[UA] Crunchy Bits

[Greg Stolze]

>I'm debugging a few new skills designed to represent brushes I've had with
>the mechanic of UA if it applied to real life:
>
>Cool Under Fire (Mind Skill)
>(or Adrenaline Junkie, or Icewater in your veins, or Collected)
>Cool under fire is never rolled.  This skill only applies when making
>madness checks under stressful situations.  Whenever you fail a madness
>check in a stressful situation, subtract your mind score from the result of
>the roll.  If the result is less than your cool under fire skill, you still
>gain the failed notch, however, you do not have the immediate effect, going
>berzerk, passing out, or running in terror.  Instead, you act in full
>control of your facilities until the stressful situation ends, at which
>point you have whatever negative effects accrued all at once, the referee
>has the option of assigning a response (usually to faint or break down in
>tears, or similar).

This is pretty slick.  I'd allow it in my game, unless I thought doing math
on the fly would slow things down.  Although, now that I think about it,
you could do the math beforehand, couldn't you?  I've got Mind 50 and GUF
30...  so I can GUF off on any failure of 80 or less.  So Mind + GUF =
threshold of delay.  Meaning that if you've got Mind 50 and GUF 50 you
never, ever freak out on the scene...  Hm, maybe I wouldn't allow it.  I'm
torn.  I do like that you don't really get out of anything, you just put it
off until it's convenient.  It's very hard to argue that it's an
gamebreaker for that.  It's just the whole, "you can't fail" element that
gives me pause.  (Presumably a 00 would still be a radical failure.)

I'm trying to remember if I ever put in some skill that let you simply
re-roll failed stress checks.  I think I might have done so...

>Good in a Crunch (Soul Skill)
>(or Works Under Pressure, or Meet Deadline, etc.)
>A character who's good in a crunch is good at dealing with time pressures or
>other stresses, but in less effective in dealing without a certain amount of
>stress.  A character who has this skill can flip-flop any failed skill check
>in a stressed situation provided the new result  would fall under good in a
>crunch, as a result, the character will succeed more often under pressure,
>but this success will usually be scraping by.  A character with this skill
>however has all skills reduced by this percentage when used in non stressed
>situations, as a result, the character will be better at doing things in
>times of stress but may find themself incapable of focussing without
>pressure to do so.

Realistic or not, I'd be disinclined to let this work.  First and foremost,
in UA you usually only roll if it's a stressed situation.  Secondly,
because this skill can basically turn into "If there's serious
consequences, I'll do better.  If it doesn't really matter, I'll do worse."

-G.

If the reinstatement of capital punishment was clearly doing nothing to
reduce the number of murders in those states permitting it, it certainly
appeared to be cutting down on the number of confessions.
        -Dr. Douglas Ubelaker

www.waylay.com
www.thehungersite.com



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