The following is a reaction to the discussion on the thread in general. If any of it seems arrogant and/or obvious an/or incomprehensible, please assume it is due to my fatigue and/or my limited skill in barbarian tongues.
Many seem to insist that HQ2 or pass/fail-cycle leads to riduculous resitances. As I see it, the cycle is just a rule-of-thumb (a good one!) to keep up the flow, to get dramaturgy of the story working. If the hero has been having it easy, he should have more challenge and eventually some setbacks, to keep it all interesting. If it is time for the hero to meet some very hard resistance, think what would be suitable very hard opposition for the hero in the circumstances. No need to make the average guard something that can beat seasoned heroquester pc:s, just figure out what could be a big enough problem to the pc and use that instead. Thereīs nothing to stop you from having a scale for the skills (as per HQ1) and setting challenges that are naturally on a suitable level of difficulty. Allso: if PC:s do meet a character thatīs been established as a tough one, (or a weakling, for that matter) just make him as tough or weak as you see fit -the cycle is just a tool not a railroad you canīt escape. It would be disappointing to everyone if Harrek was a pushover, even if the PC:S had only setbacks on their way to meet him.
To me being a good GM is making up -or at least finetuning- the setting as the flow of the game needs, not trying to hammer the flow in to the confines of a predefined story. (I believe this can be agreed by the majority here).
If the pc:s can and do get upgrades in their skills, there must be -or will naturally appear- a scale of reference for the skills in the campaign. Otherwise skill improvements have no point, really. Even then not even similar skills are equal in every situation -in a nonmagical campaign a catīs "kill with claws 10w2" and a lionīs "kill with claws 10w2" have different fields of application; a lion wouldīnt be all that tough against a mouse, just as a cat wouldnīt be much of a kiler against a gnu. That is allso a necessity, or the varying char backgrounds and various names of the skills would be pointless, killing much of the fun.
>From my experience it can be agreed verbally what are the limits of a character/her skills. From there the GM can adjust difficulties so that over the time characters learn to do better, without any need for the skillnumbers to "grow". The less thereīs focus on numbers, the more thereīs focus on the story. (Though, sometimes it IS nice to focus on numbers on the char sheet :P)
sorry for the long post,
Pekka
btw, this is my first post on the list :]
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