Using Affinities and Feats

[Alan]

One of the pre-gen characters in Hound's Tower has a bunch of Affinities, but no Feats.  The notes say he uses them with improvisational modifiers.  

Does this mean he gets a -3 or more on every use of the Affinity?

Can he improvise other tricks, such as knocking people around with buffets of wind or is he restricted to producing effects like the Feats listed for the Affinity?

Also, I somehow got the impression that Affinities could only be used to augment abilities, not as the primary ability in a conflict.  Now I can't find this rule.

Can a Theist with a Wind Affinity of 5w use it for 25AP in a conflict, or does he have to choose a non-magical ability as his AP source and augment it with the Affinity?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Alan,

You're confusing yourself a little, I think.

Let's take your theist, in some kind of combat situation (just to be boring). He has two choices to use that Affinity.

1. Slice that guy over there with his sword, augmenting with his Affinity. If his sword ability is 18, he gets an automatic +2 (for a 5w augmenter), or if you want, roll the die (you'll probably get a +2). If you do roll, then it's really a 5w roll, no penalty at all.

To do this, there oughta be some magical/mythic interpretation: the guy is emulating his wind-god's myth in some fashion or another. That's Color and a very minor creative constraint.

2. Use the Affinity all on its own, just as if it were a Feat and in fact, naming a Feat. In this case, he might, say, literally fly over to the guy, across the chasm or whatever. In this case, he uses the Affinity ability score with a penalty.

If he had the "fly" Feat which, for this deity, presumably exists, he would have an ability value for it and would use it at no penalty.

The creative point is that it's major magic - he's not just emulating the myth, he's embodying the god, dammit. He can approximate this with his Affinity, but to be good at it, he needs to acquire the Feat.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Hmmm. That seems to bring up a problematic point. Doesn't this set up somewhat of the standard Skill/Ability currency problem? That is, assuming I'm interested in advancing my ability to use more Feats than it costs to raise the Affinity by one, then isn't it more cost effective to just keep pumpin' the old Affinity? Am I missing something here?

Mike

[Alan]

Ron:

So to reflect your answer:

Theist Affinities:

1. An affinity can be used either as the primary ability in an extended conflict, or as an aid to the primary ability.

2.  Using an affinity to augment requires the player to make a some effort at describing a connection to a mythic exploit of his god.  He is calling for the god's aid and emulating the god in that act.

3.  Using an affinity as the primary ability requires the player to give a more elaborate description with connection to his god's myths.  He is invoking the god, causing the god's power to emerge from within himself, becoming the god, as it were, and doing what the god would do.

Theist Feats:

1. A Feat emulates a specific mythic action of the god.

2.  Established feats, which the character has acquired, are available at full  ability, without improvisation modifier.

3.  Any use of a feat not listed on the character sheet is considered an improvisation use of the Affinity and is subject to a penalty of -1 or more.  The player must also make an effort to name and describe a mythic action of his god that the feat emulates.  The player "formulates" a new feat which may be cemented later with a hero point.

As GM I think I would make the improv penalty easier if the player gave a really good description or cool useage.

[Alan]

Hmmm. That seems to bring up a problematic point. Doesn't this set up somewhat of the standard Skill/Ability currency problem? That is, assuming I'm interested in advancing my ability to use more Feats than it costs to raise the Affinity by one, then isn't it more cost effective to just keep pumpin' the old Affinity? Am I missing something here?

So you're asking is it cheaper to just raise your affinity and continue with improv mods on any new feats, or just to buy the new feat.

Followning Ron's comments, an improv feat has two disinsentives: first the improv penalty, and second the requirement that the player give a creative description.  Of course, once a new feat is described, the player only needs to recall what he's already described.  If this started happening in my game, I think I would give a cumulative -1 for each repeat use until the player cemented the feat.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Guys, I think the key is to use the Affinity as an augmenter just about all of the time. That's its "default," if you will.

I strongly suspect the Affinity-by-itself or Affinity-as-Feat options are there only to allow a little bit of improvisation into play once in a while, and that yes, they are not cost-effective. If you want to do it a lot, buy a damn Feat.

