I don't think your conclusion here is correct. I'm no statistician but you do seem to presuppose that players will focus their HP spending on a narrow group of specific skills. Maybe your players are the sort to try to keep ahead of the base resistance; I seem to remember that Robin has thought of that and has suggested that in this case the base resistance can increase more. Whatever the book says about it I think that such an arms race would be against the spirit of narrative gaming.
If you do get into that situation I'd suggest it's because the contests you are getting into allow the same old skills to be used again and again. If you vary attention between a wide variety of abilities then the desire to increase just a few will become more obvious and also be less attractive.
Cheers
M
From: HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com
[mailto:HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Ashley Munday
Sent: 07 March 2009 20:25
To: HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Re: Relative resistances and narrow/broad
abilities
That'll depend on your players and probably will vary across a given gaming group. Seeing as the rules recommend 3 hero points a session then the players can probably keep their heroes ahead of the base resistance and pull away fairly easily (3 hero points is +1 to an umbrella keyword and another ability a session).
Cheers,
Ash
PS: Just gawping back at my player's character sheets they increased their highest abilities at +1/session until they were about a mastery over the base resistance then it slowed down a lot. I'm not sure about the slowing down though as it's only recently happened in the last couple of sessions
> From: ttrotsky2 <TTrotsky_at_blueyonder <mailto:TTrotsky%40blueyonder.co.uk>
.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: Relative resistances and narrow/broad
abilities
> To: HeroQuest-rules_at_ <mailto:HeroQuest-rules%40yahoogroups.com>
yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, 7 March, 2009, 8:14 PM
> Ashley Munday:
> >
> >
> > I thought the rules say start the base resistance at
> whatever the
> > highest ability an adventurer can reach - 14? Or did I
> just misread
> > something
>
> It's [highest possible ability at character generation]
> minus 13, but yes, that's the starting value for the
> beginning of a campaign. Then it increases at a suggested
> rate of +1 per 3 sessions, subject to any tweaks that may be
> necessary to account of your player's style.
>
> I'm unclear to me whether the intent is that the base
> resistance always remain more or less the same value below
> the PCs' best ability (so that challenges remain equally
> dramatic), or whether it's intended to increase at a
> slightly slower rate than the PCs improve (so that improving
> abilities makes you more likely to succeed over time).
>
> > > > Also, is this base resistance increasing
> every 3
> > > sessions a suggestion? Some core of the new
> system? Are you
> > > supposed to adjust it
> > > > depending on how fast your players are
> progressing?
> > >
> > > There are no specific guidelines for adjusting
> the rule
> > > about the increase of base resistance, but you
> are advised
> > > to do so if necessary. so it's written as a
> fairly
> > > strong suggestion, but not as if it were
> mandatory.
> > >
> > > Personally, it's just another aspect of HQ2
> that I
> > > dislike, but that's a different matter, and
> we've
> > > probably heard more than enough about my opinions
> of late...
>
> --
> Trotsky
> Gamer and Skeptic
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Trotsky's RPG website:
> http://www.ttrotsky <http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/>
.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
> Not a Dead Communist: http://jrevell. <http://jrevell.blogspot.com/>
blogspot.com/
>
>
>
>
>
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