Nick Brooke:
> Excuse me. I only used Greg's name because he was presenting the
> brave new world of Broad Abilities (as if it were a Good Thing) at
> Tentacles. If I'd heard about it from someone else, I'd have used
> their name instead. Hope nobody's offended by my (perhaps foolish)
> assumption that Greg supports these proposed changes.
Sounds like a good guess to me: RR is issuing caveats, JK sounds at best half-convinced, DD I'm sure hates the whole idea... _Someone_ has to have thought this stuff up, and for all we know, Greg did half of it off the cuff at Tentacles. ;-)
I do agree with Nick's dire warning (if not necessarily that it's a clear and present danger, or something on anyone's "agenda") that pre-set "ability trees" would be bad idea, and completely contrary to the present "spirit" of the game. To a certain agree we're stuck with the phenomenon of abilities in keywords forming a de facto "benchmark" for abilities, however. (As we currently are with the lamentable Generic Close Combat, for example...)
> > Can't we at least have a
> > discussion on the respective merits of the available options
> > _before_ playing the "rules inertia" joker?
Tim Ellis:
> Well, isn't that what we're having.
By and large yes, to be fair. But with occassional marked exceptions, hence my voluble grumping.
Jeff Kyer:
> Smart or Clever is being abused in my game but I've been giving
> penalties for it IF it is being used as a subtistute skill. If you're
> using your clever to simply bamboozle someone else or to out
> wit/outthink your opponent, that's no penalty.
Happy the GM that at least know he's being abused, I suppose. ;-) I think suitably large imp-mods are a fairly decent solution, in practice. In theory, this is problematic, since if one increases a very small number of very broad skills long enough, any fixed penalty will eventually be mitigated. In Real Life(TM) anyone trying to do this is beaten about the head and body before they can make good on their plan, obviously, but mechanically, broad abilities are a "cleaner" deterrent to such wheezes. ("Sure you can take that; it's a broad ability, though." "Ah. Shan't bother, then." As opposed to on-going brushfire bunfights about assessing a penalty 'dynamically'...)
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