Providing Challenge in Adventures

[bluegargantua]

Hi,

 So I'm assembling a quick one-shot for our local gaming group to test out the HQ system.  We're just curious to take the system out for a spin and see how it handles.

 I've got the basic idea that the PCs are a group of Heortling toubleshooters working for the tribal chief.  They go around to the different clans in the tribe and try to sort out problems before the Lunars take drastic measures.  

 In order to speed the process along and focus on mechanics, I'm pre-generating the characters and the adventure will happily sit on some rails.  I still think the PCs will have some meaningful choices to make, I'm just going to make sure they're mostly binary choices.  :)

 However, I am curious to know if there's a good rule of thumb for building NPCs/situations that are sufficiently challenging for PCs.  Conflicts can play out in lots of different ways (and the PCs will have a grab-bag of talents and abilities), but I'm looking to ensure that when the PCs go toe-to-toe with an NPCs strong suit, that it will always be a close thing.

 I suppose one approach is to make a "mirror-image" NPC for each PC.  Then figure what their APs would be in an extended conflict and maybe bump it up a bit if I expect the PCs to gang up on them and they have no help.

 Are there any other general guidelines or suggestions people have?

Tom

[Mike Holmes]

You have the right idea in general. But keep in mind that AP aren't all that important in these calculations. That is, ganging up isn't as effective as it is in other games. So as long as the Ability levels are set well, the AP tend to take care of themselves. In any case, you don't want to be in the business of guessing who's going to take on whom, so just try to rate the characters sensibly.

I swear that just taking an educated pot-shot at the rating tends to do as well as any tinkering you can do to get just the right level of challenge. Given that the dice giveth and taketh away, you can't make any garuntees anyhow. Remember that the PCs are going to fail in HQ, and that's a good thing.

Mike

[bluegargantua]

Huh,  cool.

 Quick follow-on question:

 I notice that different Keywords can sometimes have the same ability.  Not terribly unusual.  I've got a hunter worshiping a hunter God.  Both the occupation and the magic keyword have Archery as a sub-ability.

 My question is:  Do these abilities stack somehow?  Or does one provide an automatic augment to the other?

Tom

[Ian Cooper]

It is important to remember that hero points shift the nature of challenges. Effectively they give players a mastery bump at key moments. Because someone with a full mastery advantage tends to win, this means that against evenly matched opponents the players can usually resort to hero points to triumph (even in an extended contest - where players tend to use hero points to create transfers).

Some of this depends upon your player's willingness to burn hp (future advantage) to win (advantage now).

My players tend to be willing to start spraying the hp around in a tight spot. As a result we tend to find that an opponent who represents a real challenge may need to have a mastery advantage if you want a 'down-to-the-wire' encounter.

Allowing the heroes to gang up can require an opponent with a two mastery advantage.

Well that is how it always plays out for us.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Tom,

If a hero gets the same ability in more than one keyword, it counts as one (1) ability. I.e. it is non-stackable, and the ability cannot be used to augment itself. If the hero, for some reason, ends up with different ability ratings in the ability, he should use the highest, and ignore the rest.

Cheers,

/Peter n

[Brand_Robins]

If a hero gets the same ability in more than one keyword, it counts as one (1) ability.

First, Peter N. is absolutly right. That is the rule, and it is in the book in black and white.

However, I'd also mention that rule irked my players, and inspired by the Lunar Handbook's "city specialty" rules they asked that if they had multiple copies of the exact same ability that they be allowed to take the highest with a +1 for every "extra" they had.

I agreed, and it's worked out fine so far.

[Mike Holmes]

What I'd do in the case of the dulicate abilities is change one of the keywords somewhat to make it a different Ability.

BTW, is that a mundane archery skill in the Magic Keyword, or a magical one? Magic archery could definitely augment mundane archery or vice versa, and are two very different things. That's how they'd "stack" in that case.

But let's say that you had a character that came from a culture where everyone knew archery, and he wanted to take archer as a profession. Well, I'd argue that in such a culture of archers, that the archer profession would have to be somewhat different. They wouldn't just teach the same skill again. So, instead, I'd give Aim Well, or some such Ability for the occupation instead of archery. Making the specialized archers even better than the normal archers in this culture, and exploring more intricately the character's ability.

Sure I could just add on an amount similar to the augment - that's just not as fun. In creating the new archer keyword, we can even come up with details surrounding it. Maybe they can drop another personality Ability and take Haughty as a replacement representing that, as an occupation they consider themelves superior to most. Whatever makes it more interesting.

What I like to emphasize is that the keywords are all just suggestions. They're not a hard list representing the only things available (check the rules, they support this). And that doesn't mean only that there are occupations and homelands not listed (that's pretty intuitive), but also that there are variations of the keywords that are listed. Thus you could take the Esvulari Homeland keyword and change it into Wandering Esvulari - like I did with my character for Josh's game. Heortling could become Tarsh Border Heortling. Archer specialized foot soldiers could become slingers instead. Often such a modification just requires substituting one or two Abilities to make it "right".

Don't limit yourself to what's in the book. That's for players who just want an easy solution - just inspirational. But they're also just a jumping off point from which you can create anything you like. Which is one of the most powerful and interesting parts of HQ to me.

So, the solution to "lost" Abilities is to work around it by adjusting the Keyword to something that doesn't result in the loss. In the process, discover new and interesting things about the character.

Mike

[Peter Nordstrand]

Howdy,

Just wanted to say that I think that both Mike's and Brand's solutions are perfectly sound.

Cheers,

/Peter N

[Brand_Robins]

Just wanted to say that I think that both Mike's and Brand's solutions are perfectly sound.

Actually, I think Mike's is probably better. Especially as having more specialized skills can often be more of an advantage (if played correctly) than having a slightly higher broad skill. Something like "aim true" can have uses that a normal "longbow" skill wouldn't.....

[RaconteurX]

I have always given +4 to abilities which are duplicated in a second keyword, and an additional +4 per iteration. Heroes who are highly specialized need every advantage they can get. Then again, I tend to start heroes at ability ratings much higher than the default as well.

[Scripty]

I have always given +4 to abilities which are duplicated in a second keyword, and an additional +4 per iteration. Heroes who are highly specialized need every advantage they can get. Then again, I tend to start heroes at ability ratings much higher than the default as well.

In my Hyborea-HQ mini-campaign, I made a spot decision (not remembering exactly what the book said on the matter) that additional iterations were absorbed into the original keyword and gave a bonus of +2 each. Pretty much the same as yours. It worked out quite well.

Scott