Narrow abilities are not necessarily a bad idea - witness the inclusion of the closely related idea of Narrow Traits in one Over The Edge, 2nd edition, in which game one Robin Laws has a credit. In there narrow Traits are described as those that are '..important to characterization but are of marginal use in the dangerous world of Al Amarja' - which I think gives me a hint as to what I think the problem with them is, which is that Hero Wars for various reasons its very hard to tell what should be 'narrow' in any given game.
HW at least in theory, to cover a very wide range of genres and very wide spectrum of campaign styles, and OTE in contrast concentrates on one (an indescribably strange genre, but a single (and singular) one). It also allows characters, to some extent, to define how useful abilities are by the level of inventiveness they can come up with for improv, etc. Characters are able to make useless abilities useless.
As a result, its next to impossible to really say how 'useful' a particular ability will be. OK, Tough or Alert is more useful than Cite Legal Precedent in most games. But its more difficult to work out whether, for example, Cite Legal Precedent will be effectively any different at than Law.
Its even possible to construct campaigns in which 'Hate Enemies' is LESS useful than 'Hate Black Oaks clan' - it requires some effort, but in games of subtle intrigue, in which some Black Oaks members are not officially enemies but will attempt to seduce and cajole your players, it might even be slightly more useful (after all, in a game in which you are always fighting them physically, its mostly useful for inefficient augments). OK, its a big stretch, but I think it demonstrates that defining narrowness in terms of usefulness (the only terms I think it really should be defined it - changing cost of abilities is something you do for game balance).
Rather than defining the broadness or narrowness of
particular abilities, perhaps we should have a rule that even if two
abilities are obviously both applicable to a particular contest, if
one is much more specifically applicable it should get a bonus (or
the other an improv mod, if that is deemed game-mechanically purer).
And similarly apply positive sit-mods when its a particularly
applicable ability in general. This does bear a significant
resemblance to Alex's
At 9:44 PM +0100 21/6/01, Alex Ferguson wrote:
>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.
I like the idea of taking into account broadness/narrowness in some way, but not in a rigid way, that has to be decided for a particular ability at campaign start and pretty much stuck with from then on. It can always change. It would be nice to give at least some reward for choosing a narrow ability.
Cheers David
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