Is it OK to ask for an intuition check to be rolled on your character's behalf?
Generally, yes. (Obviously if your referee says no, then no.) The danger is that you don't know what will happen after you ask:
1) He says "no." Play goes on.
2) He says "yes," and you're better off for it.
3) He says "yes," and you're worse off for it.
As you see, it's something of a gamble. Personally, I avoid asking for things in terms of mechanics; I'd rather say "Is there any chance I'd have noticed him sneaking up on me?" than "Could I get an intuition check to counter the surprise situation?". That's me, though.
My advice is to only ask if it is obvious to you that your referee always allows a check in this situation, but this time he's forgotten. Again, that's only advice. It's never flat-out wrong unless the ref has already told you not to.
That why I always ask "Would it be OK to ask for an intuition check?" I'm not asking for one to be rolled, I'm asking if it would be OK to ask for one to be rolled. If MJ has something else in mind, he can say "No, it wouldn't be OK to ask that." and play goes on. It kind of gives an out to the person who is being asked.
As long as he's clear that that's what you really mean. A lot of people would say that as just a more polite way to say, "Could you please roll an intuition check for that?", so it's certainly possible that that's what your referee will hear.
I guess the point is, that dodge will work for some referees (they might even like it) and not for others. Find out which kind of referee you're playing for before using that more than once.
When I'm speaking, a lot of the time, you have to take me at exact words.
It was something I used to do with a friend of mine. I would say "You have to tell me that (you will do something) and then I will (do something else)."
Nowhere in there do I say that anyone has to do me a favor. I said you have to TELL ME you will do me the favor. I didn't say you actually had to do it.
As usual, Scott is right on the money here. There is one point he overlooked, and that's the fact that this is an online forum game, and therefore all conversations take time.
You asked, "Would it be OK to ask for an intuition check?" Now you say that you were not asking for one, but only asking if it would be O.K. Obviously my answer was yes, it would be O.K. to ask. I could have said that, ignored the rest of your post, and asked whether you wanted to ask for one. In fact, at the table I am often very literal in things (comes from granting wishes in D&D, I think), and if you'd asked that I would have asked whether you were asking to roll an intuition check or merely asking whether you were permitted to ask. In this case, I concluded that asking whether it was O.K. to ask was preliminary to asking, provided it was O.K. No, you did not ask whether you could have an intuition check; but seriously, had I said yes, you can ask, what's the chance that you would have decided not to ask? It is obvious to everyone except maybe you that the only reason to ask whether you can ask is because you want to ask--or because you want to be a jerk.
- On this latter, I am reminded that one of our best friends was a student nurse assigned to practical on the medical surgical hospital unit where my wife was in charge. The first night he was there, he walked up to her and asked, "So, if I find someone who's not breathing, do I like tell you, or just call the code myself?" If you now see my wife leaping from her chair to find out which patient is not breathing, you have the scene correct. The student immediately continued, "No, it's all right, I didn't find anyone like that--I was just asking so I would know."
If you think this was not a gag, I should tell you about how he puts apple juice in specimen cups and then shows student nurses how to carefully examine patient urine, ending with the taste test. He is exactly that kind of person.
Because we are working on a one-post-per-day exchange, both sides have to extrapolate to some degree, providing several steps in advance.
And Scott is particularly right in this: it is much better to ask things from the character perspective rather than the mechanics perspective. "Do I realize this," "Did I notice this," things like that are all much better questions than "Can I use this mechanic here."
The exception that comes to mind would be when you have a skill that is considered "always active"--such as Panoramic Awareness. In that case, if you are surprised, it is quite reasonable for you to ask, "Do I get to roll my Panoramic Awareness to see whether I saw it coming?" There are quite a few skills like this in Multiverser, which the player gets to roll "after the fact" which will "undo" what was just narrated based on the successful use of a skill which would have prevented those events. That, though, is the specific use of a skill retroactively; it is not different from saying that you want to raise your belt force field, except that it is a roll to see whether something which was probably working actually worked.
--M. J. Young
No, you did not ask whether you could have an intuition check; but seriously, had I said yes, you can ask, what's the chance that you would have decided not to ask? It is obvious to everyone except maybe you that the only reason to ask whether you can ask is because you want to ask--or because you want to be a jerk.
No, that is obvious to me. And no, I wasn't trying to be a jerk, I was trying NOT to be a jerk. Asking if it is OK to ask gives you an easy out if you have something else in mind. If it's OK to ask, then you take it as I'm asking for one to be rolled. It was asking but giving you an easy way to say "No, it wouldn't be OK." I know it kind of doesn't look that way from what I'm saying earlier in this thread, but that what the intentions were.
Anyway, that got me thinking about persuasion checks. You roll a persuasion check when the conversation starts to see if the other person believes what you're saying. Well, the thing is that in a conversation, it is very possible that the next thing you say could change their mind. Especially if the subject changes or the subject matter is of importance. Wouldn't it be prudent to roll more than one persuasion check in a conversation?
Example, talking to a young lady.
Me, "Would you like to go out to dinner with me tonight?"
Check rolled and failed
Young lady "No, I think I'm going to stay at home tonight"
Me, "Well, what are you doing next Thursday? I have 2 tickets to the opera"
Check rolled and made
Young lady "That sounds like fun. I'll call you next week and let you know."
See what I mean? Only one check means that the lady is never going to go out with you.
You're assuming a check at the beginning of the conversation. If I were running you, I wouldn't make a check at first; the young lady would turn you down or not based on what I knew about her and how I think she'd react to you and what you'd said. Once you press the point and make a genuine attempt to persuade, then I roll the check.
