Heroquest Reward Idea and Skill Improvement

[Tywyll]

So, last night I had a (probably stupid) idea for Highlevel/Heroquesting style rewards.

When making a POW gain role, instead of gaining POW, the character can gain Power Points to spend on Super Powers from Superworld/BRP Gold book. Obviously the player would work with the DM (or they would just spend the points on the player's behalf) to find powers that were suitable for the quest the players performed.

As to Skills...

So I'm using the Mythras difficulty levels for skills. So a Hard roll is 2/3rds your skill (for example). So I was wondering, should the experience check be against the 2/3rds rather than the full value? The character was tasked beyond their normal skill and it seems like that would be the kind of stuff that would drive them to improve. Conversely, an easy roll that increases a skill by 1.5, would be rolled against the higher skill to see if you improved. It would take a bit more book keeping, but...

So, how stupid are these ideas?

[Joerg]

If you approach heroquesting rewards from what we know of high level heroquesters, there are a few known ones:

- avoiding aging

- backdoor from the Court of the Dead (aka self-resurrection)

- individual feats like Hofstaring's Tree-Leaping, Delecti's mass zombiefication, Cragspider's Pillar of Fire, Belintar's Land Raising, Sartar's Change of Nature

3 hours ago, Tywyll said:

As to Skills...

So I'm using the Mythras difficulty levels for skills. So a Hard roll is 2/3rds your skill (for example). So I was wondering, should the experience check be against the 2/3rds rather than the full value? The character was tasked beyond their normal skill and it seems like that would be the kind of stuff that would drive them to improve. Conversely, an easy roll that increases a skill by 1.5, would be rolled against the higher skill to see if you improved. It would take a bit more book keeping, but...

That might speed up skill learning quite a bit. Personally, I wouldn't let situational modifiers like fighting downwards influence the ease of experience rolls, whether as a flat deduction (or bonus) or whether as a fraction (or low multiple) of the skill.

[g33k]

FWIW, I am personally inclined to wait on the GM's Book (which will have "official" heroquesting rules) before putting in a bunch of effort on HR'ing HQ's.

[Darius West]

18 hours ago, Tywyll said:

So, how stupid are these ideas?

These ideas are fun, and frankly have quite a bit of potential.  I think there is a LOT of potential in the various RQG magic systems I would personally prefer my players to develop, but provided you keep superpowers within the constraints of Glorantha Lore, and don't let them overpower the game, I would be interested how it works out.  On the other hand I am also with g33k on this; there will be official rules on Heroquesting soon, and I am very interested in what they will have to say.

[Tywyll]

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

These ideas are fun, and frankly have quite a bit of potential.  I think there is a LOT of potential in the various RQG magic systems I would personally prefer my players to develop, but provided you keep superpowers within the constraints of Glorantha Lore, and don't let them overpower the game, I would be interested how it works out.  On the other hand I am also with g33k on this; there will be official rules on Heroquesting soon, and I am very interested in what they will have to say.

I guess we've been waiting for 'official' rules for 30+ years...what if these also don't see the light of day for whatever reason?

[Tywyll]

17 hours ago, Joerg said:

If you approach heroquesting rewards from what we know of high level heroquesters, there are a few known ones:

 

- individual feats like Hofstaring's Tree-Leaping, Delecti's mass zombiefication, Cragspider's Pillar of Fire, Belintar's Land Raising, Sartar's Change of Nature

 

I'm unfamiliar with those. What are their mechanics?

[g33k]

2 hours ago, Tywyll said:

I'm unfamiliar with those. What are their mechanics?

I don't think there are any mechanics there.  They are part of the source lore in the world of Glorantha, and give some sense of the powers than CAN come from heroquesting.

[g33k]

2 hours ago, Tywyll said:

I guess we've been waiting for 'official' rules for 30+ years...what if these also don't see the light of day for whatever reason?

Given the track record at nuChaosium, I have no doubt that this is coming.

The project is already very-far-advanced, and the release of the RQG core book gave Chaosium their best retail sales ever... so they know the market is there.

[soltakss]

On 12/15/2018 at 7:42 PM, Tywyll said:

So, last night I had a (probably stupid) idea for Highlevel/Heroquesting style rewards.

When making a POW gain role, instead of gaining POW, the character can gain Power Points to spend on Super Powers from Superworld/BRP Gold book. Obviously the player would work with the DM (or they would just spend the points on the player's behalf) to find powers that were suitable for the quest the players performed.

Gaining Special Abilities is a traditional reward from HeroQuesting. The hardest part is finding a game mechanic that works well. BRP Super Powers are a good way of getting powers, as long as they are relevant to the HeroQuest performed.

On 12/15/2018 at 7:42 PM, Tywyll said:

So I'm using the Mythras difficulty levels for skills. So a Hard roll is 2/3rds your skill (for example). So I was wondering, should the experience check be against the 2/3rds rather than the full value? The character was tasked beyond their normal skill and it seems like that would be the kind of stuff that would drive them to improve. Conversely, an easy roll that increases a skill by 1.5, would be rolled against the higher skill to see if you improved. It would take a bit more book keeping, but...

That could work. However, it is a bit time consuming and you need to keep track of the difficulty of the skills. Personally, I wouldn't bother with that level of detail.

[Tywyll]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

I don't think there are any mechanics there.  They are part of the source lore in the world of Glorantha, and give some sense of the powers than CAN come from heroquesting.

See I guess that's a problem for me. Where are they described? What do they do in fiction? What does Tree Leaping or Pillar of Fire even mean? The only examples I have seen are from RQ3 and they seemed to mostly boil down to ridiculous skill levels or innate armor or something similar.

[Tywyll]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Given the track record at nuChaosium, I have no doubt that this is coming.

The project is already very-far-advanced, and the release of the RQG core book gave Chaosium their best retail sales ever... so they know the market is there.

I don't doubt the will is there, but I imagine Stafford had the will to do it to and never did. I'm saying we don't know, until a book is in our hand. The design team could get hit by a meteor, etc etc.

[Julian Lord]

I had a messy system in my own house rules for skill improvement -- since then though, I've come up with a pretty simple idea.

For HeroQuest skill improvement D100 rolls, only count the last two digits of your skill % for comparison with your roll -- so for skill 137% (or 337%), you need to roll higher than 37 on D100

[Darius West]

13 hours ago, g33k said:

Given the track record at nuChaosium, I have no doubt that this is coming.

The project is already very-far-advanced, and the release of the RQG core book gave Chaosium their best retail sales ever... so they know the market is there.

Yeah, they are productive.  It's great to see.

[Harrek]

In my gaming group you get an automatic +D6% to any skills successfully used during the quest. You also get +5D6% to be used between the main abilities used during the quest. In the Hill of Gold - quest you could choose to take the full 5D6% increase to your melee combat for example. Or you could divide it between a communication skill (for example +3D6%) and melee combat (+2D6%), which both are in an important role during the quest. This +5D6% is cumulative with the +D6% you get anyway... 

Also as a reward, you always get +1 to character's POW and maximum POW is increased by one per quest (21->22 for humans for example). 

A hero usually gets a hero ability related to the quest also. 

This system has been in use for 10+years and has worked for us at least...