Benedict Adamson:
> That is what I do not like about all abilities being equally costly
> to increase. The narrative in the rules tries to encourage you to
> have cool-sounding abilities, especially ambiguous references. But
> the rules actually discourage this, because abilities are not
> actually effective unless they have a big rating and they are
> applicable.
Seconded.
> From a mini-max PoV, why should a player choose 'Hate Black Oaks 5W'
> when he could choose 'Hate Enemies 5W'? The former is useless if your
> enemies change. What is more, the latter is more likely to be
> 'related to a session', so as the rules stand, on average it will be
> cheaper to increase!
Or "Vengeful", as we Pendragonheads spell that one... A possible "fix" is to give someone _positive_ sit-mods for "ultra applicable" abilities, which seems a little odd, but has a certain logic to it. Or giving them more "leeway" in how to apply narrow abilities than broader ones, as I've seen suggested in various forms. Without introducing new mechanics wholesale, I have to say though such things are hard to handle in anything like as satisfactory (not to say dramatic) a manner as does the previously alluded to game system, with its Passion mechanic. Taking a narrow ability and then using it as an augmentation is doubly "inefficient" in HW, and extremely unimpressive in effect.
> The rules suggestion I made (which nobody seemed to like) allowed
> abilities of any degree of breadth or narrowness.
FWIW, I liked it, and I think at least mooted something vaguely similar a _loooooong_ time ago. But I felt it was doomed to die a death, since a) Issaries won't like it, since it differs from what they propose; and b) the broad-ability haters will hate it even more, since it's "even more overwhelmingly complex" than the Issaries proposal, represents an unacceptable change to The Game Mechanics(TM) (never mind that it's simply a tiny change to the development cost table), or some such.
If one wanted to make Close Combat "balanced" compared to say "Fyrd Combat", at the risk of of giving succour to the ideas detractors, I would judge that CC, even in its broadest possible interpretation would be "over-priced" at 3HP per; depending on how broad you think a "narrow" combat ability _should_ be, I'd say 1.5-2 HP would be nearer the mark. But since for me, the main purpose of the "broad" category would be to "sufficienty incentivise" the sufficiently narrow, I'm not, myself, greatly exercised on this point...
Thom Baguley:
> > From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
> >
> >No more abitrarily than one has to assess what's "too broad" at
> >present, for purposes of disallowing abilities, or assessing
> >penalties, which is the current "solution".
>
> In my opinion those problems don't disappear by dividing into broad and
> narrow abilities. You still have to decide what penalty to apply to
> "Smart", "Hunted with uncle" and so on.
I wouldn't disagree with that. What are are doing, though, is "splitting off" some of that "problem", by deciding what to do about it at _character creation time_ (or new ability getting time), rather than having to juggle sit-mods at every single application of something you've identified as "problematicly broad". (Or "reasonably abusive", as it were.)
Incidentally: give or take a constant term, using multiplier penalties, (such as "that's so broad (or so inapplicable) you're getting half your skill, tops") is essentially the same in effect as making the increase cost of an ability a multiple (whereas additive penalties (or bonuses) are not). The big difference is, if I'm going to have to much around with multipliers, I'd rather do it in the "bookkeeping step" at the end of the game (or more likely in my experience, the "aftermath" phase at the beginning of the next). It's still a little clumsy, I concede, especially if the multipliers are awkward ones, but if you don't mind the "breadth categories" being a little "lumpy", then there's no great need for awkward factors.
Cheers,
Alex.
Powered by hypermail