improve his skills in a low-stress situation without having to worry about his skull exploding
Does this mean that the success rate or effect of the skill would be different because it is done in practice?
maintaining an element of risk in skill performance
Does this mean that practice have an equal amount to botch too or does it mean that the skill performance will be lower to minimize the risk?
Or does something like safety net are added into the practice to minimize the botch but not during real performance?
That gives me an idea to develop a safety net like object or skill for other skills.
when all you were trying to do was go through the motions.
This kind of practice would not show any observable effect thus can be done in any world right?
Would this kind of practice affect similar skill if the motion gone through is similar?
I'd just make a General Effects roll for how soon you botch, how well the attempts go before that time, and how catastrophic the botch is when it happens.
Does this only work for botch-able skills or does it work for all skills even the no botch skill?
If it works to no failure skill, does this mean the SAL of the skill does not level, goes down or something, or does it mean all the effects are all at minimum?
If it works to no botch skill but still could fail, does this mean the SAL of the skill does not level, goes down or something, or does it mean all the effects fails?
if you observed a person practicing, your data would be about practice.
What sort of data can be gathered during practice?
Is it the way the practice is done?
If the practice still have observable effect, can this effect data be gathered?
Can a person with professional skill level just do the everyday thing without rolling?
Would this person does not have to roll even if there is a heavy penalty sit mod on the professional skill?
Can the effect data be collected from such a person?
*****
A zero percent or very low success rate skills because of the effect of heavy penalty to sit-mod but still learn-able because of high bias is also a good candidate to test the bonus of concentration skill.
Does this mean that the success rate or effect of the skill would be different because it is done in practice?
It could be so construed; but it also means that when you are practicing it is not possible to estimate your chance of success.
Let me pull up an example. Sometimes I practice "playing Bridge" (haven't done so in years, but I have done it). There are two ways I can do this. One is, I can pick up a bridge column, examine the hands, consider how I would play it and what outcome I would get, and then read the column to find out what the expert sees. The other is, I can deal out four hands, pick them up one at a time, write down my bids, then play the hand, putting the dummy on the table face up and picking up each of the other hands and playing it as if I did not know the content of the hidden hands. Neither of those practice methods will give me much insight into how well I would do playing with three other people; nor will I ever "lose" a game practicing this way. The entire context of "practicing" is different from that of "doing".
When I'm practicing a song on the guitar, I play it. If I blow a riff, it doesn't matter--it's not a "botch", because it didn't matter if I got it right. Maybe I'll stop and try it again; maybe I'll play through that one riff half a dozen times and then continue the song; maybe I'll start over from the beginning. Maybe I'll practice the movements of the left hand without the right, the right hand without the left, and put them together. Maybe I won't get that riff right, and I'll move on and come back to it later.
So if you're "practicing" your telekinesis, you go through the mental motions of moving a targeted object. Sometimes you have an object, sometimes you don't. You do it slowly, either way. You don't have to move the object; you can stop the process at any point before you move the object, if you're not completely comfortable with the way it's going. There is no pressure--you don't have to do this. There is also no way to calculate a meaningful rate of success--you stopped the process dozens of times before completing it because you weren't comfortable with the way it was moving, and you can't count those as either success or failure because you don't know which way they would have gone. You end up with twenty percent of the attempts worked, forty percent didn't work, and forty percent were never completed because you weren't sure whether they were going to work or not, so your rate of success is somewhere between twenty and sixty percent, but you've no idea where, and you have no idea even whether you would have succeeded in every case that you did had you been under pressure to succeed, or whether you would have failed every time you failed if there had been pressure to succeed, so you really learn very little. A generous referee might tell you that you succeed one in three times, but he's giving you an approximation based on the assumption that over time you're going to get some feel for how difficult this is. After all, when I'm practicing a guitar riff I do get some idea of how easy or difficult it's going to be, how likely I am to be able to repeat it in concert, and how much omre practice I need for it.
Does this only work for botch-able skills or does it work for all skills even the no botch skill?
There is no such thing as a "no botch skill". What there is is a skill whose sit-mods give it a chance of success over one hundred percent under normal circumstances. The same skill performed in extremely adverse circumstances might have a negative chance of success and a very high chance to botch.
The assumption in practice is that there is no pressure and there are no adverse circumstances; but if you are attempting to perform or accomplish something by the actions you introduce circumstances, and they might be potentially adverse.
