> Try this - you could enforce a rule whereby abilities are
> used to augment the opponents abilities if they're flaws or
> otherwise have a
> negative impact on a situation.
I had this idea a while back, too, but ran into a problem David Dunham describes:
> I'm not a fan of allowing you to augment with an opponent's
> abilities, because you don't know what the opponent's abilities are.
> (Of course, if it's a long-term rival, or you've had sufficient
> experience with the opponent, this is less of a problem.)
I think there might be two kinds of situations you could run into in a game:
#1 ("objective" or "external" flaws): In the PC-pushes-a-rubble-runner-over-a-cliff example, the fact that the rubble runner has the Small flaw doesn't change the PC's course of action at all. A push is still a push; it's just easier because of the rubble runner's size. As narrator, once the PC committed to this course of action, I'd roll the augmentation myself and tell the player to roll with a bonus.
#2 ("subjective" or "internal" flaws): But if the player wants to tailor his PC's appeal to the clan chief to focus on the chief's Loves Flattery flaw, the player first has to be aware that the chief loves flattery, as David mentions above. This might take some research on the PC's part. This does provide a "chink in the armor" mechanism to allow PCs to deal with high-powered NPCs. "I'll invoke his Heroic Overconfidence!" Again, I think the narrator should roll the augmentation, and just tell the player the bonus.
When rolling the augmentation, what guidelines should the narrator use for determining a desired bonus? Or, as a narrator, would you even bother rolling? Would you just pick a bonus that's reasonable for the flaw's target rating?
If you rolled, sometimes the negative penalty of a botched augmentation might actually make sense: "The rubble runner's small size allows it to evade your grasp. Use your Strong ability with a -2 penalty," or "The clan chief sees through your blatant attempt to flatter him. You gain a -4 penalty to Orate."
Finally, would you allow this mechanism to work the other way around? Would you allow a villain to augment his skills with a PC's flaws? (I would want to be careful not to abuse this mechanism as a narrator, as I have an advantage in having seen the PCs' character sheets. The NPCs wouldn't necessarily have this knowledge about the PCs, however.)
James
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