>From: "Jamie" <anti.spam_at_...>
>
>The rules as written do not say that contests, where relative negative
>states of health are carried into them, should have their results
>informed by the healing charts.
>
>I have interpreted them this way, but it feels safer for now to
>declare this as a variant.
Well, with your clarifications, it seems clearly a variant to me. Using any contest as potentially healing seems to go with the rules to me. Seeing every contest that has relevance to some penalty as automatically moving the penalty up or down the scale...I think you've completely manufactured that yourself. I mean, to get that to be true, you have to assume that the rules for healing work in reverse. There's nothing in the rules that indicate this other than the fact that the system would work with what's there.
Which is no more conclusive than my idea of what to do with penalties (since they're not in the book either, apparently).
>So instead of having a situation where an impaired character comes out
>of a contest with an impaired result and ends up with -20% I think
>that the rules imply you either remain at 10% or jump to 50%. But,
>unless you use the healing table there is no mechanical suggestion as
>to which, so people have interpreted it as -20%.
>
>This is because hurts stack so maybe the others do! I think this is a
>red herring.
No, it's not because of that. I'm admitting that my method isn't in the book AFAICT. But I'm speculating on this for two reasons. I know it's written down somewhere. And I think it works best with the rules as written. Again, the problem with your solution is that it seems to ignore actual cases that can come up. I mean, let's say that I have an injury at -50% for something physical (let's say I was defeated in combat). And then I have another contest in which I am embarassed for -10% to social stuff. Now, the narrator decides that in a subsequent contest to impress somebody using "Leap High" that both of these problems affect the skill in question. Well, where was the error? In not realizing that the contest that caused me to become embarrassed would affect my Leap High skill? Or applying it to a contest with Leap High? Or in not then saying that the total is the he's now dying, because that's what the theoretical bump is from adding these two together on the injury ladder (actually it would be higher than dying)?
>Multiple hurts, are only ever a consideration if you are using the
>advanced rule (p189) that states -7 AP can be traded for 1 hurt. I
>firmly believe that the rules for stacking hurts in the "states of
>health" section, are only in reference to this advanced rule, and the
>fact that they are placed here, where they only confuse us, is an
>artefact of HW, where it wasn't an advanced rule.
I think that you may be correct that in going from HW to HQ that something got confused or forgotten. But I'm getting more sure by the day that the rule I'm recalling to add these all together was in the HW text (which I can't check because I lost my HW book a long time ago - somebody could do me the favor, or I may have to turn over the house or get an eBay copy to find out). And, again, that it was in some odd location in that book. Which might help explain why it didn't make the crossing.
But that's all speculation - I'd be fully willing to accept that the writers had something else in mind, and were trying to get at it with the rules that they did include. But looking at the rules as written, it seems to me that there simply isn't a single clear interpretation, nor is there going to be any time soon.
Mike
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