Sure. No problem with that. But a narrator has a choice in designing the session: balance the session for the characters, or balance it for the characters with their HPs.
> ...
> > Since my game tends to relatively short sessions every week, and I'm trying to move from a game started at the "low" values, I did run into a situation where my PCs had many more HP than was good for the story.
>
> I don't understand what you mean by 'many more HP than was good for
> the story'.
There's tension and suspense for my players when they know that they have a low number of hero points available to get themselves out of trouble. That's what I mean by "more than was good for the story."
HPs means the following:
> * The possibility of increasing abilities and thus moving away from
> 'low' values, which you explicitly mention as an objective.
Sure. The problem was the tight nature of the timeline over a couple of months of the game (8 sessions or so) where I awarded HP but had only a few chances to say "OK, now you can spend HP on increases." In other words, 8 game sessions resulted in only about 10 days of game time passing.
> * The possibility of influencing the course of the story in ways that the players want, which is good for the story.
>
> So what is the problem?
The high number of points each character had seemed to mean they meant less to the players. Inflation, if you will. As a result, I perceived that they were spending points on relatively unimportant things. Because they always had some left for when it was really important.
>
> Or, are you deliberately giving large HP awards, to try and pump up
> player abilities, but instead of spending them, the players are
> hoarding them? I can see how that could be a problem. Perhaps
> directing the expenditure of the extra HPs would be a solution.
Not so much hoarding as stuck by the skill increase rules. It's not cost effective to raise a skill more than 2 points per "experience" session. Especially if you're trying to raise affinities and Grimoires.
[snip a bunch I agree with]>
> > Luckily, their "wyter" ability got them into a couple situations where they spent 10-12 HP EACH in the course of a melee
> ...
>
> Gloating about how YOU forced them into a situation where they had no choice but to spend vast numbers of HPs suggests that your approach
> is wrong.
My. Not sure I'd characterize my comment as "gloating." And in any case, it was 100% player decisions that led them into a fight WAY over their heads. Plus bad planning to boot.
>
> HW is about creating a shared story, not some kind of confrontation
> between the players and the Narrator, in which each tries to gain
> 'advantage' over the others while strictly following da roolz.
I agree. And I think my players would agree that that's what we do.
>
> So your players want to keep a large pool of HPs. Why not LET them?
To reitierate: I'm not sure they "want" to keep a large pool. It just sort of happened. Though of course given a choice between their character and their character +22 HP, they'll pick the latter.
As to "why not let them" I think I answered that above.
Mike
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