In the years since HQ came out, and the time during playtesting the
HQ rules, we reached some conclusions.
- Keep extended contests reserved for those nice big battles,
usually at the end of chapters. For 95% of contests, simple was good
enough. There was another reason for this, and it nods back to any
power-gamer who maxes out on his augments. They also usually buy
themselves a handful of retainers who will give them a large amount
of additional AP's. First round they bid the whole amount, and
because of their huge adjusted ability rating, they usually
prevailed. The enemy was defeated, and the extended contest over in
a single round before any other player got a turn.
- We still had players who would prefer the round by round combat,
so in avoiding extended contests we still managed to give them what
they wanted through simple contests. Each round was wrapped up as
usual simple contests, a defeat for the enemy removed them from the
combat, a defeat for the hero took them out of combat. With multiple
participants, once one hero went down, another who had been
victorious in their contest filled the gap. Another contest began.
We did this round by round until all of one side was defeated. This
also let any defeated heroes the chance to bring themselves back
into the melee. It worked very well.
- With preparation we allowed automatic augments. If pressed for
time, or surprised, then the hero had to roll for each augment they
wanted. This was essentially because of time required in casting
spells, some other augments really didn't need a roll but we
enforced it anyway.
- He had to keep to the rules for retainers, in that they either
augmented or gave AP's. Before we had allowed both, but it ended up
in misuse.
- Ranged combat was handy because they always got their attack in
first, regardless of initiative.
- We adopted the rating of the primary ability (less all augments)
at the indicator for simple contest initiative, and as the measure
of how many AP's you got in an extended contest. We then used your
AP bid as the initiative for extended contests, but that was heavily
misused, especially with retainers lending in their own AP's.
Hmm. That's all I can think of right now.