I agree completely. I don't want my carpenter to build a house with a target of 5w, and end up with a legendary 20w4 house on a Complete success. Not without a lot of help or planning.
Maybe a better table would
>be:
>
>Marginal = R-10; Minor = R-5; Major = R; Complete = R+5
>
>Where R is the resistance rating.
Hmm. The problem I'm having with this is that it doesn't jibe with the other side of the equation (wounding) as we've got it now. I think that up to the resistance should be the AP total. Such that if you get down to zero, you have the rating itself. So how about you add half of the APs past the Resistancel to the overall AP total. This seems to work well to me. After you get to zero AP you reach a point of diminishing returns. (This would be capped at 30, see below)
This does lead to some interesting ideosyncracies. My carpenter with a 5W can, if he wants a house with a 5W result, just go at a difficulty of 10 and be relatively certain of reducing it to -30 or more. Call this the cautious approach. That is, a character can probably build something to their own level with very little trouble (the GM should only do such a contest if he feels it's dramatic). These just will never be outstanding. Attempting something at about your own level is challenging, and can produce results above your own level - if you win.
So, in the example of my carpenter friend, Jon, he gets the plot of land down to -8 AP eventually, for a 5w + 4= 9w result.
>regarding the 'death' problem, I think Complete Success in a contest
>can definitely lead to absolute results. If you're trying to kill
>someone and get a Complete Success, they're dead and ratings be
>damned. Anything less than that is by definition not a complete
>success and so the resulting state can resonably be measured using
>the normal game rating system.
That's a pretty clear statement. That is, if you drive something to -31 or more AP, you simply give them the "normal" preventive use result, instead of a mechanical result. That should have been obvious. Thanks.
What does this mean for the other end, however? Well it seems that on the "building" side that the 30 point limit is just the upper limit of achievement. Just as you can't destroy something more than destroying it on the negative end, a character's maximum achievement would be capped at some point after 30 AP. Meaning with the diminishing return rule that this would be +15 to the target level with any Complete Success. This is the best the character can do until he improves.
How's that?
Mike
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