Skills, Checks, and Wounds...Oh My!

[donbaloo]

Here are a couple quick questions regarding skills, checks, and wounds.

After reading through the burner I now stand in awe of the overwhelming number of skills available to characters. However, a lot of them seem to be relatively close or even overlapping beyond the benefits of even a FoRK. For example, Jargon vs. Engineering. I could understand having Jargon without Engineering but vice versa seems absurd. Would you guys require an Engineering character to also spend points in Jargon? And how do you keep up with which skill a character should be testing in the face of such specificity. For example, unless I remember that Illuminations is actually a skill that had been detailed, I’d probably have called for a painting test. Do you as a GM just make the call as best you can from memory and just go with it, maybe allowing players to lobby for a test in one of their skills?

There are also skills such as scavenging that seem as if they would be more realistically represented simply through GM adjudication. No skill required. Something is either there or it isn’t, as interpreted by the GM. Same goes even more so for Extortion. You either have the goods on someone or you don’t. Do you really need a skill check when you know the bishop is regularly sleeping with a prostitute out of Rikki’s Cathouse?

When a skill has two stats listed as roots, such as Will/Power, is it an average of those stats or do we simply choose the one we want as our root?

When a trait or spell allows a character substitute a skill or stat for another in testing, i.e. using Perception for Observation, does the substituted stat get credit for the test or would the test go towards the skill that it is replacing? I could see it going either way.

Whenever at test is made in which higher obstacles would provide a more in depth success, i.e. Touch of Ages or Weather Sense, does the player declare his goal beforehand with failures indicating complete failure or is the check made and all information up to the achieved obstacle revealed? If it is the latter, do you log a test at the highest obstacle you cleared?

If stats are reduced due to magic, such as with Emperor’s Hand, what is the recovery period for regaining those losses? Should it just be equated with the equivalent level of wound on the Physical Tolerances Grayscale?

If the obstacle for Steel tests is your Hesitation do you not run into obstacles concerning achieving the proper tests for advancement? If my Steel is 4 and my Hesitation is 6, how do I manage to acquire routine tests?

When figuring bleeding times according to the bleeding clock, do you use the character’s current wounded Forte in calculations or his unmodified Forte?

Thanks for helping!

Edit: I think this maybe should have been broken up into two separate posts, one for this forum and another for the Burner Forum. If so, my apologies and if need be I can edit it accordingly.

[Thor Olavsrud]

Here are a couple quick questions regarding skills, checks, and wounds.

After reading through the burner I now stand in awe of the overwhelming number of skills available to characters. However, a lot of them seem to be relatively close or even overlapping beyond the benefits of even a FoRK. For example, Jargon vs. Engineering. I could understand having Jargon without Engineering but vice versa seems absurd. Would you guys require an Engineering character to also spend points in Jargon? And how do you keep up with which skill a character should be testing in the face of such specificity. For example, unless I remember that Illuminations is actually a skill that had been detailed, I’d probably have called for a painting test. Do you as a GM just make the call as best you can from memory and just go with it, maybe allowing players to lobby for a test in one of their skills?

I can see certain instances where one might not have Jargon but would have engineering. It all depends on how you gained the skill. You'll notice that Jargon is actually a Social skill. You would use it in social situations with other engineers, masons and architects.

As for which skills to use: The player should be the one telling you which skill he wants to use when he states his Intent and Task. The GM gets to rule whether it is applicable or not.

There are also skills such as scavenging that seem as if they would be more realistically represented simply through GM adjudication. No skill required. Something is either there or it isn’t, as interpreted by the GM. Same goes even more so for Extortion. You either have the goods on someone or you don’t. Do you really need a skill check when you know the bishop is regularly sleeping with a prostitute out of Rikki’s Cathouse?

Sure, you can do scavenging unskilled at a Double Obstacle penalty as per Beginner's Luck (system book, pg. 40). But there is a knack to it. Someone who's skilled stands a much better chance of being able to dig up what he's looking for.

