Nikk Effingham:
> When the fight
> begins, the minions rush forwards and battle the PC's. This would
> be a stock scene applicable to many different adventures. The idea
> is that the minions are not a major threat, why should they be, but
> might hinder, hamper or injure the PC's.
Indeed, but later you seem to question the entire rationale for this. I'm note sure how HW is any crucially different from other systems, if you like this 'convention'; if you don't, why bother with it?
> If you met a Zorak Zorani
> Priest with his horde of fourty trollkin (let us say split down into
> eight bands of five trollkin at 16 skill and 80 AP's) [...]
> Even if the trollkin do bet
> ridiculously high, this takes some of the fun out of the game as few
> Heroes would survive a 75 AP bet from a trollkin band which then
> spawns it's dice roll - kinda ruins it for you (and what exactly would
> a 75 AP bet indicate in game play terms!).
Mass suicidal charge, one presumes. Though unless your heroes are such überstuds that 16/80 mobs are small beer, that's an odd way to resolve it. A hero at about 10W, say, is going to be in a bit of strife against this group, especially if you resolve the attacks individually, taking multiple attacker mods into consideration.
> "Aha!" I hear you cry already, "They can attack and when they win
> just exchange 7 AP's for a Hurt level." This works. But it is far from
> realistic, and I mean realistic in the level of common sense.
Note that the 'wounds' being inflicted aren't necessarily selfconscious attempts to inflict direct physical injury. They're just a game-mechanic for any partly-disabling combat outcome. Granted the attacker has to _choose_ which outcome to select, which is a bit of a hack, and as the Immersivists would say, a heinous affront to suspension of disbelief. (Though there are also variations like Grevious wounding, and sub-variants on that, even, which avoid that.)
> Why
> would any man just attack someone knowing that they weren't
> going to defeat them just injure them so that when they were later
> killed, it'd be easier for their boss to do away with the person being
> attacked.
Overconfidence in some cases, being more afraid of your 'friends' than your enemies in others. (c.f. Trollkin.) Or being eager to die for some religious reason. As David C. notes, this is a genre question rather than one of mechanics. Why, what's their motivation in the 'stock scenes' you mentioned at the beginning?
> I do have what myself and a friend came up with as an answer. If
> you limit the maximum number of AP's a character can have,
> discounting followers, support etc..., to double the skill they are
> using, then this doesn't wholly eliminate the problem, but does
> mean that minions and henchmen are seen as more than a source
> of AP's for the Heroes to get.
I don't see how this is a solution to the problem you articulate, if it's a matter of motivation and genre, rather than mechanic. Note you have to be _much_ better (or very lucky, or HP spendthrift) for transfers or HP gains to happen routinely, so I think your rule solves a non-problem. Secondly, in any case the Heroes would _not_ retain the APs between 'waves' unless it was dramatically appropriate for them to do so, in the context of the story. ("Quick, rush 'em! Before we lose our temporary tactical disadvantage!")
Cheers,
Alex.
Powered by hypermail