BE is driven by the Infection macromechanic. I got that.
But what is the scope in play. The character we are portraying, are they Lords and Ladies (powerful and with support of armed forces, ttrading empires and spy rings); or is the setting for anything from the person without these grand connections. Have the two levels of play been mixed in the playtests?
I guess the question is the scope of the setting scalable to the desires of players around the table?
yes, yes, yes! scalable! very, very scalable!
If you’re opposing a Forged Lord with your lone farmer, you’re prolly going to get your ass handed to you right quick. But if your idealistic farmers are going against street toughs or something similar, it works nicely. Everyone gets Beginner’s Luck for the Infection maneuvers!
-L
Yes they were. We had powerfull 10 LP Travellers/Merchants and Commune Officials playing with 5 LP Cotar Fomas. It worked fine. Keep in mind that if all players will chose low LP characters, each infection phase will last more then 6 sessions (lower skill exponents = more tests needed to bring your opponent down to 0).
Does this indicate that the default is characters with 5-10 lifepaths, rather than BW’s 3-5? If so, do the BE lifepaths have the same type of scope as those from BW?
Yes and only kind of a little bit.
For humans, your average character is going to be late 30s to early 50s. But since this is SF, it doesn’t matter so much. Older characters aren’t quite so crushed by the stat loss.
-L
In fact, I created a hideous NPC. He was a 79-year-old Forged Lord (a noble with the right to raise both Hammer AND Anvil forces–the type that rules whole systems). He was also a member of the Circle of 10,000 (warrior-psychologists). He had 9 or 10 lifepaths. And he was a beast in both Firefight and social situations. And his stats were good.