Extortion is very much a skill. When you do an Extortion test you're not just testing whether you sucessfully threaten a guy. If you pull off a successful Extortion test, your target is cowed and WILL pay if he is capable. Normally, your bishop would have a choice when confronted with someone trying to blackmail him. He could pay, he could refuse to pay, he could hire someone to kill you. But succeed in the test and he will pay. And just to be clear, what you're really doing is testing to recover Taxed Resource dice. Use it the same way you would use Accounting!

Whether you have the goods one someone is incidental, though I would certainly give someone an Advantage die if they had someone dead to rights.

I suggest going back and reading Intent and Success on pg. 33 of the system book, as well as the Failure section on pg. 34. These might help illuminate matters for you.

When a skill has two stats listed as roots, such as Will/Power, is it an average of those stats or do we simply choose the one we want as our root?

D'oh! We realized yesterday that this had not been explained. You take the average.

When a trait or spell allows a character substitute a skill or stat for another in testing, i.e. using Perception for Observation, does the substituted stat get credit for the test or would the test go towards the skill that it is replacing? I could see it going either way.

In the instance of a Trait or Spell, I would give the test to the Stat.

Whenever at test is made in which higher obstacles would provide a more in depth success, i.e. Touch of Ages or Weather Sense, does the player declare his goal beforehand with failures indicating complete failure or is the check made and all information up to the achieved obstacle revealed? If it is the latter, do you log a test at the highest obstacle you cleared?

See 'Open Tests' on the bottom of pg. 28 of the System book. For Advancement, see 'Advancement for Open and Versus Tests' on pg. 47 of the System book.

If stats are reduced due to magic, such as with Emperor’s Hand, what is the recovery period for regaining those losses? Should it just be equated with the equivalent level of wound on the Physical Tolerances Grayscale?

See 'The Sickness' and 'Recovering from the Sickness' of pg. 211 of the System book. That's the system to use for Taxed stats caused by Magic. Stats reduced by Wounds are covered by the recovering from wounds stuff. Stats lost due to Locks in combat are regained when the Lock is released.

If the obstacle for Steel tests is your Hesitation do you not run into obstacles concerning achieving the proper tests for advancement? If my Steel is 4 and my Hesitation is 6, how do I manage to acquire routine tests?

See the Steel and Advancement section of the System book on pg. 124.

When figuring bleeding times according to the bleeding clock, do you use the character’s current wounded Forte in calculations or his unmodified Forte?

Use the unmodified Forte. It's too brutal otherwise.

[Redoid]

For example, Jargon vs. Engineering. I could understand having Jargon without Engineering but vice versa seems absurd. Would you guys require an Engineering character to also spend points in Jargon?

Well, I haven't looked extensively, but the only place you pick up the Jargon skill is during an Artisan carrer, and it's a mandatory skill for the lifepath. So yes, you have to at least open Jargon to be an Artisan. If you are a competent artisan in this field, you'll probably pick up Engineering as well. But this isn't mandatory, though the frequentation of this milieu will have left you with some words to communicate effectively on engineering problems with your peers. Putting more points into Jargon is the player's choice, though.


And how do you keep up with which skill a character should be testing in the face of such specificity. For example, unless I remember that Illuminations is actually a skill that had been detailed, I’d probably have called for a painting test. Do you as a GM just make the call as best you can from memory and just go with it, maybe allowing players to lobby for a test in one of their skills?


I do, my players know that when I mention a skill, I am simply giving the intent of the test. They know their capabilities better than me, and can suggest the use of FoRK, or even the use of a more specific skill. This isn't BW specific, though: I suck at remembering which skills are in which system I GM... If I call for, say, a Painting test, and a players comes with a skill applicable and more specific to the goal, I tend to lower the obstacle, too.


There are also skills such as scavenging that seem as if they would be more realistically represented simply through GM adjudication. No skill required. Something is either there or it isn’t, as interpreted by the GM.


Think of it as any Search skill: they don't allow anyone to find something that isn't there, only to find existant things hidden or buried under a pile of other superfluous items.


