[HoE] Re: Hucksters in HOE

[Reuben McCallum <bloopy40@hotmail.com>]

Howdy All!
I thought I'd just add my own thoughts on this little sideline and see how 
they'd pan out.
I've had a Huckster in my own DL game for a year and a half now, and by no 
means has he ever dominated play. In fact, I found that other AB's can be 
far more all-powerful (especially in HOE) and penalising them to the degree 
that they were in Junkman Cometh is somewhat unnecessary. But I also found 
several flaws in the logic of the penalties:
The Raised requirement for the hand seems entirely unjustified. If the 
manitous are more powerful, you've got a better chance of snagging the power 
you need to power the hex.
In regards to the joker part, the red joker reflects that you've found a 
bigass manitou and simply by bluffing the little bugger you've caused him to 
still give over the power that he needs. I can see why under the "larger 
manitou" theory this might make sense, but in my experience bigger isn't 
necessarily smarter. Perhaps introducing an actual bluff roll to avoid 
backlash is the answer.
The penalty I thought was appropriate. A +4 on the backlash table makes 
things more difficult, but not excessively so.
There are a lot of game related reasons why hucksters aren't overly powerful 
and don't need any more penalties. As has been stated elsewhere, a Huckster 
already requires two separate things to cast a hex; first, to make a roll, 
and then to draw a good enough hand. And unlike most attempts at success, 
the huckster can't use chips to make sure that a hex is going to work, 
because, you can't spend more chips on the roll once the hand is drawn. This 
means that they've got to spend chips blindly and hope that they're going to 
get a good hand. In my experience in any other form of action anyone with 
one each type of chip can pretty much garruntee success on any roll (a 
white, a red then a blue all go a long way). Hucksters don't have this.
Even with this, a huckster who even makes the most basic roll has still got 
a fairly good chance of drawing a black joker, and when that happens, odds 
are pretty good that the hex is going to fail. A huckster can never 
exclusively rely on their abilities to see them through a situation. The 
number of times my huckster has drawn only an ace on his soul blast (believe 
me doesn't go far against what my huckster is using it against) I lost count 
of. Yet he's only really managed to pull off a big-ass soul blast twice. 
He's not particularly unskilled in this field either. When my posse goes up 
against a villain, I don't worry about the huckster capping him too quickly; 
I worry about the sharpshooters with rifles and pistols taking headshots 
constantly.
Lastly, a huckster has to invest incredible amounts of time and effort into 
what they do. Admittedly, with the forthcoming revised edition, this 
changes, but none the less, a huckster requires good die types in a whole 
range of abilities just to perform hexes adequetly well. A syker requires 
only a good knowledge and maybe spirit, a doomsayer requires only spirit, a 
junker is another knowledge base, and templars just need a sword a a good 
nimbleness to really shine. A huckster with a fair range of abilities is 
going to need good knowledge, spirit, smarts, cognition, and if possible 
mien just to get by. That means that other potentially life saving traits 
such as nimbleness (for dodging), vigour (for standing), quickness (for 
reacting), and deftness (for capping) are going to be neglected. Being a 
huckster, by all accounts, ain't no gravy train.
Whew.
Okay, you can flame me now, but I think I have made my point.
Reuben "Affirmitive Action for Hucksters" McCallum


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