Flynnkd2 mentioned problems with an Uber Humakti slice
'em dice 'em merchant. As a GM I get fed up with some
(okay, one) players whinging that their character's
had sod all to do during a particular contest, so as a
player I decided to put my money where my mouth was
and get stuck in to every contest I could. I worked
out the following guidelines to keep my character
doing something in contests.
Incidentally, this works for all types of contest, not
just with vastly different combat abilities.
Ash's Guide To How To Live With Ability Monsters
- Try and find a way of making an opponent defend
with a worse ability. If he's got an impervious close
combat ability, switch to using magic and see if his
magic resistance is worse. Be like Spiderman who
routinely used "wit" against opponents "self control"
to gain an advantage.
- Forget trying to actually affect the opponent,
augment the person on your side with the best chance
of success. As your abilities become greater, rolled
augments become a serious option. If you've got 5w2
with a relevant ability try a +5 rolled augment, it's
unlikely to go wrong and a significant amount of the
time you'll generate a +10 augment instead. Save a
hero point in case the "dead cert" rolled augment goes
horribly wrong.
- Instead of augmenting, lend AP. Small loans (in
relation to the ability used for the transfer) turn
the lender into an inexhaustable AP generator. You
also get to control the resistance which means it's
unlikely to go badly wrong and can be used with almost
any ability.
- Pick on someone your own size. Help your big
fighter out by removing multiple target penalties.
Oddknutt, Kaarg's Son, may be able to crack walnuts
with his foreskin, but his Trollkin horde probably
can't even open a bag of peanuts without outside
assistance.
- Finally, sometimes it's just polite to stand back
and let the top banana do all the work and take the
credit. It's probably the point of the character so
don't take it away from the player. Just because
McGiver can construct a nuclear missile out of a pair
of Val Singleton's old pants doesn't mean he always
has to. While the group is frequently more capable
than the individual, sometimes the individual is more
heroic than the group.
Cheers,
Ash