> In historical battles, people died. Lots of them. A
> lot more than 1 in 400 of participants.
>
> But that 1 in 400 is only for an even fight. Who's
> silly enough to get into an even fight? If you want to
> win, you make sure it isn't even!
>
Well, a lot of historical writers may not have been very accurate
reporters, but as numbers are recorded, deaths on the winning side
often were quite low, while deaths on the losing side would be vastly
higher. The difference between not being hacked down as you ran away
and also getting quick medical attention.
Speaking as a player, I'm fairly glad that complete defeats are very uncommon. They tend to imply massive transformation of the character. I'm a builder, I'm thinking of where I want my character to be two masteries from now if it ever gets played that long. So massive transformations tend to be rather disruptive to all of that.
However I agree that the -10% can seem pretty minor. Until you face a recurring series of contests. The 10% lower may not seem very big, but it increases the odds of minor or higher defeat a fair bit. So you lose an argument with your rival at lunch time. That afternoon the fyrd musters and you are both bucking for position, you are not only more likely to lose, you are more likely to lose in a substantial way again. So by the time you accuse him of selling out to your enemies that evening your odds have dropped quite notably.
However I think the penalties can have a much bigger impact if they are descriptive as well as numerical. So instead of '10% on your physical skills" it is "Left eye swollen shut, -10% on relevent skills." It won't much affect your ability to run along a road, but it will affect certain social skills, is an absolute "you don't see to your left," it affects what skills the character is apt to choose to use and how they will use them, etc. In short it becomes a story element.
I think when characters treat these penalties as simply numeric they should be running the risk of making them worse. So if you have a 'badly sprained ankle' and engage in chasing pick pocket across teh city, just taking a 10% penalty on your agile skill, then I think you should have a real chance of making that injury worse. If you have "Charles thinks I cheat, -1" and you ask Charles to do soemthing involving trusting you, he should not just behave normally with you having a -1, Charles is going to act like he does with people he explicitly does not trust.
I guess I'm arguing that when you try to work around penalties, they are minor. But if you try to ignore them, they should have more impact. So that they should have a story impact--what really matters--as much as they do a numeric impact
--Bryan
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