In general, I wait until the point of no return to roll. That way, if you fail, it makes sense for me to refuse you further checks.
(Of course, if there's a big enough change in circumstances, that could be grounds for a reroll. But you were familiar with that rule already, from skill checks.)
I just had another thought about intuition checks. Suppose you say that you're doing something that you could stop doing at any time. The referee keeps rolling to see how it goes, and you botch. The botch is bad, of course. Could you ask for an intuition check to see if you would have realized that you were about to botch, and stop doing what you were doing before that happened? I just want to make sure I know how this works.
Nope, that's included in the skill roll.
I guess I wasn't making myself clear there. Suppose I said "I am going to be shooting my gun into the air until it runs out of bullets." Then a botch is rolled, and the gun blows up in my hand. If I said "Well, I would have stopped shooting before that happened." That's cheating, in a manner of speaking. Could I say "Well, can you roll an intuition check to see if I would have stopped shooting before the gun blew up?" If I make the check, the gun doesn't blow up. That sounds fair to me.
Scott's got the first part right. Actually, given that you're talking about asking a girl to go out with you, I'd probably have started with either an an-mag or charisma check on your part, to see whether she was at all attracted to you. If she's strongly attracted to you then you probably don't need a check to persuade her. That doesn't mean you don't need to try to persuade her--she's not going to throw herself at you or make it seem as if she's desperate to go out with you. She would see that as cheapening herself, and she wants to know that you're serious about wanting to go out with her, and not asking because you think she's a certainty. So she might not say yes right away, but she might ask when or where or something and try to look less eager than she might be.
If the charisma/an-mag check (choice depends on how long you've known her) goes very badly, you're going to face a single difficult persuasion check, and I'll let you make your entire argument before I roll, and then you get one shot, pass fail. If the charisma/an-mag check goes really well, I'll let you talk for a bit and then I'll have her agree. If you get a weak success on the "does she like me" check I might rely on a GE roll to determine how convenient or inconvenient your proposed date is--after all, if she likes you a lot, she'll call her parents and apologize that she can't make their fiftieth anniversary party, but if she only likes you a little then she's going to need some persuading to get her to agree to skip watching her favorite soap to go out with you, so whether you need the persuasion check would depend on the GE roll if the charisma check is weak. If you get a close failure on the charisma check, I'll give you the simple persuasion check to get her to go out with you "anyway". You still only get one, unless you can create a significant change in circumstances (like, if you're asking her if you can take her to lunch while you're in a bus dangling over the edge of a precipice and she says know, and then you manage to save her life by getting her off the bus onto solid ground before it goes over the edge, I'd certainly give you another roll (with some bonuses on your persuasion) for asking her again.
On whether you can have an intuition check for whether you stopped before the botch, the answer is certainly not, in any circumstance like what you've described. The reason is that you cannot and do not know that a botch is going to happen on that basis, and you've clearly stated your intention to continue the action until a very specific outcome is achieved. It is implied in that that you will do so as long as you are able to do so.
Now, that doesn't mean that an intuition check would never apply; but it would not normally apply retroactively. For example, if you're firing a laser cannon repeatedly, and the laser cannon has some sort of warning light on it that tells you it's overheating, I might secretly roll an intuition check to determine whether you notice the light in the midst of your current situation. If so, I would tell you that there is a warning light lit on the cannon, and let you decide whether to stop firing to find out what it means.
Now, let's suppose that you're using such a laser cannon, and you roll a botch, and I say that the thing overheated and fused its circuitry and exploded. You then say, how could that happen, since it has these warning lights on it to tell me it's overheating? I should have had an intuition check to determine that I saw that coming. The answer to that is no, it is not that you get the intuition check to prevent that from happening--the answer is either that the warning system malfunctioned or that I goofed and that's not why it exploded. The botch has been rolled, and the roll of the botch means, inherently, something you did not and could not anticipate has happened, and it's bad.
Now, I'm going to throw one more curve at you, because what you're suggesting is possible--but not directly as an intuition check. You might have another skill that falls into the "always active" category. You've seen these in use, with the panoramic awareness and heightened awareness sorts of categories in which the referee will say that someone is surprised and the player will respond that he has this skill which prevents him from being surprised, which is then rolled and lo and behold, look at that, the character was not surprised, we'll have to replay that. That's not an intuition check; it is exactly this sort of situation, since surprise is based on either a failed intuition check or a situation (ambush, stealth) in which the intuition check is denied. The character's skill at noticing things most people would not notice would apply here. Similarly, you could have a skill like Spiderman's Spidey-sense, a precognitive danger sense that tells you that something is about to go wrong (but you don't know what it is). If you had that skill as an always active skill, and there was a botch in the sort of situation you describe, you might be permitted a roll against the danger sense to determine whether you became aware that something bad was about to happen in time to prevent it. This would not apply to most botches, because in the ordinary realm of decide/act there's not enough time for precognitive danger sense to work. It would only apply against a chosen course of action, not against a chosen action. Thus you might draw and fire the laser cannon once and have it explode, and your danger sense would not have anticipated that; but if you said you were going to keep firing it until it was out of power, and some roll after maybe the third or fourth was a botch, a danger sense roll could kick in just before the botch to give you the feeling that this is a bad idea, and you could then undo the last shot to prevent the botch.
Footnote: anyone who read this thread is barred from coming up with the idea of a precognitive danger sense until this thread has been inactive long enough for me to forget that I mentioned it here. Let me also suggest that asking if I've forgotten is a good way to remind me.
