I love this sort of stuff, must be something quirky in my childhood.
As a GM anything of this kind helps (as long as it is right).
One of the things I have sort of settled on in HW is that opponents of my players need only have a + or - value in their skills, rather than an absolute value. By this I mean the + or -# is applied to the players skill levels to work out the opponents skill level. By using relative scores most of my adventures do not rely on how good my players are. Specific major encounters can be singled out for customising but in general this applies to every thing.
A weak encounter is -5, an average encounter is 0, a strong encounter is +5 etc, based around some player selected skill level.
I had read somewhere that a mastery was equal to about 5:1 odds, and had used that as a guide, I have 6 players so the major encounter (single monster) is usually 1 mastery above them.
With your info as background I can adjust my encounters better, which is why I like such things... not because I am freaky about maths but because as a GM you really need to understand the mechanics of the game to avoid those embarrassing... opps, you all died horribly... moments.
Cant wait for the new rules to come out!! :-)
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