RE: house rule question of augmentation

From: David Cake <dave_at_...>
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 00:35:27 +0800


At 1:35 PM +0200 28/6/00, Henrix wrote:
>On loking it up, it actually says that
>the narrator "may subtract the lower...leaving only one participant with an
>edge." (HW:RiG p. 136). But in this case I think it would be advisable.

        I read that as 'may' ie the narrator may do so if they think it is a good idea.

        I think its not often a good idea, and its an unwelcome generalisation of what was a special rule for the armour and weapons rules, that should at least be more clearly indicated as optional.

        On the one hand, as equal edges makes relatively little difference to the outcome of a combat, its easy to see why it might be seen as a good idea to eliminate equal edges, and it can simplify things a fair bit, and thats pretty useful at times..

        On the other hand, there is more to a combat than simply who wins, particularly when its an extended group contest like most large combat scenes, in which case how much they won by, how fast they won, etc can make a big difference.

        I wouldn't do it much in my game, but if you like that idea in your game, thats a matter of personal taste. Personal GM style should always be encouraged.

At 1:35 PM +0200 28/6/00, Henrix wrote:
>I think you can add up all edges for armour and weapons. A guy with a long
>spear has an edge over a man with a dagger, but if the latter has
>plate mail he
>can pretty much ignore the spear and close with his dagger.

        If you are concerned with, for example, how many injuries where sustained during the battle, or how long the battle took, then edges and handicaps should not cancel.

        You can look at two battles, one between two naked people wielding chain saws (both sides have equal enormous edges), and one between two heavily armoured people armed with padded teaspoons (both sides have equal handicaps), and take two different attitudes. One the one hand, you could say in both these cases the combatants are evenly equipped, so they are the same (and all equal edges and handicaps should be cancelled). On the other hand, you could say the likely consequences of the combat, and the time it takes to complete the combat, etc are very different.

At 11:05 AM -0400 28/6/00, KYER, JEFFREY wrote:
>Armor reduces Weapon and vice versa.

        Its when you have weapons reduce weapons, and armour reduce armour, that I think it gets kind of strange.

        Armour reducing weapons is one of the cool design aspects of the system, though - if you just assume that everyone has about the same level of weapons and armour (as you can do in many narrative situations), then you can just ignore it. Which will probably suit many narrators just fine.

At 3:19 PM +0000 28/6/00, Charles Corrigan wrote:
>The place where it seems (i.e. I may have got this wrong) to get
>scary is that in a contest you would probably use one edge while
>acting (i.e. those that enhance your weapon/attacking ability) and a
>different edge when resisting

        Acting and resisting should be symmetric if the contest is symmetric (another nice aspect of the HW rules - those initiative contests that tend to dominate other games are no longer as important, because acting and losing is much the same as being acted on and winning, except for choice of stake). So which edge you use doesn't depend on whether you are acting or resisting, except when the abilities you use are completely different. Between two people, say, in close combat using the same ability for attack and defense, the edge used should depend on who wins.

At 5:46 PM +0200 28/6/00, Mikael Raaterova wrote:
>(David Cake must surely have fond memories of this very discussion to
>bring it up again.)

        Not exactly, but I think its too important an issue not to be settled one way or another.

        (personally, I liked it when you could have bonuses on your character sheet, and you could say things like Leaping 15 Leap over trees +15)

	Cheers
		David

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