You could do either. If the outcome is a special effect like sleep or weapon destruction my personal preference is probably to treat it as a simple contest. Add penalties for multiple targets.
>I understand much of the combat oriented magic to be primarily
>augmentation in nature, and some (say the equivalent of the old
>disruption) a normal "combat" action. But some like sleep or say
>weapon
>destroyer, just don't feel right (to me) being treated as normal
>extended actions, resulting in loss and/or gain of AP's.
Go with what feels right. Where attacks have special effects I'm tending to use simple contests.
>I also observe that it can be tricky for us neophites to HW to
>balance
>contests. I had a party that frontally assulted a broo stronghold
>(which I thought was really stupid, 5 heroes versus 15 or so broos).
>Well most of the heroes ended up on the short side, but the Humakt
>warrior (and his follower) ended up slicing through the broos, ending
>the combat with more AP's than they started! It's not that this is
>bad, but not what I expected. The fact that the Humakti had 3/4 of a
>mastery level up on the broo, resulted in this condition. Heck the
>broos even had fetishes to give them more AP's, as well as all of
>them
>used an addition fetish to augment there combat edge.
This happens with Humakti. I've not had so much of a problem balancing things since my Humakti player had to drop out! Try putting in a powerful leader to draw in the Humakti character, or giving opponents big defensive edges, using opponents who concentrate attacks as wounds on the best fighters in the group and so on.
If in doubt make opponents slightly too tough rather than slightly too weak. Players can always make huge bids and/or spend hero points if things get desparate.
>Now there are many ways to overcome this, looking back
>retrospectively.
>I could have divided the broos up into groups, with one leader and
>3-4
>followers per group, with the leader having a higher combat skill,
>for
>example. Overall, it seems that if someone is up an effective mastery
>level (even say 5W vs 18), the higher one will almost always win,
>even
>facing multiple opponents (unless one is completely swampped).
I've done this and it makes fights quite tough. A single oppent with high skill can also be very tricky. My players recently struggled against a 2W2 chaos creature - despite having a huge AP reserve between them.
Thom
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