Re: Epic NPCs and their stats

From: Trotsky <TTrotsky_at_kEhQHJkF-NQVfHQI2bv05-GYaYmArkaG5Y1HFaDMExXpaHB4e0OrCe7fIdoA8mrdkpl>
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:10:53 +0100


David Dunham wrote:
>
> Mikko
>
> >I find the inflation some people
> >seem to need very confusing, but parhaps it's because of the
> >experience system? I like the slow saga-system myself, so this is not
> >a problem for me.
>
> Not sure what you mean by that, but the number of game years between
> sessions isn't the issue. It's the number of sessions. The Orlmarth
> campaign had 79 sessions over about 3 years.
>

I don't think its the number of game sessions that's the issue, particularly, because that would be true of almost any RPG. Nobody has qualms about including stats in D&D worldbooks that I've noticed, but it's still true in D&D that if you play more sessions than another group, your characters will be higher level.

What makes HQ different from D&D, IMO, is that hero points can be spent on 'bumps' as well as on advancement. Give a D&D character 10,000 xp and you've got a pretty good idea how powerful he'll end up - give a HQ character 20 hero points, and it's a lot less obvious what his stats will look like afterwards. I'm at one extreme here, I suspect, because I *hate* having to spend hero points to bump my rolls; I spend about 95% of them on advancement. Other people are at the opposite extreme, and many are somewhere in between. And that's ignoring the possibility of spending them on new stats rather than existing ones, or favouring one stat above all others rather than spreading your points widely.

Having said that, although I have little use for stats for Jar-Eel & co. myself, I have no objection to them being published. Being published without context - now that would be a bad thing, IMO. Which is why I chose not to include stats for Guilmarn and Theoblanc in KotFS - I didn't feel it was worthwhile within the context of that book. Had it been a campaign book, or a book specifically about, say, running a game of intrigue at the Royal Court, and I'd have added them. OTOH, I did stat out the cities and other settlements, mostly in short form, but in the case of Segurane and Leplain, using the full format from Men of Sea. Because, in a gazetteer book, that sort of thing is more relevant.

-- 
Trotsky
Gamer and Skeptic

------------------------------------------------------
Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/




           

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