Bumps

From: Rob Finnegan <rob.finnegan_at_...>
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 16:13:56 -0000

When I ran a game the other night, I ran into two issues the first being the amount of Augmenting that went on and the second (as result of the augmenting) was bumping.

A bump takes you from a Fumble to a Fail, a Fail to a Success and a Success to a Critical.

Example
Billy and Icky, two dodgy geezers from some big port, have a falling out and have a go at each other with knives.

Billy, much more experienced has 15W. While Icky, a bit slow and thick has 17.

Round one.
Billy bids 10 and rolls a 4 (success bumped to a Crit), Icky gets a 15 (a success). Icky transfers 10 APs to Billy.

Icky then bids 7 and rolls 2 (success), Billy gets an 8 (success bumped to a crit). Icky transfers 7 APs to Billy. And Icky is left on the floor begging for mercy.

If you look closer at what happens in the fight in relation to the effect of the mastery bump Billy has.

Round one.
Billy bids 10 and rolls a 4 (success ), Icky gets a 15 (success). Before the bump is added Billy had a marginal success (Icky woule lose 5 APs). When the Mastery is added he has actually gone from minor success to a Critical.

Icky then bids 7 and rolls 2 (success), Billy gets an 8 (success). Before the bump is added Icky has a marginal success (Billy would lose 4 APs). When the Mastery is added Billy goes from a minor defeat to a Critical! A bit harsh on little Icky don't you think? So the bump in effect has taken Billy from a fail to a Critical, not a fail to a success which I'm sure is the main idea of the bump.

A horrible example.

Billy prior to kicking Ickys arse uses some magic. So Billy has 20W and Icky has 17.

As it stands unless Billy gets rolls a 20 or Icky rolls a 1, Billy will get a Critical every time and therefore get a transfer of all Ickys APs. You could argue that this would be better played out as a Simple Contest (no APs) one roll each. But remember that in a group extended contest opponents may have a wide variation in Target Numbers.

My first thoughts are to re-examine bumps where both sides succeed: So minor defeat to a minor victory and a minor victory to a victory. The rest all works the same so a Fumble to a Fail, Fail to Success (with a look at who role the lowest to see who wins) and a Success to a Critical.

These seems fairer, and means that Masteries (and hero points) do swing it in favour of the side with the Mastery but does not make it so certain that side with the mastery will walk away from the contest with most of the APs of the opponent. Which means that in the case of the Heros going through the henchmen to get to the main villian the Heros will not gain so many APs that they nuke the major NPC!

Does this seem more fair on little Icky?