how do you get something to eat around here?

[rylen dreskin]

Thanks for the response to my last question.  I did go a bit long.  Shorter bites, this time.

Saturday evening, I helped a friend put together a test character -- puma person, odaylan, hunter.  (Wanted to play around w/ theisim a little.)

Important stats,

Stalk 2W
Patient 2W
Archery 2W
a beautiful bow (I said augment to relevant stuff +4), 10W beautiful
lots of keyword stuff at 17.
2 cousins he hunts with, sometimes.  Retainer hunter, 17.

I pitted him against a normal deer from the HQ book -- page ~192.
16W scent danger+nervous
18W sprint

Hide 15
Dodge combat 18

We tried a simple contest.  The deer won handily.

We tried an extended contest.  He had far more AP but the deer still blew him away.

Using lots of augments, he could get up to 10W-14W.  His best moment chance was when I decided the deer bolted, leaving behind one of his cousins (AP loss) and past his position.  It resisted his archery w/ Dodge augmented by sprint.  He got a trivial victory, which I converted to a hurt and some AP loss, instead of just AP loss, to give him an easier time.  If I hadn't given him that, the deer would have had superior numbers the whole time.  Then the deer used its sprint to get away, knocking him negative and used it again as a parting shot which I said took the arrow out and let it heal more quickly.

My questions:
1)  Do I have the wrong idea about hunting?  I'd think that getting food for a dedicated hunter would be a straightforward task.  A deer a day in Sea and Fire.
2)  Did I run the deer wrong?
3)  Are deer "overpowered" for a starting character?

And on extended contests:
I had both the hunter and the deer bid.  The high bidder went first.  Then the low bidder could change their action but was stuck with their bid amount.

So, deer bids 20 vs hunters 6.  Deer acts and hunter resists.  Next hunter acts and deer resists.  Then new auction.  Yes?

Last, character generation.  In theism, default value during creation is communal worship and provides nothing.  Initaite is free, provides cult abilities but not affinities.  Devotee costs 3 points, and provides all affinities at 17.  No feats or improved affinities yet.  How close am I?

Thanks for the comments.

Rylen

[Brand_Robins]

Yea, deer are tough. There are a few things to keep in mind, however, some of which I know having hunted in the past.

1. Few hunters get every deer they go after -- even with a rifle.

2. Lots of hunters don't even get a deer every time they go hunting -- much less one a day.

3. Your Puma Person is a high-level apprentice, low-level journeyman hunter (that's about where HQ characters start out), and so isn't the master hunter that characters from books like Last of the Mohicans are.

4. So his missing one deer isn't surprising -- but if he's in a deer rich environment he could potentially get a shot at dozens of deer a day, and if he's even close in ability he should end up getting one of them. Just because he lost two contests (one simple, one extended) doesn't mean that he wouldn't win another later in the day.

5. If you're hunting the deer, you have to think that the normal rules for death don't apply -- you don't need a total victory to get a dead deer from a simple contest. You could rule that a failure means the deer gets away, but even a minor success could get you a deer -- it's just a stringy nasty deer that bleeds to death slowly, forcing you to track it down and then fight off the puma that wants to eat it before you can.

6. Another option, especially in a deer rich environment where the character might have a score of chances a day to down a deer, is just to do the simple contest against the area's hunting difficulty rather than against the specific deer. If he gets a bad failure he comes back empty handed, a minor failure gets him a single stringy hare, a minor success gets a brace of rabbits or fish, and a major success might mean he comes back with a deer. (After all, a deer has enough meat to feed several people for a few days.) The hunting difficulty can be based on lots of things like amount of game, amount of time taken, how common hunters are in the area (and thus how wary the game is), or made up by you to give the level of challenge you think is fitting.

7. I think your hunter could probably augment up higher than he did. With the stats you gave, if it was important to the characters survival that he get THIS deer, I'd probably go something like this, or at least pitch it at the GM: Stalk 2w, Patient +2, Archery +2, Bow +4, Retainers +2 each, team hunting style +2, hide +2, know animals +2, keen senses +2, know local area +2, track +2, wilderness survival +2, wily +2 – and assuming it played out so I justified them all that's around a 10w2 – giving a mastery edge over the deer.