For my part, if you had a skill that had greater than one hundred percent chance of success under ordinary circumstances, you would botch only on a general effects roll bad enough abruptly to introduce extremely adverse circumstances.
Can a person with professional skill level just do the everyday thing without rolling?
The answer is, probably, but you don't get to define "the everyday thing".
If a character had developed simple TK to professional level, I would not roll for such things as moving small objects around a room, grabbing a pencil to hand, placing a note on a desk. I would still roll for snatching a ball in flight, grabbing an object out of someone's grasp, lifting a creature against its will, putting the point of a weapon in a targeted spot (whether an assailant or a scabbard or a block of wood), and numerous other tasks that seem ordinary enough but "matter" in some sense. I might allow an expert to perform some of these without a roll, but not those that matter to someone else. An expert might not have to roll for sheathing a weapon or sticking it into a block of wood, but would have to roll to use it for an attack.
A zero percent or very low success rate skills because of the effect of heavy penalty to sit-mod but still learn-able because of high bias is also a good candidate to test the bonus of concentration skill.
It is important to note that it is inherent in Multiverser rules that characters do not know and cannot discover the mechanics of the system. They can talk about bias being high or low, but cannot know that a world has a 15@ bias or that this gives them +30 on all skill use in that bias area, or that their force field is a 10@ skill that gives them a 10@ bias. What they know is that some skills are more difficult to learn, some skills do not work in every universe, some skills are more difficult to perform and more likely to botch. Players are permitted to have the mechanical information because it is the easiest way to communicate concepts. That is, saying that you have a 1@5 strength which means thus-and-such in mechanical terms enables everyone to understand how strong the character is; what the character knows is that he is stronger than some people, not as strong as others, able to lift amd carry certain objects easily, others with more difficulty, and others not at all. When the player attempts to have the character act with an eye toward game mechanics, all such efforts fail automatically, because characters do not and cannot understand or acknowledge the existence of game mechanics.
As far as durations of skills, what the player knows is that they last a number of minutes equal to the roll of the die unless terminated prematurely; what the character knows is that they last different lengths of time, never less than a minute, usually considerably longer, and he has yet to discover (and possibly never will) the longest time it could last. After all, you might roll the best possible roll for the skill, but your character knows nothing about that, and does not know that the skill could not have lasted another ten minutes--which would be the case if the best roll you ever happen to have rolled is ten points lower than the best you could have rolled.
Because of this, you can't determine durations from observing practice. You don't know enough. Besides, if the practice is trying to improve performance, as soon as you've succeeded you're going to terminate the use and try again, just as if I'm trying to perfect that riff I'm not going to play the part of the song that I don't need to practice.
I hope this helps.
--M. J. Young
There is also no way to calculate a meaningful rate of success--you stopped the process dozens of times before completing it because you weren't comfortable with the way it was moving, and you can't count those as either success or failure because you don't know which way they would have gone.
he's giving you an approximation based on the assumption that over time you're going to get some feel for how difficult this is.
Approximation is good enough. It might also make the character kind of know how difficult it is to do something and how much the character have improved.
Could a good trainer tell (approximately) how well someone would succeed from looking at their practice?
The assumption in practice is that there is no pressure and there are no adverse circumstances; but if you are attempting to perform or accomplish something by the actions you introduce circumstances, and they might be potentially adverse.
Does observing someone else practice introduce pressure to that person which could be adverse enough that the person practicing can botch even if the person practicing does not care whether he/she succeeds or fails?
I could see the above happening if the one in practice is aware of the presence of the observer and does things differently when there is an observer but what if the person does not aware of the presence of the observer?
it is inherent in Multiverser rules that characters do not know and cannot discover the mechanics of the system.
Mechanics or law of the reality is usually what a VR tester is thinking when testing a VR simulation. It might not be the same as the Multiverser rules, but there are rules on how the reality is perceived or generated. Can the VR tester come up with a way to simulate the reality that is perceived by making up related formula (which is not accurate at first considering lack of data but probably will grow as the character knows more) just like physicists?
he has yet to discover (and possibly never will) the longest time it could last.
A record of the longest time can be kept but knowing the exact longest time the skill could last would be hard. The character probably know currently that the skill can last more than an hour but not more than two hours. The character would not be sure that the skill would not exceed two hours but the character can guess the current limit of the skill.
as soon as you've succeeded you're going to terminate the use and try again
That depends on the way someone practice. The person could be having a practice on changing the properties and so uses the full duration. The person also could know the duration of the skill before terminating it prematurely via other skill.
