[Glorantha] Power Levels

From: Jane Williams <janewilliams20>
Date: Thu Nov 16 23:00:26 2006

• Graham Robinson <graham_at_albionsoft.com> wrote:
  > Heroquest assumes (perhaps implicitly) that there is
  > a basic character story that goes something like :
  > minor nobody > locally powerful > regionally
  > powerful > nationally powerful > great hero >
  > demi-god, and beyond...
  

Yep.

> It also assumes a connection
> between this story and your character's stats

Well, yes, one hopes so.

> - by
> default, roughly one mastery between each stage.

If you say so - sounds not unreasonable, in the current definition of "mastery".

> Combined with the experience system, this means that
> your characters are assumed to move through this
> story at roughly X sessions per stage - where X is
> the average number of sessions needed to add a
> mastery to your PCs significant skills.

well, that rather depends on your gaming style, whether a "session" is a meaningful concept, how long they last, how often they occur, etc etc. But yes, given that X is not defined.

> Now that's okay if you happen to want to tell that
> story at that rate. If you want to tell it faster or
> slower, skip the beginning stages, or never reach
> the last few, you need to make changes.

Yes.

> One of the
> most obvious is to change the stats of NPCs.

Er, no. The obvious change is to alter the *choice* of NPCs.

Ignore the stats for a moment.

If you start as a minor nobody, then your opponents will be minor nobodies. If you start as locally powerful, your opponents will be locally powerful. Etc. You don't leave someone "locally powerful" fighting trollkin, the story wouldn't make any sense. You leave the trollkin alone, you leave their stats alone, you face the locally powerful PCs with locally powerful trolls, and their trollkin warband. Saying "you may be a clan champion not a teenage beginner but you're still facing a trollkin only it's got W2 stats" is just story nonsense. That's not starting with a more powerful character at all, because they're still doing the same things.

> Perhaps more controversially, the stats of NPCs
> should also, surely, depend on when in this
> progression they are introduced. The Lunar Field
> School that acts as a support body for starting PCs
> and which they will later outgrow would naturally
> have lower typical stats....

Why? PCs who use them that way obviously have higher stats than the beginner level anyway. Er, that is obvious, isn't it? Or is that another assumption that's so obvious we weren't stating it?

Look, if you want powerful PCs, surely what you mean is that they're powerful compared with the world they're living in? So you either shift their stats from beginner-level, or you adjust the entire rest of the universe: NPCs, difficulty in getting to the Other Side, difficulty in climbing a wall, or Kero Fin - the lot. Shifting your PCs is usually regarded as easier.

If you want them to start at a level defined as "uses a Lunar Field School as support", then look up the stats for a Lunar Field School, and base your PCs' starting stats on that. Now compare with the stats of the Orlanthi clan they've gone to visit, and (without having to do any more alterations), laugh hysterically, beat up the champion, and start claiming taxes. Because that's the level you're at, and all the published, available, stats will make it easy for you to find that out.                 

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