature of HAMS. Skill points decide the
magnitude of the effects of your Skills- special maneuvers that you design yourself to
demonstrate the flavor, themes, and unique abilities of the class you've named for your
character. Just like your class and artifact, you get to name the skills you create and decide how
they function. HAMS offers the Quality Grid as a system to refine your ideas into functional skills
as well as allow anything you imagine to engage directly with the game mechanics in a fair,
appropriate fashion.

Skill Basics

This is the ​Quality Grid​, and these qualities- adjectives with a theme, divided into six categories-
can be combined in groups of three in order to define the mechanics of your skills.
There are 157,464 possible combinations on this Quality Grid- that includes combinations that
involve the same skill twice, as well as three times. Pull-Pull-Pull is a valid skill- perhaps your
character is very adept at hauling, it's up to you to describe that!

Starting at level 1, and again at 3, 7, and 10, your character will be eligible to construct a new
skill. The next chapter will cover the specifics of some common skill effects to help you along
and demonstrate basic balance, but here are two examples of simple skills, using the exact same
qualities, that could belong to two very different level 1 players with different levels of
familiarity with HAMS:

Bolt of Nothing [Project + Basic + Push] ​- Toss an unaspected bolt of magic. Deal S damage to
the target and inflict Shook. Cost: XS + 1S

The Fundamentals [Project + Basic + Push] ​- Pass an unaspected basketball at the target. Target
is Winded and takes S damage the next time they are attacked. Cost XS + 1S.

Even skills that rely on the exact same qualities can have very different results in the hands of
different players, and having access to different qualities under different circumstances is very
useful, because the same grid that serves as the backbone of your skills also supplies every
enemy you encounter with a ​Weakness.

Using a skill with a quality an enemy is weak to results in extra damage- one extra damage for
every instance of that quality in the skill. Skills with repeated qualities- ​Picket Line [Strike +
Strike + Strike] ​for example, would deal its initial magnitude in damage, plus one extra damage
for every time their quality is the enemy's weakness- in this case, Picket Line deals +3 against an
enemy weak to Strike, simple as that.

For more information on how Weakness is calculated, refer to the chapter on NPC creation.

Skill Construction & Balance


Everything in HAMS comes with a direct, calculable cost that typically doesn't rely on anything
more complicated than addition or multiplication. However, as you design more skills, you may
find that it's more rewarding to bring something interesting to a fight than something powerful-
and when that situation arises, you'll need to know how to balance costs in order to keep your
skills fair and functional. Here is a list of common desired effects for skills and how to calculate
them:

∙ Area of Effect: ​Add an additional cost equal to the number of targets the skill will hit. A
cone attack you want to hit three enemies, for example, would require 3 additional Skill
on top of the skill you spend to use it.
∙ Statistical Bypass: ​Add an additional cost equal to half (rounded up) of the cost of the
skill. If a skill is meant to specifically damage Health by passing through Mitigation, then
incurring an additional Action cost in this fashion keeps you from simply skipping a basic
HAMS mechanic for free.
∙ Imposing a State: ​Add an additional cost of 1 for each State imposed. If the effect is
meant to be ongoing, you have two options- repeated upkeep of the skill on every turn,
in lieu of using another skill, OR, increase the cost of each state, equal to the number of
turns you'd like the effect to last. Imposing Mommicked for 10 turns, for example,
would be a skill that costs 10 baseline, in addition to any other effects the Skill has.
∙ Damage over Time: ​The magnitude you choose for damage over time skills is divided by
the duration to determine how much damage it does per turn. For example, casting
"Burn Target" at Skill 12, for a duration of 3 turns, would burn the target for 4 damage
per turn.
∙ Healing: ​Restoring stats to a teammate outside of the context of a Team Maneuver is
fairly straightforward- but if you'd like to convert an expenditure of your Skill into
something with more dramatic results, you'll need a secondary cost. The other side of
the Menace mechanic's coin, you can spend Action as a multiplier for healing skills, 1x
per Action spent, up to a cap of your level.
∙ Healing over Time: ​Following the rules of both the Healing and Damage over Time
sections, a Heal over Time requires a duration cost, a skill cost, and a multiplier cost in
order to be reasonably effective. For example, having a character heal over 3 turns, for
12 Skill, with a healing multiplier of 2- it sounds like a lot, but in practice you spend 5A
and 12S, to cause a party member to be healed for 8 every turn, for the next 3 turns.
Potent!
∙ Self-Sacrifice As Cost: ​Any skill that incurs a cost to your Health directly has its output
increased by an amount equal to half of your Level, rounded down. This is the reward
for the risk you take in doing something like that.
∙ If/When: ​Supposing a skill includes some kind of secondary action if/when an enemy
behaves in a certain way is common in complicated skills. When designing a skill like
this, increase its cost equal to half (rounded up) of the action(s) you'd like it to perform.
For example, "If the enemy target takes an Action next turn, this skill causes an extra 10
damage and the target becomes Mommicked and Pickled," would have a baseline cost
of 6 (10+1+1, divided by 2) in addition to its magnitude when you cast it.

