Re: Minimaxing

From: Nick Brooke <Nick_Brooke_at_compuserve.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 08:23:40 +0100



Steve Lieb tickles the HW 100-word char-gen system, and asks:

> What are the guidelines here? I mean, how do you adjudicate that "Close
> combat" is fair but "Adept with all weapons" isn't - or is it? What about
> "Master of every weapon"? How does the system address this?

Well, "Close Combat" is the default fighting skill. Speaking as both a playtester and a prospective HW GM, I'd adjudicate your three examples as three different ways of saying, "Has a starting character's skill in close combat". The unusual case (which Steve does not cite) would be if he wanted to be "Adept with the quarterstaff" rather than "an adept fighter" -- this might qualify for a "+1 w/ quarterstaff / -1 without" modifier to that basic Close Combat skill.

Hero Wars is not written for idiots. But it does include copious advice on how to deal with them. Brian and Steve have been treating the 100-word char-gen system with unjustified contempt -- I assume they have not read the playtest draft, which advises on what should and shouldn't be in a character's description, and on how GMs should adjudicate *exactly* this kind of minimaxing desperation.

A fair parallel would be me turning up with an RQ character -- allegedly newly generated -- who just happened to be above species maximum in every stat, and above 200% in every skill, and *then* claiming that RuneQuest was a flawed system because it allowed me to write complete crap on a piece of paper, in roughly the same order as a real character sheet. You're not even breaking the rules -- you're ignoring them completely!

> It sounds like the playtest system (thus far) is Sartarcentric? Am I
> simply a victim of non-playtester's ignorance? Or will the expansions
> have the relevant character/history/cutural generation info?

The first releases for "Hero Wars", which are being playtested, are the basic rules, the Orlanthi book, and the Sartar book. So most of the playtests are (astonishingly enough) Sartarcentric.

Nick
:::: web: <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Nick_Brooke>


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