Carefully, patiently, quickly

[Mickeroo]

While the mechanics work, it doesn't make sense to have someone working carefully, patiently, and quickly at the same time. I can see patiently and carefully, but quickly doesn't seem to fit. Can someone please explain that to me? Thank you.

[RickoniX]

While the mechanics work, it doesn't make sense to have someone working carefully, patiently, and quickly at the same time. I can see patiently and carefully, but quickly doesn't seem to fit. Can someone please explain that to me? Thank you.I may be a little hazy on this, but doesn't it say you can't?

[Mickeroo]

No, according to page 32 of the revised editon "Players may have their characters work carefully, patiently and quickly all at once." Maybe it was like that in Classic?

[Thor Olavsrud]

No, according to page 32 of the revised editon "Players may have their characters work carefully, patiently and quickly all at once." Maybe it was like that in Classic?

Right. There is no longer a rule against using all three at once. You have to look carefully at what they mean, especially Carefully.

By the intent of the rule, you're no longer supposed to use Carefully as a cop out to get extra dice for a test. You should only really invoke Carefully when it IS a time-sensitive test (although generous GMs will allow it regardless). You don't have really have to sit and calculate how long it will take.

It's all about increasing the ante. When you choose to work Carefully, you are telling the GM, "If I fail this test, the allotted time we had has run out. The guards come before I finish picking the lock, the bomb blows up before I can disarm it, etc."

Quickly is there for those times when you have a very detailed amount of time to do something. In essence, you set your own Obstacle in order to make things faster. If a test normally would take 10 minutes, I can reduce the time to perform the test by 1 minute for every level by which I raise the Obstacle.

Now conceivably, I could do both at the same time. Let's say that I'm cracking a safe, and I know the guard will come back in 13 minutes as part of his circuit. My GM tells me it will take about 10 minutes to pick the lock. I could say, "I'm going to go about it Carefully (meaning the guard will definitely come back if I fail), which will increase the time to 15 minutes. But I'll probably have to rush a bit at the end, so I'll also work Quickly and take +3 Ob in order to make sure I finish a minute before the guard comes back."

It works. However, if you do the math, you'll see that it doesn't pay off to work Carefully and Quickly at the same time. You can only get +1D for working Carefully, but +1 Ob is a more severe penalty than the benefit you gain from +1D.

So we're not saying you CAN'T do it. But only the math-impaired are likely to try it (as far as I can tell, anyway).

[Mickeroo]

Excellent...some of my players are quite math-impaired... :twisted: