Not if you make the player use it mostly on one skill - a +5 requires 15 HP... If you're *really* nice, you give them the free 1 HP to let them hit +6 (21 HP)
> But my real problem isn't so much with the content of the HQ as with
> the narrative flow. For years RPGs have tried desperately to avoid
> that epitome of unimaginative scenario design, the linear storyline.
> We have all this rich background, a game system so flexible and open
> the wind whistles through it, and to achieve anything important it's
> back to Roleplaying by numbers... enter room 1, fight 3 orcs, take
> treasure... enter room 2, fight gelatinous cube, take treasure... In
> some ways HQs are worse, you know in advance there's 3 orcs in room 1
> and a gelatinous cube in room 2.
No, you know that orlanth faced 3 orks in room 1, and a gelatinous cube in room 2. However, *your* hero isn't Orlanth. A lot of what he faces on *his* heroquest is going to come from his own past actions - if the 3 Orcs in Room 1 represent Orlanth's Goblin Enemies, then you'll face your own goblin enemies, but they could be almost anything - a corpse of a hobgoblin, a troupe of orcs, a whiney little snaga orc, a rumor of goblinoid activity. If the Geletinous Cube represented Orlanth's greed, you may be confronted with an unattended bag of gold, or a idol with a ruby in its forhead, or a mugger (your own greed turned against you).
No-one knows *exactly what he will face on a HQ, just that these are the things other people have seen/confronted, and how *they* handled it, and what they got out of it. Is picking up the bag of gold is the right thing to do, or should you resist temptation?
RR
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