Your skills are not limited to just one of these effects, and if there are yet unprecedented effects
that need detailing here, look for them in the next edition of HAMS! Research is ongoing into
what our imaginations can add to the game- and until such time as they're all documented, DMs
are welcome to impose house rules of their own design to account for any unprecedented
effects they encounter.

Points Management
All stat points in HAMS are spent like fuel, rather than treated as static values representing
ability. Your four main stats are where you'll see this most- Action and Mitigation require
constant expenditure in combat to keep you alive, and judicious use of Skill points can turn the
tables on a difficult encounter. Outside of an enemy's weakness and any benefits provided by
your Artifact, there are no modifiers to consider- a punch thrown for Action 2 will do 2 damage,
and require 2 Mitigation to block completely.

While HAMS points are the most common kind of point to encounter, Experience Points are not
far behind, and just as relevant to your adventure. It takes a certain quantity of Experience
Points to level up, and leveling up provides you with 10 HAMS points to distribute to your stats
in any way you see fit. Below is a table outlining the total XP required to reach any level.

Successful Hikes award equal XP to the entire party, the value of which is determined by the
DM. Completing a Fight also awards XP to all participating party members, with a minor bonus
to XP for each enemy a player defeats.

Fortune​ is a less common value than experience, but perhaps the most precious value of all.
Awarded by the DM to players demonstrating exceptional teamwork, creative gameplay, or
entertaining roleplay, Fortune serves as a pool of un-allocated HAMS points which can be drawn
from at-will, ​once per Fight or Hike,​ to serve as a bonus to a stat of your choice.

Use all of your Fortune for thrilling, explosive results, or strategically borrow from your Fortune
to tilt the scales in your favor time and time again, the choice is yours.

Artifact Parts​, or ​AP​, relate to the Artifact you named at the beginning of character creation.
These points are awarded at the end of successful Hikes of sufficient challenge, or as a reward
from defeating Boss enemies. Representing the moment you reach beyond the confines of the
Level 10 cap, any artifact requires 11 AP to complete. Any artifact you complete can draw a
single effect from the following list:

∙ Gain +10 HAMS to allocate as you please. Permanent Effect.


∙ Gain an extra Skill slot. This skill always costs double. Permanent effect.
∙ Reduce boss Menace by 1 as a 0-cost Action, once per Fight. Permanent effect.
∙ Assign 20 of your own Health to the Artifact. When you are Downed, gain 20 Health.
Artifact breaks permanently and must be rebuilt.
∙ Add +20 Mitigation when attacked. Artifact breaks until the next Rest.
∙ Add an x3 multiplier to a single Skill usage. Artifact breaks permanently and must be
rebuilt.
∙ Gain +10 Action every turn for 2 turns. Artifact breaks until the next Rest.
∙ In a Fight or Hike, swap one HAMS value of your choosing with another as a 0-cost
Action. Artifact breaks permanently and must be rebuilt.
∙ Add a fourth Quality to any skill you use, once per fight. Artifact breaks until the next
Rest.
∙ Destroy a single non-boss target, or deal 1/2 total Health damage to a boss. Artifact
breaks and ​can never be rebuilt.

