Animists vs others, gameplay in general...

From: flynnkd2 <flynnkd_at_...>
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 22:09:07 -0000


The current topic about animists and fetishes and how tough they are seems to some extent to be limited to 'one' animist vs others. Yes
'one' animist is tough but there are ways to bring them down. But
what if there are 'two' of them? Or what if there is a group of them, or even a group of players of mixed backgrounds.

In my group of players (which is where I draw all my opinions from, so take that with a grain of salt) there is a mix of thiests and animist and one sorceror (a flintnail dwarf). So what tends to happen is the theists soak up the riffraff and the animist holds back till things look tough, then charges in to win the day. Even with only one animist (and there are often 2), because of the number of fetishes he has, it is not difficult to unleash a few and win, keeping spares for any other unforeseens that pop up.

So all the talk, which seems to have been centred around defeating an animist, isnt really relevant to a group with an animist. We should be trying to look at the biggr picture (and maybe some of you were but it didnt sound like it to me).

So the answer can be expanded to a group can be defeated by another group. SO if one of your players is an animist and super tough, oppose him with another animist, or two, or three... But this is becoming excalation, and animist handle that fine, but theists dont. If you throw in one animist to make life hard for a player animist, once you win you are almost untouchable by the theists... you are so ramped up that they will have to run away and come back to fight you... (and note that I am mainly talking about combat here, the theists may well be able to defeat you by using other means/skills not relating to combat to avoid your strengths). However...

In my game melees are over VERY quickly. Once they have found out AP levels (one exchange) and an idea of skill levels, then it is usually
'determined' or 'reckless' all the way. There is no pussyfooting
around. And this to me is entirely realistic, nobody wants to be in a deadly fight longer then they need to be. Certainly my players are totally ruthless and efficient at defeating opponents.

As a GM I was initially lulled into fights with the idealistic descriptions in the HW rule book about extended combats being... extended. Well they arent, they are bloody and quick, as I expect is the reality (not confusing reality with cinemareality). SO while I as GM was making initial bids of 1 AP to find out AP levels, and then fencing with opponents in a cinematic way, my players simply cut me down. The harder I tried to play it in the style of the book the quicker my players ignored what I was doing and got on with the job (like characters out of David Gemmell books do, kill or be killed).

Getting back to animist, lets say you bring in an animist NPC and defeat the player animist. If that animist was one of my players he would simply turn around one action later and strike as many opponents as he could reach... ie do a multiple target strike and bid 100% AP. If he has been able to unleash 3x20pt spirits he is probably 2 masteries up on the theists (assuming they might be one mastery up on him normally), so he has 40 pts to play with. He could easily attack 6 people at once and still be a mastery up. NOw this is a simplified view, and plenty of things cant prevent it, but it isnt out of hand.

And what do all the theists do while the animist are nuking each other? They cant afford to make an attack because they will certainly lose and are simply acting as AP batteries for the animist. They could all circle around making 1AP bids to cause multiple attacker penalties, but the opposing animist has capacity to soak this up (and will have followers also surely).

Anyway I could go on, but I think I have made a few points that concern me most, which is about finding balance. My problems may be from the way my players like to play, and a different group of players might be more co-operative with their GM. But that is not a valid answer to my concerns, HQ as a generic rule systems should be capable of handling most methods of play. And this is not to say that I am not adjusting and finding answers of my own, cause I am, but newer people to the game may not be...

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