>From: "Rob" <robert_m_davis_at_...>
>
>But good luck! Your definition of powergamer sounds like you will
>prosper with Heroquest then, but you might wan't to chuck the players
>a few more points than the starting 20!
Actually I was assuming that he'd figured out how to get characters with higher starting ability levels, but there's no reason to assume that really. People have been hinting at the ways to do this, but let's be more explicit. "A few more points" really won't do it, in my opinion (you need to go more like the number of points that Rob was alluding to earlier). In fact, I think that for historical reasons that most narrators are really tentative with how they deal with characters who are supposed to be "high level" (if you will).
But to give you an idea, if you want real movers and shakers you might want to go with something like this:
Starting Keyword Level: 20W
Starting "Other" Ability Level: 10W
Extra Points to Add to Abilities: 150 - with no more than 30 added to any
one ability
This gives a maximum rating for abilities of 10W3 for five abilities from their keywords if they min-max that way. Which makes them quite remarkable, but not quite legendary level of ability yet. Everybody will know of them, and they will probably be respected for their previous accomplishments. But they probably have yet to accomplish things that will propell them into legendary hero status like Jar-eel and Harrek. Though that might not be too far in the offing.
If you don't want quite that level of power, you can scale back a stage or so to something more like:
Starting Keyword Level: 10W
Starting "Other" Ability Level: 2W
Extra Points to Add to Abilities: 100 - with no more than 20 added to any
one ability
Which gives a maximum ability level of 10W2 for up to five keyword abilities. This makes the characters firm experts in their specialties, and broadly very capable. They'll be locally renowned and recognized as leaders, but not on the scale of kingdoms.
Let's compare this vs the normal starting level for comparison:
Starting Keyword Level: 17
Starting "Other" Ability Level: 13
Extra Points to Add to Abilities: 20 - with no more than 10 added to any one
ability
This is the level of a competent, individual who is ready to start a carreer. Like a soldier who is just out of boot camp, or an apprentice just ready to start practicing his trade. Not at all known to people outside of his social circles, and with no real influence over the larger scale *except that he's got hero points and therefore can affect things he shouldn't normally be able to*.
The book starting level is a fine place, very interesting, but probably not remotely what you're looking for in play. Resist the temptation to use a relative scaling on this (saying that the starting ability levels are higher than the scale says they are), or you'll forever be tweaking target numbers of published numbers to adjust, and you'll miss out on some of the cool features of the scale.
Hopefully this gives you an idea of the scale of things, so you can play around with it, to come up with the precise level you want folks to start at.
Note that I actually use something a bit more complicated than the above, I give a base level for keywords, and some points that can only be used to raise them up. In this way you get varying levels of keyword abilities, which gives the characters some additional texture. That is, I think it's more "realistic" to have a character with a single keyword in the expert range like his magic or occupation, while his homeland keyword might not be all that much higher than a starting character's keyword level at all. That sort of thing.
Just some food for thought.
Mike
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