--M. J. Young
OK MJ, I absolutely loathe using this example again, because I can already see the look on your face. However, everything goes back to it. I once said "I am going to be repeatedly TK pulsing the back of his head, saying not a word." While I could certainly see myself doing that, getting cocky and botching, I could also see myself realizing that what I am doing is potentially hazardous to my health. In game time, I had 60 seconds to wind up between each pulse. More than enough time to think about it and realize that I probably shouldn't be doing this. I could legitimately see it going both ways. I was wondering if an intuition check might have been appropriate in that situation to see if I would have stopped before I botched. I think in that case, I could reasonably have realized that I shouldn't be doing what I said. I could also see myself growing more and more cocky, to the point that I didn't have concern for my safety. Would an intuition check have been appropriate in that case to prevent the crash?
In this sort of situation, I pay very close attention to what you said when you told me your actions and I try to get a sense of your attitude and intentions. If you seemed cautious, or gave me the impression that you were watching the MP closely to gauge his reaction, or if you indicated that you were watching for some sort of cue to tell you when to stop, then I might - maybe - give you an intuition check, based on the example with the laser gun MJ gave. If, however, you seemed reckless, impulsive, or cocky, or you gave me the impression that it was your goal to provoke or harm the MP, or it seemed as though you just wanted to see what would happen (whatever that was), or you were explicit about not stopping until a given thing occurred, then I most definitely would not give you an intuition check.
Keep in mind that the result that caused you injury was completely unexpected and in fact difficult to achieve - as you've just been proving in your game thread. So, it would take a lot of convincing for me to think that you'd seen that coming in time to change your mind. Really, I probably wouldn't let you get out of it with anything less than a precognitive "spider sense" sort of skill like MJ mentioned.
Like I said in another thread, to you this is beating a dead horse, to me it is something incredibly confusing. While I finally understand why the force was needed, I also am still confused about a few other things. Anyway, thanks to all of you for your patience in dealing with me on this.
I personally don't mind. As long as your questions are exploring new territory and eliciting new responses, it's instructive, right?
The thing that got me into trouble there was I just came from a high psionic world, then I'm put into a flatline world with no knowledge of what a flatline world was. The first person I encounter is the person that I hate the most in the world (A police officer) I still think I have my psionic powers, and every reason to believe that I do. If I had been put into any other flatline world BEFORE that one, I don't think I would have been nearly as cocky with the cop. Circumstances fell into place exactly right to get me into a lot of trouble in a hurry. Oh well, at least I learned (and am still learning) from it.
Ya know what I think was the biggest thing that I learned from that, though? I learned the answer to the question "Why does God allow bad things to happen to people?"
For the longest time, I couldn't understand why MJ didn't tell Adam to pretend like the botch didn't happen. It's just a game, you've got a rookie player who misunderstood the rules, show a little compassion, and give him a Get Out of Jail Free card just this one time, ya know? What I realized is that if MJ had done that, it wouldn't have been fair to anyone, including myself. In order to be fair, MJ had to allow something bad to happen to me. In much the same way, God sometimes has to allow bad things to happen to us, in order to be fair. Now you're going to say "Well, what could possibly be fair about a 4 year old child starving to death in Africa?" We can't see The Big Picture. We don't know what impact that 4 year old child has on the world. Only God can see that. Maybe there is some reason that we will never know why God had to allow that, in order to be fair. When we get to meet God, I'm sure He will explain it.
I know, 3 posts, but they're all different topics.
I think I would probably be an extremely lenient referee. I was just thinking about it, and I've come to the conclusion that, if the player asked for it, I would have given an intuition check for every single successful pulse up until the botch. The change in circumstance is that the character sees the effect that the pulse has. Maybe that last time, it came damn close to slamming his forehead into the steering wheel, and the player realized that if he tried it again, he would probably knock the guy out. Would there be anything wrong with that style of refereeing?
I don't know that there's anything wrong with giving that many rolls, but there are a couple points about it I would mention.
The first is that to some degree rolling an intuition check for the character to notice something assumes that there is something to notice. In the case of your repeated TK pulses against the driver, I can imagine that there might be lots of things you would notice--but not a single one, nor any in combination, that would cause you to "notice" that it was "likely" you would abruptly lose control of the power and knock out the man operating the vehicle in which you were a helpless passenger. Had I rolled intuition checks and one was successful, I probably would have ignored it anyway, because what am I supposed to tell you that you noticed?
The second is that repeatedly rolling the dice ups the odds. There is a rule in Multiverser, that in any situation in which a check is made to determine whether anyone in a group notices, the dice are rolled exactly once and compared to everyone's score. The reason for this is simple: if you have twenty people in a group and they all have a 30% chance of "noticing" something and you roll individually, probably six are going to notice, and those six can alert the rest, and the entire point of having something hidden loses all its value; it's also contrary to the way reality is, because if you have twenty people rambling along together, it is probably less likely that any one of them will notice the faint noise or glint of light or whiff of odor that one person alone might. Thus if I roll for all twenty individually I create a situation in which the probability that someone will notice skyrockets, whereas if I roll one roll to compare against everyone, that one roll will tell me whether anyone at all noticed, and not compromise the probability that what is hidden will stay hidden.
In the same way, if you've got one thing that the guy might notice and you keep rolling for whether he notices it, eventually he will--even though there's nothing changed in relation to what he is supposed to notice. If you're rolling repeatedly for whether the character notices "something", you're implying that there is something else to notice, something he could not have noticed a moment before. Otherwise, you're saying that he will notice this ultimately, to a certainty, because the odds that he will keep failing intuition checks get pretty slim the more times you roll them.*
- *Technically, yes, I know that the odds do not change. Every time you roll the dice you have the same odds of success or failure. However, seen from the long view, every time you get the chance to roll yet again your chance of rolling successfully has increased as compared with rolling only once.