8. Sometimes the dice just suck.

For the other questions, you seem to have it right on the extended contest.

Communal worshipers only get divine aid.

Initiates get affinities, but no feats and take a penalty to improv feats.

Devotees get either all the feats or 3 of the feats for the affinities, depending on how powerful the GM wants them to be. The general consensus is to go with 3 feats.

[Deacon Blues]

(1)  What abilities were the actual contests between?  In the extended contests, what were the abilities that generated each side's AP totals?  I'd presume that it came down to the hunter's Stalk vs. the deer's Hide, or perhaps the hunter's Archery vs. the deer's Sprint.

Assuming the above, one thing the hunter might try is to take away some of the deer's abilities.  As Narrator, you might allow the hunter to make a simple contest before the real extended contest - say, the hunter's Stalk vs. the deer's Scent Danger.  If the hunter wins, then the deer doesn't get to use its Scent Danger in the following Extended Contest: the hunter has snuck up so stealthily that the deer is completely caught unawares.

(2)  Doing the math in my head, it looks like the deer and the hunter had cancelling masteries, meaning they were essentially at the same ability level (14 vs. 10, or 7 vs. 17, let's say).  At that point, it's largely a law of averages thing.  If one side has an advantage over the other of one W or more, then you can count on that side to win.

(3)  More of a tangent: if this comes up in the course of a story, roll with it!  How could this deer get away?  Maybe it was one of the god-deer of Orlanth's sacred herd.  Maybe it was a shapeshifting creature of Chaos.  Maybe it was the trained pet deer of a visiting Esvulari scholar.

You probably knew that, of course, but I never miss the chance to throw an object lesson into a post.  :)

[Simon Bray]

Hi,

Of course this is glorantha and the hunter could always spend some time in a little ritual before he goes hunting to aid his task. Perhaps he needs to get himself a couple of beaters in the form of followers, or even a good alynx to lend a hand. If he hunts as part of a group his chances improve. If the hunter goes out on an auspicious day (for Odayla) then his chances are higher two. If you really want to beat those deer more often you could always do what the Yinkini in our HQ play tests did and Heroquest to gain the magic 'Thwart Deer Senses'. But that was a little drastic and not the easiest option. However in a strange sense it is nice to see that in HQ animals stand a chance, I hate games where animals are push overs LOL.

Simon Bray
The Unspoken Word - The Company for Heroquesters.

[buserian]

7. I think your hunter could probably augment up higher than he did. With the stats you gave, if it was important to the characters survival that he get THIS deer, I'd probably go something like this, or at least pitch it at the GM: Stalk 2w, Patient +2, Archery +2, Bow +4, Retainers +2 each, team hunting style +2, hide +2, know animals +2, keen senses +2, know local area +2, track +2, wilderness survival +2, wily +2 – and assuming it played out so I justified them all that's around a 10w2 – giving a mastery edge over the deer.

And this doesn't even count at least +6 from the Odaylan's three affinities -- as an initiate, he does get all three affinities at 17, just like the other abilities. Affinities are a keyword ability; see page 19 first sentence of "Abilities and Ratings"; Hazeel sample character page 24-25 (who gets the magic from his magic keyword during character creation); page 30, 1st paragraph; and 118 "Initiate Abilities" which lists Soul Vision and the affinities as abilities.

Would another +6 from affinities have made a difference? Plus +6 for each of your two retainers perhaps also being initiates?

Also, did the hero concentrate his theistic magic? If not, he can also have the Common Magic keyword, and potentially get another +10 from common magic charms, spells, talents, and feats. Surely a +16 would have made a difference?

buserian

[Mike Holmes]

Mostly, what Brand and the others said.

But where were the personality traits? Was the character "Cautious" in his approach? Was he "Determined" to get the deer? Did his "Brave" help him overcome his buck fever?

Why was he hunting? Was it to put food on his family's table? If so, then did you include the character's relationship with his family?

