Urgent: Running faster than Anaxials Rooster

From: Andreas Mueller <mueller_at_...-ulm.de>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:09:32 +0200


Dear Anaxial Rooster Team,

yesterday I read the creatures chapter in the Narrators Book and was shocked. If the values for animals are repeated this way in Anaxials Rooster, there will be regularly Heroes who are strong as a bear or faster than a horse.
Until now I had the impression that HeroWars isn't a comic/super-hero-RPG (and the "running faster than a speeding bullet" example confirmed this point).
Maybe I got something wrong, but I understood that the whole Game system is about comparing target numbers. If a true master has 2 masteries and somebody truly heroic has 3 masteries, most abilities of animals, that are better in it than humans, should be in the 10w2 to 18w3 range, not 2w. (Strong 8w is IMO more appropriate for Uz).

The best example is the ability run fast, since speed is easily measured, widely known and there's a natural limit for each creature. The average horse runs 17 m/sec, the average man 8 m/sec. While olympionics may run faster than 10 m/sec, it's not much more and they can't keep this pace for longer than 100 m. Racing horses can keep some miles with 20 m/sec. So a horse runs aproximately double as fast as a human, so its target number in the ability run fast should be at least 10w2 (double of 5w). This does not account for raising this ability, so I would make it 10w3 (see below). This way, only truly heroic runners could run as fast as a horse.

To save time (I hope AR isn't in print yet) here some arguments against my rambling and my counters:
1.) The ability score of 5w certainly involves some magic.
- I hope not (and I hadn't the impression until now). I have no problems
with a feat Run faster than a horse from Mastakos, but the normal ability rating shouldn't include this.

2.) Man outmarches horse (Though I don't believe in this, no need to discuss it once again)
- Run fast is a very different ability (see Narr. B. page 96: Diokos has
two abilities run fast and run long distance).

3.) There's an implicit "as (species)" in all abilities. When a human tries to "run fast as a horse", she gets hefty improvisational modifiers of -10 to -40.
- Several problems here:

* Which impr. mod. are appropriate? Then every creature (and at least humans) should have a list of impr. mod. for "specializations". And what's the impr. mod. when a wolf tries to "run fast as a horse"? Questions over questions which wouldn't be necessary with a reasonable target number in a general skill.
* Isn't the game system about comparing target numbers? This approach is very "out of system", otherwise climbing a "ice slick steep cliff" (see HW p. 119) should also have a improvisational modifier of -40 to -60 instead of target number 10w2 to 10w3. Same goes for other resistances. When looking at the resistance table, it becomes clear that something mildly impossible (just like running fast as a horse) has a target number of 10w3, and so this should be the target number of the animal abilities.

Can't think of more, but surprise me!

Many greetings,

Andreas

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