I also think the cost-effectiveness of Affinities is perfectly appropriate. You have a Light affinity. Can you use it augment tons and tons of other, mundane abilities throughout the session? Yes! It's Glorantha, dammit. Getting a rune is a big deal; it's tattooed on your face or wherever (if you're Heortling), it glows, people say, "Look, there goes the Lightbearer" when you walk around.

Affinities, relationships, and followers are the great generalist augmenters. Imagine getting all three to fire at once, across a wide variety of mundane and setting-crucial situations! Why, that would mean ... that would mean that your character's theological perspective, personal community, military politics, and personal ideology were ... all becoming united and unique! And that combination is having an impact on everyone else's!

... Glorantha. That's what it's all about.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Alan, one little point - in your #1, you specified Extended Contests as the context for augmenting. Augmenting is perfectly OK in Basic Contests too.

[Mike Holmes]

Let's not go into histionics here, Ron. I don't disagree with anything you said. I'm just worried that players will abandon Feats to make their Affinity more powerful. And I like Feats. :-)

That said, I like the spirit of Alan's rule. Yet, I'm not sure I can find a good in-game correlate for it. I'm concerned because I have my players do the Improv Feats all the time. In fact, I'd say that Improv Feats is Josh's character's primary ability. He also has Feats. But then I required them, and this is our first time out and I'm sure the cost effectiveness didn't occur to anyone.

What I've done so far is to rule that the Affinity can only do really primal things related to it. Josh's Affinity is Destruction, and he can, well, destroy things with it. In a very overt and basic way that invloves flinging negative energy around and sucking the positive forces out of them. This can look a bit different each time, but can't be relatively complex.

His Feats, OTOH, are very complex (representing ShadowWorld Sorcery). So he can do things like causing a cloud of misperception to follow him making him hard to note. He can cause languages to get messed up so that people can't communicate. These are still destructive powers in their descriptions, but nothing that I'd allow with the Affinity.

So, have I drifted the game? Or do these things make sense with the rules as written? Or, if drifted, are they problematically drifted, or do you think the idea works?

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I think it works fine, Mike. It's a perfectly viable use of the Affinity rules. No argument.

I'll be histrionic when I want, thanks.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Following up on the last post above...

Of course, once a new feat is described, the player only needs to recall what he's already described.  If this started happening in my game, I think I would give a cumulative -1 for each repeat use until the player cemented the feat.

From a completely metagame standpoint I really like this rule. There's something really attractive about how it forces creativity.

But one thing I like about Hero Wars is how it's mechanics all have strong in-game correllates. And I can't think of why the diety in question would punish the character for doing the same Improv repeatedly. Which is what this seems like.

One rationale that might work is that the diety is "loaning" out the Feat to the character. That is, he an have it, but there's a price to pay. A cool way to do this would be to have the -1 penalty accrue on all Improv Feats after the first, until some sort of sacrifice were made to the diety, or pennance, geas, or what have you. That would be the repayment (and would make a cool roll). Spending the Hero Points to buy the Feat would then represent "buying" the ability from the Deity in a more permenant fashion such that further debt would not accrue.

An idea to associate with all this would be that a Theist ought to have to do a Feat a couple of times as an Improv before being allowed to buy it. This would represent the first fumbling, "unowned" attempts to use the Feat. That sounds cool to me, personally. Buying the actual Feat would represent the most basic mastery of it.

Just some ideas.

Mike

[Peter Nordstrand]

I have a couple of additional comments, if you don't mind.

An affinity can be used either as the primary ability in an extended conflict, or as an aid to the primary ability.

I would put it a little different. Like this:

An affinity can be used either to augment other abilities, or to improvise feats. When used to augment (i.e. use your Combat affinity to improve your Sword Fighting skill) you use it at its full rating. When improvising a feat (i.e. using your Wind affinity to improvise a Blow Sand In Enemy's Face feat) you are subject to a penalty.

I would not allow players to use affinities as primary abilities at all. Apart from improvising feats, of course.