Make sure that you're players understand how to explore the character completly when looking for augments. They may not be used to all the things that apply in HQ as abilities like personality traits and relationships don't exist in other games.

Also, did the player consider spending HP? I mean, to a large extent, spending HP is a statement that, "I want my character to be cool right at this moment." If he didn't spend AP, then he's accepting the story event that the rules generate. He doesn't even have to look bad. Remember that the die roll represents the vagaries of fate. So you could narrate a loss like this.

"You draw a bead on the animal after carefully creeping up on it, you draw back and have him dead to rights. Then, just as you release the arrow, a badger startles the target and it barely moves out of the way. What rotten luck!"

Failure doesn't mean the character is bad, or doesn't look good, it just means failure to obtain the goal.

Mike

[rylen dreskin]

Thanks.

My plan for the simple constest was to give him something increasingly good depending on the degree of sucess.

I'll consider a sampling difficulty instead of a contest against an example individual.  On the other hand, I could treat the deer as a group, supporting their outlier/sentries.

Doing the math in my head, it looks like the deer and the hunter had cancelling masteries, meaning they were essentially at the same ability level (14 vs. 10, or 7 vs. 17, let's say). At that point, it's largely a law of averages thing. If one side has an advantage over the other of one W or more, then you can count on that side to win.

Yep.  The dice were against him.  Even got some fumbles.

Affinities -- Odayla's Hide and Hunting would add another +4.  The Bear affinity wouldn't add anything.

He had some common magic, but none directly related to hunting.

By choice he didn't have deep roots in the area, just patient (relevant), stoic, and wanderlust (not and not).  We learn these things slowly.  A later character might be more tied in to the game.

I did not introduce hero points.  I wanted to keep the example simple.

And no, it wasn't a special deer.  Plain ole ordinary forest deer.  Not that I won't taunt the player with deer in the future.

Rylen

[elgorade]

I think your hunter could probably augment up higher than he did. With the stats you gave, if it was important to the characters survival that he get THIS deer, I'd probably go something like this, or at least pitch it at the GM: Stalk 2w, Patient +2, Archery +2, Bow +4, Retainers +2 each, team hunting style +2, hide +2, know animals +2, keen senses +2, know local area +2, track +2, wilderness survival +2, wily +2 – and assuming it played out so I justified them all that's around a 10w2 – giving a mastery edge over the deer.

And this doesn't even count at least +6 from the Odaylan's three affinities -- as an initiate, he does get all three affinities at 17, just like the other abilities. Affinities are a keyword ability; see page 19 first sentence of "Abilities and Ratings"; Hazeel sample character page 24-25 (who gets the magic from his magic keyword during character creation); page 30, 1st paragraph; and 118 "Initiate Abilities" which lists Soul Vision and the affinities as abilities.

Would another +6 from affinities have made a difference? Plus +6 for each of your two retainers perhaps also being initiates?

Also, did the hero concentrate his theistic magic? If not, he can also have the Common Magic keyword, and potentially get another +10 from common magic charms, spells, talents, and feats. Surely a +16 would have made a difference?

But where were the personality traits? Was the character "Cautious" in his approach? Was he "Determined" to get the deer? Did his "Brave" help him overcome his buck fever?

Why was he hunting? Was it to put food on his family's table? If so, then did you include the character's relationship with his family?

The first list is +8w (if I counted correctly).  The affinities and maybe a hunting charm or two make that something like +18w.  I hate to think how high it might go with relationships and more personality traits.  (Hey, it is only one HP to get Hate Deer for a +1 augment and after he misses a few, I'm sure he can justify that too.  :-)  )

I love the idea of augments.   There was a great thread a while back about how augments really allowed there to be a difference between the routine bar fight of no consequence and a really important fight to protect your home and family.  (Actually, that example wasn't used, but that was the idea.)  That when something matters to the character --- it fits with a relationship, a personality trait, a strong belief, etc. --- he is better at handling it seems like a really neat feature of HQ.

But I can't sell it to some players here because they figure it will all come down to trying to argue every line on their sheet into applying to every roll.  .  They fear exactly what happened in this thread.  What seems like an easy contest (hunter vs deer) becomes a task for the player to find all possably related words on his sheet and argue with the GM that they are relevant in this situation.


