08-02-2016, 06:37 AM | #41 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
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The same applies here. You should roll for things were dramatic tension matters and you should aim for fewer, rather than more, rolls, especially during moments as tense as a fight scene. You want that roll, and the tension of the moment, to turn on whether the character hits or is hit. Can you imagine the anti-climax of passing your physiology roll ("Oh, I remember where a Vulcan heart is!") only to miss? And then next turn, forgetting where the heart is, so you can't make that particular attack? That doesn't sound like a rollicking good time to me. That sounds like a bundle of bureaucratic frustration in the name of "realism." I like realism, but I don't like excessive rolling. I think an "anatomical familiarity" is a sufficient nod to realism (If you don't have it, you don't know where a vulcan heart is. Too bad!") without requiring constant, moment-by-moment rolls. And for those rare edge cases where players really aren't sure if they'd know, roll IQ or Physician.
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08-02-2016, 09:53 AM | #42 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: USA, Arizona, Mesa
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
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08-02-2016, 09:55 AM | #43 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: USA, Arizona, Mesa
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
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08-02-2016, 10:16 AM | #44 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
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That's not to say there isn't a reasonable skill here - maybe even a realistic one. But it's Find Weaknesses or something rather than Physiology, and probably does work just about as well on normal animals (or robots for that matter) as it does on "demons". Physiology (species) would then negate the need to roll against that skill at all if you have it for whatever you happen to be fighting. I do think Physiology (species) probably is a perk, or a low cost advantage. It's a broad familiarity akin to Cultural Familiarity, or Ambidexterity, something that counters a penalty that would otherwise apply to a bunch of skills, but goes away for all of them once you understand it for any of them.
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08-02-2016, 10:29 AM | #45 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
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And what happens if your players fail? What then? I roll to see if I know where the monster's vitals are and success or victory of the entire encounter comes down to me having the right skill and also got lucky enough to roll? Perhaps you'd enjoy that sort of game, but I certainly wouldn't. A skill should have a variety of uses, a variety of modifiers, and be useful at a variety of levels. Skills like Physician and Surgery and Diagnosis certainly fit that bill. Physiology does not. Physiology is a lot closer to Cultural Familiarity than it is to Savoir-Faire.
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08-02-2016, 10:36 AM | #46 |
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
Combat Physiology is a thing -- where are all the good places to hit someone (or something). But its probably either a perk, as mentioned, or an easy skill. And an easy skill covering more than one creature.
If I was going to try and encourage that type of skill I'd certainly slightly nerf combat without it and give bonuses if you have it. I probably wouldn't bother unless it was a game with lots of exotic creatures: bug hunt, a fairly wacky DF, Old Man's War and so forth. I actually had another thought: Physiology uses the word species, but I suspect that it actually works better on the level of Genus or family. Those are admittedly scientific terms, but how much difference is their really between a lion and a tiger? Or various forms of deer? those differences can probably be subsumed in familiarities. Of course, the skill is almost always used for humans, which are the sole member of our genus and family. In a setting where we are not, you're likely dealing with fantasy, and fantasy writers and fond of doing things like giving dwarves two livers and other things that would make taxonomists either very frustrated or very excited.
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08-02-2016, 08:03 PM | #47 | |
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: The Land of Enchantment
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
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And then there's pathophysiology... But anatomy is even taught totally separately. Mind you, I'm talking modern practical scientific definitions. I'm pretty sure that classically "physiology" is something like "the study of living systems," which could be interpreted pretty damned broadly.
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08-02-2016, 10:10 PM | #48 | |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
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If a not insanely high IQ character wants to make such a vet, the best bet is always to buy those medical skils multiple times as if they had zero cross over with each other.
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08-02-2016, 11:00 PM | #49 | |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
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Knowing how to prepare cyanide in the field requires Poisons, in a lab Pharmacist, identifying its effects with Diagnosis, and what it's doing on a sub-cellular level with Biology.
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08-03-2016, 12:57 AM | #50 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology
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This rule, specifically, I think should be covered by a perk, rather than requiring players to purchase the relevant physiology per species: they'll never spend more than 1 point anyway, as they guy who dumps 8 points in a couple of Physiology skills is almost certainly going to be eclipsed by everyone else. What else physiology should do, I don't know. Perhaps it's a perfectly relevant skill, but I'm not sure what it covers that Physician or Biology does not cover, and it's a Hard skill.
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basic, physician, physiology, skill of the week |
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