> Surely on the contrary, the point is, what happens in the following
> two (not very!) contrasting situations: a) one person is
> Tree-jumping, using her magic for same, by herself/for a larf; vs.
b)
> one person is _competing_ with another in jumping over trees with
> respectively Tree-jumping magic, and some 'mundane' leaping ability.
This kind of contest reminds me of Cuchulain's encounter with some relatives of Fin (I think). He said "I bet you can't do this" and leapt up, balancing on the tip of his spear. Of course they were honour bound to try, and all died. Cuchulain has "Ballance on spearpint" magic (resistance 14) and they have normal balance abilities (recistance very high). It would be mad to pit all the character's balance abilities directly against each other - they're not actualy doing anything to each other, so why would you want to?
I think there's only a problem here if you want there to be one. A tree leaping contest seems streightforward to me, because the thing they're testing themselevs against are trees, so the tree's resistance is what you match your ability against. Magic works here, now against that.
Admittedly in many situations in an actual game if the character end up in a jumping contest with an NPC I'll run it as a direct contest against each other using their best Jumping ability. This is just a convenience issue though. As soon as one of the characters starts using their creativity, and uses any fun foibles of their ability to gain an edge by making the contest more specific, I'd be crazy, not to say very unpopular, to not take that into account in deciding how to run it.
Simon Hibbs
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