Questions on Special Abilities:
1) Not to be trifled with / The devil’s footstep
The text says: “you still get one of the normalbenefits of pushing yourself (+1d, +1 effect, etc.) in addition to the special ability.” Regarding “the feat of physical force/athletics that verges on the superhuman” parts: does that mean that, as a GM, I need to re-evaluate position and base effect (and then apply the push benefit)?
For example: if you want to break something that anyone could break, you just do it, no roll required? Is a roll required just for something that only you (with this abilities) could do? If not, what is the extra benefit besides the normal push benefit? A better position? An increased effect?
2) Rook’s Gambit
Isn’t this an almost-too-good ability? I mean, it’s pretty much a guaranteed better version of pushing yourself for bonus dice. Does it have to be explained to work, or the “say how you adapt your skill to this use” just a reminder of the narrative side of this ability? If it need to be explained to work, who decides if the explanation it’s “good enough”?
Re: Rook’s gambit…
a) Yes, it’s often better than pushing yourself (and even when it’s not, because your action rating is only one higher, you can use it in addition to pushing yourself). But that’s okay! Lots of the abilities are. If they weren’t an improvement over what you can do with base mechanics, there wouldn’t be much point in taking them. Also don’t underestimate how costly stress can be.
b) It’s just a reminder; you don’t have to explain it any more than you have to explain how your gun works. I mean, fiction first, but buying the ability means that your rationale will always automatically be ‘good enough’ to use the chosen action. You can already use any action that you can justify; Rook’s Gambit means that you can pay stress instead of justifying it.
On Rook’s Gambit: the position and effect is still beholden to the fiction. So if your player wants to use Sway to attack someone with a weapon, they still need to give you the explanation of how that works and, thanks to the ability, it’s a given they can do it and that this is something they are relatively GOOD at doing.
BUT, you are still free to set their effect or position lower than you might if they just Skirmished the offending individual.
The way I run it: I actually let my players get away with something like rooks gambit when it makes sense even without the ability, I simply offer them a path to the outcome they want that might not be straight forward. Often this more complex path is enough to dissuade them. Rooks gambit sort of does away with that.
Not to be trifled with/The Devil’s footsteps:
Personally, I wouldn’t require someone to roll to break something anyone could break, even if they weren’t using this ability, unless there was something else going on there. “Anyone could kick down this door, but can you do it on the first try, before the guards catch up to you?” Then a roll. Otherwise “You can just keep kicking until it busts.” (And if they were using the ability here, I’d say either let them have it without a roll, or make it controlled/great. Something easy.)
In terms of evaluating position and effect, I think people say “I want to do this thing that’s impossible” and the implied position/effect would probably be desperate/zero, or at least really limited. And they can still roll for that without using the ability, so if the ability only ALLOWS them to make the roll, then it’s not really doing anything. So yeah, I think you should definitely reevaluate based on their new level of physical prowess. And the push benefit should go on top of that, because otherwise to me it just feels like another way of saying “you push yourself for increased effect, but only in really specific circumstances.”
Rook’s Gambit:
The ability shines for players who want to rush 3 or 4 dots in a couple key abilities, and spend stress a few times a score to make high-probability, high-impact rolls. I don’ think it’s overpowered, per se–there’s still a cost, so it’s not like they can do it constantly, and the stress they spend aggressively like that can’t be spent to resist. If one player seems to be using it to take over the game, then maybe evaluate the ability, and why/how it’s happening, but personally I think stress costs are a great balancing factor.
I think the ability usage definitely has to be explained. As has been mentioned, technically you can roll any action on any task, but my interpretation of it with Rook’s Gambit is that, say they’re rolling Sway as Finesse: normally, probably desperate/zero or limited, but I could still see how that might look. But Sway as Wreck, to knock a door down? “Yeah, um. So this door understands words then? Roll it, I guess, but it’s still desperate/zero, because it’s still a door. Oh, 1-3 huh? I guess it comes to life and attacks you? since clearly this is a sapient door.” Because maybe it’s just me (please tell me it’s not) I’m not buying that a door can be Swayed.
I read the ‘adapting the skill’ thing a bit differently. My take is that it’s not necessarily “use [cool action] to accomplish [other action],” but “use [what cool action implies about character] to accomplish [other action].”
For example, you know the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes movies, when he’s doing that thing where he uses deduction to find somebody’s weak spots before beating the crap out of them? To me, that’s Rook’s Gambit in a nutshell, using Study instead of Skirmish. He’s still beating the crap out of someone (he can’t just deduce them to death), but he’s going about it in a way that’s more scholarly than soldierly. Rook’s Gambit gives him license to apply his high Study rating (and the history of learning that implies) to the act of applying fist to face.
So for the ‘swaying the door’ example, a perfectly good rationale could be ‘I used to date a carpenter, so I know how these doors are made.’ It’s on the player to put it together, not the GM. Though, this being Doskvol, ‘the Dimmer Sisters would totally have a sparkcraft lock with a bound spirit, and I am going to fast talk it’ could be just as good!
I probably worded myself poorly earlier when I said that you don’t have to explain how your action applies. The second part (your rationale will always be good enough) is the important part.
That’s a pretty good way of looking at it, I’m not sure why I hadn’t considered that. I think both approaches are valid. And I like that Sherlock example.
