True, but HQ2 gives you guidance on how to do it both through rules and practical advice in the text. Also, the purpose of my post wasn't to promote HQ2 so much as to address the relative ease of pre-statting versus ad-libbing.
>>Example:
>>One of my PCs decided to infiltrate Yolanella's court with the
>>intention of gaining influence over her. The PC attended a banquet and
>>used his Seduction ability to make an impression on her." (A true, if
>>distasteful episode from my game)
>
> I'm curious as to why this was distasteful, but that's neither here nor
> there.
It was a "May - December" romance between morally challenged characters. Even calling it a romance is a stretch since "May" was only in it for the power and "December" for physical gratification - at least at first. The twist came when Yolanella actually fell in love with "May" and had to kill him to fulfill a geis.
>>What was the purpose of Yolanella in
>>this scene? She has power (Satrap of Spol) and the player wanted to
>>use that power for his own purposes. How hard should this be to do?
>>I set the difficulty based on what I thought my players would enjoy.
>
> And the argument here is that you could always use the HQ2 rules to
> adjust the written stats to that difficulty.
If I am going to basically ignore the stats as written and adjust them according to the needs of the scene, then why go to the trouble of inventing the stats in the first place? How does it help?
Further, although published stats were not part of the issue I was discussing, I think that stopping the flow of the game to look up stats in a book and then figuring out how to modify them to fit the circumstances has to be harder than trusting my instincts and making the number up based on some easy to remember guidelines.
> I happen to agree with you because I see HQ2 (from what I understand) as
> requiring no "statting at the table", because you don't actually stat.
> You just assign difficulty. (Hard = Base +9)
> This, to *me*, is easier than going "Hmm.... she's Mistress of
> Manipulation 10W, so probably knows something about manipulation, so
> I'll knock 5 off that for improvising."
>
> But that's *me*. (And some others here).
True - I don't want to give the impression that I believe there is One True Way to play. I am just trying to understand how it can possibly be harder to use the HQ2 method of assigning resistances based on the situation at hand rather than trying to stat for every likely encounter in advance. It seems to me that there would be a lot of wasted effort involved in that strategy.
-Kevin McD
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