>From: "Rob" <robert_m_davis_at_...>
>
>I think one of the things of the Heroquest Glorantha system that always
>felt like a flaw for me is the advancement costs of the magic system.
Following up my previous post where I agree largely, I think that where the system actually balances out character interest, that this cost difference is OK. For instance, there's an argument to be made that magic is just more attractive than mundane abilities (and certain readings of the rules can even mechanically incentivize it).
I don't know that the ratio that exits in HQ is right, but I'm not entirely against the idea of interest-balancing.
An example of a case that I think is unbalancing favoring magic is Fetishes. Purchase of abilities, even if only "leveraged" by a relationship (meaning that, in theory, the ability will be unavailable at times), at a reduced cost, and then having those abilities have the capacity to be added full to other abilities (even if that means losing the ability for a while), all serve to make Fetishes rather more "economical" in terms of interest than they should be, IMO.
Of course, if you're not interested in playing an animist, then this won't matter to you. We can only speak of these things in terms of generalities and personal proclivities. That said, it may have been a better idea to not have varying ways in which the abilities have mechanical effects at the least, and leave it all to player decisions - why *not* allow a player to purchase the sort of character they'd like to see no matter how that varies?
So, my point really comes down to the idea that I think that it's not the balance rules that are wrong - they're made neccessary by the other rules. It's those other rules that are the problem, for the most part. The mechanical oddities of magic that make it special. Get rid of those, and I think you lose 90% of the need to do any sort of balancing - enough that I wouldn't do any.
Mike
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