Indeed - I am definitely idealising things.
>
>It's in one place implied that a mastery's difference is supposed
>to correspond to 'odd' of 4 or 5 to 1, for example, if I'm recalling
>correctly...
Any idea where?
>
>
>> 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.
>
>You mean that, these may not be the actual odds of such a (simple)
>contest, but that conceptually they ought to be, is that the gist of
>what you're saying here?
The truth is that I didn't want to spend the time, and doubted I had the
statistical skills, to do the actual calculation, especially within the
structure of an extended contest. I'm content to be challenged on the
precise ratios of changes in ability to frequency of wins - the
important idea is that its not about how many you can take on at once,
but how likely you are to win a single contest.
>
>
>> 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.
>
>I think actual conversion between two different numeric ratings might
>be over-egging things. I'm not really unhappy with the idea of a
>person being able to outrun a horse (in theory true, actually, over
>sufficiently long distances...), though going by the Anaxial's
>numbers, there's certainly issues with this happening at a narratively
>appropriate-seeming point of the ability scale.
Simulating a heroic environment, where maximum game fun rules means you are quite right. It's just as a GM I like some grasp of what the rule system might mean for when things aren't working right.
>But that aside,
>sit-mods hide a multitude of sins...
You too? Good, I'm sure its the way its meant to be.
>
>
>> (If you like this sort of nonsense, then I could follow up with related
>> stuff on how to run a Many-onto-one combat)
>
>I would indeed.
Then see "Many-to-one combats".
-- Kevin Blackburn Kevin_at_...
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