> From: "A. K. Berner" <open_micro_at_...>
>Regarding augmenting in general. I get how in trying to use magic to augment
>and then getting a failure which causes a penalty can be described, e.g.
>"you try to augment your sword's effectiveness with your
>sword-of-butt-kicking spirit fetish but the spirit gets angry at you and
>causes your sword to become more dull instead of more sharp" etc..
>
>My problem is describing what happens when a similar situation happens with
>abilities. Say I have a highly dexterous, thief-type character in my game
>who has spent many sessions getting better at the 'dodge' skill. They go to
>augment their CC abilities with a +3 using dodge and roll high enough so
>that they end up with a -3 penalty (from a defeat). How are you folks
>describing what happens here? Do you say, "even though you are excellent at
>dodging you try so hard to dodge that you tire yourself out and dodge in a
>clumsy manner for the entire fight such that you will probably take more
>hits"? This doesn't seem very convincing.
>
>I mean, I have no trouble describing, fumbles, reverse engineering extended
>contest results after the AP hits zero, and other such narration challenges,
>but how a character who is supposed to be excellent at something ends up
>being consistantly crappy at it for an entire contest due to the intent to
>use this skill makes no sense to me in most cases...
>
>Does anyone have examples of how they describe this sort of situation?
I don't use these rules for penalties, so rarely have to make the
decisions. I'd probably use minor twisted ankles, slipped armour straps and
the like to simulate this. I'd let people remedy them with appropriate
unrelated actions too.
Thom