When an artifact breaks, its effects no longer apply and it cannot be used. Building and
rebuilding your Artifact is as simple as collecting 11 more AC and choosing its effect. In the case
of Artifacts that can’t be rebuilt due to their effect, design a new artifact and choose a new
effect.

Exhaustion​ is a unique points value that applies to the whole party. The party's Exhaustion value
can only ever be 0, 1, or 2, and this value increases from 0 with every Hike or Fight the party
participates in. Once Exhaustion reaches 2, the party is eligible to Rest.

For more information on Hikes, Fights, and Rests, refer to the next chapter.

Hikes, Fights, and Rests


The rhythm of HAMS gameplay is guided by these three activities.

When your adventure begins, your party will be at ​Rest. ​While Resting, all HAMS values are
considered to be at their maximum, all actions that can be taken are considered to have no cost,
and the emphasis is placed on roleplay and character interaction rather than game mechanics.

Unless the party is ambushed, it is likely that leaving a Rest will put the party on a ​Hike. ​While
Hiking, HAMS values can be spent normally and will not recover until the next Rest. You may
encounter puzzles, go spelunking in caves, break in or out of jail- the possibilities are all up to
your DM. Sufficiently challenging Hikes also offer the chance at Artifact Parts.

Fights ​demand the most out of your HAMS stats, and are the most mechanically rich encounters
in HAMS. Taking advantage of all your Skills, strategically taking Action and Mitigating damage,
while determining your enemy's Weakness and working as a team to take them down, is a
deceptively simple process that calls for teamwork and careful play. When in a Fight, the DM will
determine a fighting order- while playing in person, it will often be easiest to simply move
clockwise around the table, but in online environments, it is best to simply take the time and
choose who goes when. Once the order has been established, combatants may take a single
Action or use a single Skill on their turn, and decide their Body State for the next turn- whether
they're Liable, in Egress, or Wary.

For more information on Body States, refer to the chapter on States.

While in a fight against a difficult enemy, a ​Team Maneuver ​may be necessary to overwhelm a
dangerous foe. These maneuvers are complex, and benefit from prior planning, but a
successfully executed Team Maneuver can have devastating results. When a player declares a
Team Maneuver, their turn can be used for nothing else. They select one of their Skills and all
teammates joining in the maneuver offer either Action or Mitigation points to serve as bonus
magnitude for that skill. Roleplaying this as a combination of their efforts in some way is to be
encouraged, and all participants in the Team Maneuver can only use Actions until the next turn.

States & Death


There are two categories of States in HAMS- Body States and Sorry States.

The Body States are simple and represent the position of a character's body in a very general
way:

∙ Liable: ​You are susceptible to direct attacks.This is the default state, and attacks against
your character will be calculated normally.
∙ Egress: ​You are less susceptible to direct attacks. While in Egress, Mitigation costs are
halved. Damage done against Health is calculated normally.
∙ Wary: ​You are not susceptible to direct attacks. Mitigate all incoming damage for free
this turn. Damage done against Health is halved.
∙ Downed: ​You are unable to take actions other than spending A, M, or S to return your H
to a positive integer.

Of the four Body States, only Liable has no cost to maintain. You will remain Liable so long as
you do not enter into any other Body State. Declaring that you are in Egress incurs an action cost
equal to half of your current Level (rounded up), and you must spend a turn in Egress in order to
become Wary.