Same goes even more so for Extortion. You either have the goods on someone or you don’t. Do you really need a skill check when you know the bishop is regularly sleeping with a prostitute out of Rikki’s Cathouse?


This is a good situational advantage to extort money from the Bishop. A failed roll will of course convince the bishop that you're not going to let him in peace afterward and come back to ask for more money in the future. So he'll probably give in, and ask Madame Rikki to enlist some thugs to dispose of you in a back alley. A failed test isn't necessarily the failure of the task at hand, but can be the introduction of a complication. Failing at extortion doesn't mean the target don't give you money...


When a skill has two stats listed as roots, such as Will/Power, is it an average of those stats or do we simply choose the one we want as our root?


Average.


When a trait or spell allows a character substitute a skill or stat for another in testing, i.e. using Perception for Observation, does the substituted stat get credit for the test or would the test go towards the skill that it is replacing? I could see it going either way.


I don't know... I'll let the Elder answer this one... I would use the rolled ability get the test.


Whenever at test is made in which higher obstacles would provide a more in depth success, i.e. Touch of Ages or Weather Sense, does the player declare his goal beforehand with failures indicating complete failure or is the check made and all information up to the achieved obstacle revealed? If it is the latter, do you log a test at the highest obstacle you cleared?


Open-ended tests are always counted as the basic obstacle for succeeding. If the character gather some information (if not all that he wanted) he'll get some improvement out of it, and will have to do with what he has.

[luke]

1: Extortion is an art, like persuasion. It is not simply good enough to run up to the Bishop sneering, "Nyeh, nyeh, I know you slept with whooah!"

"Really my son, seems to me that knowledge imperils your immortal soul. One word for you: Excommunication."

2: Scavenging DOES allow authoship on the part of the player. Having the skill bypasses the horrors of GM fiat. A player can say, "I sneak into the village and scavenge up some leather sacks to hide the loot." If he's successful on the roll, he finds what he's looking for. If he's not, then there aren't any sacks to be found. The intent and the dice create the game reality there. Just like Circles.

3: Substituting stat/skill tests has a little heading in the advancement chapter. Don't have the books at work, but it's in there.

4: Tests with range of obstacles and advancement: If the GM doesn't set an obstacle -- Ob 1 and up gets a range of info, then it's a Routine test. If the player or GM sets an obstacle, then use that obstacle for advancement.

5: Emperor's Hand doesn't give recovery times? Damn. Use the Tax rules as Thor suggested.

6: Steel tests obstacles vary. That's what that whole chapter is about!

7: Also, what Thor and Redoid said, too.

-L

[donbaloo]

Okay, thanks for the clarification on extortion. That should cover the other instances of similarly used skills that I was curious about as well. And I keep forgetting that its the players job to declare their skill use, not mine as GM...that should help. Redoid-Yeah I stink at rememberings skills too and I just foresaw doom ahead when I realized the degree of specificity the skills list exhibited.

Abzu, you cleared the cobwebs from my understanding of Scavenge and like traits. Thor, I understood that the skill could be used without any skill points but the problematic aspect of it was that I just simply didn't understand the need for such a skill. In a typical game of mine if someone wanted to sneak into town and find some sacks then it was my job to determine if the sacks would be there and if I thought so, we'd do a brief roleplay and the sacks would be gathered. All on my judgement. Abzu cleared that notion up with the idea of player authorship. Now I don't have to decide anything, the PC does it all. This is the most unfamiliar aspect of gaming that Burning Wheel has offered to me and its been very difficult to come to grips with. I'm excited about seeing it in action though, and a little scared if truth be told. Its just something completely foreign to us.

