Re: ability use

From: Timothy Byrd <timbyrd_at_...>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 12:21:16 -0800

"Richard Develyn" <Richard.Develyn_at_...> writes:
> The beserk troll I would give a +10 advantage so that a heroic
Trickster
> (with just half a level of mastery higher) has an even change to
talk him
> out of it. And why not? After all, didn't they shoot Robespierre
through the
> jaw because they were worried he could talk his way out of a
confrontation
> with a bloodthirsty peasant mob?

Then how did they manage to shoot him through the jaw without him talking them out of it?

The thing that irks me about all this is that it smacks of taking away from the players ability to make decisions for their characters. Maybe it's a good simulation of the seductive power of Nysalor (I can't spell Gbaji), but I don't like the idea that given a sufficently high beguile skill you could make any character go totally against everything he stands for. (Like a sufficently skilled trickster could - without magic - convince a Storm Khan to have sex with a walktapus.)

> To me, the GT's pole axe attack is just a specialisation of
'Aggression',
> whereas Oscar's witty repartie is just a specialisation of
'Beguile'. A
> contest between Aggression and Beguile IMO needs no adjustment.

Oscar had better have the knowledge of what counts as repartie to a troll. (I think any verbal attack skill is going to need an appropriate knowledge ability to back it up. If you were up against a six-year-old child, being a master of sarchasm and irony probably wouldn't do you much good because those lingustic tricks just wouldn't 'take' on him.)

How insulted would you be if a troll came up to you and said "Your skin is smooth and pink and your tusks do not jut past your lips!"?

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