(This was almost sent privately, but there's no extra maths, and it seems to touch on more general topics than the "log table for HW thread")
> <nify maths snipped>
>
> Sadly the mention of things like logs tends to drive many people
> screaming from the room.
Yep.
> However your basic point is a sound one: Never add two abilities,
> always augment one with another.
Yep. Except when it's too damn tedious to do so, ie non-dramatic and/or repetitive cases. Also, where HW TN rules don't _work_ very well, ie Wealth, Gains from Quest Challenging, ...
> Taking this way back up the thread to quest challenges, I think the
> obvious solution is that if you are challenging for an ability you
> already have, you still get a new ability.
>
> Say you have close combat 6W2, and in a quest challenge you defeat a
> troll death-lord, wagering your close combat against his close combat
> 10W2. Rather than adding the two abilities (giving you CC 16W4,
> clearly broken), or adding one fifth (giving a more reasonable 16W2),
> I think you should gain "death lord combat". You would also add the
> death lord's close combat combetencies (mace, club, etc) to your own,
> should you not already have them.
Yeah, good idea in that particular case.
Reminds me of another thread, the generic skills one.
Of course, this solution wouldn't work with specific skills, like Stay Awake or Hide in Cover.
> This is a skill that can clearly be used to augment your close
> combat, and probably for a hefty augment at that.
The basic principle of this rule works, except that it might lead to pretty unwieldy character sheets.
Going on logically from here, a solution for Quest Challenges might be to attempt a Permanent Augmentation of your Ability from the one you've gained ? Maybe attempting a Permanent +8 skill gain against a resistance of 20W with a TN of 10W2 ?
I think that just adding TN/5 would be less fiddly in many cases.
> > But then, a squad
> > with one CC 10W Hero and 20 CC 17 grunts would have 10W + (20 *
> 17)/5 = CC 18W4
> > (and 370 APs), so this approach needs fixing too.
> >
> > The anally retentive calculation method for the squad's enhanced CC
> would be
> > the
> > following one :
> >
> > 10W + ((17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 +
> (17 + (17 +
> > (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + (17 + 17/5)
> > /5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)/5)
> >
>
> This works out to the sum of a geometric series, which with a
> multiple of 0.2 means that any fair number of terms will approximate
> 0.25. So with this approach I'd suggest that 1/4 * (sqaddie skill)
> is better than 1/5 * (sqaddie skill) +1.
Actually, having realised that I *deliberately* used 1/5 instead of 1/4 because 1/5 is, I believe, used as a rule of thumb elsewhere in HW or elsewhere by HW players.
> However, I don't really see what is wrong with the current HW
> approach of looking at multiple attackers/defenders, and adding up
> AP? I thought that was one of the mechanisms that bugged people quite
> little?
It bugged me a bit, because mass combat has a wider role in my RPGing than most people ; the fact that groups of warriors have the same TN as a single warrior felt pretty wrong to me.
Also, just adding up APs does cease to be completely "realistic" (from a narrative POV) when very large groups are involved, but that's rather a different issue to this one ...
> > Wealth is an exception, because you actually *need* a simulationist
> rule for
> > it, and some method of translating the TN into accountancy.
>
> *need*????
The Wealth rules (and the Quest Challenging rules) in HW1 are clearly broken ; and money (and the lack of it) does often play an important role (or intermittently so) in some people's games. So yeah, _need_ IMO. The game that is, not every player group. Most players can easily do without such simulationism, but a substantial minority can't.
> A lot of people seem to be playing the game without such
> a think without great difficulty. Perhaps "....because if you feel
> you *need* a simulationist rule for it....." would be a better
> phrasing?
OK ! ;-)
> Personally I look at "how wealthy is my character?" a little bit like
> saying "how much water is in my well?"
I've saw "Barry Lyndon" again on the big screen last night, and the amount of money that he has (or hasn't) over the course of his life is a _vital_ component of his _story_. I can certainly see Wealth as having similar importance in some HW stories.
> On the other hand, I see simulationist rules as being more like a
> water tank, it holds so much, you drain it and that is it until you
> re-fill it, you can figure exactly how much water is in it. I think
> most people would rather have a well than a water tank, although of
> course there are exceptions. If the whole point of the game is that
> the heroes are outlawed and cut off, then tracking each of their
> possesions with care could be appropriate.
I think that water tanks and wells are ideally interchangeable. I think that, as elsewhere in HW, there should be two compatible Wealth rules for people's various gaming needs, and really, we do *need* a better rule for adding Abilities than what is suggested in HW1, one that would provide similar results to Augmenting, but for non-dramatic or repetitive use, or for a few boring things (like Money) that one occasionally needs to simulate/narrate.
Julian Lord
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