Oops, sorry about the odd characters - they were slanted double quotes,
from the word-processor form I originally wrote this in.
>
>Your terminology helped to clarify a thought that has been bouncing
>around in my head for a while, so thank you.
A pleasure - I may have got the details wrong (c.f. comments of others
about the changes in ratios of successes in close combat, though all my
model requires is that +5 equates to a chance of winning from 50:50 to
33:66 in consequences) but it did help me puzzle out something quirky,
and have some sort of rationalisation and fix for the quirkiness.
>
>To use your terms, when one side of a contest is using a quantity
>ability that can be expected to deviate noticeably from the other
>party's quantity in that same ability, then contest abilities can
>only be used to augment.
Seems a fair choice - in my game I often mess around with what augments
are worth in odd situations - "You can augment at half rate" that sort
of thing. Of course, the mathematics of what happens with halving an
augment is worrying (fifth roots *twitch*)
>
>So, if a base human "run" quantity ability is 12, when faced with a
>horses "run" of perhaps 2W, a hero may not use his various "run fast"
>type abilities except to augment his default 12. Note that truly
>heroic character, with a 10W2 in running, would have an auto augment
>of +10, and hence would be able to match the horse. Perhaps this
>seems silly in earth terms, but it seems about right in heroic terms.
Oh, its definitely right in heroic terms - I have a Mastakos the Mover
character who, going west, I allow to go outrageous distances in a day
(right across Dragon Pass, for instance)
>
>The underlying assumption here is that contest abilities are all
>meant to be used when the related quantities are about equal.
>
>However, this means that you have to be very careful when to allow
>quantity abilities to be used as the defining ability in a contest.
>Except when it is very clear, they should be forced to be used as an
>augment. For example, in an auction it is fair to pit wealth against
>wealth. In trying to bribe someone, it would be inappropriate to
>say "the briber is using wealth, so the bribee must use their wealth
>as their main skill." More appropriate to use wealth as an augment
>on some other (contest) skill.
One piece of messiness occurs if you try augmenting another's wealth with your own. Since it's all about quantities you can calculate the true augment:
Rating relative to augmented rating vs. Augment
+0 +5 as if you augment wealth with equal wealth it doubles -2 +4 -5 +3 -10 +2 -15 +1 -20 +0
But this is nasty - you don't want players having to look things up in tables.
> In the case of running, in a straight
>race, using the quantities is reasonable. However, if say a horse
>with rider is trying to catch someone on foot, and the footman is
>trying to dodge and avoid, it would be inappropriate to force the
>contest to go to quanities.
Indeed - the contest isn't about speed, it's horse control vs. dodging
or the like.
>
>Finally, I'd love to see your thoughts on many to one combat.
>Different views are always valuable.
For what they are worth, see "Many-to-one" combats.
-- Kevin Blackburn Kevin_at_...
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