Playing on their weaknesses

From: James A. Holden <jaholden_at_...>
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 23:11:14 -0700


Has anyone experimented with playing on your opponent's weaknesses in extended contests?

Imagine there are two contestants, our Hero and the Villain. The Villain has the stereotypical personality trait of Overconfident. Now lots of times in fiction, the Hero plays on the Villain's weakness. By "activating" the Villain's personality trait, the Hero gains an advantage.

Would it be possible to augment your own skills by successfully rolling against your opponent's weaknesses? If the Hero knew about the Villain's personality traits in advance, he could take an unrelated action in an extended contest to roll against the Villain's Overconfident trait. The Overconfident trait would be used in a simple contest against the appropriate resistance value for the desired benefit (the higher the potential benefit to the hero, the higher the resistance). If the Hero succeeds, he augments his own skill in the contest. On the other hand, the attempt might backfire, in which case the Hero is now disadvantaged against the Villain.

The nice thing about this mechanic is that the higher the flaw or personality trait's target number, the easier it is for others to take advantage of. Now there's a reason for PCs to buy down those Heroic Arrogance 5w2 flaws! (Note that if you attempt to "activate" a flaw that's not there, the narrator might rule it defaults to 6, making it pretty likely your augmentation attempt will backfire.) And maybe this would be a way to get around the "only one mundane ability can be used to augment" restriction: you can use one mundane ability to augment another, but you can also use your enemies' weaknesses to augment yourself, too.

This encourages players to spend time investigating their adversaries. Before the big clan meeting, maybe it's worth finding out about the lawspeaker's secret allegiance to the Lunar provincial governor. Verbal slurs against the governor during the meeting might force the lawspeaker to tip his hand, exposing him to the anti-Lunar crowd and giving the PCs a better position in the debate. But if their research is faulty, the PCs will only end up making fools of themselves.

Can anyone think of a way this would work with edges or AP lending? For that matter, does it work with augmentation? Would a mechanic like this just encourage flawed narrator characters and flawless PCs?

James

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