Thor, went back and reread the success and intent sections, as well as failures like you said. It did help, expecially while keeping in mind the notion of player authorship. However it brought forward another question about success, failure, and let it ride that I'd like to ask. I'll use the example from the book. So the character's lockpicking skill is being tested with the intent of opening a door before the guards get there. Failure. Now the book drills home the idea of alternate forms of failure, one being that the guards show before the lock is popped. Lets say that the guards are disposed of in some way though. Now, the player still wants to get through that door. Under Let it Ride the task was failed but in narrating the failure in the way we did, it seems to indicate that the character may still have a chance at opening the lock. How do you handle this? Alternately, suppose the character succeeded in opening the door to begin with. Once inside, they need to open a chest to retrieve certain documents that they are after. Does the initial success for the door count as successful lockpicking for the scene and so the chest is opened as well. My apologies for coming across so so dense but I just want to make sure that when I'm playing that I'm allowing the system to function in the way you guys have created it.

Steel. I've read the section twice and now skimmed it for a third time. I guess my initial impression was that the majority of obstacles are simply your Hesitation (your base) and that typically there wouldn't be very much modification. I guess through a combination of the situational conditions as tests and the list of modifiers that over time sufficient tests can be logged. It still appears though that the greatest number of tests are going to be simply against your hesitation with a -1D for a wound in battle. Of course, that could just be my D&D/combat mind not opening up enough.

Thanks for the help once again you guys and if you get a chance to address my let it ride and scene success issue above I'd appreciate it. This system has been very eye opening to me and though I must appear as quite the dolt through my questioning, flowers of enlightenment truly are beginning to bloom in the garden of my mind. I hope to have the time to post my thoughts soon on how Burning Wheel has begun to shatter my belief that I've ever truly role-played at any significant level in all my years of gaming. Take care...

[Thor Olavsrud]

Thor, went back and reread the success and intent sections, as well as failures like you said. It did help, expecially while keeping in mind the notion of player authorship. However it brought forward another question about success, failure, and let it ride that I'd like to ask. I'll use the example from the book. So the character's lockpicking skill is being tested with the intent of opening a door before the guards get there. Failure. Now the book drills home the idea of alternate forms of failure, one being that the guards show before the lock is popped. Lets say that the guards are disposed of in some way though. Now, the player still wants to get through that door. Under Let it Ride the task was failed but in narrating the failure in the way we did, it seems to indicate that the character may still have a chance at opening the lock. How do you handle this? Alternately, suppose the character succeeded in opening the door to begin with. Once inside, they need to open a chest to retrieve certain documents that they are after. Does the initial success for the door count as successful lockpicking for the scene and so the chest is opened as well. My apologies for coming across so so dense but I just want to make sure that when I'm playing that I'm allowing the system to function in the way you guys have created it.

Basically, failure in the example causes the guards to arrive. If you deal with the guards at that point, you get through the door. The consequence could certainly have nothing to do with the guards. The important point is that the player must state his Intent, which should imply the risk of failure. If there's no conflict going on...i.e. there's no pressure and the character has all the time in the world to pick the lock on the door, don't even bother rolling dice. Just let them through.

Steel. I've read the section twice and now skimmed it for a third time. I guess my initial impression was that the majority of obstacles are simply your Hesitation (your base) and that typically there wouldn't be very much modification. I guess through a combination of the situational conditions as tests and the list of modifiers that over time sufficient tests can be logged. It still appears though that the greatest number of tests are going to be simply against your hesitation with a -1D for a wound in battle. Of course, that could just be my D&D/combat mind not opening up enough.

Well, those situational conditions from pg. 125 will come up as often as the GM wishes. As long as you apply them rigorously, the players should be getting plenty of Routine tests. Of course, once you get up to Steel B5, you won't need Routine tests anymore. The Advantages and Disadvantages on pg. 124 should ensure that they get a good combination of Difficult and Challenging tests in order to advance.

[Redoid]

Abzu cleared that notion up with the idea of player authorship. Now I don't have to decide anything, the PC does it all. This is the most unfamiliar aspect of gaming that Burning Wheel has offered to me and its been very difficult to come to grips with. I'm excited about seeing it in action though, and a little scared if truth be told. Its just something completely foreign to us.

