HeroWars appears to have two types of abilities or ratings, and the confusion between them causes some difficulties.
The first type is a “quantity” rating. Some base quantity is set to a value of 12. Each doubling of the underlying quantity is worth a +5 to the rating, in a logarithmic manner – thus multiplying the quantity by eight is only a +15, not, for instance +20 for a linear relationship between multiplier and bonus. This is reasonably explicit in the rules. A classic example of a “quantity” rating is Wealth.
The second type is a “contest” rating. Again, there is a base rating of 12. However, the +5 comes if a given contestant is twice as likely to win over someone with a base rating. That is, if you arranged a sequence of one-on-one contests, the 17 rating would win twice as many as their 12 rating opponents. A rating of 2W would win four times as many, and so forth. There is an assumption that a 2W rating would win twice as often over a 17 rating – which is an assumption about the rating scale rather than a property of probability. In particular, it is clear that this sort of contest rating is not intended to be such that someone with a 17 rating could take on two contestants with a rating of 12 simultaneously as an even fight – in many contests (combat in particular) the two can gain all sorts of leverage over the one. The classic hero wars “contest” rating is Close Combat.
The “contest” style of rating loosely fits the HeroWars contest
mechanics of a one-on-one rating rather well, with the probabilities
associated with the dice rolls seeming roughly to have the right effects
(there is a variety of complications caused by the result of a contest
being on a scale of complete victory to complete loss of 9 steps, if you
count a draw). Indeed, considering the probabilities associated with a
contest is the most obvious way to derive the existence of “contest”
ratings.
Carrying out a contest with either or both of the ratings being quantity ratings begs the question of whether this is a fair model. A good example is matching the “run fast” contest rating against a “Speed” quantity rating. “Run fast” developed as a character trait, built on with a 1HP per +1 mechanism is best seen as a “will I win in a foot race with other people”. A rating of 17 is probably not intended to mean “I run roughly twice as fast as a normal person”.
A normal person can perhaps run at 8 miles per hour over a distance,
though a four minute mile is going at a rate of 15 mph. Thus if “Run
Fast” was a quantity rating, a top modern athlete would be at a rating
of around 17 compared with a base human 12 (presumably all humans other
than perhaps role-players have some basic ability to run). A riding
horse's trot is some 12-14 mph, and its gallop maybe 34 mph (a 2W over a
distance on a quantity scale, unachievable by real world humans). Looked
at another way, a top athlete might be one in a thousand adults (some
2^10 adults) who are in principle capable of running a mile, so at 12 +
(10 * +5) = 2W3.
A major point of the HeroWars system is to avoid anyone having to worry about detailed arithmetic. Perhaps the appropriate advice to a games master is to let players know whether their abilities are “contest” or “quantity” ratings, and to be aware there treasured multiple masteries will suddenly collapse into a more meagre rating if the contest is suddenly against a quantity. The game master might also want to have some idea of the translation for any ratings that seem crucial. This translation should take into account any magical nature of the game world – perhaps you want a good Orlanthi to be able to outrun a horse.
(If you like this sort of nonsense, then I could follow up with related
stuff on how to run a Many-onto-one combat)
-- Kevin Blackburn Kevin_at_...
Powered by hypermail