Re: Ability advancement rate

From: Graham Robinson <graham_at_...>
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 16:10:21 +0000

At 15:10 14/02/2002 +0000, you wrote:
>Graham Robinson wrote on [HeroWars]:
>...
> > If you bump up your best skill by one each week...
> > Players COULD be running around
> > with 5W5 characters, and followers with 17W4 in their best skills!
>...
> > I'm personally wondering how to slow down players improvement of good
> > skills, so that Tarsh raiders of the W2 level still seem a challenge. The
> > linear improvement system seems flawed for long campaign play.
>...
>
>The 5W5 character would have no other significant abilities. Such
>characters are actually pathetically weak, because it is easy to
>attack their weak spots.

Not necessarily true. If you look to related costs (and close combat is going to be related for a lot of people's sessions most weeks...) then increasing your best skill costs one hero point. Put up another related ability (one point) and you still have a point or two left over for emergencies, cementing items, buying followers (really good value for broad abilities!) and so on. After a few weeks, if you don't bump unless REALLY needed, you will have a nice sized pool of 'emergency hero points', and can start putting up magic, or other costly skills.

I've not seen this in practice, but it is possible. I'm seeing characters bordering on W3, but then my players won't put up anything unrelated. Even that I find a bit worrying. The game is getting to the high end of where I'm comfortable running, and it feels like it has only just started. I'd personally like to see a slower improvement rate - maybe one hero point, plus one per mastery? But then I don't want to have to run games for Harrek, just because a campaign lasts five years...

Cheers,
Graham

-- 
Graham Robinson
graham_at_...

Albion Software Engineering Ltd.