> > FWIW, I always ask for a [Tradition] Knowledge against the desired
>spirit's
> > Might just to see if the shaman has any idea of how and where
>finding one in his Tradition. >
>
>And
>
> > And then, in an animist area, I use about the same scale for
>spirits than for
> > persons :
>
>Both excellent ideas! Those should be captured somewhere as useful
>house rules or rules of thumb I think.
True, these are good ideas. I use this principle all the time. It's the basic idea behind the currency based resolution (without the hassle). That is, in general, if a player wants to gain something of a certain power level, tracking it down has, in general, a difficulty similar to the power of the object in question. This principle is used by the rules in many places already.
Another one that's commonly used is to use a base of 14, and augment with the ability of the thing sought. This is more apporpriate for doing things by magic, I think.
For example, if I wanted to find a magic sword, rated at a +3 bonus, that's equal to a 5W power, so using my Sword Lore ability, I'd roll it against 5W. If I had a magical "Find Swords of Power" ability, I'd roll that against 17.
Further, this is a good guideline for determining the other contests that might be involved in getting the item. For example, you could use the same difficulties in determining the ability level of a guard set over the item. My favorite is to have "purchasing" conflicts where the player rolls his wealth against a the opposition as determined above to see if he's able to buy the item without damaging his wealth. If he succeeds, his overall wealth is unaffected. If he fails then either he doesn't get the item, or the "injury" occurs to his pocketbook, making subsequent purchases more difficult. The rating only goes back up when the character has made some other roll to "heal" his lacking cashflow or credit.
Overall, what this does is to make gaining anything that would improve the character beyond his current maximum level of ability somewhat dangerous, while things that are below the current level of ability are pretty easy to obtain.
As always, require a player to spend a HP to cement any new ability to prevent players from just doing nothing but seeking out new abilities this way.
There are loads of ways to apply this principle. Anybody have other examples?
Mike
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