Presuming that the character is Heortling, after explaining the whole
secret murder thing, if he still wants to go about the same action, how
easy do you want an clean kill to be in this situation in your game?
- If these thugs are there to be killed in your story, make it an
automatic success (probably in the story of how this character brings Chaos
into his life and environs).
- If you want him to be able to make a clean kill if he rolls well enough
and if this contest is not worth a multiple-roll extended contest in your
narrative, allow him to augment his archery ability with the other relevant
abilities (hiding, etc.) and make the attack an ability test (a
straightforward task with no opposition). The higher the augmented result,
the better the chance for a critical success/complete victory. You can use
automatic augmentation to avoid making this a roll-fest.
- If you want the contest to cover more of the story, make it an extended
contest. Unless he has a clear advantage over the thugs in more than one
skill, this route may require more than one HP to arrive at the clean kill
situation. If the thugs don't know that the attack is coming because of
earlier successes with stealth abilities, the surprise factor can drop the
final dodge/resistance to default (6). This could also be done with
multiple simple contests.
- Since he's already trying secret murder, let him compound his error by
looking at the situation as a low-probability chance for a clean kill and
informing him that a virulent poison (say 10w2) would dramatically boost
his chances for a clean kill. (Using the not-yet-official bump down rule
for unused masteries makes this even worse). You can allow even a scratch
(minor victory) to initiate a contest between the poison and whatever
resistance the thugs have.
- If the character has been dwelling on his humiliation and revenge
fantasies, you could let him have an extra "situational" augmentation
bonus, actually a gift from a Chaos spirit/whatever that has been drawn to
the wonderful possibilities in this individual.
Whatever route you choose, you will set a precedent for your game and
probably an expectation in the players that similar actions will produce
similar results in the future. I think that this setting of expectations is
one of the biggest challenges in running HW, so you may want to explain the
importance-to-story reasoning (or whatever justification you prefer) to the
players at some point.
Thanks,
Andy
At 11:32 AM 9/12/2002 +0100, MCGINNESS, Stephen wrote:
>I had a bad experience in a recent game I ran.
>
>One of my characters wanted to kill one of a group of lowlives that had
>beaten him up earlier (he's a merchant - little close combat - good
>hiding/movement/archery though). They had been hired to warn him off a girl
>but the leader of the group had convinced the rest of them that a beating
>was called for.
>
>He went out stalking them and wanted to pick off the leader from a distance.
>Now this isn't the kind of behaviour I wanted to encourage, so rather than
>simply handwaving the assassination as something he _should_ be able to
>accomplish, I looked for a simple contest.
>
>The problem is that a clean kill is difficult to get. He would have had to
>spend a hero point to accomplish this which made it unsatisfying indeed.
>
>If the archers skill is 1W and the ruffians have dodge 14 how would others
>go about this.