On-hand items

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

Originally Posted by khorboth

I look at rules like this and I always wonder... What are we trying to accomplish?

A person whose job description is accurately described as "getting in trouble" will logically carry situationally useful odds and ends that are cheap, small, light, expendable, legal, and may very well bail them out of trouble.

Most PCs have exactly that as a job description.

Most players sitting around that table playing these PCs do not.

I have a strong policy as a GM that "what is written on your character sheet, filtered through common sense, is the last word, and if that's not enough I will split the difference with an appropriate dice roll".

If your character sheet says "Tactics: 25" and "Soldier: 25", your character does not die because he opened a door wrong in the middle of a zone he knows is a hot zone just because you didn't say you opened the door without standing in front of it. Your character does not fail to account for enemies mouseholing just because you are not an avid R6S player and thus thought walls were impassible (if you have a breaching charge, they aren't). Your guy is a genius tactician and expert soldier, he simply doesn't die from a rookie mistake he would logically know not to make just because you as a player aren't any of these things. Now if your guy is facing exotic enemies with exotic abilities that he has been briefed about, I'm just gonna roll against his tactics skill with penalties for really exotic abilities if you have made a glaring oversight and you can retroactively prepare against them because, again, that guy with proper intel won't make these mistakes (that guy, even at -10 to tactics, has an 80+% of success). If he doesn't have the relevant intel, you're SOL.

Bottom line? Your guy who has been doing that gig for 5 In-Game years logically knows how to do that gig. He knows the ins and out of it. I don't want to see a character who's supposed to be a pro fail by making a rookie mistake just because the player is a rookie.

To me, the guy who's been doing that gig for 10 years with great success, with high stats and skills to prove it, making a rookie mistake that got him killed because the player is an office worker working a normal 9-to-5 office job, is kinda like handing the guy who plays a lvl 7 D&D rogue a training rubber knife and asking him to backstab you, and denying him his in-game sneak attack because despite his character qualifying for it, well the IRL guy has no idea how to wield a knife IRL and couldn't make a convincing show of stabbing you with a training prop.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

So, if I wanted, as a campaign switch, to say that any PC can make a roll of his better of IQ and Urban Survival . . . to pull a miscellaneous, small, unrestricted, cheap but common item . . . that he has bought off camera recently, would anything break?

No, nothing will break. I've always taken this as a baseline assumption, though I've never bothered to systematize it. Sometimes we make a declaration ("Yes you would likely have twine as part of your camping supplies"), or we base it on a skill (Survival is common), or we declare reasonable odds and roll ("25%, roll eight or less!"). I would allow Luck on the roll, too. Admittedly, I usually run faux-medieval fantasy, so there are fewer paperclips and cigarette lighters lying around, but it comes up every so often.

In a modern campaign, I would be more generous because modern detritus is small and versatile.

If I were designing a PC where I wanted this to be a specific feature, I would take some version of gizmo or ask the GM if I could purchase a "Macgyver Kit" to add to my inventory, depending on the value and versatility I was looking for.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

I was about to say, I'd at least charge them a Perk level of Gizmos for this.

And I'd allow them to buy the Perk the next time they had points to spare if they had none right at the moment of first occurrence.

If the OP is planning on giving it to every PC, there's no need to charge for it, it's just there.

That said, I'd not be allowing finding smokes - in my experience non-smokers never 'accidentally' have smokes on them, and smokers always know if they do and if they've a restricted income exactly how many. That might be different in a time when huge numbers of adults smoked and it was very cheap, though.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Rupert

That said, I'd not be allowing finding smokes - in my experience non-smokers never 'accidentally' have smokes on them...

Sure, but during the hay day of smoking, even non-smokers often had a light on them. Heck, even now I generally have a light in my EDC, but my EDC is geared towards to being a minimalist SHTF kit.

But then I'd also charge myself a Perk for "probably having a [Cheap, Not Immune to Searchers, Gizmo] on me" at all times.