[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Honesty

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

No, I mean someone playing such a character might want to give the character Honesty but will immediately encounter the practical problems in play that I identified.

Which is why you should read the description of disadvantages rather than just look at the name. In order to avoid such problems, they can take a limited version of Honesty or a quirk instead.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

It's only -10 points of disadvantage, not the -30, -50 or whatever that some seem to be defining it as. It shouldn't cause more hassle than the equivalently priced nearsightedness with glasses.

Disadvantages don't all cause an equal amount of hassle per point, just like how some advantages give more benefit than others per point cost. Especially for traits that are highly setting dependant such as Honesty.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Personally, and in my observation of the people I play with, constantly running afoul of a disadvantage in that way would not be all that fun.
=

There is no good reason to expect such issues to constantly arise. It might happen. Once.

[Curmudgeon]

Honesty isn't necessarily as restrictive as some posters have assumed. First, the disadvantage states "laws of your own home" [p. B138] not "laws of your homeland." Granted, in games set in the present the two are usually synonymous, but that wasn't always the case historically. A member of the Roman Catholic clergy in 15th-century France would consider "the laws of his own home" to be Canon Law and not the laws of France, at least when there was a conflict between the two. Likewise a WWII French partisan could have Honesty while having no recognition of Vichy French laws because "his own home" is Free France, not Vichy France.

That said, persons with the Honest disadvantage will be similar to each other because the view of crimes will be broadly similar wherever and whenever the character lives, just because murder, crimes of violence, theft and other crimes against property are universally crimes. [OK, you can probably find some fiction where they aren't, but I can't think of any real world examples.] What will differ from home to home will be who they apply to and how broad or narrow the coverage is. Honesty is mostly concerned with criminal law, especially in the examples. Torts and contracts will only be affected by the broad strokes of the law: you should exercise reasonable care; a contract isn't valid if there wasn't a meeting of the minds or if no valuable consideration was involved; etc.

Honesty applies to laws, not to regulations. Some regulations may have the backing of the law, but that won't necessarily make them laws.


Finally, while it has been assumed that the state is the ultimate authority for laws, it need not be. Wizards or superheroes, for example, might follow laws promulgated by other wizards or superheroes, even though those persons aren't states, simply because they can enforce their dictates on the wizard or superhero, where the state could not.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No. Of course that's because it doesn't. The "hazing as ritual ordeal for membership" is not assault any more than participating in a boxing match is. It only becomes an Honesty issue if the subject decides quit and the team won't let them or the hazing rises to the level of reckless endangerment.

You have provided a perfect example of the information/knowledge problem I have raised. A hazing doesn't generally involve informed consent and simply failing to raise an objection while it is going on does not establish consent. Also, an act does not need to be dangerous to be an assault. Common Assault can be any unconsented application of force even with no intent (or foreseeable likelihood) to injure. But he important thing here is not the existence of those facts, but that you didn't know them and neither would a lot of characters who might have Honesty on their sheet.

Apart from that, yes Honesty is limited by the knowledge of the character. You have to know that something is illegal before your Honesty will tell you not to do that. If the speed limit sign is obscured than you can keep going at the same speed until you are made aware that you need to slow down to comply with the law.

Well that seems like a way you could read-dwon the text for manageability, but it's not exactly what it says.

What more if you think that Honesty requires you to act in an insane manner, then you doing it wrong. Madmen do not get a +1 reaction modifier.

I am pointing out how it does that very thing. As written, Honesty indeed calls for a character to act unrealistically and/or not rationally. Tacking on the reaction modifier thing in the description simply makes tje description more confounding

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Well that seems like a way you could read-dwon the text for manageability, but it's not exactly what it says.

The problem is that what the text says is fundamentally self contradictory.

The first two paragraphs go on about how you must (it's even italicized for emphasis) obey the law. The third then goes on about how there are a bunch of things you can do (start fights, steal at great need as long as you pay back you victims), most of which are illegal under most law codes. The fourth one continues by contradicting *itself* about how you must keep your word, except you don't have to your enemies or if it isn't a law. The fifth one gives you a reaction bonus that's frankly at odds with either the must obey unpopular laws *or* being allowed to assault and rob people and lie about it.

It's nonsense as written, so in an effort to implement it in a way that does make sense, you have no option but to ignore some of the description, and depending on which part you ignore you end up with very different results.

I personally think reading it as Code of Honor (act like an upstanding citizen of a Lawful or Neutral Good state) is probably the intent, based on the fact that it's been present in the rules forever and the types of characters it's been used for. But that's not how it reads, and inevitably in the gaming community it suffers the same "theoretical" problems as Lawful Good, where adversarial players and GMs ignore the Good part, only worse because the Honest disadvantage isn't even explicit about Good being part of the trait.

