Bryan Thexton wants to model the farmer turned warrior type:
> But....first of all, the assignment of skill levels is
> a bit of a problem. Assuming you aren't starting the
> character at the moment of the branching of the path,
> you may want to say that now the character is a
> warrior (or whatever), and then use your list or
> character description to fill in the other occupation.
> For the sake of example, say farmer. What you end up
> with is a broad suite of warrior skills at 17, and
> selected farmer's skills at 13. Granted you could
> make use your 5W or one of your two 1W skills for
> farming, but this implies that you were a master
> farmer, maybe not the intent.
Well, you could also do it the other way around, of course: take the farmer keyword at 17, and have selected warrior skills at 5W, 1W, and at 13. That seems more 'realistic' to me, at least in terms of the sort of genre convention one sees.
I think it's somewhat unfortunate that one gets the keyword at scuh a significantly higher value than the bulk of one's ability. I can lovingly craft all the unique foibles and individual talents a character has, but apart from the 'rogue' abilities at even higher level, they pale somewhat compared to the Gereric Stuff from the keyword.
Based on one of the drafts, I would rationale what I ended up doing by the following sorts of numbers: cultural keyword at 8 (10 might be better), occupation and magic at 14, other abilities at 12, and designated abilities at 18 and 16. I wonder if keyword and misc abilities should be at the same level, even...
> This issue goes beyond
> the simple newly minted hero--in general you are good
> at your occupation, excellent in a couple of chosen
> areas, and just barely beyond a beginner at anything
> else.
Right, that's the more general point: what if you 'fall between two stools', key-word-wise? This could be either for occupation, or indeed for magic -- one of my players took both the Yinkin and Kero Fin "magic packages" in those dark days when there were (draft) rules for doing so. I'm hoping no-one will enact the dread Vile Asian Kopi Rites on me if I summarise same? The gist of it is, though, that you become a little worse in your priamry keyword (-1), and significantly so in your secondary one (-3). Seemed to work OK to me, though it might start to seem silly if it leads to people having five keywords...
> The second area is tougher. A lot of it a broader
> Gloranthan issue that will hopefully be addressed in
> some of the source books. Occupational key words can
> be invented, but having some guidelines for the major
> non-adventuring occupations would sure be handy.
Indeed, I hope they'll do this. Hard for me to imagine Thunder Rebels with a Carl keyword, for example.
> Finally, on a semi-related side note, does anyone have
> suggestions on how the Issaries-related Spare Grain
> sub-cult would be implemented in Hero Wars?
> Equivalent to a hero cult that is open to
> non-Issarians perhaps?
I think it's either an Issaries sub-cult, where Issaries actually is worshipped, or it's a 'primitive' form of the cult, where Issaries himself isn't found. Though in all likelihood, the RQ3 cult structure was probably a bit of GLish Creative Fiction...
Cheers,
Alex.
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