> I roll against 14 for magic. Say a guy wants to climb a tree, then
> he can roll that against his climb skill. If he wants to climb
> something like a cliff then the resistance is 14 to 17 or even
> higher depending on how high/ difficult it is. But the key here
> that, to get a resistance it really does need to be challenging,
> with a real risk of failure for someone who is good at what they do,
> which in my HQ is about 17 (which is actually crap in everyone elses
> game it would seem).
There is the point that some GMs (not me, but certainly others I've gamed with) *want* the characters to start out relatively weak, and similar to a beginning RQ-character. I guess they would need some way to reflect that - although, lowering the starting skills to 13 or less would be one way of doing that, I guess. Of course, if none of us have that problem (and I don't), that may be moot...
> When someone gets actively opposed by something then they roll vs
> whatever the other party is resisting with. Thus being 10W to 20W in
> using a weapon is being really, really good, and having Heropoints
> really pushes the envelope of what a character can achieve.
I'd agree with this, myself, although I'm not sure its the stated intent of the rules as they currently are, going by the examples in the text.
> Therefore, in my game Harrek and Kallyr are way above the norm,
> where as most of you it seems may well view them as curiously
> underpowered.
I doubt anyone thinks that Harrek is underpowered - we haven't seen official stats, but they're apparently in the w5 range, which is pretty damn high compared with even Philippe's PCs (assuming Harrek gets to augment as much as they do, which he should).
> I think OiD says that Kallyr is as powerful as a minor
> god. I would say not given the extreme stat inflation caused by the
> aforementioned view on character ratings given in the Hero's Book
> page 9, and the insistance that characters must always be resisted
> by the default 14 unless they are attempting to hold a cup or walk
> down the street. Whatever happened to the 'what no self respecting
> hero would fail at.'
I suspect that people may have very different interpretations of what 'self-respecting hero' actually means. Do we assume, for example, that a character of starting-RQ ability is a 'self-respecting hero'? We might well, if we take the word 'hero' to simply mean 'protagonist', rather than 'somebody who shapes the world' or some similar definition. This is something that I think people can reasonably differ on, even with the exact same rule set.
> Hence when I say 'Low Level Heroic feel' I mean that my players are
> made to feel as if their characters are serious characters in their
> communities, instead of the useless whelps with paltry skills at 17
> and [gasp] 13!!!!
But others may mean something quite different - even a great hero has to start somewhere, after all. And, ideally, the game should cater for them, too.
Philippe:
> - how do you deal with character evolution? By giving some HP each
> session,
> you'll rapidly have them at a (for you) stratospheric level. Say, a few
> abilities at 15w-1w2.
That depends what you mean by 'rapidly'. It would take my group 50+ sessions and several years of real time, at current rates of progress. That doesn't sound very rapid to me!
> - how do you deal with augments? Give me a standard character and I
> can whip a
> 20w TN easily. If I understand you correctly, you consider such a TN
> to be very
> high.
The simplest way, I guess, is to look at what sort of augments your PCs typically get, and just apply that. You said, I think, that your PCs could typically raise their stats by 50% using augments. Use that as your benchmark - every NPC of significance actually rolls against a TN 50% higher than his raw stat in the ability. Kallyr has 10w2? OK, she has a TN of 15w3. Harrek is 10w5? He has a TN of 5w8. And so on.
> - how do you deal with other normal NPCs? If your Hero with his
> 'Strong 13' goad
> a weaponthane into a armwrestling contest? Do you give the weaponthane
> a Strong
> 6, or a 14 or use is weaponthane Keyword (at -10, say) ?
Unless he's known to be a particularly strong weaponthane (in which case our hero knows what he's getting into) then, in my game, since Strong isn't part of the warrior keyword, he has Strong 6. He may augment that with his Endurance (which *is* in the keyword), or something, but chances are that's only a +2. So our hero is better than him, as he should be.
> In either case, the
> end result is that the Hero as a 50/50 probability of losing.
Not with a 13 versus an 8, he doesn't. And that's assuming he has no useful augments of his own, and doesn't want to spend hero points (which, admittedly, for something this trivial, he probably wouldn't).
Rob, again:
> I like Mike Holmes idea of not having armour and weapon bonuses
> (unless they are magical, and then they only get the magic bonus).
> Instead, give a situational modifier. Thus, a hoplite v's the
> orlanthi clansman, the hoplite gets +3. If that Orlanthi only has a
> dagger and no armour, then the hoplite gets +15 or +20. Its
> intuitive and again player and GM are describing the action, and
> considering the implications thereof, rather than blandly listing
> their respective equipment bonuses.
The problem with that, it seems to me, is that while it makes sense, it isn't what the rules say. Most people probably are going to use the rules as written, assuming that they've been written that way for a reason. It may be a good house rule, but it *is* a house rule.
-- Trotsky Gamer and Skeptic ------------------------------------------------------ Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
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