Edit:
It's also worth noting that this is one of the traits probably most altered by Self Control rolls. In 3e with the flat -10 cost the cost meant my interpretation made a lot of sense relative to more serious Codes of Honor - being a Good Citizen may restrain *adventurers* a little more than a Code of Chivalry for example, but it *is* usually a bit less dangerous and you do get that reaction bonus. Equally importantly the 3e rolls were not to *opt* to break the law, but you made an IQ roll to see the need to, whereupon you could break it automatically, only needing the Will roll not to turn yourself in afterward. This meant that in cases where it was bloody obvious to even a total idiot that there was a need there could reasonably be a bonus, or an automatic success (e.g. you probably didn't need to exercise self control before you could ignore the anti-trespassing law that forbids you from entering somebody's property without permission before you could save his kid from drowning in the pool, you could just do it and then make a will roll afterward if for some incomprehensible reason you wanted to keep it secret you had). This undermined both the must obey part further (need is of course vague and subjective), and made the name somewhat less problematic - because the primary effect wasn't forcing you to do nonsensical stuff, it was more that it made you make voluntary confessions - and truthfully admitting your actions is something much more like the usual meaning of Honest than a geas to obey is.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The problem is that what the text says is fundamentally self contradictory.

The first two paragraphs go on about how you must (it's even italicized for emphasis) obey the law. The third then goes on about how there are a bunch of things you can do (start fights, steal at great need as long as you pay back you victims), most of which are illegal under most law codes. The fourth one continues by contradicting *itself* about how you must keep your word, except you don't have to your enemies or if it isn't a law. The fifth one gives you a reaction bonus that's frankly at odds with either the must obey unpopular laws *or* being allowed to assault and rob people and lie about it.

It's nonsense as written, so in an effort to implement it in a way that does make sense, you have no option but to ignore some of the description, and depending on which part you ignore you end up with very different results.

I personally think reading it as Code of Honor (act like an upstanding citizen of a Lawful or Neutral Good state) is probably the intent, based on the fact that it's been present in the rules forever and the types of characters it's been used for. But that's not how it reads, and inevitably in the gaming community it suffers the same "theoretical" problems as Lawful Good, where adversarial players and GMs ignore the Good part, only worse because the Honest disadvantage isn't even explicit about Good being part of the trait.

Start fights is only allowed if you can do it in a legal way, so no contradiction there.

It is a general principle that specific rules overrides more general ones, so when interpreted according to that principle, the problem regarding stealing and keeping your word is also resolved.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

Honesty isn't necessarily as restrictive as some posters have assumed. First, the disadvantage states "laws of your own home" [p. B138] not "laws of your homeland." Granted, in games set in the present the two are usually synonymous, but that wasn't always the case historically. A member of the Roman Catholic clergy in 15th-century France would consider "the laws of his own home" to be Canon Law and not the laws of France, at least when there was a conflict between the two.

By the law clergy were under ecclesiatical law not the secular law. It wasn't up to a clergyman to choose. An Honest clergyman would be bound to follow the former and not bound to follow the latter.

Honesty is mostly concerned with criminal law, especially in the examples. Torts and contracts will only be affected by the broad strokes of the law: you should exercise reasonable care; a contract isn't valid if there wasn't a meeting of the minds or if no valuable consideration was involved; etc.

Honesty applies to laws, not to regulations.

The description of the trait does not distinguish between civil or criminal or between different administrative paths to enactment. The concepts of tort and contract and distinction between enactments and regulations did not appear in Common Law until the 1700s. The Honesty trait demands the characters apply a strict construction that simply isn't possible to make clear cut.

Finally, while it has been assumed that the state is the ultimate authority for laws, it need not be. Wizards or superheroes, for example, might follow laws promulgated by other wizards or superheroes, even though those persons aren't states, simply because they can enforce their dictates on the wizard or superhero, where the state could not.

That seems like a very problematic approach. The Mafia can enforce dictates, but it would be a rather idiosyncratic setting that would have those as the laws that bind an Honest character. Certainly a GM could provide whatever source of laws she likes for a setting, but the spource of the law, whether it is king, congress, or cabal, doesn't really change the way the Disad applies to a character.

[Plane]

people who know you are so honest have +1

I would think that THINKING someone was honest (rather than KNOWING) would be the critical part. Someone who can fake being honest enough to benefit like this probably has Controllable Disadvantage, I guess. Which I guess means that others react to you well because they know you're honest SOME of the time (unbeknowst to them, you don't have to act honest all of the time)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Plane

I would think that THINKING someone was honest (rather than KNOWING) would be the critical part.

That's why Reputations cost cp. Someone could easily be Honest without everyone in his vicinity knowing that. Spending pts on a Reputation though means you've already skipped ahead to the "people know this" part.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

You have provided a perfect example of the information/knowledge problem I have raised. A hazing doesn't generally involve informed consent and simply failing to raise an objection while it is going on does not establish consent. Also, an act does not need to be dangerous to be an assault. Common Assault can be any unconsented application of force even with no intent (or foreseeable likelihood) to injure. But he important thing here is not the existence of those facts, but that you didn't know them and neither would a lot of characters who might have Honesty on their sheet.
g

What you see as a problem is something I see as a lack of problem. It is not a problem that people respond within the limits of their knowledge. In fact it makes Honesty a lot more playable.