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Old 01-20-2019, 04:10 PM   #52
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Make contact skill great again.

The basic thing I would say about organizational Contacts is that they're intended to represent the organization's employees, volunteers, slaves, or other workers; that is, the general personnel of the organization. They don't represent incredibly competent player characters. They represent people the organization has recruited and could replace by investing time and wealth. They're essentially background characters, members of the supporting cast.

The organization may be able to provide PCs with vast resources that give them big boost to their effective skill, whether by acting as their Patron or by their having Rank within it. (But NOT by acting as their Contact; what a Contact provides is two of quick, inexpensive, and nonhazardous, and must in any case be a minor favor.) But it doesn't provide vast resources to its own personnel. Rather, those personnel are themselves among the resources that it provides to the PCs. They're the forensics lab that helps them identify the master villain, the pilot who flies them where they need to go, the paramedics who keep them from dying when they're hurt, and so on. They're competent, and they can be impressively good. But they're not meant to overshadow the PCs themselves. And effective skill above 21 almost unavoidably will do that.
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