Re: Heroforming / Augmentation issue

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 22:39:41 +0100 (BST)

Charles Corrigan:
> My problem is that there is a 5 to 1 resistance against the
> Augmentation. Say that the Hero's major skill is 10w3 and you
> have a
> similar (or identical) type of skill at 10w. Roughly speaking, you
> have an approx 50% chance to get an Augmentation of 14 or better (I
> do know it is not quite so simple), giving a skill of 4w2. If
> however, you incarnate the same Hero and you do not have a similar
> skill, then you get the full 10w3 skill.

Indeed. I think that the Augmentation rules aren't the best, in many respects. The 'optimal' way to use them seems to be to have lots of 'little' abilities you can augment with small amounts. Having a high-valued ability and augmenting with it just doesn't seem like bang for the buck. The only consolation is that for theists (and I suppose, sorcerors as well) you get an Augment pretty much 'for free' with an affinity that may, hopefully, have stuff in it that's worth raising in itself. (Cornflake packet analogies spring to mind.)

I think the reason Augmentations are so feeble is because of the worry that you might have a very generally applicable augmenting ability, and use it absolutely willy-nilly. Thus if you're going to augment every single physical ability you have with 'Strong', and such tasks are fairly common, then you'd indeed want a fairly 'tame' augmentation table. But on the other hand, for narrower abilities (to steal shamelessly from Pendragon, 'Hate [name of PC]' springs to mind, eh, Myles?), or for allegedly dramatic effects like spectacular weaponenhancing  magic, say, I think they're simply not up to snuff.

My thoughts are along the following lines. Not playtested, not necessarily even entirely thought through, but hopefully grist to the mill.

        o Make the bonuses larger, per resistance

	o  Reduce or re-do the penalties for failure.  In particular,
	   the existing chart is far too zero-sum.  I can have a
	   mastery in an augmenting ability, and if I go for a
	   measly +4 (compare with how readily a RQ2/3 RL with
	   bladesharp 4 accomplishes this, for comparison), I'm
	   as likely to make myself worse as any better.  A simple
	   tweak already mentioned is to drop the penalty for
	   marginal failures.  I'd go further, myself, though.
	   
	   One option in particular is to assess penalties against
	   something _other_ than the ability being augmented.
	   Indeed, the _augmenting_ ability is an obvious choice,
	   I think.  (To be meaningful, this would presumably have
	   to be (say) episode-long, perhaps longer for Big Flubs.)

	o  Make narrower augmenting abilities work much, much better.
	   A flat bonus to the augmenting chance would have to be
	   hideously large to make a material difference, so the
	   whole scale really would have to be 'tweaked', somehow.
	   And/or make re-introduce specificity sit-mods, in some
	   manner.



> Have I completely misunderstood the Heroforming rules here? I very
> much look forward to the long mooted full HW game terms commentary on
> this story!

I have a sinking feeling it'll be a lot of touchy-feely stuff, with the punchline 'he rolled a crit'... :-/

Cheers,
Alex.

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