Wulf C:
> Well, there are many tribes who do run down horses (using 'Run Long
> Distance' rather than Run Fast), so they're not WILDLY wrong.
Wild? I was furious. But seriously folks... IIRC it takes on the order of days to catch a horse like this (or on the order of forever, for the average western human fitness level), so it's at the very best, totally misleading if it's supposed to represent cursorial hunting. Some fubars are bound to occur given the open-endedness of one's choice of ability tags, and the lack of an "objective" game world translation of the "meaning" of these numbers. (i.e. nowhere does it tell you that "Run Fast 5W" means being able to run at 40mph, say.) This has clearly been compounded by some ratchetting up as well, though: around the time of the Convulsion HW preview, you were the best guy in your clan in something with a 16. This had clearly changed a good deal by the time of HW1, but it wasn't quite so explicit about it that you could tell exactly how good you were supposed to be, relative to your "standard game world" fellows. The example of weaponthane numbers could be taken as implying that your best ability of 5W would put you in about the top percentile or so in that field. (And that your slew of other abilities are very much in the realm of "bog standard competence".)
Whether Greg's recent prognostications represent more "ramping up" is less clear. If 300 people in your clan have "Farming 1W", you could argue it was consistent with the above (there being more farmers than warriors in a clan (give or take Martin Laurie)), but it would certainly make it harder to be a stand-out farmer if that was for some reason what you wanted to do with your character, which seems somewhat at odds with the "N-word" philosophy.
I loudly agree with the person that said that "have to have a mastery so you don't fumble" is a hack. This takes no account of "unstressed rolls", or situational modifiers for preparation and equipment, if for some reason one wanted to play out the "can I make the bread right?" adventure. Equally though, it's also true to say that the "original scale" would have been far too cramped for the "stick-picker game", or anything like.
So in short I'd prefer to keep the interpretation that 1W is fairly conspicuously good (just nothing to write to the High King about, or indeed even the local Rex). It seems to me to be consistent with HW1 as written, and to be fairly statistically reasonable too.
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