Re: Augmenting to Augment?

From: Andrew Solovay <asolovay_at_...>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:35:35 -0800

Mike Holmes <homeydont_at_...> wrote:
>> 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.

That's how I'd see it. I think one circumstance where you might need to "augment the augment" is if you're using magic.

That is, say that you're bargaining with a Lokarnos merchant. You have "Devotee of Issaries: 5W", "Goldentongue Lore: 18", and "Relationship to (Issaries) Divine Companion: 10W". Oh, and it's an Issaries holy day, too. Does the Lokarnos merchant give a rat's ass about any of that? No, he does not. And none of it is directly connected to bargaining, so it's hard to see how you could use it as an augment. But you could reasonably use all of those to augment your Issaries merchant magic--and then use your magic to augment your bargaining skill.

I expect that kind of situation might happen a lot. That is, you might have a lot of skills which can reasonably augment your magic (or your combat or your speaking)--and if you're using your magic (or whatever) as an augment, all those second-level-augments might add up to contribute another point or two.

Is it more trouble than it's worth? I dunno. On a lot of character sheets I see skills represented as something like "Close combat (mace) 5W: 10W with augments" (where the player has worked out in advance what his automatic augments from "large", "hardy", and "ill-tempered" work out to). So when the character uses his "Close Combat" for an augment, it seems reasonable to let him use the *augmented* "Close Combat" score to calculate the augment. (Just as long as he doesn't end up using the same skill twice! If he's using both "Close Combat" and "Large" to directly augment his shouting match with the town bully, he can't use "Large" to augment "Close Combat".)