Out-of-Character Posts Thread

BTW, just looked up how helping on Beginner's Luck tests works, 'cause I never really understood it. For good reason, it seems! Here's the ruling as I understand it now. In brief, think of Beginner's Luck as an obstacle penalty to a stat test which does not factor into anyone's advancement, like artha doesn't.

Concrete example:

Suppose Zachary is going to make a Beginner's Luck -wise test, and Gord is helping. They both have B4 Perception. Let's say the Ob is 2, and Zachary has a +1 Ob disadvantage because, I dunno, he's drunk.

Zachary rolls Beginner's Luck Perception B4+1D=5D against a total Ob of 5. Base Ob doubled, plus disadvantage, is 2*2+1=5.

Zachary's test will be logged as if he rolled 5D against an Ob of 3, base Ob plus disadvantage, 2+1=3. That test would be routine for the stat, so instead it counts as a test toward opening the -wise.

Gord's test will be logged as if he rolled 4D against an Ob of 3 as well. That test would be difficult for the stat, so it counts as a Difficult Perception test.

I treated his previous -wise check (and will be doing the same with this one) as a Graduated Test. Does it just count as whatever Obs you hit then?

Nah, graduated are just base Ob 0. Always routine unless you have lots of +Ob penalties. The margin of success is what tells you how much info you get from the GM.

Not a bad roll for me! I imagine Gord and Zachary are now chatting about Chondite Keep for the roll.

I choose to believe the 6 was rolled on my die. :)

Maybe we should put help dice in a separate roll so we can see!

IIRC one of the conditions for help in the RAW is that the player physically hand over dice to the other player... I'm definitely putting help dice in separate rolls starting now. :D

Oh, but you're right that this doesn't work for margin of success. I started a thread on the BW forums about that, no traction yet. In general MoS counts like base Ob in that you have to achieve two successes for each extra MoS.

So for Zachary's Beginner's Luck Graduated test, with 3 successes on the dice, gets margin of success = 1, and should be exactly the same outcome as a real City of Greyhawk-wise test with 1 success.

I don't think there should be any distinction between what a Beginner's Luck test can achieve and what rolling the skill can achieve, it's just much harder to get a large margin of success on Beginner's Luck. The only examples I know where there's an actual difference are called out explicitly - Martial Arts as an opened skill lets you pick some new maneuvers in Fight!, I believe, and you can't roll Sorcery with Beginner's Luck until someone has taught you your first test.

Knowledge about the City of Greyhawk is not going to yield anything about the weaknesses of a military fortification.

Definitely. That'd need to be a beginner's luck Chondite Keep-wise test or similar, right?

So I "learned" that the keep is completely separate from the city. That's something I didn't know before.

Heh, well if that's all you took as useful information, then I guess that's all you "learned".

My tests are up to date on my character sheet. Just two beginners luck tests. Did i understand correctly that you're going to end this "session" already?

Just wanted to remind everyone I have my irl game tonight. Won't be able to respond to IC til tomorrow.
Possibly, after another day or so in-game.

Whew. I was expecting Zachary to offer Gord a bit o' cash to drop the whole Nog/Weed business...

Zachary knows that the only currency that really means anything are favors. Growing up rich has skewed his perception that way, anyway.

Haha, looks like Nulgha is more rattled than I thought. What is she thinking, just blurting out all that about the Old Alliance... :D

Nobles hate the Thieves Guild and hate how much Heimart suffers them? Sounds promising... Here goes nothin'. I want to say specifically that Lord Heimart fears the dissolution of the Old Alliance because riots chaos etc. Nulgha would get this idea from a) knowing the character of Tomas and hearing stories Tomas has told of his father, b) rumors in the Guild, and c) getting that feeling from the fears and superstitions of those she talks with in the city. What -wise, what Ob, what failure result, and can I get an advantage for having heard unguarded stories from Tomas? (My intuition says Heimart-wise Ob 2-3, City of Greyhawk-wise Ob 3-4, or Superstition-wise Ob 5-6. Let me know if my idea of these Obs is fairly close to yours or wildly off-base just for being-in-sync purposes?)

You can't established that Lord Heimart fears the dissolution of the Old Alliance with a -wise check. There is logic and reason/story/plot that would lead him to feel however he does about it. It's already established.

If you want him to fear it (if he doesn't already), you will have to take tangible action to make him feel that way. You can make a Persuasion test to convince Tomas to fear it now. You can make a -wise check to try and reason out how Lord H might feel. Or attempt to gather information in some way to find out concretely how Lord H feels.

Oh! Okay, thought it was undetermined. No -wise then, we'll see what we see! Knowing how he feels makes no difference in which actions Nulgha will take to try to talk with him, no need to find out if she's guessed right beforehand. I'm gonna go with "she thinks he's scared but obviously can't admit that publicly" and see what happens.

As for Tomas, I don't want Nulgha to try to convince him it's in his best interest to be afraid, so definitely no Persuasion for that.

Ooh, unskilled Disguise, one of my favorite tests. ;)