>*laughing* You are right. In fact that was _precisely_ what I was
>asking, with those exact terms in mind, but I didn't figure that I
>could assume everyone was familiar with the old hero system.
There are people who haven't played Hero System? Then they should go out and do so now! ;-)
In all seriousness, HS can help recognize potential areas of neccessary adjudication. This isn't to say that HQ has a problem, just that HS can help you think about these things. OTOH, again, you'll find that if you just leave it for play that in HQ these things all seem to work themselves out.
Still, it's fun to think about it. :-)
>It also seems that somehow BIG magic should be more obvious
>and easier to "sight" by, whereas some small magics might even be
>hard to detect. I suppose one way to do it would be to make the
>degree of information vary significantly based on success
>level....but what is the target number? Maybe augment the viewer by
>the strength of the magic?
That's been proposed before. And I sorta like it, except that there's no "zero base" here. That is, with spotting a person, you could augment with their Large if they had one, or they could augment their resistance with Small. Basically, since characters are complex, they have this built in zero base (no augmenting for defaults) that sets the scale. What if a magical effect is tiny - shouldn't that give a penalty to note instead of a bonus?
>From a very philosophical point of view, modifiers are augments of unstated
abilities. If the effect is something that you'd call "Tiny 5W" then it
should have a -3 modifier. IOW, since abilities themselves aren't enumerated
in a complex manner, we should instead use modifiers to simulate their
"sub-abilities". When you say that there's a -3 modifier to detect the
particular effect, you're saying in effect that there's some ability that
causes this - we just don't want to take the time to enumerate it.
That's not to say that the power of the ability can't also augment in a postitive way. Just that in the end I'd roll it all up into one overall modifier based on all the considerations that seem to apply.
>The other books he's set in
>this world are OK reads, but not generally on the same level).
Reading? No time. Too busy playing. :-)
>I guess what I'm getting at is why someone would raise their soul
>sight, and what the effects/benefits of truly exceptional levels in
>it would be.
Why not raise it to high levels? It's a pretty cool ability, IMO. I mean, it's good for getting information about something that many people can't percieve at all. The key is probably finding creative ways to apply the "injuries" that it would produce. For example, if you were trying to intimidate somebody who thought that their hidden spirit was an ace in the hole, revealing details about it first could reduce their resistance to your intimidation attempt. More obviously, it can make it easier to find characters that are trying to flee or hide by penalizing their rolls to do so. Lots of possibilities.
Any ability can be creatively used as an "offensive" ability in HQ, so the only thing that makes one ability more attractive is how cool it is. I think these are more than cool enough.
In point of fact, I have a dominant NPC in my game who is tremendously feared because of his ability to see the future. Knowledge is power.
>One thing I would want to avoid is: almost everything important is
>magic, so you can use this and function effectively in the dark in
>any dramatic situation. That would take away from heroes who can
>actually see in the dark. However I can see stumbling mightily on
>narrating it consistently, which was why I was looking for others
>examples.
I think that the thing to do here is to make the visions sorta vague and mystical on anything less than a complete success. Such that maybe an augment for the sight only works to counteract penalties for darkness. So if it's -10 dark out, a 5W would only be worth a +3. You see where their magic is vaguely, but not well enough to shoot at it as if it were day.
Basically, if you're saying that you don't want it to replace the appropriate targetting sense, then it's only a modifier instead of a targeting sense itself.
Mike
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