The Sorry States are more complex and represent an ongoing problem with a character's body:

∙ Mommicked​ - Stress has gotten the best of you, and every time you take an Action, you
also take damage to your Health equal to the expenditure of that Action.
∙ Screwed​ - The hand of fate has folded. Your Mitigation stat is 0. You are considered
Liable.
∙ Pickled​ - Your senses have been affected in a very troubling way. Whenever you use a
Skill, you must also use half as many Action points (rounded down) to succeed with it.
∙ Haggard​ - You’re dog tired and beat up. Your Skill stat reduces every time your Health
stat reduces.
∙ Rank​ - You're sick, and it's nasty. Unless you spend equal Mitigation when taking
Actions, lose Health equal to the Action cost.
∙ Winded​: You’re out of breath and can’t move. Pay Mitigation equal to any Action, or
double Mitigation for any Skill usage. You are considered Liable.
∙ Shook​: You cannot use Skills. All actions incur half their cost in Skill. You are considered
Liable.
∙ Scuttled​: You must attack only the target which Scuttled you. You may only use Actions,
but your Action costs are halved while Scuttled. You are considered Liable.

Choosing not to perform an action on your turn while in any Sorry State will cause that state to
end unless the effect is extended by an external source, such as a player re-casting a spell that
causes a State, or traversing a State-afflicting environment.
Death​ is rare in HAMS- it simply isn't a game designed with a great deal of player punishment in
mind. It can happen however, and your character is declared dead when one of the two
following conditions is met:

Your character's Health value is a negative integer equal to their level or lower, at the end of a
Fight or Hike.

Your character's Health value is a negative integer equal to double their level, at any time.

Upon reaching 0 Health, your character is forced into the Downed state. Their only action each
turn is to spend points out of Action, Mitigation, or Skill equal to their missing health, until their
Health value is above 0 again. If they cannot raise themselves out of the Downed state, a fellow
player can offer points in the same fashion to lift them up.

Remaining at 0 or below until the end of a Fight or Hike will result in Death. Dead characters can
make no movements, take no actions, and unlike any other time in the game, cannot interact
directly with party members or the world around them. A party with 2 exhaustion can include a
Dead character in their next Rest, allowing them to return to life with 1 point in all HAMS values.
Their full HAMS values cannot be restored until the party Rests a second time. Resurrecting a
character in this fashion can only be done once- their next Death is considered permanent.

A character that dies as a result of taking such incredible damage that their health is a negative
integer equal to double their Level is considered in ​Sudden Death ​and cannot be recovered
during a Rest. This is the harshest penalty HAMS will ever offer a player, and calls for the
creation of a new character.

NPC Construction
NPCs are designed using nearly the exact same method as players. They have a level, HAMS
values, and classes. A DM designing an NPC may notice that, for example, a generic grizzly bear
has little need of specific Skills- so their level 6 Bear can instead have 0 Skill, and many extra
points in Action for strong basic attacks. NPCs that need to be protected from particularly
violent players, on the other hand, may benefit from having a Skill to use in retaliation that
punishes that kind of behavior.

Think about an NPC's specific special abilities (if any) when deciding whether or not they need
Skills, and distribute their HAMS points according to your needs.

Weaknesses ​distinguish NPCs from players mechanically. Every NPC has a specific weakness-
and an additional weakness for every Skill they have, chosen at the time of their design from
one of the 54 options on the Quality Grid. While an enemy with an obvious weakness may be an
easy encounter for the party, a more carefully chosen weakness may keep an NPC alive for
longer. In addition to avoiding extra damage, every Weakness an enemy possesses also confers
a +10 bonus to their Health and Mitigation.

Bosses, ​however, demand an extra layer of mechanics. NPCs and player characters tend to be of
a reasonable durability, no more or less fragile than anyone would expect- but an NPC that
qualifies to be a boss demonstrates a greater magnitude of power, threat, and resilience than
the average encounter.

Menace ​determines a boss's ability to use its Skills, rather than the Skill stat. Menace is
calculated by multiplying a boss's level by 2. The resulting number is the threshold of damage a
boss needs to take before gaining 1 Menace. As an example, a level 5 boss gains 1 Menace when
it takes 10 damage.

The Menace value describes how many of the boss's Skills are available for use- Skills that they
can use for no cost at all. The magnitude of these skills is equal to 1/2 of their level (rounded
up), meaning that the same level 5 boss can use their skills as if they had spent 3 Skill.

