Quote:
Originally Posted by CoyoteGestalt
One thing that has never been clear to me is what the "skill" is for a contact whose main role is to provide inside information about the activities of their organisation. If my character is a PI and I have the secretary of the Fire Commissioner as a contact, presumably they don't have Professional Skill (firefighter) as a skill, nor do I expect them to perform analysitcal tasks with Administration - I want them to give me insider information about suspicious fires and the progress of arson investigations. Current Affairs (My Office) seems like an odd skill....
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In one of
my attempts to redo contacts, I figured that indeed the primary reason to take a Contact, instead of just taking the same skill personally on the PC's character sheet, was to get access to what's going on in their workplace. Quite often a legitimate Contact will have the same skill as what the PC already has (e.g. a PI and their Contact in the police force will both have basically the same investigative skills, such as Criminology). I then gave the main skill of a Contact as Current Affairs (Stuff Related to my Position). If the Contact was also for access to a special knowledge skill, then this was an extra enhancement and cost was related to the skill of the PC. Likewise access to special equipment or to files, books or databases off-limits to the PCs would also be an enhancement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
The reliability statistic has always bugged me. It feels like it belongs in a specific genre, not as a significant stat on every contact.
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I think it's a bit broken, for at least two reasons-
1) Patrons and Allies don't have an equivalent mechanic, and are automatically considered to be Completely Reliable without a x3 point tax on them. Thus, having a "good" contact becomes way pricey in relation for what they can do for you, i.e. give you a piece of knowledge or a small favour. Changing Completely Reliable to x1 and then having lower levels be Limitations can help fix this.
2) Because with Completely Reliable there's no failed roll, it's more cost effective to take this together with a low Effective Skill level on your Contact. Effective Skill is supposed be the defining attribute of a Contact, not their Reliability.
3) (Told you there were at least two reasons...) It's not clear what the Reliability axis is meant to represent. A Completely Reliable Contact is so good at what they do, and persistent, that they can always get an answer- measuring skill and persistence. A Somewhat or Unreliable Contact will lie or rat you out to your enemies- which is a measure of loyalty.