Since I'm probably the Andreas, that is spoken of, I don't have the imprssion that somebody has answered my concerns.
That's the reason why I sent off-list my question about the animal's
target numbers to Steve and he answered, that there's an implicit "as
(species)" in the ability. I'm not very happy with this and it probably
complicates things even more. The reasons are:
First, the advantage of absolute numbers is their ability of getting
compared to each other. (At least they would give a hint, how fast the
animals are in comparison to each other, or how probable it is, that a
dog loses the track of a scout who tries to blur it)
Second, this behaves very different to the rest of the game system
(There are prices for Temples and such).
Third, if you say, a horse runs like a horse, a normal ability target
number of 12 would have been sufficient. Racing horses would have the
ability score of 17 and so on.
Fourth, the running issue is quite clear in itself. Probably it's no
problem, to say: Okay, you want to run as fast as the horse? Improvise
with -40. But when comparing combat strength, things get worse, since
these
numbers should be absolute. In fact, I was worried at first with the
combat values of bear and troll. Then I thought, okay, no problem, they
will enhance with strength. When I saw their strength-target number, my
worries were there again. At best, they will enhance +3, and that's not
enough in my opinion.
I'm not quite sure if this has any influence to the magical or not discussion. But my feeling is also, that there's a set of mundane abilities (skills in RQ), that can be enhanced by magic. Jumping over trees should be impossible => resistance 10w3 (In HW p. 119 Leap to the top of a tree has a resistance of 10w3). If anybody has the ability Jumping over trees, then it is probably a magical feat in game terms, that's only useful for that. If you try to jump over anything else, it shouldn't work (Or it could easily replace the mundane ability). For some time, I imagined, that the feat run like a horse could enhance the ability run fast by +ws (Masteries) instead of +1s (But for anything else, it wouldn't work). Then high resistances (of 10w3) could be countered. But I don't know if this would lead to a major breakdown of the system.
OTOH the advantage of the "as (species)" approach is, that it's possible to contest this (relatively low) target number with a "run fast as a horse"-feat target number of 17.
If somebody please will show me a way out of this mess! Does it make sense to treat the target numbers of combat abilities as absolute numbers and the TNs of non-combat abilities as relative numbers?
Cheers,
Andreas
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