Now, I will tell you how it might have been different. I do not now remember how many times Adam rolled before you botched; my impression is that it was not more than five. In that case it would have been pretty much the same whether he did it or I did it in online play. This, though, might have come out differently in live play at the table, in this way. If we were at the table, and you said you were going to keep TK pulsing him, I would have told you to roll it once, and you would see the number on the table (which now you only see "behind the screens") and I would tell you whether it was a success or a failure. Probably I would be dealing with someone else at the same time so I would come back to you in a moment and ask if you want to roll again. Probably you would--unless the number on the first roll was some incredibly low number that was below your threshhold, at which point you would say that it must be nearly impossible to do the TK pulse in this world. (For what it's worth, a TK pulse would work on a roll of 1 unless there was serious bias or power blocking in effect.) You would roll again, and again you would see the number on the table and be told whether or not it worked. Now, if you're rolling lots of high numbers, you might decide to quit because the dice are cold and you're afraid of botching; on the other hand, if you're rolling relatively low numbers and failing, you might decide to quit because the odds are obviously low and that means a high chance to botch. So maybe you wouldn't go as far as five rolls before you gave up. On the other hand, if you got a string of good rolls--say two of your rolls were low successes and the other two high enough that it did not surprise you that they were failures--you probably would keep going, because it's working as well as you expect. Still, the power to make that decision is in your hands.
I can't do that online, because I have to roll the dice and it will take forever for me to ask you after each roll if you want to roll again. So I make a decision about how many times "keep going" means, and I roll the dice that many times, tell you the results, and ask if you want to "keep going" still. That means that if you got through five rolls without a botch (a nice number that we call "round" even though it isn't) you'll be told in play that you succeeded so many times and failed so many times, and you can check behind the screens to see the rolls if you wish, and on that basis you can make the decision whether to go five more. However, if one of those five--even the fifth--botches, you're stuck with the botch, because you said to keep going, and five is barely enough of a sample for you to have made a decision on anyway.
So you would not get an intuition check, but as a player you might intuit that this was not a good idea. In live play you have the advantage of seeing each roll hit the table and deciding whether to make the next roll or stop. If you want that same advantage in game, you have to "pay for it" by specifying that you're going to do it once, waiting for the result, and saying whether you'll do it again.
--M. J. Young
The first is that to some degree rolling an intuition check for the character to notice something assumes that there is something to notice. In the case of your repeated TK pulses against the driver, I can imagine that there might be lots of things you would notice--but not a single one, nor any in combination, that would cause you to "notice" that it was "likely" you would abruptly lose control of the power and knock out the man operating the vehicle in which you were a helpless passenger. Had I rolled intuition checks and one was successful, I probably would have ignored it anyway, because what am I supposed to tell you that you noticed?
Well, like I said. If I pulsed him, and his head almost hit the steering wheel, I might notice that if I hit him much harder, he would slam his forehead into the steering wheel. Or perhaps I would notice that he came close to losing control every time I did hit him. That in itself might be enough to make me realize it was a bad idea. If the truth be told, if I had been rolling the dice myself, I would have changed my mind the minute you handed me the dice. As I told Adam, to me, it sounded too funny to be taken seriously. You would have to hear me say it to understand what I mean by that. I didn't think he would roll for it at all. Psychotic delusion of some sort, I'm almost certain.* Although I could certainly see myself doing it in real life, if you handed me dice, I would have been dissuaded instantly. Kind of hard to explain.
*According to my doctor, if it is a true delusion, you would never realize that it was a delusion. She said (in a nutshell) that a delusional person will believe anything except that they are deluded.
For the record, in terms of how much I've learned about the game, and even about real life from it, Pearl Harbor was the best world I've been to so far. It was nowhere near the most fun though. (That would be B Movie Monster World)
I guess I should clarify. If the botch resulted in the jeep crashing, I would give an intuition check on whether or not the player realized it and stopped before they botched. If the botch was brain burn, I wouldn't. Psionic Shockwaves could make it crash too. That would be worse, because I would be dealing with that and the damage from the crash. It never occurred to me that what I said could result in a crash. That's why I would give the intuition check. See what I mean?
John wrote:
If I pulsed him, and his head almost hit the steering wheel, I might notice that if I hit him much harder, he would slam his forehead into the steering wheel. Or perhaps I would notice that he came close to losing control every time I did hit him. That in itself might be enough to make me realize it was a bad idea.He underscored this in a later post by writing:It never occurred to me that what I said could result in a crash. That's why I would give the intuition check.
I think here you're approaching the heart of the problem. You did not realize that the stunt you were playing might result in the jeep crashing, and if you had realized tht you would not have done it. On the other hand, you probably did realize that it might result in brain burn or psionic shockwave or neural breakdown, or any other kind of botch. I would wager that Adam's botch list probably had all those things, and more, on it. He did not know with any certainty that you would botch. He probably cringed and thought, this is going to hurt, because it seemed likely that you would botch (or even that in succeeding you would have undesired effects), but he could not say that you would, with certainty, botch, and he certainly could not have said that in botching you would have caused the jeep to crash--if we assume that he had six botch options on his botch list, that's 16.667% of the possibilities, and that assuming first that you botch at all, for which the chance was probably about 6%.