I've never GM'ed HQ.  Do the people who have have any advice on how to deal with this issue?   One idea that I had toyed with was not allowing different skills from the same keyword to augment each other.  So if you got Stalk and Know Animals and Bow all from a Hunter keyword, they couldn't augment each other because they are really all just facets of the same ability as a hunter.   Of course, that doesn't address the personality, magic or relationship traits which are the harder ones because they are the more ambiguous ones and can cause the most arguments.

Elgorade

[Mike Holmes]

But I can't sell it to some players here because they figure it will all come down to trying to argue every line on their sheet into applying to every roll.  .  They fear exactly what happened in this thread.  What seems like an easy contest (hunter vs deer) becomes a task for the player to find all possably related words on his sheet and argue with the GM that they are relevant in this situation.

Are they aware that their characters can't die?

What I mean is, they seem to think that there's some player goal of winning each contest. There's not (in fact, HQ would make a dreadfully dull Gamist game). The player's goal in a contest is finding the augments such that they display how neat their character is, and how he relates to the issue at hand. Basically, it's fun to look for augments, and argue them in - it's part of the point of play of the game. So is losing contests. So there's no reason to worry about trying to squeeze every last ounce of effectiveness into every contest.

If your players are really hardcore D&D players, or the like, then it might take some time and/or effort for this to sink in. Use some shortcuts. In the first fight, put them up against something with a rating waaaay out of their league. Let' say that they can get to 5W2 with a lot of augments. Hit them with a Large 10W2 ravening beast that augments up to 5W4. When they're lying there broken and maybe dying, but not dead (creature runs off to crush some other villagers). Then they'll understand that losing in HQ is just another plot event that makes their characters cool. The villagers will tell of how they fought valiantly against the creature that could not be stopped, and ask them to stay to defend their village. (And later, when they're tougher, and they defeat it, it will be very cool).

What this means is that the player doesn't have to augment if he doesn't want to. If the player doesn't think it's worthwhile to hunt for every augment, there's no rule saying that he has to do so. Maybe in this fight his strength doesn't matter. It's up to the player.

Are you worried that it'll be boring to look up the keywords? Because it's not. Augments are pointed out by players at a rate that's precisely equivalent to how interesting they are to look up.

This is reinforced socially. If you see a player dragging out all the stops for what was nearly a throwaway contest, then just roll your eyes at them and act exasperated, and annoyed. Soon augment productions will be precisely what they ought to be. :-)

Mike

[elgorade]

Yes, they are hard core D&D players and seem to be strongly
oriented towards resource conservation and winning.    We're
giving Burning Wheel a try.  That satisfies my desire to not
run a game using D&D, but is still quite crunchy.  I do plan to
use the general point of your post --- losing doesn't have to
mean death, it can mean a good score to settle later. :-)

Thanks for the pep talk.

[Moah]

Also, there's not much actual *arguing*. In most situations, the augments are well known to your players (cause they'll mostly use the same), or they'll go quickly through it (and you'll answer just as quickly). Only in really specific case, will they try to convince the GM that yes, "appreciation of rare teapots" applies to this fight.

[Mike Holmes]

Hi Moah, welcome to The Forge. Everyone Moah is one of the regular posters on the HQ rules list, and poses lots of good questions there.

You make a good point. Once players get to know their characters pretty well, less important contests tend to fly by as players know what abilities are available, and expected to be used. That is, once the narrator has OKed Know Teapots as good for contests in the duke's court, the player just pulls it out regularly, and everyone nods in understanding.

Mike

P.S. Any chance we can get a real name out of you? Not required, but most of us around here really like to use the real names of the people who we discuss things with.

[Moah]

Sure. My real name's Gwenael Tranvouez (With Gwenael being the first name).

Thanks for the introduction, Mike.

[Brand_Robins]

Sure. My real name's Gwenael Tranvouez (With Gwenael being the first name).

Dude, your name kicks ass.

Good to have you around!

[Moah]

Thanks and thanks.