I hope this helps.
Yes, thank you very much for the feedback.
I think not in the sense you mean. A good trainer would know how good a trainee is relative to other skilled users, but could not translate that into numeric equivalents.Could a good trainer tell (approximately) how well someone would succeed from looking at their practice?
Obviously a boxing trainer might be able to say that he thinks his student can or cannot beat some other boxer, and could even say how likely he thinks it is that his student would win; but he couldn't state the probability of his student landing a punch, or getting into form quickly, or getting the first swing. An acting coach can tell a student that he's ready for the stage, but not whether the audience is going to like his work or whether he's going to remember all his lines. A swimming coach knows that his student can swim the hundred meter comfortably in a stated time, but not how likely the student is to beat that time, or to beat others in the race, or to hit the water wrong and choke. If you're looking for generalizations with no mathematical precision, trainers can give you that; if you're looking for numbers, probabilities, times, rates, durations, maximums, those just aren't the way the reality presents itself.
Does observing someone else practice introduce pressure to that person which could be adverse enough that the person practicing can botch even if the person practicing does not care whether he/she succeeds or fails?
I would say that as long as the one practicing is unaware that he is being observed it would not affect his practice. I would also say that the observer cannot know whether the observed is aware of the observation, and also cannot know what or how the observed is practicing. Did I take three steps and bounce on the end of the board and not go into the water because I didn't like the way those three steps went, or because I did? Did I want to practice the set up for the dive several times before actually performing it? Am I trying to decide just how hard to hit the end of the board, how high I want to go on the spring, and how to achieve that? Or am I just procrastinating about getting wet?
A record of the longest time can be kept but knowing the exact longest time the skill could last would be hard. The character probably know currently that the skill can last more than an hour but not more than two hours. The character would not be sure that the skill would not exceed two hours but the character can guess the current limit of the skill.
The player has the advantage that he can see the rolls, and so he can know that when he rolled thirty-seven he got thirty-seven minutes of effect but when he rolled 45 he got no effect at all. If, though, the rolls were blind, the player would know what the character knows. Suppose I rolled behind the screens, and your chance of success is actually 40 but you happened to roll 35, 27, 02, 80, 19, 17, 60, 03, 22, 19. You will have succeeded eight times in ten, and will think that you have an 80% chance of success. Similarly, if those rolls were 41, 35, 90, 85, 46, 17, 52, 88, 60, 95, you're going to have succeeded only two times in ten and botched once, which will give you the impression that you have a 20% chance of success and a 10% chance to botch. In theory you can eliminate the effects of randomness by increasing the number of rolls, but without doing any math I would not expect a hundred rolls to give you better than +/=10% accuracy, and a thousand rolls would not bring you as close as +/-2%. The data just isn't there.
Mechanics or law of the reality is usually what a VR tester is thinking when testing a VR simulation. It might not be the same as the Multiverser rules, but there are rules on how the reality is perceived or generated. Can the VR tester come up with a way to simulate the reality that is perceived by making up related formula (which is not accurate at first considering lack of data but probably will grow as the character knows more) just like physicists?
The complication here, as I see it, is that the mechanics are already an attempt to model reality, and so you are in essence attempting to extrapolate how the reality is modeled.
Using your example of physics and virtual reality simulation, in the real world acceleration due to gravity is roughly ten meters per second per second (I just looked it up). In emulating that within a virtual world, I must first create a matrix in which there is perceived distance and perceived time. My matrix is probably going to have to include perspective, and thus that the "actual" distances perceived are distorted by the perceptual adjustment. Thus my formula is going to include that the motion of an object in freefall should appear to accelerate by moving so many units in the first fraction of a second, so many in the second, so many in the third, and so on, and then that the units themselves must pass through a translation system to provide the correct view of the motion relative to the observer, so that the units are smaller when they are further from the point of observation. If the simulation is done exactly right, you as the observer ought to be able to determine that objects in that virtual world fall at ten meters per second per second; you almost certainly cannot determine the formulas which create the perception that they do so from your observation point.