So you are asking him to warn you that something is going to happen that he has no idea is going to happen until it actually does. He is not much more prescient than you in that regard. I mean, let me make a list of possible botches for a TK pulse by a restrained passenger in the back seat of a jeep against the driver in the front seat:
- Render driver unconscious.
- Knock driver out of jeep.
- Knock self out of jeep.
- Render self unconscious.
- Flip jeep.
- Knock jeep off the road.
- Disable jeep.
- Disable steering.
- Fire driver's sidearm.
- Brain burn.
- Psionic shock wave.
- Neural breakdown.
- Lock steering wheel.
- Lock accelerator.
- Lock brake pedal.
- Stop jeep dead.
- Spin jeep.
- Raise front end off ground.
- Raise rear end off ground.
- Create force wall around jeep.
- Levitate jeep.
- Levitate driver.
- Levitate self.
- Knock object in path of jeep.
- Knock person in path of jeep.
- Blow out tire.
- fuse driver's hand to steering wheel
- melt steering wheel
- transmute part of car to other solid material
- transmute part of car to other non-solid material
- make car only non-corporeal
- make car and contents non-corporeal
- make driver non-corporeal
- make self non-corporeal
- transmute driver to solid
If the truth be told, if I had been rolling the dice myself, I would have changed my mind the minute you handed me the dice. As I told Adam, to me, it sounded too funny to be taken seriously. You would have to hear me say it to understand what I mean by that. I didn't think he would roll for it at all.
Ah, and that's why everyone else here makes side comments in-character expressing their thoughts and feelings. "Boy, I'm sorely tempted to harrass this guy by TK Pulsing him into the steering wheel repeatedly, but I can see that that's not really a good idea here, so I'll laugh to myself at the thought and sit quietly in the back seat."
If you say you are going to do something, the referee really doesn't have much choice but to assume that you are going to do it. If you say it to be funny, you have to make it clear that it's a joke, or your character will do that ridiculous thing and you'll have to live with the consequences.
One reason for this is that it would be really easy for a player to use a take-back rule of the sort you envision to undo stupid choices. You say now that you thought it would be funny, and that Adam would laugh at it but wouldn't actually roll for it, but how do we know that this is true? If the botch had been such that the jeep crashed but you were unharmed, you would have taken advantage of the situation to make your escape, in all likelihood, and having done so would never have mentioned that you "didn't really mean it". Yet we cannot know whether you "really mean it" except by going by what you write, and if you write that you are doing something, then you "really mean it" and face the consequences.
I will say that when I think a player has posted something really stupid I will sometimes ask him whether he really means it. I would not have done so with your TK pulse in the jeep. The distinction I make is simple: if you say you want to do something really stupid, it may be that you do not perceive the situation the way I perceive it, and we need to clarify the circumstances so we are both seeing the same thing. The example that leaps to mind is the recent case in which the player was in his car talking to the girl, and he said he was going to grab the girl and put her in his passenger seat. I saw the situation as one in which they were each sitting in separate cars, and he would have to get out, go around his car to get her, pull her out of her car, drag her around to the passenger door of his car, put her in, rush back to his door, and get the car moving again before the oncoming car reached him. He saw it as her standing by his car window, which made the entire situation different. When I asked if he was trying to do what I envisioned, he changed what he was doing based on the corrected vision.
In your case, you knew you were hancuffed in the back of an open vehicle and here harrassing the driver by poking at him and pushing him around. If you were holding a stick in your hands and pushing him with it, you would have realized that what you were doing was dangerous and had some severe potential consequences. You should have realized that doing the same thing without the stick was just as dangerous. You say it did not occur to you. Maybe it did not, and maybe it would not--but then, the way you made the statement of your intended actions, had you said you were going to poke him with a stick (and there was one available) I would have assumed you knew what you were doing and that it was dangerous, and I'd have rolled for it.
See what I mean?
--M. J. Young
Yeah MJ, now I do. It was perfectly clear to me before, you just worded it in a way that I could better understand it. It just took me a while to fully accept and comprehend that it was my own fault, and that I really could see myself doing what I said. I'm sure you've had situations like this before. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.
And yes, you're absolutely right. If I had knocked out the driver and rolled a 3 on the crash, I would have escaped and never looked back, and never mentioned that I thought it was too funny to be taken seriously.
The thing though that I am not entirely clear on though, is why wouldn't you give an intuition check? I, me, John Edward Cross sitting safely in his warm apartment never considered that it could cause the crash. My character however would have seen the effect that the pulses were having. It's entirely possible that the first time he pulsed the guy, his head moved a lot more than my character would have anticipated, my character would have said "Damn, that's WAY more powerful than I thought. I better stop that right now!!!!" I, me, sitting in my warm apartment don't have the luxury of actually seeing the effect that it is having on my target. That's also why I said I could see myself doing it or stopping.
Or is there no intuition check because if I had failed on all 8 of the pulses and absolutely nothing happened, I wouldn't have said I didn't want to do it? The only reason I realized it was dangerous is because it turned out the way it did.
Last Post unless someone else does, I promise.
Actually, I'm not sure if I would have said that I meant it as practice if it was a good result. I remember being very surprised that Adam rolled for it, and that was before I even realized what the end result was. I think I'm just going to chalk it up to a possible psychotic delusion and a really frustrating and draw out learning experience. I was on medicine that caused paranoia as a side effect at the time, so God only knows what other side effects there were.
Ya know what? I wonder if a retroactive intuition check could be rolled. I was on medication. My Character wasn't. I get sent back there and find myself handcuffed in the back of the jeep when I verse in. I'd like a rematch with that MP. Hey if anything is possible.........
