RE: Augmenting to Augment?

From: Mike Holmes <homeydont_at_...>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:49:23 -0600


>From: "Mike Dawson" <mdawson_at_...>

>In the Play by post game I'm reading, Brute gets to augment Smoothie with
>EACH
>appropriate skill, so Brute's Huge and Scary Looking both add +2 to
>Smoothie. That's twice
>the effect.

This is the method I use. Rather, I have a general principle. Which is that things augment whatever they're augmenting. To explain, if the player can explain how something augments directly, then it augments that thing. If they can only explain how it augements some ability that's being used to augment, then they only augment that thing.

In practice, rarely do we ever augment an augment. If one can see how it's helping the one thing, in almost all cases one can see it directly helping the other thing.

Put another way, how often do you have a guy who's big and scary, augment his own scary with big before using big to augment something else like an intimidation attempt? I see this only once in a blue moon. Also, given that it's so ineffective overall, I think that people who don't see augments as directly affecting things don't tend to call for them. Many times they make no difference at all to the augmented augmentor.

Where it's iffy, I usually allow the augment directly at an improv penalty. Using the shortcutting method here, I calculate the full agument and subtract one or two. That is a marginally appropriate ability at 17 would get it's normal +2 reduced to a +1 - representing the typical modifier that might have been applied before calculation.

In terms of who is augmenting whom, the rules don't say that this is a special case, merely that one can augment another. So I don't see any reason why you'd apply a different standard in this case. Theoretically if somebody augments somebody else a lot, it takes the original character out of being the center of attention. Well, first, given that the acting hero gets a primary ability, I'd say that his being dwarfed is very unlikely in most circumstances - the augmentor, even if very effective, is still second banana here. But even if they were, I don't think that it's all that problematic. I think that this would tend to iron it self out in play largely.

So I can't see a downside to allowing normal augmenting from character to character in the usual circumstances. The upside is that it opens the door to more characters being protagonists on each contest.

If you really want a character to shine individually in a contests, orchestrate it to where he's along when it happens. Simple as that.

>I suppose you could say that each augment requires an unrelated action, so
>the latter
>example would take more rounds to prep. On the other hand, you could say
>the same
>thing about Brute augmenting his own Scary Looking with Huge.

In simple contests, no rounds means that this is not a consideration. But, yeah, in an extended contest, the normal rules apply, and if something reqires an unrelated action to get in, it requires an unrelated action. Just like normal.

Mike

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