Using an affinity to augment requires the player to make a some effort at describing a connection to a mythic exploit of his god.  He is calling for the god's aid and emulating the god in that act.

Well yes, but don't be too harsh on your players. It is pretty obvious why the death god Humakt's Death affinity is suitable to aid a hero in combat, right? I always urge players to come up with descriptions of what is happening. "My sword becomes pitch black, as if it is devouring all light coming in contact with it."

Any use of a feat not listed on the character sheet is considered an improvisation use of the Affinity and is subject to a penalty of -1 or more.

Yes, except that I think that the penalty should be a lot higher. I suggest a penalty of -5 or more, with perhaps -10 the standard.

Cheers,

/Peter N

[Palashee]

Hi all,

Just a quick note to say that whenever my players want to improvise a feat I ask them to come up with a short myth to explain why they can use it, if their inspiration fails I let them roll their 'know orlanthi (or whatever) myths' and then after that they still have the improvisational modifier applied.

This gives a chance they can't use it. If they sacrifice a hero point they can use the feat at any time without any negative modifier.

Cheers,
Mick

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Mick,

Welcome to the Forge!

That's a pretty good solution as well (insofar as there's a "problem") - engage the powerful Hero Point metagame mechanic as a limiting factor.

Peter, I agree with your rephrase of the point, but I think you might confuse people with your comment of "no affinities as primary abilities, except for improvising feats." This reads a lot like Yes-and-No to a person who's still trying to figure out the difference between the two. I think I'd say, "Yes, an Affinity may be used as the primary ability. We call that, 'Improvising Feats' and it gets penalized."

In practice, is this specific issue really a big deal? My impression is No, it's not. I played Hero Wars like a demon for, um, fourteen months straight, and I think we pretty much stuck to Affinities as augmenters because (a) it makes sense and (b) see (a). How often do you guys actually have to deal with improvised Feats, and how hard can it possibly be simply to pop on a little penalty or, as Mick does, call for a Hero Point?

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

How often do you guys actually have to deal with improvised Feats, and how hard can it possibly be simply to pop on a little penalty or, as Mick does, call for a Hero Point?

Not to be a contrarian, but I use them as "Primary Abilities" all the time. My (probably mistaken) reading of the rules left me thinking that it was just an Ability much like any other. I think when I read Improvised, that meant to me that you could just make stuff up, not that the Improvisational modifier applied.

OK, so I'm dumb to have missed that. The point is that there may be some who'll benefit from this discussion. I know I have. I'm going to stay mostly with small modifiers for those abilities that would have fallen into that "primal" category that I described above (I agree that they should be like -15 otherwise).

Peter, I really like the sound of the HP option, but woudn't it make more sense mechanically for the player to roll first with the modifier, and then to use the Hero Point to bump if they failed? A much better return on your HP investment it seems to me.

Hmm. Let's see if I can work through this. For me, one problem is that I allow for purchases in play* (still requiring some in-game rationale, but still). So, the "advantage" of being able to do the feat despite not having bought it last session would be moot in my game. So for me, the player spending the point would just be buying the feat on the spot. Here's my new idea. Use an Improv power the first time, and it should be like -15, the second -10, the third and subsequent -5. This represents growing familiarity with it. Then, if the player wants to get to -0, he has to buy the Feat. And he can only do this once he's reached the -5 stage and done it once there (so the character has to use the ability at least three times before buying in play).

HP can still be used to Bump, so they can almost always negate the effects of the Improv penalty in use if the player needs to.

Anyhow, know what this reminds me of? Power stunts from Marvel Supers. I like how this is crystalizing some of my thoughts on how it all should work.

Mike

*Actaully this happened when, in play, I coudn't remember if you could spend in play. So I just ruled on the spot that you could (in fact I required it for cemeting a particular item, which otherwiswe, I ruled wouldn't work for the character). I think I may have been remembering something Ron said about how he did that, or maybe I just took it from all the theory at the time that said it was a good idea. In any case, I can only say that it works very well, and highly recommend it.