HQ Observations.
The following is some personal observations I have with the HQ system. Bare in mind that this is just my opinion, and how I use HQ will vary to how you use HQ. The "HQ-Rules list" will quickly show you the different ways that people play their games, and how they interpret the rules. Myself I come from a wargaming background (figurines and boardgames) and so this makes my role playing more mechanstic than narrative. HQ has managed to get me to adjust quite a bit however, which is impressive in itself. I am now thinking more about the story, the imagery and the heroic nature of the game than about whether a d20 dice system is a good idea.
You Cant Die!
My players mostly like running long term characters. They really dont like dying unless there is a good reason. Thats just the way we like things. One of the things I failed to pick up on and drive home to my players early on was - "you cant die" (unless I want you to). Every result falls down to "Dying but not yet dead!". If I had pointed this out to my players a bit more I am sure it would have chnaged the way they played much sooner then it ended up. Since you dont actually die in HQ, unless the GM wants it, then you can take heroic risks, do heroic things, and if things go pear shaped then hopefully you will still survive. The GM should be rewarding you for this type of play, as long as it wasnt stupid, and making sure you dont die. You may have to pay a ransom, you may have to serve someone for a year, you may be sent on a mission etc, but you wont be dead and starting a new character.
So be sure you understand this, both as GM and player, because it will alter the way you play the game (if character death concerns you). To the better.
Magic in HQ
"Sever Head" - "Slay Undead" etc. When you first read HQ you will see the nifty feats (magical abilities) like those ones. It took me ages to come to grips with the idea that they simply dont do that - see the Pompous Magic section of the rules. Although they are suggestive of the intent of the magic they do not do what they say unless specific conditions are met. So Slay Undead can be used to slay undead, but they dont die just because you used the feat on them, they die because you fulfill the reason for them to die, and because the feat is one way of achieving that. You could just as easily have hit them with your sword. IN an extended contest you drive them to 0 AP and they die, how you go them there is irrelevant.
What ends up happening in my group of players is that they quickly drive their melee skills up and their magic lags behind. So it is very easy to have 1w2 melee skill and still only have a magic skill around 5w1. So why would you use a magical skill that is so low, wouldnt you just go in their and hack them to death all the time? Well my players DO tend to do that, so I have been thinking of ways to encourage them to try different methods.
The first thing to consider is that if you attack with magic then the target has to defend with an appropriate defence, which isnt going to be Sword and Shield. Think about a zombie, it has a weapon, but it doesnt have a brain or a soul, so what is it going to resist a magical attack with? Nothing, which means they defend with the worlds resistance of 14. So in melee the zombie might be your equal, 1w2 vs 1w2, but in magic he is vulnerable, 5w1 vs 14. HQ is all about comparing scores, a mastery level advantage is AMAZING value.
But I am getting sidetracked from my pompous magic thread. So Slay Undead doesnt slay the undead outright, but it certainly is an appropriate ability to slay them with. When I first looked at this I spent a lot of time trying to make Slay Undead do exactly that - I spent ages working out ways of trying to control the power so my players wouldnt abuse it (and other powers like that). SO I got into this argument with myself - the power is there so it should work vs if it works too easily my players will be too powerful. FORGET IT!
It is just another ability, and thats all! Dont get fixated (like I did) on the literal meaning of the words and instead, look simply at the intent. Slay Undead can be used as a tool to slay undead. Sever Head can be used as a tool to achieve that result, but only as a side effect of defeating them (coup de grace shot with this feat maybe). Sever Head would be good for finishing off vampires (its intent most likely), but is mostly irrelevant vs humans unless you wanted to be particularly gross (and there may be uses for that).
Skills Concentration
Being a group of mechanistic gamers we tend to enjoy a good olf biff-up, which means we put a lot of importance on melee skill, which means we put a lot of HPs into melee. What then happens is you have a character with 1w3 Sword and Shield, and every other skill wil still at 17 or 13. This happens for several reasons, the way you play the game (as already mentioned), and the way the GM runs the game. If the GM has a lot of melee then your players obviously place a lot of emphasis on that. If the GM changes the style of his game, and puts in more diverse challenges, non-melee ones, then your players will see a need to diversify their skills also. The other option is to use different tactics in melee itself, use monsters that are difficult to defeat with melee (or impossible) and force them to use other abilities.