It would have been a really fun and exciting world, and with one single typed sentence, I changed it into a learning experience, not just for me, but I hope for all of you as well. Hey, at least I admit when I realize I'm wrong, you have to give me that much credit.
Ya know what else though? As far as my character is concerned, it actually turned out better than it would have. If I had gotten to the base in one piece, I wouldn't have been so quick to warn them. I would have died there. Yes, I got banged up, but I had decent medical care, (plus I got to experience the joy which is pharmaceutical morphine, and that's certainly worth a broken bone or two.) and I got to 1@6 boxing and got into a little better shape. The other way, I probably would have learned nothing at all. I got to spend a year and a half learning boxing and shooting pool with 3 guys that seemed like they were friendly enough, and decent human beings. Wasn't really all that bad. And in terms of what I've learned, it was the best world I've been to.
The thing though that I am not entirely clear on though, is why wouldn't you give an intuition check?
To which I respond:
The reason you don't get an intuition check for a botch is that a botch is inherently unanticipated. If you knew you were going to botch before you did, you wouldn't try it. The only way to know you are going to botch is to use a clear precognitive vision before attempting the action to see what the future actually will be (something like a D&D augury might work), and then to change your intentions based on that knowledge.
___
This is the crucial bit of your argument with which I disagree:
My character however would have seen the effect that the pulses were having . . .
Yes, he would have, but seeing the effect of successful TK pulses in no way gives you any insight whatsoever into the potential consequences of botching a TK pulse. It's not just that you can't predict that a botch will happen; it's that you can't even predict what kind of botch you'll get.
Imagine for a moment that the botch Adam had rolled was instead "melt steering wheel" (which I just grabbed off of MJ's 'getting creative' list). Would it make any sense at all for you to "notice" that your pulses just might turn the steering wheel into formless goo? No, of course not. It's entirely unexpected, and entirely unpredictable based on observation of your skill performance - just like every other botch on the list, including "render driver unconscious."
If you can see it coming, it's not a botch.
If you can see it coming, it's not a botch.
Yes, but potentially crashing the jeep IS a foreseeable outcome. That's what I am saying. He might do it once and say "That's gonna make him crash, I better stop." See what I mean? That's the point I'm trying to make. Botch or not, the pulses could reasonably have crashed the jeep, something that I didn't consider, but that my character could very well have been aware of.
Adam never rolled an agility check for the driver, to see how well he withstood the pulses. It's very possible that if the guy failed his agility check badly enough, THE FIRST PULSE could have made us crash!!!!!!! That's what I'm saying.
I'm sorry to be ranting, but as you well know, this is something that I feel very strongly about.
And even if he made every agility check, and I failed every intuition check, if the botch was that I slammed his forehead into the steering wheel and knocked him out, shouldn't there have been a difficult agility check for avoiding that, as well? I don't know, but it seems like it would have been a good idea.
John, stop it with the damn driver, You knocked him out, period, it was a botch, with a worse than expected GE roll, deal with it, everyone else has.
Adam, I think what we have here is a genuine confusion with the rules. John's just using the most salient example to explore that confusion, and I think we're unearthing some valuable clarifications in the process.
John's already said several times that he's no longer disputing your call, but there's a difference between accepting a ruling and understanding why it was made. This thread is about understanding - which is also half the point of having the board in the first place.
Thank you Scott. I couldn't have put it better myself.
What I was saying is that you said I couldn't have anticipated a crash, but I think I very well could have. I guess I'm asking if this is another way it could have been done.
And also, hopefully, referees will think about things a little better. You might think that you don't have to roll agility checks, but you now see what can happen if you don't.
What I realized is that I could have crashed the jeep AT ANY TIME!!!!! More dice rolls would have made it more realistic. I pulse him, maybe the jeep wobbles but does not crash. I make my intuition check and stop pulsing him. We get to the base in one piece. More dice rolls could have changed the course of that world significantly. And if nothing else, would have avoided all of this bullshit to start with.
Even if it still go to the point where I threw the pulse that knocked him out, he could have made a difficult check and stayed driving. Then you BETTER give me a heavily bonused intuition check, because that damn sure would have made me stop.
Last Post, I promise
Adam, I think a large part of the resentment that you feel towards me is that you didn't get to run Pearl Harbor the way it was meant to be run. You told me that you really liked that world. Now if you liked the world because you enjoy torturing players, then I was perfect for you. However, if it's because you like Pearl Harbor, then you are disappointed in how it turned out. Understandably, you blame me for that. However, I've just proven that the crash was just as much if not more your fault as it was mine. Hopefully everyone can learn a lesson in being a better referee from all of this. And since not even MJ caught it, maybe he can learn something from it too.
If I pulse the guy once, he fails his agility check and we crash, that's my fault. However, if it's because I botched on my fifth attempt after the referee failed to make at least a half a dozen different rolls, any one of which could have changed the time of the crash, or prevented it from happening at all, then that's the referee's fault.
And don't give me that "I decide what rolls to make" nonsense. In a case like this, where one roll can change things so drastically, I would think it would be wise to make all that are applicable.
And don't give me that "I decide what rolls to make" nonsense. In a case like this, where one roll can change things so drastically, I would think it would be wise to make all that are applicable.
I disagree. The referee always makes all applicable rolls, by definition, because he decides what's applicable. It is the referee's burden to decide which mechanics to employ when, optimizing flow of the game, accurate simulation, and fairness to the players and the non-players.
However, if it's because I botched on my fifth attempt after the referee failed to make at least a half a dozen different rolls, any one of which could have changed the time of the crash, or prevented it from happening at all, then that's the referee's fault.
