>I believe what your suggesting is nesting a contest within another
>contest in an attempt to invalidate the other, which is expressly
>disallowed under the HQ rules.
There's a prohibition against nesting extended contests but unrelated actions can affect an extended contest and sometimes will require a contest. Perhaps the result should be expressed as a number of APs lost rather than a result but that could still decide the extended contest.
>Rather, think of it this way that, as Mike said, you have the said
>Barbarian coming unstuck with a debate against a Princess. The
>narrator will have determined how the Princess feels about said
>barbarian according to narrative logic and the needs of the story.
>So the Barbarian tries the kiss. The narrator may give a bonus, let
>the ability chosne by the barbarian remain the same or issue an
>improv modification. The Princess will then have to choose an
>ability to resist the kiss, or the narrator (due to his private
>knowledge) will declare the Pricess melts into the barbarians arms.
>
>Whatever happens, the contest has remained the same even though aims
>may have changed. The reason is that although he has tried to kiss
>her, its not as radical a change of tac as say, stopping trying to
>flee the chaser, and turn and commence a melee. Even under that I
>would rule that the contest continues, but with different abilities
>(i.e. melee rather than running.
>
>If, the player said that he wanted to augment his debate with a kiss
>(maybe to ruffle the feathers of the Princess and knock her off her
>high horse), then I would certainly call that an unrelated action
>and ask in that situation for a rolled augment, not an automatic
>augment, becasue there is IMO a significant chance of the attempted
>kiss turning out to be a negative augment!
So you'd rule differently for the same action depending on the precise motivation of the PC?
I'd also think that an augment is a bit of an inadequate result for such a major action. There should be a large number of action points at risk here whatever the result.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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