> the opposition is what matters
> it matters what the scene of the contest is all about
> if superman is the hero of our game, he is only challenged by a
force that
> is stronger or of equal strength to him
> so even if we gave superman "superhuman strength"17, that still
means that
> only heroes with "superhuman strength"17 or higher will be able to
challenge
> him in a dramatic way.
Yes, but if, and only if, there are people with 'normal human strength' and people with 'superhuman strength', and nothing in between. In reality, in most superhero games there will be heroes the strength of Superman/the Incredible Hulk, heroes with the strength of Spiderman, heroes with the strength of Batman, and so on.
Is it really the simplest solution to have different terms for all these? If so, how do we remember whether 'Extraordinary Strength' is better than 'Incredible Strength', and how those relate to 'Superhuman Strength'? Isn't it simpler just to have the one scale, and ensure that Superman has a greater than 3W advantage over a normal human (such that he automatically gets a Complete Success without even rolling)?
Isn't this exactly why we have a mastery scale in the first place?
> superman will defeat any normal human anyway, we dont need to start a
> contest about that !
But we *do* need to worry about Superman having a contest with a lesser superhero, such as Spiderman. Sure, I can say that my hero with Extraordinary Strength 10W will always beat a normal human with Regular Strength 18W, with no roll needed. But what about when he comes up against the supervillain with Superhuman Strength 17? We know 'superhuman strength' is better than 'extraordinary strength'... but by how much? And what about the guy with Regular Strength 15W3, is Extraordinary Strength 10W enough to automatically beat that?
You're talking as if Superman-level strength and human-level strength are the only options, but in most superhero games there will be a huge range in between, much of which will overlap. If a game is based on, say, Japanese Monster Movies where you have Godzilla and Rodin and so forth on the one hand, and regular humans on the other, yes, your system works. We know that only Godzilla (or something similar) can beat the Giant Monster of the Week, so it doesn't really matter how strong he is compared with the human heroes. But most superhero games aren't like that - there will be many people somewhere in between Superman and Lois Lane in strength (or whatever), and we need a system that copes with them.
And HeroQuest is, IMO, one of the few systems that does a good job of describing that.
-- Trotsky Gamer and Skeptic ------------------------------------------------------ Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
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