>The "problem" such as it is, is players putting their "discretionary" HP
>into a few abilities and letting the rest slide. Sure, it's nice to have
>all
>the "minor" abilities go up a point between adventures, but if the players
>are putting 5 points into "Munchkin Fighting Style" in the same time frame,
>you still get the wide gap between "best" and "unused" abilities (after
>all,
>they won't need to put points into those minor abilities, 'cause they're
>getting them for free! Yippee!
Hmmm. First, I think that the stacking you describe is what happens now - I think we agree that the problem that got us talking about this in the first place is the discrepancy that will occur. So I don't think that the problem can get "worse" with my version. That is, I don't think that there are players who are thinking that they like to spread their points out who would not do so because they knew that they'll be getting a keyword bump.
OTOH, a player thinking about raising up an ability mostly used to augment might consider it more if he knew that he wasn't going to have to pay for the entire elevation to the next level. That is, if I have an abilty at 17, and need to get it to 25 to get it to be a +3 augment, I'll be more inclined to spend 4 HP than 8 HP knowing that the other 4 will be made up eventually by Advanced Experience.
And, agian, I'm talking multiple years between adventures, not just one. So, between maybe 2 and 4 points of keyword raises? Maybe more (the idea is to play out the characters entire life during the course of several adventures)? I think that, at that rate that players may even see the light in raising up certain abilities from 25 to 35 to 45, etc. But that remains to be seen.
In any case, I agree with you that some abilities will never be raised, and that this is just fine. I'm just trying to present a game where doing so is an option. As usual, I think we all agree that the best way to make the "unused" or "passive" ability more attractive is to vary contests greatly, and to try and target contests to some of these abilities. If the player can't count on every contest being a fight (or any other specific type of conflict), then stacking up on combat or anything else becomes less attractive.
Now, unless a magic item is in a keyword that a player chooses to raise, advanced experience isn't going to help with magic items. There's still one more ingredient to all of this that I'd like to see, and one that I'm still struggling with. It all comes back to the GM fiat issue in terms of giving characters abilites. Essentially, the book indicates that this is an option that the GM can employ, and I like what it implies - players don't have to wait long periods of time to see advancement in certain abilities under certain circumstances. Apparently sometimes it's more appropriate for them to advance by leaps and bounds than by incremements.
So, if a character has a magic item, or charm or something, then maybe it makes sense that it would go up by 10 rather than just by 1, to get to that next level of augmenting ability. Maybe more interestingly, a character who picks up a powerful magic item might be given it at 14W rather than at 13, representing it being simple to use, and relatively powerful. Again, the rules mandate now that swords and other equipment be given out that have augmenting ability equal to as much as 5W2 *for free*. Why should a magic item have to be a sword to be able to give a +4 augment right off the bat? Why can't other magic items be given out for free that would give a +4 augment?
Well, the reason why they can't is because it doesn't balance with the "normal" rule that says that one HP gives you a new ability at 13. When is it appropriate to make the player pay 1 HP for an ability, and when is it appropriae to give out high rated abilities for free? This is the question that I haven't been able to answer.
My less satisifying answer is to just limit all new abilities to 13, give no bonus for standard equipment (instead making it just prevent improv penalities), and make players pay for all new abilites. The problem with this is that I then have thrown out the potential tool of giving larger advances. Which is what I've set out to get above. I'm going to guess that narrators don't often use the ability to give out free beneficial abilites (flaws are another matter, I let players take them for free at any reasonable level whenever they like).
I'd like to do a poll on this: Have you ever given out more than one point of advance or an ability higher than 13 for one HP? Have you ever given characters abilities (that were not flaws) for free? Heck, while we're at it have you ever given out flaws?
This is why I created the baroque currency based resolution method. I'm not actually using it, and I have no idea if it's even useable. But the idea is that it gives a risk to getting larger payoffs. I think this seems reasonable as a guidline. That is, if there's no risk to the character, then the payoff should be minimal - one HP to start a new ability at 13, or raise an ability by one (or even worse ratio if it's costly). But, as we can see from gaining keywords such as new religions, if you take that risk, you can reap larger rewards. This is what we want to see from players, anyhow, isn't it? Basically players should be rewarded for taking risks with larger potential payoffs, no?
So I've tried to apply that guideline to the normal rules. That is, my idea has been that players can create and cement, for instance, magic items at 13 just using HP. But if they take larger risks, then I can reward them with larger items. It's your basic D&D treasure system - more danger, more reward. Nothing wrong with that. Except that I can't seem to make it work in play. That is, I only remember to do this at all with magic items, not for other abilities. Because of this, I feel that it's unbalancingm- I'm rewarding players for collecting magic, and not solving the above advancement problems for other sorts of abilities. I want to be giving players larger bumps when they deserve it.
The problem, of course, is the in-game plausibility. This coming from me? Well yeah, given that we're not giving these rewards out for exchange of metagame, but for risk in-game, the rewards have to be commensurate to the risk. That is, there's a "trigger" when someone obtains a magic item that tells me to think about it being larger than just 13 (and I have done this - just gave a player a 5W item a session ago - but I'm still a tad gunshy about it). With abilities, there's rarely a moment where a player obtains, for instance, the help of a mentor in learning a new ability. Oh, sure it could happen, but so far I've not seen it in play. Basically, players don't think about these issues in making decisions. Magic items are just cool, so of course they pursue them.
Which is not to say that the moments don't occur that would be appropriate for this sort of advancement. For instance, if a player does something nice for a follower, it might be plausible to improve a relationship by a leap. Similarly, if a player did something risky with a magic item, maybe it would make sense to advance it by a leap as well. It's just that this never occurs to me in play. Given that the player isn't writing something down on their sheet, there's no trigger for this. And, again, if I forget one, then it's unfair to do a different one.
So, do people see any way to make this a game reality without going to something as extreme as the currency system that I posted? (Or is this just too far to go to solve what's not really a damaging problem?)
I'm thinking that, perhaps, every contest should give an opportunity to have an advancement like this. That is, concluding contests could be the trigger that gets me to quickly discuss with the player if they think that some ability deserves to be advanced as an outcome. Counterintuitively, perhaps, I'm leaning away from allowing players to suggest the primary abilities used - if they want to advance those, they should do so with HP per normal, and have every reason to be able to. No, in order to try to broaden characters out, I'm thinking that the abilities advanced can only be other abilities than the primary one used in the contest. So, if I fought for a lady's honor, my relationship with her might go up. Thus if I used it as an augment in the current contest, and it tends to be used for augments, then this is the perfect opportunity to advance that ability such that it gets nearer to that next augment point.
Now, all this said, the question is how much to give? It's easy to say that a character who fought for his lady's honor deserves a bump in that relationship - the question is how much? If it's an ability that's used actively as the primary ability in contests a lot, then even 2 or 3 points seems to be a lot. If it's only used to augment, then anything less than 10 points is just a fractional bump in ability. I'd like to say that reward should be proportional to risk, but then how is that judged? I'm thinking that the GM should look at the relative level of abilites between the character and the opposition, but that's kinda vague. Basically, I'm seeing seven levels: Character is very superior (mastery), superior (10-19), marginally superior (4-9), essentially equal(+3 to -3), marignally inferior(4-9), inferior (10-19), very inferior (Mastery). One point of rank per level? Just as a guideline (there could be migigating, or exacerbating factors like lead up contests).
Any merit to any of this thinking? This is about the only thing that bothers me at all when playing HQ, hence why I harp on it all the time. Any discussion would be appreciated.
Mike
Powered by hypermail