I, myself, got the impression from somewhere (perhaps from the "hero"
designation) that abilities above w3 are noticeably superhuman, even when
they are just very high "mundane" abilities. That is perhaps the
impression shared by the folks who want to differentiate advancement up to
w3 from advancement after. For them, the idea of increasing advancement
costs after that point makes sense. (I do understand the point about
advancement being mechanically identical as long as the opposition keeps
pace, but one of the problems raised early on was the D&D-like feel of
characters who completely outclass all mundane opposition, and need
"dragons" or the Gloranthan equivalent to feel challenged. So absolute, as
well as relative, power is a concern.)
There is a rules-supported option for folks who want to encourage heroquesting for advancement into levels above w3. There are abilities (Initiation, and affinities for initiates) that are strictly capped at a certain level. If you want to be really strict about the "w3=hero" concept, you could allow advancement past the high w2s *only* through heroquesting. The milder option would be the cost increase that a couple folks have suggested.
Obviously, not everyone will need those "brakes," as this discussion has
shown. And if future books follow the BA tradition of changing w3 from
"notably superhuman" to "guy any given clansman might know and admire," the
brakes should be needed even less, since the range of "normal humans" is
widened. (To be fair to BA, I know that the leader-types' special
abilities were most likely acquired via heroquesting, so the implication
may not be so much that w3 is "sub-heroic" but that "heroes" of that range
are a lot more common than I had thought.)
On the related "stats for Kallyr and Argrath" question, I think comparing
those two (or even Harrek) to D&D "gods" is unfair. Kallyr and Argrath are
socially influential and have been involved in unusual experiences on the
Other Side, which should certainly make them unique and powerful
characters, but I see no indication that a suitably prepared warband would
be completely unable to assassinate either of them. (It would be a
difficult task, since they have far more protections than just their
personal abilities, and of course it would wreak holy havoc with the
"official" future, but I don't think K&A are so hot in terms of raw
personal power that it is impractical to give them stats.) Harrek (along
with Jar-eel, and Androgeus, and similar "superhero"-class individuals) is
on a whole different level, and the number of individual "Harreks" in a
region should probably be kept low if only to stay in line with the
admonition that the appearance of even *three* such individuals in the
Dragon Pass area at the same time is itself an omen of the Hero Wars. Of
course, based on what Greg has been hinting about the Wars themselves, the
number of "superhero-class" beings may well only increase from
there. _Hero Wars_ is made to handle that sort of scale, so I wouldn't
want to discourage those who *do* want to play at that level from doing
so. Heck, technically even Orlanth *could* be given abilities and take
part in contests using the game system, while still utterly outclassing
even max-boosted Harreks, though I probably wouldn't bother doing such a
thing unless serious high-level futzing with the Godplane were a major
element of a specific campaign.
Hmm, talking about that gives me another thought on the original
question. Perhaps what the long-term campaigners are seeing that causes
them to want to put brakes on character power is the HW version of a common
"rules artifact" in RPGs. Characters who are actually played, and increase
their abilities by whatever advancement system is given, nearly always show
a jump in abilities that would be frightening and improbable if the same
rate were applied proportionately to the character's entire imagined future
life. It's similar to the oft-cited old Runequest problem of trying to
extrapolate the commonality of healing magic seen in-game to the entire
world, and getting a very skewed picture of reality as a result.
(I first noticed this during a recent game of WW's Mage, which *does* use a
fairly steep increasing-cost curve for advancement. We happened to be
playing kid characters, which led me to extrapolate what they'd be like as
adults if they kept up the rate of adventuresome experiences and therefore
advancement that had been seen in-game over roughly a year. It was a scary
thought. Of course, that system balances its steep advancement curve with
a coarse-grained scale in which there are usually only five ability "steps"
between "inept" and "world-class." Then again, HW isn't that much better
if you look at masteries rather than individual TN increases as the
"ability steps," as it seems most of us have been doing.)
What I mean is, I now understand Wulf Corbett's problem with the *way* his PCs are likely to advance. Even though hero points don't actually represent training per se, the regularity with which they are gained and spent implies that any character who just lives an exciting life for a long enough time will become a hero and eventually a superhero. Yes, one can disallow "related to game" increases for trivial tasks, or make sure that the hero point-earning experiences of high-powered characters increasingly involve the Other Side, but those are Narrator tricks that not everyone may think of. Wulf and Graham and others in their camp want extraordinary abilities to require extraordinary experiences, not just more of the same. I can definitely get behind that.
Before I conclude this way-too-long post, I have a question for folks
involved in high-powered games like the Gwandor Saga. I have no intrinsic
complaints about Issaries' decisions on what different mastery levels mean,
though I do think they've been inconsistent over time and I'd love to have
seen the pre-pub "rare mastery" version that David Dunham so loves. I'm
even reassured by this very debate that my original fear -- that characters
would advance too slowly to get from starting level to "heroic" level over
the course of a reasonable campaign -- is groundless and may even be the
exact opposite of the real problem. What I'm wondering now is what to do
if you're starting a game at higher-than-standard power
level? Specifically, what about those 13 and 17 abilities? Do they stay
at those values? Rise slightly to reflect the characters' increased
power? The thing I find most unbelievable about the BA leader-types is not
their highest values, but the fact that they apparently have whole keywords
at multiple-mastery levels. Yes, I know it's just a shorthand for NPCs,
but it points up the reverse of the above "near-automatic advancement in
best abilities" concept. No PC played from starting power level is *ever*
going to get every ability in a keyword up to multiple masteries; indeed, a
great many of the default cultural and occupational abilities will likely
never change from their starting values. I know HW isn't simulationist and
all, but it bugs me that a PC who eventually achieves a clan or tribal
leadership position will probably look nothing like the sample characters
given. Worse, a PC built up to such a level may not even look like a PC
created at that level. That gives me something of a mental block when I
try to imagine giving starting PCs higher abilities (to put them in the
"clan troubleshooters" role implied by the rulebook's sample of play,
rather than the "not actually as good as the average clan professional in
their occupation" that is the case with the default values). Do I raise
their default cultural abilities too, even though I can't imagine that they
would have done so had they been played from "new initiate" status? I
suppose I'm just falling prey to the same rules artifact I cited above --
expecting characters to advance at the same rate out-of-game as they do
in-game. Instead, it seems that unplayed characters (PCs before or after
game play, and all NPCs) advance faster in breadth but slower in depth than
their played brethren, judging by their abilities.
Stacy Stroud (deadstop_at_...)
hoping that made some sense
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