05-28-2016, 07:35 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Observation
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Nor do you need to have a specific, relatively rare skill to actively use your senses.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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05-29-2016, 03:54 AM | #22 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Observation
Quote:
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05-29-2016, 04:04 AM | #23 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Observation
Quote:
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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05-29-2016, 09:11 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Observation
Abstraction levels are always a matter of taste. But "sit in coffee shop, assess bank's guard rotas" doesn't strike me as an overly rich opportunity for intensive roleplaying. And having Observation skill gives one a defining feature for the team recon expert, allowing a little bit of niche protection with a single purchase - instead of having to buy up Per and IQ (despite not necessarily having any other uses for them), plus Acting with a specialisation in "Drinking coffee while looking innocuous and throwing quick glances out of the corners of your eyes..."
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-- Phil Masters My Home Page. My Self-Publications: On Warehouse 23 and On DriveThruRPG. |
05-29-2016, 09:58 AM | #25 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Observation
I don't think Acting is primarily suited to the task of observing without revealing that you're doing so. The core function of Acting is to sustain a false impression over time: To assume a role consistently.
Now if the role is "I'm a person who's not interested in your security arrangements," that's a pretty basic impression, and normally I'd allow an Acting+5 roll, or straight IQ, vs. Detect Lies to see through it. If you're trying to observe at the same time, I'd call for an Acting roll (with the bonus) and a Per roll. But I'd also call for -2 penalties, because you're doing two different things: Playing a role and trying to notice things. So if you have IQ 12 and Per 12, that would be two rolls at effective skill 10, giving a 25% chance of both noticing something useful and concealing your attention to it. If you actually have Acting skill at, say, 12, that would be an Acting+3 roll, or 15 or less, so you probably wouldn't be noticed, but it would still be kind of chancy whether you obsered anything. And even if you succeeded, I wouldn't consider it quite the same as an Observation roll. With Per, you'll tend to notice the things that stand out to the human eye or ear. On a successful roll, I'd let you pick up the marginal things. But I wouldn't let you get the things that emerge from systematic inventory of the environment, because you wouldn't have trained yourself to notice those things. When you come right down to it, most of the Per-based skills could be defined as "just using your eyes/ears/nose." So you could argue for separate skills being redundant. And yet it makes sense to me that people can learn to apply their senses in specific ways. As to the question of "a single roll," I mostly support what Phil said. I don't think it's really very interesting dramatically to play out multiple Observation rolls, each of which reveals a single possibly meaningful fact. I think normally you roll once and see if you spot anything. If there's drama at all, it's because you critically failed the roll and gave yourself away; or perhaps because someone else observed you observing (perhaps with a Quick Contest); or because someone came up and interacted with you randomly and you needed to roleplay your ostensible reason for being there. Or because you used Stealth to find an observation post where you would be concealed and could devote your time to systematically inventorying the enemy's routines and capabilities.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. Last edited by whswhs; 05-29-2016 at 10:12 AM. |
01-18-2023, 01:56 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: The Land of Enchantment
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Observation
Sorry to necro, but this issue of when to use Observation skill versus a Perception or sense roll has come up for me recently, so I did a search and wanted to add something:
Observation skill is also the sine qua non of any sort of military scout- cavalry scouts in my case. For instance it is used to estimate the number of soldiers/vehicles in a large body of troops that is spotted. (And I would make an argument for the same regarding finding tracks made by a military formation on the move.) So Observation would tell you "there is an encamped battalion-sized formation of line infantry on the opposite side of the valley, they have pickets set, and from the traffic of the runners you suspect that the commander is billeted in the farmhouse near the creek" whereas all that a (+10) Per roll should tell you is "there is a ginormous mob of soldiers on the opposite hillside". I also like the point that someone made to the effect that a Per roll will tell you "you see X over there" whereas an Observation roll might tell you "you see X, about Y yards away, on a rough heading of Z and moving at approximately speed S". The detail that Observation can give you is a great differentiator. And the nice thing is that Observation skill can be improved, whereas generally Per cannot in a realistic setting.
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I'd need to get a grant and go shoot a thousand goats to figure it out. Last edited by acrosome; 01-18-2023 at 02:10 PM. |
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