Ah, a bit different than my use of "pre-empting", which is "I shoot him before he can get me". Semantics, yes.
I see it as an appropriate use of resistance - an "All Seeing Amulet" could easily be an appropriate defense to being snuck-up on. So would "Sense Assassin", or "Spidey-Sense". It's not pre-empting if you happen to have a defense for a specific attack! Yes, the assassin wants the contest to be "Sneak vrs skin", but he didn't do his homework on his victim. Had he known about/remembered the All Seeing Amulet, I'm sure he would have modified his approach. But too late, he's committed.
Remember that all uses of ability in HQ should be prefaced by "I try to", so it is: "I Try to sneak up on him and stab him in the back"; and "I try to Detect him before he stabs me in the back". The actual outcome of these attempts is up to the dice.
> That's what I'm getting at. Plausibility often allows for this change to
> occur. Again, with the Rep character, one could argue that Huge can't just
> ignore the reputation, having to get "past" that first to get to the PC.
Well, the problem with the Reputation case is that I'd expect a reputation of "Best Warrior" to be challenged (frequently). Will it cow a Uroxi? Who laughs in the face of Chaos monstrosities? I think not. But that is simply based on the *particular* dynamics of that one specific incident.
> Again, I'm not saying that there are any hard and fast rules here. It's
the
> narrator's job to sort these things out by applying modifiers.
Absolutely.
But that's
> the point - just saying that a character can attempt an action because he
> declares if first doesn't fly.
The person that declares the first action determines the contest. (see below about phrasing the action correctly) Of course he's going to frame it in the best possible terms for himself. But if the defender just happens to have a particularly useful ability to use to resist the attacker's ability, then too bad for the attacker. It doesn't even really need to be an ability that defeats the first guy's intentions, it could be environmental. Say the victim was sitting at a bar when the assassin came sneaking up on him - if there was a mirror behind the bar, then I'd probably give the victim a break on being snuck up on.
To take a more extreme example, if a target
> character were at the top of a wall that was difficult to climb, would you
> allow him to make an attack without climbing the wall, first? I'm not
saying
> that you have to roll for every challenge (no, that wouldn't be like me,
> would it). But in the case described, a roll for the wall is more than
> appropriate, it's downright neccessary.
Err, you mean "Would I allow *an attacker* to make an attack, I assume, since it doesn't make sense the way it's written...
Depends on the attack, of course - a magical or ranged attack of course I'd allow it. But you're talking about a hand-to-hand attack I assume.
No, I probably wouldn't allow a naked declaration of "I stab the guard" without some way of getting up the wall. But I'd tell the player up front that he couldn't do it *as stated*. "Right, from 30 feet below you're going to stab him with your knife? I don't think so. Try describing what you're doing again". But once the player has satisfied any problems with the statement of intent, he's set the stage for the contest. The other player then has to react and give his resistance, he can't pre-empt by claiming to act first in the contest and setting up the conditions to suit himself. His reaction, if he has a suitable ability, might modifiy the conditions.
(By the way, the attacker shouldn't get to abort the contest once the defender has stated his resistance unless there was some outrageous omission in the initial description (which was probably the narrator's fault): "What do you mean he's sitting in front of a mirror? You never mentioned a mirror, I'm not going to attack him." This then comes down to narrating tricks and traps and all sorts of other things. )
> Now, we could divide this into two separate contests. You could have a
> "sneaking up" contest, and apply the modifiers to the next contest. That's
> completely legitimate. But in your own example, you have a combination of
> actions being involved (the crossbow augmenting the Detect Assassin
> indicating that some fighting was also involved in addition to the
> sneaking). So there's no hard and fast line there, either.
"Narrating as Art, not Science".
Think of my hypothetical victim as the high-strung Detective type, that *always* responds to surpise by pulling out his gun. There are plenty of examples in modern fiction and movies :-). The Sneak attack *was* augmented by a Knife, remember: "I sneak up and stab him in the back", so a combat augmentation makes sense - if I win, I shot him before he got close enough to stab me.
> Again, I agree that it's a lot simpler to just make the assumption in most
> cases that the declaring player has "framed" the action to the point in
> question. But, especially between two PCs, this sort of framing could even
> be abused. Again, can I declare that I have already snuck up on you with
no
> roll for that? Doesn't that violate my character's concept as a perceptive
> sort? Not to say that this will even be done. But there could be the
> appearance of it happening. That is players will often feel put upon in
such
> a situation.
>
> The point is that if you allow this to be an open negotiation (with
narrator
> as final arbiter), you can avoid these appearances of favoritism either
way.
Yep, absolutely.
RR
It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has
done what he has done.
- Richelieu
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