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Old 02-10-2019, 02:18 PM   #63
naloth
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Default Re: Empathy with low IQ

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Originally Posted by Thamior View Post
How can you compare attacks and Empathy is beyond me honestly. You act on a strange assumption that everything can be re-attempted without penalty, when it is clearly not the case. Read Intuition description for example. Reaction Rolls kinda woulda you can but with a growing penalty every time. So it's last chance and won't let you reroll ad infinitum till you get what you want. It just doesn't work like that.
I don't believe you'll that I ever implied that you can retry "everything", nor did I create an extensive list of activities. I merely pointed out the absurdity of your statement that "This is a total misunderstanding of how the rules of GURPS and RPGs in general work in the first place."

Bluntly, it's not. Unless the situation changes or the rules explicitly limit you to one attempt, you can re-try. Sometimes that attempt is penalized. Sometimes the ability to keep at a task until you succeed earns you a bonus (extra time).





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My rules don't include rerolling. I think you should read repeated attempts on page 348 of Basic Set.
Luck? Impulse buys? Those are actual re-rolls, though I was discussing situations where you would either a) get a bonus to success by taking extra time and care (which presumably is covered in your version of Campaigns) or b) where you could re-try because there's each attempt is an independent attempt.

Following B348 you can see that 3/4 of the described situations allow you to reattempt a task:
- Situation 1: something destroyed or killed. Doesn't apply here.
- Situation 2: something damaged. Retry possible for the same task after reasonable time.
- Situation 3: re-rolls are penalized for some reason.
- Situation 4: you can re-attempt without penalty after a time.

Quote:
Also read the description of Detect Lie where it is written:
If you lose, the GM may
lie to you about whether you were lied
to . . . or just say, “You can’t tell.”
Yes, which is strangely in line with what I've been putting in every single post. The GM can mislead you so you can't count on *failure* to learn information. If you can virtually count on a "you can't tell" being failure, you know to always treat it as a failure.

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I was pointing at a fact that there is no way to tell if you succeeded with Empathy.
That mirrors exactly that the GM can (should) do with Detect Lies.

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While at other types of spotting you get a positive confirmation of your success, with Sensitive - no such thing. Do you understand that difference?
Yes, and I've tried to explain the different. If the GM makes a sense roll to detect the tiger lying in wait up ahead and you *fail* you don't get any warning. You're suggesting that you should get an indicator that you failed and that there is a tiger up ahead while I'm saying that you should not.

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1.) No real feedback (Should I even explain that this is bad for gameplay?).
2.) Unusable with IQ up to 13 and even with more I wouldn't use it. Even if I had 66% of success. At 80%... Eh, maybe.
3.) Well damn sometimes you are really not sure about something. You can't tell one way or another. How does it fit there? When someone lies to you, you either see through his lies or believe him completely according to your interpretation and the flawed rules. If something bothers your subject you either KNOW it or you are sure that NOTHING bothers him, you can't be unsure. Does it seem a good approximation of reality to you?
4.) If you are Sensitive at IQ 10 with your interpretation how can you conceptually HAVE those bonuses to Detect Lies etc. if you are wrong most of the time. Your logic that these things are divorced from each other is flawed.
1) You're suggesting that your character should act on knowledge they don't have. That is bad for gameplay.
2) Sure, up to you. Keep in mind that you've mentioned applying difficulty modifiers and I've also mentioned that before. With modifiers, the roll might be much more likely.
3) The GM should switch it up a bit. Nothing says they need to go with one answer all the time.
4) Detect Lies allows a contest. Empathy allows you to just roll for success. That's a pretty powerful (skill ignoring) feature.

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The only way I see it useful as is is trying to stack as many bonuses as you possibly can. But it would be still a crutch and not very interesting and still prone to most of those problems I listed.
That sounds a lot like saying guns suck because you have range, size, and other environmental penalties. Aiming, bracing, and bonuses would be the "crutch." Those aren't problems, those are how the system creates a bit of balance.

If you want to roll straight IQ, Empathy is available for 15 points. All I really see here is that you want more functionality, but don't want to pay more for the advantage, even though it does quite a bit for 5 or 15 points.
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