Magic is Too Expensive!
Theistic magic costs 3pts per Affinity to increase, its too expensive? Maybe, but their are other alternatives, like simply buying up a single feat at 1pt per level. So you might have Combat affinity at 20, and Assist Sword feat at +5 (total of 25). Affinities are expensive because you get to increase all the feats at once, but if you only use one feat regularly then just upgrade that one.
Animist are too tough, or too weak!
My players shifted from Animists are too tough, to animists cost too much, to animists are weak, back to animists are too tough. Initially they were tough because fetishes add to your total skill when released, so a Sword Assist 17 fetish spirit would add +17 to your sword skill, which looked pretty damn good. But then they realised that to release the spirit you needed a reasonable relationship with them, so they were seen as costly, especially as a fetishes power level cannot be increased (its fixed). So then they thought animists were weak because a lot of HPs would be sucked up by fetishes (wrong!). Finally I sat down and did up an animist character and played him in a session with one of the players running it. He was a Storm Bull with three fetishes, when we ran into a REALLY big chaos monster (so big we weren't supposed to fight it, we had NPCs to protect us), but to show them how tough an animist can be (if only for a short time) I started releasing all my fetishes and then charged into combat. As a Storm Bull all my fetishes had some application to chaos (I had set it up that way) so with three fetishes thats +3x17 = +51 melee skill. Of course that meant all my fetishes were expended at that time and no good till I had time to recover them (one roll each week). But the point was made.
Animists have specific advantages, they can be very tough at single events. Theists are moderately tough all the time (they average out). Not sure how wizards go as we dont have any at this stage, but look like they can be tough for a moderate time IF they prepare for it.
Its All About Comparative Values!
HQ mechanics are all about comparing the values involved. A mastery difference (20) means the higher score will win 75% of the time. So basically a mastery difference is about as far as you want an NPC to be from a player and keep the fight within reason (remembering that HPs can alter this, as too will numbers on each side). To work out skill levels of NPCs that your players will face you can do a quick cheat and just ask what skill level your players are at, then simply set a level + or -20 of that. Tough opponents will be 10 to 20 better, weak opponents will be 10 to 20 less (you dont even have to work out what melee skills they have, just make up a comparative value).
At one point in my game one of my players managed to get a complete mastery above the other players in melee. This presented a problem as mobs tough enough to fight him where a little too tough for the rest. One answer was to have one or two tough opponents and get them to fight the tough player, and scale appropriately for the rest, but you cant be sure who will be facing who so it didnt always work. There is a fine art in finding the balance for this. It certainly helps to drop plenty of clues so the tough players take on the tough opponents (like the guy shouting orders, or the guy wearing a red plume feather, or the guy with no shit on him!)
Large vs Small
IN Anaxials Roster the concept of size is explained. Basically a human is the base level on which size is determined, and humans are normally size 6 (which can be considered as Large 6 or Small 6, depending on your view). Anything bigger than a human is Large 6+, anything smaller than a human is Small 6+. So a troll might be Large 10, and a dog might be Small 10. Large and Small can be used as an augment in combat, Large for extra damage, Small because they are harder to hit. Various other uses become available also, like Large vs doors to knock them down, Small vs holes to get through etc. It isnt totally smooth shifting your thinking patterns from one to the other but it seems to work. And as far as I can see it works on a linear fashion, so a horse about four times the size of a man is Large 24.
One useful feature of this is that you can use Large to attack with, and potentially to defend with. So a Large 24 horse can attack a man who is 6, and the horse will have a good chance of winning, which to me makes sense. One could argue to use a melee skill to avoid this attack but I dont consider it appropriate and would improvise it heavily (prob -10 if a warrior, -20 if not). As melee skill tends to increase rapidly it doesnt take much for a trained warrior to be able to avoid a bashing horse, even with -20 improv, which is fair enough. But a charging horse, Large 24, augmented with Strong and Run and Battle Training can become a formidable opponent. A Giant of Large 60 becomes deadly.
Large vs Small, just do a direct test, so the smaller they are the harder they are to hit. Small can be used as a combat augment as well. Really Large creatures can attack groups, you can either simply add all their values together or use one and augment with the others.
Large and Small are not skills, they are values that can be used as skills. Your size is inherently set and rarely changes short of dramatic events.