A lousy success is OTOH far better than a failure, since it means half the AP-loss (losing x1 instead of x2) if your opponent scores a better success. If you're a mastery level above your opponent you don't win every time, but you definitely win more often than not, and when you lose you lose less. Which sounds eminently reasonable to me.
I do agree that the statistical breakdowns cause some fishiness in the bumping business; a person with a rating of 5 or 15 contesting someone with 5w or 15w respectively wins only about every fifth exchange, while a person with a rating of 10 contesting against 10w wins about every fourth exchange. A rating of 2 against 2w or a rating of 18 against 18w wins only about every tenth exchange. With a 20-point rating difference, bump-ups are the least effective when the target numbers are 10.
However, a rating of 10w against 10 is unlikely to lose an extended contest anyway, and i doubt such contests will be very frequent (going one-on-one at a 20-point disadvantage isn't very smart unless you have a very big ace up your sleeve). So, i don't see the above as a problem to be fixed, especially not if a proposed fix would introduce more numbercrunching or complications.
Re: levels of mastery between initiates and runies
>From the HW draft it seems that if you are initiated to a god you can also
lead worship ceremonies to that god. With sufficient preparation, sacrifice
and community participation a starting PC could propably contact God on a
HHD. But it would be a poor community that don't have somone more suited to
the task.
Whether you are allowed to officiate or not is a matter of ability and
social standing (if i was a responsible community leader i sure as hell
would want the most capable person to lead the worship ceremonies, because
the consequences of failed ceremonies could be devastating for the
community).
Thus there are quantitative but no qualitative differences between initiates and officiating priests, and hence no distinction between initiate and runelord. Which makes the question 'how many mastery levels to runelordhood?' moot.
No doubt the terms "initiate", "acolyte" and "priest" will still be used in HW, but in the context of socioreligious position and not in the context of reusable divine magic.
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