No, that's still your fault. If the referee would have normally made those rolls but forgot, then if you remind him "hey, usually you make agility checks in situations like that," then you maybe might have a chance of convincing him to go back and change how things went - if he feels that he acted unfairly, and if he honestly feels he goofed badly enough to justify that. If, however, the referee considers those rolls unnecessary, then tough. He is by definition correct, and furthermore, that is fair.
This is why it's fair: the next time you're trying to make someone crash (not with TK pulse, because I think it's incredibly unlikely that a TK pulse to a driver's head could crash a jeep unless SOMEBODY botches SOMETHING), your victim won't get to roll an agility check every time you succeed to undo the effect of your successful skill use.
By deciding when agility checks do and do not apply, the referee has in effect written a rule. Because the rule applies to everyone equally, it is a fair rule.
I disagree. The referee always makes all applicable rolls, by definition, because he decides what's applicable. It is the referee's burden to decide which mechanics to employ when, optimizing flow of the game, accurate simulation, and fairness to the players and the non-players.
I disagree, Scott. If the referee can just decide out of the blue which rules to follow and which rules not to follow, and there's nothing the player can really say about it, why have rules at all? I've always been kind of a "By The Book" kind of a guy. I mean the referee just doesn't like you, so he "decides" completely at random not to make a roll that could have saved your character's life???????? I mean...... My thinking would be either follow the rules as they are written, or you're not following them at all. Well, at least we all learned from it, and if nothing else, this is a suggestion for other referees on what NOT to do in the future.
John, I must not be making myself clear. The referee does not decide "out of the blue," and he's not deciding "which rules to follow and which rules not to follow." He decides after careful deliberation and thought, and he is using his referee's discretion which is explicitly given to him in the rules.
If you think about it, this is the way it absolutely must be. No rulebook, however gigantic it may become, can ever provide a rule for absolutely every situation and be written in such a way that a real living person does not have to make decisions about how those rules are applied. Let me turn your question around on you: if you could write a rulebook like that, why have a referee?
I see your point, Scott, but do you see mine? More rolls would have made it more realistic. I guess if I were a referee, I would probably make more rolls and decide less. It just seems more fair to me that way. I mean it's entirely possible that any one of my pulses could have crashed the jeep. (Don't dispute me there, I said POSSIBLE, not likely) It's also possible that I would have realized this and stopped before I botched. Since I've said several times that I could see it going both ways, I would think that the best way to handle that would be by making more rolls. If nothing else, it would have avoided all of this. My hope here is that referees consider things like this a little better in the future. That's the whole point of this, isn't it? To make the referees better?
It's my understanding that the knockout blow was a botch.It's entirely possible that the first time he pulsed the guy, his head moved a lot more than my character would have anticipated, my character would have said "Damn, that's WAY more powerful than I thought.
That suggests to me that it caused the knockout because it included a sudden unanticipated uncontrolled surge of power.
That further suggests to me that the previous pulses did not contain anything that might have caused you to have that reaction; it is inherent in the botch that it was unexpectedly powerful, and thus inherent that the successful rolls were not.
There was nothing to notice; there was no basis for a roll to see if you noticed nothing.
I certainly would not have allowed what you described as "practice". You were repeatedly targeting the same specific individual and you were expecting there to be results. Further, I as referee would have to have known what those results were. You chose to practice by poking the driver. I need to know whether the driver feels anything at all, and what he feels, and how he reacts to it. If the five attempts are all failures, then the driver feels nothing at all. If two of them are successes, the driver is wondering what's happening (he probably turned to look at you after the first success, to persuade himself that you didn't push him or something). On three successes, maybe he stopped the jeep and got out to try to figure out the problem. At some point he might have asked you what you were doing. I can't possibly adjudicate this scenario on the "this is practice" assumption, because I have to know whether your "practice" is having any effect or not. That means I have to roll--and that means you can botch.Actually, I'm not sure if I would have said that I meant it as practice if it was a good result.
What are the alternatives? Had Adam told you that nothing happened when you attempted to TK pulse the driver, you would either have thought that the TK pulse didn't work in this world or you would have thought he was treating you unfairly, and demanded that he roll something for it. You wanted him to tell you that your pulses were annoying the driver, because that was the reason you were doing them. That meant he had to know whether they worked--and that means he needed to roll.
So then, the argument is that "crash the jeep" ought not have been one of the botch options; but I'm not certain a) that "crash the jeep" was one of the botch options (as opposed to a consequence of what you actually did) and b) that anything you did or observed might have suggested to you the possibility that the jeep itself might go out of control.Botch or not, the pulses could reasonably have crashed the jeep, something that I didn't consider, but that my character could very well have been aware of.
As far as giving the target an agility check to avoid having his head slammed into the steering wheel, you've got to remember that this is a botch. It is based primarily on outcomes. Your outcome was that you rendered the driver unconscious; that he slammed his head into the steering wheel was Adam's explanation for how this happened. You could have slammed his head into the door, if the jeep had doors attached, or slammed some random object into his head, or simply jerked his head with that concussive force that causes the intercranial fluid to part and bangs the brain against the inside of the skull--but in that case you would be left wondering what it was you did.
What I was saying is that you said I couldn't have anticipated a crash, but I think I very well could have.
I will agree that you could have anticipated the crash. You could have said, hey, I really feel like annoying this driver by poking him with my TK pulse while he's driving and I'm handcuffed helplessly in the back. You know what, though? It's probably not a good idea to bother a driver while he's driving, so I'd better not do it.