Apparently, my answer didn't come through the forum's problems :( So I'll repost a shorter one. Do give player authorship a chance, especially using the Circles mechanism. The more the player participate to the construction of the story, the less likely they are to feel it's a bad story. They can add elements that interest them, either by the Relationship mechanism, by introducing them through circles, and so on. Even scavenging. So if they find the story lacking, they just need to introduce elements on their own. I enjoy this sort of hippie commune as abzu said. I discovered it in Warlords of Alexander, a game in which seers characters can actually try to predict anything remotely believable. If they are successful, the GM is bound to make their prophecy comes true (but the specifics and the time frame can't be prophecized, so he has some leeway), since Fate is unavoidable. It's fun, and it really opened my eyes on the story constructing in RPG. So, if you're not yet familiar with player authorship mechanism, encourage your players to use it, it may require more work from you, but ultimately the story will be more enjoyable. You said you decided all by yourself: now you can also get surprised by where the story goes.


I'll use the example from the book. So the character's lockpicking skill is being tested with the intent of opening a door before the guards get there. Failure. Now the book drills home the idea of alternate forms of failure, one being that the guards show before the lock is popped. Lets say that the guards are disposed of in some way though. Now, the player still wants to get through that door. Under Let it Ride the task was failed but in narrating the failure in the way we did, it seems to indicate that the character may still have a chance at opening the lock.


As Thor said. If you want to rationalize it, now the guards are dead, so they can take all the time they need. Or, even, they can bash down the door: there's no need to pick a lock when the lobby is covered in dead bodies. You can afford not to be subtle by then :)


How do you handle this? Alternately, suppose the character succeeded in opening the door to begin with. Once inside, they need to open a chest to retrieve certain documents that they are after. Does the initial success for the door count as successful lockpicking for the scene and so the chest is opened as well. My apologies for coming across so so dense but I just want to make sure that when I'm playing that I'm allowing the system to function in the way you guys have created it.

That depends. The intent of the Let it run rules is to prevent GM to unjustly increase the difficulty of tasks. Let's say you have 50% chance of getting past a guard. For some reason, the GM requires two rolls or that. You chances are only 25% now, and you couldn't guess it before. If there was several guards patrolling, the obstacle should have been set higher initially, not dealt with multiple roll. Each roll must be significant.

The Let it ride didn't appy in the example with the guards. It would most certainly apply if you asked for another roll to open the chest. Ask yourself, what did the character achieve by opening the door, and failing to open the chest? If entering the room was by itself an useful achievement, then you can ask for another roll to open the chest. If they fail, the first roll wouldn't be retroactively made useless. If entering the room wasn't significant storywise, you either shouldn't have asked for a roll in the first place, or use the let it ride rule and let the results apply.

[donbaloo]

Ah, things are becoming clearer with each post. I did in fact see your original post Redoid...thanks for the detailed responses. I'm pretty excited to give the players the reins a little and see what happens but still mildly concerned about the workout my improv skills are gonna initially receive.

Thanks to you and Thor I believe I'm getting a handle on the let it ride notion and the adjudication of whether a test is even needed. The more I learn, the more this game feels like its breathing. Take care all...

[luke]

The GM's role in Burning Wheel is as Vincent said, "Say yes or roll the dice." When you decide to roll the dice (as you should most of the time), it's the GM's job to set the obstacle based on the player's intent. The player may then modify his intent to gain advantage dice or even increase his obstacle.

The GM is simply another player with a few extraordinary "powers" in the game. One of those powers is NOT to fill in every detail of the setting -- so much so that the players are playing in his head rather than a shared imagined space between them.

Of course there are limits to this. The GM's job is also to guide the narrative so it keeps genre fidelity. Players can't narrate spaceships and lasers into existence just to be cute, that breaks genre and the GM is supposed to put his foot down over that nonsense.

hope that helps,
-L

[Fourth Horseman]

Players can't narrate spaceships and lasers into existence just to be cute, that breaks genre and the GM is supposed to put his foot down over that nonsense.

Do you mean "LASER"? Or do you mean the "ALAN PARSON'S PROJECT"?