Hero Wars Wars Wars.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 15:18:20 +0100 (BST)


It seems the clamour for us to shut up about HW is at worst in equipoise, so I shall chunter on some more...

Michael Cule:
> 3) I don't find it odd that people with very poor skills score many of
> their successes as criticals.

That's the "Pendragon syndrome", and it's in HW too, of course. But what I think was being commented on was that if you have a really, really bad skill (say, 18), then when you score a (normal) success, it's always with a really, really good value (18 or 19), and the chances are you'll win the contest (unless your opponent Succeeds Big, with his three bump-ups...) Constrast with Pendragon where if you have skill 3, and you _don't_ crit, then you succeed with a very poor value (and will almost certainly lose).

Neither is ideal, IMHO, but I appreciate the difficulties of fixing this Just So, not least as I tried to do so when I first looked at Pendragon, and decided to give up until someone invented hyperdimensional dice with geometric probability distribution functions with arbitrary skill levels. [*]

> 4) Yes, Mastery gives you a bump up in result level based on how much
> Mastery you have over your opponent.

Thanks for the clarification, and to Kevin Rose for the same.

Slainte,
Alex.


[*] What's that you say, they're called compu-whats?


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