You're probably aware of the rise in cell phone laws, that many states have made it illegal to use a hand-held cell phone while driving. This is based on studies that show an increased risk of accident among people who are using cell phones while driving, comparable in some ways to that of people who are mildly intoxicated. However, other studies have demonstrated that the rise in accident risk is not related to holding the cell phone, but rather is connected to the fact that the driver is involved in conversation which distracts him from driving. There is a direct correlation between the intensity of the conversation and the rise in the risk, and--this strikes me as the kicker--it is identical whether the conversation is via cell phone or to a passenger in the front seat.
I mention it because you might well realize that talking to the driver, asking him where you're going, trying to get information about the date and such would increase the chance that there would be an accident. You might realize that if you start going through the glove box you might distract the driver, and if you start going through the driver's pockets while he's driving you will almost certainly distract him. You chose to do something that was clearly intentionally distracting. It might have occurred to you that this potentially distracting act on your part would increase the probability of an accident.
It didn't. Had it done so, you would have realized the danger of what you proposed doing, and would not have done it. So you can say that you should have been given an intuition check to realize that poking the driver as if with a stick while he's driving might cause the car to go off the road, but if you didn't realize that then I don't see any reason why your character would be in a better place to realize it than you. What he sees, in fact, is exactly the opposite: that poking the driver with his TK pulse annoys the driver but has no negative consequences.
However, if it's because I botched on my fifth attempt after the referee failed to make at least a half a dozen different rolls, any one of which could have changed the time of the crash, or prevented it from happening at all, then that's the referee's fault.
And don't give me that "I decide what rolls to make" nonsense. In a case like this, where one roll can change things so drastically, I would think it would be wise to make all that are applicable.
All that are applicable? Let's see:
- John has to roll a skill check against his ability to sit, so he doesn't fall over.
- John has to roll photosensitivity, focus, color perception, depth perception, four distinct checks, to determine whether he can see the driver clearly.
- The driver must roll those same checks to determine whether he can see clearly enough to drive.
- The driver is also sitting, and should roll that check.
- The driver is driving, and should roll that check.
- John has to roll his TK pulse.
- John wants the target to be able to resist the TK pulse; so the driver probably should roll his resistance check to ignore the pulse entirely (or else we make the TK pulse a targeted roll by including John's ranged strike value against the target's resistance and skip this check).
- Maybe the driver can resist by virtue of his agility, so we'll give him an agility check.
- Maybe the driver is strong enough that the pulse won't move him, so we'll check that.
- Maybe John's will power is strong enough to overcome the resistance of the target, so we'll check that.
- The weather might change; we need a GE roll for that.
- It is possible that there might be an oncoming vehicle out of control, so we should check that.
- There might be a problem with the road, so let's roll for that.
- The jeep might break down, so we should roll for that.
- We might be accosted by a drunken sailor on shore leave, so let's check for that.
- The MP might be reinforced by the arrival of one or more additional MPs, so let's check for that.
- John doesn't roll a skill check against his ability to sit because I decide his professional level of ability at that makes sitting in the jeep within his ordinary task ability.
- John makes no vision skill checks because I assume there are no adverse conditions against his visual accuity, and so I don't need one of those.
- This also applies to the driver's vision checks.
- I cover the driver's sitting check as well.
- The driver only needs a driving skill check if there's an adverse condition against his driving, as any professional driver can drive a vehicle in orderinary conditions in a medium-high bias world; he would make a check if the botch indicated something affecting the car itself, or if he were affected in a manner that makes driving more difficult but not impossible.
- John rolls his TK pulse.
- I get to decide which, if any, of the various counters are appropriate to the driver's situation. Best bet from my perspective is to make the TK pulse targeted and include the resistance against it, but that's one of several options. I would only give one defense, though, because it's unfair to John for me to prevent his skill from working because I can think of more defenses. In any case, the difference between the target's resistance and John's ranged strike value is probably low enough that we're talking one or two percent change in chance of success at the outside, so unless one of those rolls was right on the line it doesn't matter.
- Thus I skip the agility check because I've given the target a defense already. There might be a call for an agility check if there were good reason to think that the driver might be in danger of being knocked out of the jeep, but I do not see that as a danger from an ordinary TK pulse against a seated target holding to a steering wheel.
- No strength check for the same reason.
- No will power check for John, because I'm keeping the conflict simple by using only his skill check and whether it works.
- For the various possible conditions, I can use a single GE roll and interpret it, or I can just go with my script if I have a pretty good idea of what is happening. Thus the oncoming vehicle will only happen if I decide that a GE roll on getting to the destination is appropriate, and the roll suggests that something about this bad happened.
- Road problems are covered on the same GE roll.
- The jeep function is covered either by the GE roll or by the skill of the driver--breakdown of the vehicle is a potential driving botch.
- The drunken sailor gets tossed into the GE roll or ignored.
- Reinforcements also get tossed into the GE roll or ignored.
You're trying to shift or share the "blame", but there is no blame. The outcome was completely correct given your choices. You didn't like the outcome. Hopefully your character--and you--will have learned from this that doing foolish things can be dangerous. If not, we'll be back here again arguing about whether the next foolish and dangerous thing you decide your character "would" do should have resulted in the to everyone else entirely plausible negative outcome that occurs.
John, why is it that you are the only person who is at all surprised that when you poked the driver with your TK pulse you caused an accident in which you were severely injured? Somehow I think that this in itself should clue you to the fact that you're completely wrong about this. What happened was exactly what was likely to happen, all things considered. If you want your choices not to have consequences, don't play role playing games, because they generally do in the good ones. Otherwise we wouldn't play them.
--M. J. Young