Though your take on it makes me wonder how to set position/effect for the action. If you’re rolling Sway or Consort because “I knew someone” then is position/effect based on how well you knew the person, and how much they taught you, or is it based on the action you would have used without Rook’s Gambit? This is also why I’d say that how good the rationale is, is important.
And I stand by my earlier statement: you can’t persuade normal doors to break themselves down just because you have Rook’s Gambit. Or else gazebos may come to life and murder you.
Steven Dodds yeah I’m with James Etheridge on the Rook’s Gambit. In fact, the ability states that “you roll your best action rating while performing a different action”, so you’re still performing that action, but you treat it as if its rating is the same of your best one, and you justify how you adapt your skill to this use.
I think that you don’t need to reevaluate position and effect on the Rook’s Gambit in this case, because (following your example) you’re just rolling the Sway rating but you’re still Wrecking the door.
So, if you used to date a carpenter, maybe you learned a week spot to better your Wrecking chances or maybe you noticed that this is the same kind of door that he had on his house and you Wrecked that too when you broke up.
Anyway, I can see that the 2 stress cost probabily makes it “balanced” and I was simply worrying too much.
The other two (Not to be Trifled / Devil’s Footsteps) are those who I find harder to handle, because in mind they seem to be at odds with the way you’re supposed to estimate of position and effect.
It seems that those abilities lead you to re-evaluate a position and/or effect based on parameters of strenght/agility that are normally implied for PCs (by some of their action ratings) but don’t directly influence your evaluation of postion and effect.
For example, you can probably guess that a PC with 4 dots in Prowl is very athletic, but you don’t change the position/effect based on his dots in Prowl…
Maybe John Harper or Sean Nittner could give some insight on this?
I see your point, that physical prowess can be implied by action dots, but I don’t tend to look at it that way. I think either players set a baseline expectation of their character’s athleticism (based on background, experiences, how they play, and just what they feel their character can do), or else the table decides if the PCs are normal people, or professional athletes, or action stars, or something else, and everyone is equally athletic. And then you work from there.
So if the table has established that all of the PCs are athletes, then there’s a baseline expectation there for what they’re capable of, and that sets the position/effect. For example: jumping from roof to roof over an alleyway is easy: don’t even roll most of the time. Jumping over a normal street is desperate/limited, and anything wider is impossible, zero effect. In this case, it doesn’t’ matter if the PC has 4 dots in Prowl or 0, they’re always considered athletic and in shape, and have a certain chance of making the jump.
So if the PC is athletic and not to be trifled with, now they’re an action movie star, and action movie stars jump large distances dramatically, while explosions go off. So maybe it’s risky/standard (or still desperate, depending on how high up they are), and jumping a larger gap is no longer impossible: now it’s just insane (desperate/limited).
That’s a really good point (set the standard for PCs and work from there) but those abilities seem to imply that if you’re not spending those 2 stress you’re not necessarily stronger or more agile than the others (or, at least, not in a way that would change your position in related actions).
Usually, if an ability makes something true in the narrative, it just says that (see the Cutter’s Savage, the Slide’s Like Looking in the Mirror or the Leech Saboteur).
Not to be Trifled With and The Devil’s Footstep’s give the idea that only when you push yourself you can summon incredible strenght or be incredibly agile, otherwise wouldn’t they resemble one of those abilities that I mentioned? Something like:
Not to be Trifled With
“You are incredibly strong. You can also push yourself to…”
Yeah, I’d say that if the table wants all the PCs to be equally athletic, then yes, everyone is on equal footing unless they have this ability and use it. If the table wants to distinguish each character’s athletic ability from the others, then that’s fine too, though.
And yeah, it’s not an always-on ability. This is the character digging deep, getting a burst of adrenaline, and doing something crazy. So not only can they dig deep like this on command, but when they do it, they get abnormal results. But it’s taxing, so they can’t do it constantly.
I think making an ability to always be extra-strong is a little too boring to have been included in a playbook. And for example if a player is a cutter, takes NtbTW, and Mule, and plays the character like a tough badass all the time, then I might say “sure, your character is stronger than average” without tapping into this ability. Then again, there’s Reflexes, which is a very specific physical ability that’s always on, but limited to seizing the initiative. So if you wanted to have an ability like “Muscles: When there’s a question about who is stronger, the answer is you” that would be fine. And it implies a kind of always-available strength, but it doesn’t let you do something that would normally be impossible, even with your abnormal strength.
(Sorry, I wasn’t really sure what you were asking at the end there, so I kind of just spewed a bunch of thoughts onto the screen, in the hopes that I would provide useful information. Did it work?)
Steven Dodds don’t worry I wasn’t exactly asking something, I was just reiteraiting my uncertainties!
On one hand, I’d like to go with your suggestions, but on the other I’m not entirely convinced by them because the “not always on” part.
I kinda feel like I’m missing something about the concept behind them: am I supposed to just eyeball the adjustment in effect/position and that’s it? That feels weird compared to how the other abilities work.
I’d love to collect a variety of experiences from players/GMs to see all the different approaches and maybe find one that “click” for me. Maybe I’ll ask again in the future and see what others have to say.
In the meantime, thanks to all who have answered, you’ve been really heplful 🙂