>If, on
>the other hand it is too high it becomes much to powerful ("I'll
>augment my close combat by yelling out my name and linneage,
>frightening my foes when they realise who they are facing - my Close
>Combat is 17 and my Glory is 4w3 so i'll go for a +8, with only a 5%
>chance of not making it...)
I don't play Lo5R (well, I played the card game once or twice), but nothing seems particularly bad for HW in your example. Sure, you could get a huge bonus for a huge Glory score; it won't hep all that much against an enemy with 4w3 Close Combat but a piddling 17 Glory. Your enemy will chose to augment with her "Amazingly Fast" of 10w2 and cut you to ribbons....
There seem a couple of ways to limit Glory, should you want to. First, you could set "caps" for social levels (You have to be a noble to go above w2, only the emperor can go above w5, etc.) You could treat it as a resource like Wealth that must be tended and can be "spent" for favors. You can allow Hero Points to be spent on it only when relevant. You could have two skills, "Reputation" and "Glory," depending on one's social class (the poor, famous ronin might be better known and more fearsome than the 3rd son of a powerful clan leader). Lastly, HW skills are as much knowing how to use your traits as they are an objective measure of those qualities. If Joe has Big: 5w, and raises it to 10w, that doesn't mean that he's a) bigger or b) horse-sized to begin with. He just knows how to use his size to his advantage. The 3rd son of the clan leader might be a shy scholar, unused to bullying people with his status. His Glory, as a result, is a low 17, despite the fact that his father and elder siblings are accomplished courtiers with scores in excess of w3.
Anyway, that's my opinion.
Peter Larsen
Powered by hypermail