Re: Re: Broad categories, Hunting

From: Kevin Blackburn <kevin_at_...>
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 09:55:04 +0100

In article <3B2A07D1.95D71C9B_at_...>, Benedict Adamson <badamson_at_...> writes
>EXAMPLE 1: Hunting 1Wx3 would indicate a Hunting ability with a
>rating of 1W that costs 3HP to raise +1. As it has a breadth rating
>of 3, it is meant cover about three normal (breadth 1) abilities, for
>example, stalking, tracking and hiding.
>
>EXAMPLE 2: Dragon Slaying Sword 10W2x1/5 would indicate an item with
>an ability rating of 10W2 that can be raised by +5 per HP spent. As
>it has a breadth rating of 1/5, it is meant to be useful in only
>about 20% of situations that a sword might be useful in.

Not sure about the overall idea, but if I was going down this path I'd give a bonus for a broad ability - so a cost of 3 might indicate it covered five or six normal breadth abilities, as well as those exotics no one would ever think to write down (Blow Hunting Horn?). After all, if there's no reason to take the broad ability from a mini-max point of view, and it certainly won't help from the Maximum Game Fun point of view, why introduce the concept of broad abilities? There's also the implicit reinforcement between the skills - e.g., if you know how to hide, you're probably quite good as spotting those hiding (i.e. stalk).

Likewise I'd probably put a penalty on overly narrow skills - in your example perhaps a +3. This is because the player will have chosen that focus because they felt it important (and probably thus likely to use heavily), so your abstract judgement of usefulness won't fit the players.

-- 
Kevin Blackburn                         Kevin_at_...