So maybe someone can help answer a bit of a question.
To some extent, a lot of the time if you prepare a contingency in advance to avoid a problem, doing so often doesn’t actually matter.
Let me explain;
If I am a Lurk, and I use a vial of silence, and proceed to fail a Prowl roll, there is going to be a consequence. It just can’t be sound-related. Which in some cases might actually be worse. Making some sound might tick up an alarm clock, but if that can’t happen because of a silence potion, the GM is tasked with coming up with some other consequence. There’s no reason it couldn’t end up being damage, instead.
There’s nothing in the rules stating that a silence potion (still an example) gives you any benefits to your roll, though a GM could certainly choose to do so, and that would be its own benefit. But that’s sort of beside the point; if you plan for a contingency in such a way that it doesn’t provide a specific roll benefit but DOES make it impossible for a specific consequence to occur, is that actually helping?
Another question I have is whether or not it makes sense for something like a vial of silence to act like a special Armor when it makes sense for it to do so. Like the Lurk’s special armor related to stealth. Is it within the bounds of the rules for a Lurk to use silence, mess up a Prowl roll, and have the GM say ‘You stumble around, but the guards can’t hear it, so the consequence is automatically resisted.’
Obviously the rules don’t want to over-emphasize planning ahead, and the items exist for largely narrative purpose, but there’s a part of me that finds it rather unsatisfying that using a special tool to be silent doesn’t actually provide you with any particular advantage, it just shifts your consequences somewhere else.
I know I’m overthinking this, and one easy response is; your group can play it however they want. But I’d love to hear someone else’s take.
Two things:
Your situation and effect. Don’t forget that your fictional positioning has an effect on both of these. Going on a prowl while inaudible can easily move you from Risky to Controlled (exploiting a dominant advantage), and may change how deep and complex a Prowling situation you can reasonably get into (maybe sneaking into the Shogun’s bedroom goes from Limited effect to Standard; or sneaking into a normal compound goes from Standard to Great).
So, if the potion makes you go from Standard Effect, Risky Situation to Great Effect, Controlled Situation… your successful rolls become awesome, and your failed rolls go from “oh, you’re screwed” to “eh.”
Those two things are the absolute beating heart of BitD’s mechanics. As long as you overlook them, yeah, lots of fictional positioning stuff is going to seem completely whacked.
Fiction always predicates position, effect, and even the need for a roll. So, let’s look at your Lurk who is prowling.
What was the position and effect before using the silence potion? How much of the risk or effect was based on the possibility of them being heard?
If the all the risk was them being heard, like say sneaking through a manor home with creaky wooden floors in the pitch black, and they take the silence potion, then I’d say that obviates the need for a roll completely. Being heard was the only risk, now it’s not a risk, so proceed along.
If there were other dangers, say night watchmen that might spot them, does the silence help? Seems like it would but not completely, so perhaps you change the position to from risky to controlled. Or, maybe you decided that all they need to do is not be spotted once, then they can run (silently) all the way to their goal, so it’s still risky but they get great effect, etc.
Then, if they do get a bad outcome or partial success, you already know (at least in a general sense) what’s at risk here. In the controlled scenario the might slip out and find that there is a guard in the way, they could try again in a risky position, or try something else to distract the guard and still be controlled. If they hadn’t taken the silence potion, the roll would have been risky instead, an that bad outcome or partial success might have started an alert clock, or presented them an immediate challenge, etc.
The GM should always be taking your actions into account before deciding position, effect and whether or not you even need to make a roll. So an item that makes you completely silent could turn a risky roll into a controlled roll, or if the only reasonable way you could get caught is by making noise then you might succeed automatically. If it literally does nothing, that’s not a problem with the rules, but with their (lack of) application.
I would personally be okay with the special armor-ish suggestion, so long as it isn’t overdone; it feels in line with the rules to reveal after a bad roll that you were carrying a vial of silence and use that to explain how you resist the noise detection consequence.
Position and effect, yep. Also, a flashback to “I used my vial of silence potion” probably removes the need for a special armor hack.
Thanks for the great replies. It’s still tricky at times to keep in mind all of the various ways things can push and pull at a roll, and how to connect a roll’s effect with the results. So that was helpful!
Chris O’Keefe No worries; the community is always happy to be helpful.