>From: Greg Stafford <Greg_at_...>
>
>No, the intent was to start a Swimming = 0, not 6.
>
>That is why it was in there.
>
>Praxians don't have enough water to learn to swim.
So, in other words, if they attempt to swim, it's an automatic defeat. Per the modifiers rule that states that if a total is below zero, that it's an automatic defeat.
As opposed to it being merely unlikely due to being untrained. That is, humans tend to have Fly 0, and Run 6. Every human learns to run, even if it's not culturally important, or part of their occupation, etc. Outside of magic, they simply can't fly.
There's this notion that every character has every ability at 6. But, in fact, they effectively have lots of them at "0". It's not even really 0, because if it were, one could augment, and maybe swim with their +2 from Determined or something. The rule is that if they don't have a suitable ability, even with an improv penalty, it's just an automatic defeat. No rating, nothing, skip the resolution process, and head straight to describing how it doesn't work.
By the way, for those wondering how to determine if a non-swimmer drowns or not, make that the contest. If they fall into water, and are pulled out by somebody, then rate the contest based on how strong or quick the puller is, or how durable the drowner is (augmenting with the other). That's the contest at hand, not a question of whether or not they can swim in this case. Any more than you'd roll to see how well a character flies down from a cliff after leaping off of it. No, instead you'd roll to see how well they take the impact at the bottom.
Frame the approrpiate contest, and questions of default abilities become a lot easier to deal with.
Mike
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