>No doubt the collected wisdom of this list (CWotL) will answer me
>immediately, but I was setting up for a new game of HW with some
>new-to-HW-but-otherwise-seasoned players and was faced with a stumper.
>
>In his description, a player wrote his character has the ability to "change
>reality" and "stop time"
>
>OK, yes, I am aware that he was d*cking with me on purpose, but how would
>the CWotL respond?
I'd disallow it just because that sort of ability leads to dull games and irked players. Not because it imbalances things (any ability can be handicapped), but because the player with the ability ends up trying to find clever ways to use it, and that monopolizes game time. In my experience.
>Re "change reality"
>I played along, allowing that perhaps he could do so, but the resistance
>roll for reality-changing would be the world-standard for anything of
>consequence and short duration, increasing severely for changing anything
>that either had been "real" for a long time, or that he wanted to stay
>"changed" for a long time.
Well, Illusion is a fair Gloranthan power, although it has definite Trickster connections. With a power like "Change Reality," however (instead of "Embarrassing Sound" or "Illusionary Birds"), there are going to be hefty improvisation penalties to do anything. Say the character wants to make a hole in a wall. That's pretty specific, and should get a -10 (-20?) or so. It doesn't seem outrageous, so I wouldn't make it difficult (HW p.172-173), so it would have a resistence of 14, assuming the wall was just stone or some similar stuff. If they want the hole to be big or last a long time, that would add to the difficulty, of course (HW p.230-232), as would the wall being magic or made of, say, iron. Even with a starting value of 5W, the character is going to be hard pressed to use the power directly with any reasonable chance of sucess. I'd treat it as an affinity for purposes of raising the score (which would be a reason to disallow it altogether -- gaining an unusual feat during character creation isn't too bad, but affinities should require worship and time to get them).
That was, of course, assuming we're talking about a Theist. An animist with an integrated "Change Reality" spirit will probably be able to use it only once per adventure. Sorcery can't produce broad effects, and the whole idea is contrary to Mysticism, so it wouldn't work there, either.
>re "stop time"
>OK, again assuming one would accept this, what would be the result in GAME
>terms? You're having a fight with Old Perk the Troll, and you succcefully
>stop time. What happens game-mechanically? Do you get an augment like
>anything else? That seems pretty wimpy result for otherwise mondo cool
>ability.
Time, it seems to me, is the province of Aracne Solera. Screwing with time seems like a bad idea. It touches on the Great Compromise. Imagine -- really high penalties to use, and if you role successfully, you get "Come to the Attention of Extremely Unfriendly Gods Who Are Still Pissed about That Red Goddess Thing" at 12....
Anyway, the point is not to deny these abilities in a sort of player vs GM sort of struggle, but to urge the player to choose something that will be more game-friendly. That's my opinion, anyway.
Peter Larsen
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