> From: paul_at_...
> 1. How are people handling the balance between specific/general
> skills? I've found us using Scan Plains for Danger in our Prax
> setting as a substitute for almost all the old perception skills. Is
> the general idea to develop more specific skills (Search or Spot
> Hidden equivelants perhaps) or to continue with fewer skills and
> apply improvisational modifiers almost all the time? It seems to me
> that the danger could be ending up with some very specific skills
> (Spot Rodent Under Desert Bush) that are rarely useful, and some very
> broad skills that cover a wide range of things (did anybody out there
> ever play the Ringworld game? Repair fixed everything but you needed
> a specific branch of Organic Chemistry in other circumstances)
It's no harm to have an "excessive" number of abilities when starting out -- you can wring a large number out of your 100 words, and then you have your three to four keywords, if you're like some people on this list. ;-) I'd encourage players not to "spread themselves too thin" in advancement terms, though. One thing you can do to be generous to people taking "colourfully narrow" skills in advancement costs; I'm not wild about directed HP awards as such on a routine basis, but I do often give "discounted rate" increases for some abilities (e.g. +2 for 1 HP) if they're been used in an especially key way.
> 2. My players expressed concern that during contests the lower dice
> roll wins if both players succeed. So having a Mastery means that you
> are less likely to fumble/more likely to succeed through a bump, but
> can still lose that round very easily. We've not really played enough
> to see how this pans out long term. Any thoughts?
Remember also that you're increasing your chance to crit! It's true that the mastery is less of an advantage than in, say, Pendragon, which uses the opposite convention (in effect, the system there is different (and clunkier, btw)). (i.e. I'd rather be skill 15 vs a skill 5W opponent in HW than a skill 15 vs a skill 25 opponent in Pendragon -- but on the whole I'd rather be the higher skill guy, in either case...)
> 3. Does anyone have any more info on Animism in Prax? (Why do I get
> the feeling this has been asked every ten minutes for the last year -
> if so sorry, but I did try going back through previous messages with
> little success). Thoughts on Praxians practising integration? Normal
> Waha/Eiritha worshippers (not just Shamans) having Spirit Combat like
> Storm Bulls if so?
IMO Praxians don't do integration, though given the HW rules on the topic, I anticipate the official write-up will go the "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" route. For me, the Praxians do spirit cult totemism, which is sort of an "intermediate state" between "pure" animism and pure theism. I'd suggest giving 'em "feat-like" Talents was game-worldly justified.
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