> Michael
>
> >when the dog men initiated combat in the first scene, the healer
> >wanted to use her Self Defense affinity as her defending ability (the one
> >that APs get based on). Is it appropriate to use an affinity in this
> >manner?
David D.:
> Yes! You can almost always use magic or mundane abilities
> interchangeably (places you can't, like humans flying, should be
> obvious :-). As Narrator, you're justified in imposing
> improvisational modifiers, of course.
The only thing that's interchange is the game mechanic. If the described _action_, whether magical or not, isn't appropriate to the situation, the ability would be that much less 'appropriate', and would likely attract a penalty.
> >how should one go about determining the abilities
> >used to determine the APs? Should it be the abilities used in the first
> >exchange?
>
> Yes.
No. ;-) (That's a reasonable rule of thumb, perhaps, but not to the point of flouting common sense.)
> > Would it have also been appropriate to,
> >instead of going to reduce APs to say it loses its next action due to
> >being stunned?
>
> You could, but since AP represent the overall situation, it's
> probably simpler to just *describe* the stewed opponent as stunned
> for a few critical seconds -- that's what his loss of AP represents.
> I recommend just using the AP system whenever possible.
I would concur, though I also note that one should certainly take the situation into account, too! For example, assign the AP loss, and then penalise the stewee (as it were) if they take actions which seem 'less consistent' with having a pot of stew freshly dumped on them. (Say, it they're blinded for a moment, lashing out with their sword might be a tad tricky.)
> If the dog man wins, you'd expect
> him to do 4 AP (his bite's rank of 1 is smaller than the armor's rank
> of 2, so he is ^-1), and edges/handicaps are always reflexive.
What do you mean by 'reflexive', here? (I'm still trying to work out where exactly Greg's Pendragon use of the term comes from, mind you: it seems to correspond to none other, before or since, in the entire history of the English language. <g>)
> I'm sure the idea was to have a consistent rule to explain to people:
> you want to roll low. Unlike Pendragon, where you have to tell
> beginners: "You want to roll high numbers, but not a 20, that's bad."
I dunno: if the viewers (not to say, contestants) of The Price Is Right can cope with this sophisticated mathematical concept, surely the neophyte gamer might be able to master it... (One thing I mildly dislike about it is that it doesn't really admit the dreaded 'lazy ref syndrome' of 'roll now, I'll decide on a mod. after the fact, if it looks marginal', since the 'marginal' rolls aren't 'marginal' outcomes...)
Cheers,
Alex.
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