No one has written anything about spending HP *during* the game (unless I missed it). If the hurdles (physical or not) are challenging then the players will, most likely IMO, be spending a number of HP on changing the outcome of rolls too.
An interesting note: if spending (enough) HPs in-game on a skill *is a sign* that the character has been challenged, you have the choice, as narrator, of how many HPs to reward with at the end... (for "reward with", you could read "apply skill experience" or somesuch)
It's doubtful that you'd give enough HPs to improve very many skills (at the end of the session), certainly not enough to cover all those skills in which the character was challenged enough to spend HPs. Maybe I'm way off here, but I go through phases of spending a good deal of HPs in sessions; whilst watching my friends only spending a few (usually because they either spent them all on skills or because they were doing the same as me in previous sessions). Then there's the HP saving that goes on, inevitably; sometimes this can be hard to do :)
IMO the spending of HPs in sessions is one of the outworkings of a heroic character. Isn't it one of the things that distinguishes the heroic ones from the non? It doesn't mean that we (I) always win, either; especially when the narrator can spend narrator points to keep the story on track!
I think what I'm trying to dig out of my tired mind is that if you're playing a heroic game and you want to prevent it getting unbalanced, you could encourage players to spend well on both skill increases, fixing items etc (can't remember the term for it), in-game heroically bumped outcomes and other uses you can find for HPs.
a for instance: my Votanki/Bear God Shaman currently has about 20 HPs unspent. He's planning a quest onto the spirit plane and has a Spirit Travel of about 6W, Spirit Combat of 19W (hence fetch of same, that being the highest skill). I'm anticipating that he's going to use a good deal of those 20 in preparation, a fair amount on actally crossing the divide and then yet more on the actual quest. Only the preparation bit will increase his skills - those which are sadly lacking atm. He also has to spend HPs on his 'spirit companion' (a grizzly bear, don't ask!), which is not tied to the shaman's skill levels and would become a vulnerability if he didn't. It's taken me ages to accrue those 20 points and I don't think I'll have made back even half when the job is done. The object of the quest is a group of starting skills and one specialist one.
(does anyone still instinctively read Hit Points when they see HPs? It must
be just me then :)
Matthew
p.s. I'd love to know how many HPs get spent in-game by everyone else! My average is about 2 - 4 and the maximum has been around 10. (I think) An average session might yield (!) about 4 (including start/finish point) and maxmimum (poor memory here), probably 5 (rare).
inspiration for post:
Mike wrote:
Of course, this just forces the characters to either save HP or spend points on rounding their characters, but neither of those are bad things. And it makes the characters start looking for something Big to do, as they should.
Mike
http://differentgames.onestop.net
Powered by hypermail