10-20-2015, 12:22 PM
I went ahead and edited the poll slightly so there's room for people to make suggestions of their own.
Liz, that's not a bad idea. Two possible concerns: Doing that would require me to design a house rule similar to the one I did for the Influence background, which, if we're trying to avoid making too many house rules, that's a consideration. Science in particular already has its subcategories laid out in the book, so if we changed them we'd need to make sure players were aware of that. The second issue is that these learned disciplines also function as specializations. When purchasing them the standard way that doesn't kick in until the 4th dot, but it's still something to keep in mind (especially since I will probably use the Well-Skilled Craftsman option.) I don't know that it's really a huge issue? But allowing players to re-roll 10s on super broad categories might get (hah, pun intended) dicey. That's less of a concern with something like Crafts, but Martial Arts is also one of the abilities we're talking about here, and I don't expect anyone really wants to allow that for a combat ability. Unless you meant that we could allow them to classify their learned area of expertise in a broad way, while still keeping the specialization within that category specific? That I think I would be more in favor of.
Vesta, it sounds like what you're suggesting is allowing players the option to roll these traits for any applicable task (as all of the other traits can be used) but with fewer dice if said task doesn't involve their particular specialty? That was another option I was thinking of suggesting. (Either that or a difficulty increase.) And I do think that might be easier to implement than re-writing the whole process. I'd honestly be down with that if other people liked it. (Unless I've misinterpreted your suggestion?)
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I had someone request for me to list the abilities we're actually talking about here. And I was about to go ahead and do that, but while I was reading through them I ended up having a lot of doubts myself as to which abilities we're really meant to split up. Crafts is clearly written that way. Art and Martial Arts seem to strongly imply the same, but don't say so in a clear and unambiguous way. Science I had thought was meant to be handled the same way that Crafts is - because it says so in the description. But then it goes on to give an explanation that is, in fact, not the same as the one given for Crafts. (And does assume that people be allowed to roll Science for general scientific knowledge.) So basically we're for sure talking about Crafts, and maybe like 75% sure talking about Art and Martial Arts, and then there's a bunch of other abilities where my response is pretty much ??? - but given the lack of a clear and unambiguous indicator, I'm inclined to err on the side of not making this game excessively complicated and assume those abilities function the same as they always have and that the writers of this book just explained them in a confusing/misleading way by constantly comparing everything to Crafts.
Vague and misleading descriptions - it's the Mage: The Ascension way.
(Note: I have not looked at the Secondary Abilities recently, but I'm fairly sure that some of them fall into this category as well. Especially things like Lore and Area Knowledge.)
Bearing all that in mind, I think regardless of what we choose I'm going to have to make a clear ruling and write some kind of note about it in the Judgment Calls so that nobody gets confused.
Liz, that's not a bad idea. Two possible concerns: Doing that would require me to design a house rule similar to the one I did for the Influence background, which, if we're trying to avoid making too many house rules, that's a consideration. Science in particular already has its subcategories laid out in the book, so if we changed them we'd need to make sure players were aware of that. The second issue is that these learned disciplines also function as specializations. When purchasing them the standard way that doesn't kick in until the 4th dot, but it's still something to keep in mind (especially since I will probably use the Well-Skilled Craftsman option.) I don't know that it's really a huge issue? But allowing players to re-roll 10s on super broad categories might get (hah, pun intended) dicey. That's less of a concern with something like Crafts, but Martial Arts is also one of the abilities we're talking about here, and I don't expect anyone really wants to allow that for a combat ability. Unless you meant that we could allow them to classify their learned area of expertise in a broad way, while still keeping the specialization within that category specific? That I think I would be more in favor of.
Vesta, it sounds like what you're suggesting is allowing players the option to roll these traits for any applicable task (as all of the other traits can be used) but with fewer dice if said task doesn't involve their particular specialty? That was another option I was thinking of suggesting. (Either that or a difficulty increase.) And I do think that might be easier to implement than re-writing the whole process. I'd honestly be down with that if other people liked it. (Unless I've misinterpreted your suggestion?)
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I had someone request for me to list the abilities we're actually talking about here. And I was about to go ahead and do that, but while I was reading through them I ended up having a lot of doubts myself as to which abilities we're really meant to split up. Crafts is clearly written that way. Art and Martial Arts seem to strongly imply the same, but don't say so in a clear and unambiguous way. Science I had thought was meant to be handled the same way that Crafts is - because it says so in the description. But then it goes on to give an explanation that is, in fact, not the same as the one given for Crafts. (And does assume that people be allowed to roll Science for general scientific knowledge.) So basically we're for sure talking about Crafts, and maybe like 75% sure talking about Art and Martial Arts, and then there's a bunch of other abilities where my response is pretty much ??? - but given the lack of a clear and unambiguous indicator, I'm inclined to err on the side of not making this game excessively complicated and assume those abilities function the same as they always have and that the writers of this book just explained them in a confusing/misleading way by constantly comparing everything to Crafts.
Vague and misleading descriptions - it's the Mage: The Ascension way.
(Note: I have not looked at the Secondary Abilities recently, but I'm fairly sure that some of them fall into this category as well. Especially things like Lore and Area Knowledge.)
Bearing all that in mind, I think regardless of what we choose I'm going to have to make a clear ruling and write some kind of note about it in the Judgment Calls so that nobody gets confused.