Looking at modeling combat for a moment, it is assumed that when an amateur fights an amateur bare-fisted without any style bonuses, each rolls once per minute to determine whether he landed a significant blow against the other. The character does not know that; he knows that he is swinging and blocking and dodging constantly during the minute. That he has perhaps a thirty-five percent chance to connect solidly enough to matter once in the minute is not something he can perceive; nor can he determine which of the many punches he attempted is the one that "missed" if he failed to make that hit. The player perceives the actions in terms of the mechanics because the mechanics provide a simplified means of determining the outcome of a highly complex combination of actions and responses, a reality in which the character probably has closer to a two percent chance to land each of sixty attempted blows, which we simplify by the assumption that there's a thirty-five percent chance one of those sixty attacks will actually connect, and we don't worry about which one it was except in terms of an initiative roll that tells us whose thirty-five percent chance to connect comes first.
The mechanics are by definition invisible to the characters, and thus undiscoverable. The player can know that his chance of success at a particular skill is somewhere between thirty-seven and forty-five percent based on the history of rolls he has made, and that his RS minutes duration means it will last a maximum that is not less than thirty-seven minutes but not as much as forty-five minutes. The character only knows that it has lasted over half an hour but never yet three quarters of an hour, and that it works somewhere between one time in three and one time in two.
The system is designed to thwart efforts at getting more accurate "mechanical" answers to those questions.
--M. J. Young
I would eliminate the problem entirely by making the meditative concentration a linked skill or an optional component, something he can use when there is time for it. Whern chaining, he'd have to focus again to get the effect. If he wants the same success rate, he needs to put the same effort into it. Applying the bonus without the effort is only possible when someone else supplies the effort, such as a magical skill that has an otherworldly being directly interfere (which leaves the use of that skill up to that being, obviously).
I would eliminate the problem entirely by making the meditative concentration a linked skill....
This works, but it works differently. Let's assume that we're talking about a magical bonus to a magic skill.
If the base time factor for the skill is one minute, and I make the ritual two minutes, I have doubled the base time and get +10 on my chance of success. Each time I double the base time I get another +10, so if I make it a 32 minute ritual I'm going to get +50. This means my chance of success is 50% greater and it will always take me half an hour to perform the skill.
Instead, let's add a connected skill that bonuses my chance of success. The baseline bonus is going to be +RS/10 and it's going to take me one minute to perform; if it also takes me one minute to perform the skill, it now takes two minutes to perform both skills, and I have to roll the dice twice. If the first roll succeeds, I will add some amount of at least 1 and not greater than 10, and it will probably be on the lower end at least until I get fantastically good at it; if I manage to get my chance of success to 100%, the average bonus will be 5.5. But I can increase the ritual time of the adjunct "bonusing" skill. If I double it to two minutes, I get +10 on my chance to get a bonus of RS/10 on the next skill. I can increase the ritual time to thirty-two minutes and so get +50, but that goes to the bonus skill, which still confers only +RS/10 to the target skill. I can increase the bonus value by taking -10, which will give me +RS/5 but only +40 on the chance of success for the same time; I can increase it again to RS/2; I can even increase it to RS=SM, that if the roll is successful its value is added to the targeted skill--but now the bonus on my chance to succeed for the half hour is only +20, and there's still a 1% chance that I will roll 01, getting only a one point bonus, and probably still a significant chance that I will fail the bonus skill entirely, and thus have spent the entire half hour for no gain.
Thus it is always more effective to put the bonuses directly into the skill you want to perform rather than a secondary skill. The chief advantage of putting the bonus into a secondary skill is you can get better at that skill and use it for a broad range of other skills. The chief advantage of not putting the time into the primary skill is that you can perform the primary skill more quickly if necessary.
There is also the detail that if you are rolling for two separate skills, you've got two chances to fail and two chances to botch. You might increase your chance of success on the second skill (and so decrease your chance to botch), but you might botch on the first, or you might botch on the second.
Also, it is generally not the referee's decision which way that happens. The player/character is making a determination as to whether to limit his ability to use a particular skill by making it a skill requirement that he invest the extra time into it (which prevents him from performing the same skill the same way in less time), and so getting a greater bonus on the chance to succeed with that skill. If the player prefers, the character can create a skill that bonuses a broad range of other skills, and if he wishes he can make certain skills contingent on a successful prior use of the bonusing skill (which would give him +10 for the requirement of successful use of another skill and prevent him from performing it at all absent that success).
--M. J. Young