When using skills, bosses can spend Action as a multiplier- capped at their Level, they can
expend Action to increase the output of their chosen skill. Our level 5 Boss's magnitude 3 skill
can be multiplied with 5 Action, for example, to deal 15 damage. Suddenly they're much more
dangerous to the party!

Like a standard NPC, a Boss must have Weaknesses, one for every Skill it can access, its quality
selected from one of the 54 options on the Quality Grid. However, the bonus to Health and
Mitigation that comes from each Weakness is doubled- +20 to Health and Mitigation for every
Weakness they have.

Since so much about bosses requires special modifiers, a list for quick reference is below:

Damage Taken to Gain +1 Menace: ​Boss Level x2

Skill Magnitude: ​Boss Level x1/2 (rounded up)

Skill Multiplier from Action: ​Boss Level x1

Health & Mitigation Bonus from Weakness: ​+20 per Weakness


Roleplaying
HAMS was designed as a lightweight system to support roleplay directly, allowing players to
seamlessly add mechanical costs to their actions and skills without having to rely on the roll of
the dice. If you cast a simple Fireball, you have direct control over its magnitude and any effects
it creates on impact- it will neither blow up in your hand or spontaneously deal additional
damage outside of your control. This predictability exists so that players can narrate around
their actions with greater ease and fewer revisions, allowing them to be more directly engaged
with the game world their DM has created.

Constructing a world can be as simple as writing out a prompt and following through with it,
generating NPCs as you need them and guiding players through improvised scenarios. For
longer-term games, setting aside the time to construct a bestiary full of enemies, populations of
friendly NPCs, and an ongoing narrative to guide players through a quest is the DM's
responsibility.

Likewise, players are responsible for sharing the creative effort. So much of HAMS is based on
what the players create for their characters, and making sure that they can interact with the
DM's world in a way that's both fun and effective is to everyone's benefit.

HAMS has simple mechanics to support everything, but for much of a play session these
mechanics may not be as necessary as simply playing the role you've created or giving your
players a rich, vibrant setting to explore. As a game designed to accommodate people of all ages
and from all walks of life, with special consideration to demanding schedules and access to game
materials, HAMS is an opportunity to let go and have fun playing a character with your friends to
an equal degree that it's a chance to play with RPG systems that are usually too time-consuming
for the average weeknight. With nothing more than a pen, some paper, and this handbook, you
can turn any evening into a bite-sized jaunt through a fictional realm of your choosing.

Whether you only play for a couple hours or all through the night, HAMS is a great way to bring
friends to your table and spend some quality time together.
Character Sheet

Character sheet designed by Wheeler @notover9000 on Twitter.


Acknowledgements
HAMS, which was once HARE, which went through iterations like HART and HUGE and HALO, has
been a project of mine for many years. It started as a player-versus-player solution for online
roleplaying games, to settle conflicts without rolling dice in party chat or resorting to actual PvP
combat to settle an RP-based conflict.

Roughly five years ago, I laid the groundwork for HAMS with HARE, but found that it didn't solve
the problem it was set out to solve. Instead of throwing away the notes, I kept them because I
had fun playing with the system- and then I got into Dungeons & Dragons Online, Pathfinder,
Monster of the Week, and other systems with various levels of rules-heaviness. Current
development of HAMS began after playing Dungeons & Dragons for a friend's podcast, and
realizing just how little control I had over the outcomes of my character's actions. Every dice roll
was chaos, and that was fun in its own way- but it had a way of stalling the story as well.

Thank you for going on this journey with me- the future of HAMS depends on players most of
all!

I'd also like to thank my beta testers, whose diligence and creativity make HAMS better every
day:

Wheeler - @notover9000 on Twitter

Lokit - @deoxysofficial on Twitter

Kim - @alonebutatease on Twitter

Evie - @butchythot on Twitter

Riptide - @Riptidehere on Twitter

Vahllen - @Vahllen on Twitter

Mikado - [ ]

Mason - Not Available Online

HAMS is written by Moxie Garner of Renton, WA.

@2019 Moxie Garner All Rights Reserved

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