Ah, level 2 at last! As this is my first Hackmaster Basic character this was also my first experience with leveling up in HMB. It was an easy process that only took a minute.
As Gorman is a second level fighter he received a +1 Attack Bonus. That was great, because my +3 attack bonus was causing a lot of misses. Gorman's damage bonus is +5, but it hardly matters when he keeps missing. Increased hit points upon leveling up is no guarantee in HMB. Every other level you gain a another hit die (d10 for fighters) and you do not get any bonus from your CON (CON only affects you HP at 1st level when you get your entire CON score added to you HP). At levels where you do not gain a new hit die you re-roll your old hit die and if you roll higher then the new higher number replaces the old one. If on both rolls you roll lower than half the max on your HD (i.e. 5 on a D10 for fighters) then you automatically get that number instead.
Sound complicated? It kind of is. It's also kind of difficult to explain. I love most of the rules for HMB but I'll admit that the HP rule is one rule I don't like and really hope they change when they go to advance.
At 1st level with Gorman I rolled a 6 on my HP roll so I got to re-roll that 6 and hope for something higher. Unfortunately, I rolled a 5 and gained no hit points. Oh well, thems the breaks. I really hope I roll well at the next level. Gorman's 33 hit points were impressive at 1st level, but much less impressive at level 2.
To finish off the leveling process I received another 15 Building Point (BP). Those of you who have been keeping up with my Diary know that Gorman has 2 skills, both of which he got for free. His BP was spent on weapon specialization in the trusty Battle Axe. This strategy has worked like a charm thus far and I saw no reason to change it. So I took the 15BP I got at level 2 and the 5 BP I carried over and bought 2 second tier specializations. As I said earlier my attack bonus was too low so I bought the tier two attack bonus to bring my overall bonus to +5 with the battle axe. That cost 10 BP so I still had 10 BP to purchase another second tier bonus. The two left available to me were Speed and Damage. My damage bonus is high enough, and opponents with faster and lighter weapons represent the bulk of opposition thus far. So I spent my final BP on tier two speed bringing my weapon speed down to 9, and that concluded the leveling process.
From there it was straight to the adventure. We hit the road at the beginning of the night and after some time on the trail we entered a small, almost abandon town in the middle of nowhere. Once there we learned about an escaped criminal hiding somewhere in the area. Being as we are lawful types and followers of the true we set to work trying to find the scoundrel. Of course it didn't hurt that we were low on funds and there was a reward offered.
We tracked the crook and his gang to a cave. Exploring the cave took a while. It took much longer than it would have because none of us were able to find the secret passage to where they were hiding until our third search of the cave. The secret passage led to a zip line which carried people over the underground river that separated the passage we were in from the crook's underground safe house.
Bryan's halfling, Lyle decided to go across first. Being a thief he is generally sneaky and thought to scope things out for us. That didn't work out for us and he stumbled across the gang playing cards. They went after him drawing cold steel while he shouted for us to come help. Stalling for time Lyle even tried to hide in the river, but was swept away by the current.
Being the front line fighter I was first across. There were five of them with shields and scimitars, against me one dwarf. I'll be honest if there was a place to run to I might have done it, but short of jumping in the river and getting swept to god knows where there was no option but to fight like a man.... or in this case, Dwarf. Things got pretty hairy fast, my shield was saving my hide, but a fourth attacker was able to get to me which meant only a d12 defense and no shield. I took a few wounds in the early going but was able to take one of them out with a massive non-critical hit (thank you penetration!). Before everyone's weapon speed came back up James' cleric McDougal came across. With the two of us battling the odds seemed much better. The fight was very close, especially when MacDougal went down, but in the end we won.
I had accumulated half a dozen wounds and wanted nothing more than to spend a few days healing up. Fortunately we did not have to battle the gang's leader as he was already quite wounded himself so we tied him up and brought him back to town where we turned him over to the authorities. They gave us a fat 500 silver piece reward for our efforts and invited us to travel with them to a near by city.
Goodbye Studded Leather, Hello Chainmail!
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