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Old 02-10-2019, 08:11 AM   #61
naloth
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Default Re: Empathy with low IQ

Quote:
Originally Posted by Thamior View Post
So? I explain why it works better using your own example. With basic rules it boils down to truth/lie dichotomy with no way of knowing if you have succeeded. And it is too punishing. I have described the scenario in my terms. Could you describe it in yours thoroughly? The same situation: 10 suspects. Character with Sensitive and IQ 10, character with Sensitive and IQ 13.
Using your rules, just ask them each 5 times, in a different way, using Empathy to detect if any of those 5 statements is a lie. Since you'll be unlikely to get more than 1 false positive, 2-3 statements verified, and 2-3 statements of "not sure." If you get a contradiction, you know you've hit your 1/64 chance of a crit failure.

As the rules are right now, you can't rely on your chance of failure to give you "not sure" so you have to base your Empathy on the fact that you're X% sure of any given statement.

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Who told you that? This is a total misunderstanding of how the rules of GURPS and RPGs in general work in the first place.
That you can often reattempt the same thing later?

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You don't get to reroll that. It's something like a Reaction Roll and Intuition for that matter. Maybe once in a blue moon GM may allow to reroll it but only when something significant happens under very special circumstances. It's the impression, you can't just keep asking yourself for new impression, it sticks.
You apparently need to go back and read the advantage. It has 3 different pieces:
1) You get "first" impressions if you want.
2) You get a skill bonus (always).
3) You can use it determine if someone lied to you (any statement).

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Hahaha. I get it now. You see, you totally break the Basic Set rule by rerolling. It's like you know your success chance (say, 20%) and you keep rerolling to make enough examples. And then you see the pattern. And then your success chance becomes irrelevant. Way to go!
Sarcasm or lack of comprehension? Your statement amounts to "whoops, you missed with your first attack, guess you can never attack anyone again!" This is not a re-roll. This is a further attempt to do something similar later. If nothing interferes with you doing it again and again (subject being held for interrogation), there's nothing that prevents you from either benefiting from extra time or repeat attempts.

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Failure is indeed misleading in BOTH cases. BUT success in the spot check is immediately evident. You can act on it reliably. Not so with Empathy. You are never sure if you have succeeded. This is THE difference and this is why your example is bad. It's nuances like these that matter and that you seem to either don't notice or don't grasp.
You want to change failures, such that you can get reliable information from them. If you fail to notice, you shouldn't get information that you will act on. Your changes aren't about making making success more likely, they are making failures useful.

Last edited by naloth; 02-10-2019 at 08:15 AM.
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Old 02-10-2019, 01:37 PM   #62
Thamior
 
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Default Re: Empathy with low IQ

How can you compare attacks and Empathy is beyond me honestly. You act on a strange assumption that everything can be re-attempted without penalty, when it is clearly not the case. Read Intuition description for example. Reaction Rolls kinda woulda you can but with a growing penalty every time. So it's last chance and won't let you reroll ad infinitum till you get what you want. It just doesn't work like that.
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Using your rules, just ask them each 5 times
My rules don't include rerolling. I think you should read repeated attempts on page 348 of Basic Set. Also read the description of Detect Lie where it is written:
If you lose, the GM may
lie to you about whether you were lied
to . . . or just say, “You can’t tell.”
Quote:
You want to change failures, such that you can get reliable information from them. If you fail to notice, you shouldn't get information that you will act on. Your changes aren't about making making success more likely, they are making failures useful.
I was pointing at a fact that there is no way to tell if you succeeded with Empathy. While at other types of spotting you get a positive confirmation of your success, with Sensitive - no such thing. Do you understand that difference? And if you don't have confirmation neither from success nor from failure this is huge. It has to be compensated or it's not viable. It is nightmare in gameplay terms for the following reasons:
1.) No real feedback (Should I even explain that this is bad for gameplay?).
2.) Unusable with IQ up to 13 and even with more I wouldn't use it. Even if I had 66% of success. At 80%... Eh, maybe.
3.) Well damn sometimes you are really not sure about something. You can't tell one way or another. How does it fit there? When someone lies to you, you either see through his lies or believe him completely according to your interpretation and the flawed rules. If something bothers your subject you either KNOW it or you are sure that NOTHING bothers him, you can't be unsure. Does it seem a good approximation of reality to you?
4.) If you are Sensitive at IQ 10 with your interpretation how can you conceptually HAVE those bonuses to Detect Lies etc. if you are wrong most of the time. Your logic that these things are divorced from each other is flawed.
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Your statement amounts to "whoops, you missed with your first attack, guess you can never attack anyone again!"
No, it does not. Why do you keep comparing those things? I already thoroughly explained why it is not correct.

The only way I see it useful as is is trying to stack as many bonuses as you possibly can. But it would be still a crutch and not very interesting and still prone to most of those problems I listed.
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Old 02-10-2019, 02:18 PM   #63
naloth
 
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Default Re: Empathy with low IQ

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Originally Posted by Thamior View Post
How can you compare attacks and Empathy is beyond me honestly. You act on a strange assumption that everything can be re-attempted without penalty, when it is clearly not the case. Read Intuition description for example. Reaction Rolls kinda woulda you can but with a growing penalty every time. So it's last chance and won't let you reroll ad infinitum till you get what you want. It just doesn't work like that.
I don't believe you'll that I ever implied that you can retry "everything", nor did I create an extensive list of activities. I merely pointed out the absurdity of your statement that "This is a total misunderstanding of how the rules of GURPS and RPGs in general work in the first place."

Bluntly, it's not. Unless the situation changes or the rules explicitly limit you to one attempt, you can re-try. Sometimes that attempt is penalized. Sometimes the ability to keep at a task until you succeed earns you a bonus (extra time).





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My rules don't include rerolling. I think you should read repeated attempts on page 348 of Basic Set.
Luck? Impulse buys? Those are actual re-rolls, though I was discussing situations where you would either a) get a bonus to success by taking extra time and care (which presumably is covered in your version of Campaigns) or b) where you could re-try because there's each attempt is an independent attempt.

Following B348 you can see that 3/4 of the described situations allow you to reattempt a task:
- Situation 1: something destroyed or killed. Doesn't apply here.
- Situation 2: something damaged. Retry possible for the same task after reasonable time.
- Situation 3: re-rolls are penalized for some reason.
- Situation 4: you can re-attempt without penalty after a time.

Quote:
Also read the description of Detect Lie where it is written:
If you lose, the GM may
lie to you about whether you were lied
to . . . or just say, “You can’t tell.”
Yes, which is strangely in line with what I've been putting in every single post. The GM can mislead you so you can't count on *failure* to learn information. If you can virtually count on a "you can't tell" being failure, you know to always treat it as a failure.

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I was pointing at a fact that there is no way to tell if you succeeded with Empathy.
That mirrors exactly that the GM can (should) do with Detect Lies.

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While at other types of spotting you get a positive confirmation of your success, with Sensitive - no such thing. Do you understand that difference?
Yes, and I've tried to explain the different. If the GM makes a sense roll to detect the tiger lying in wait up ahead and you *fail* you don't get any warning. You're suggesting that you should get an indicator that you failed and that there is a tiger up ahead while I'm saying that you should not.

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1.) No real feedback (Should I even explain that this is bad for gameplay?).
2.) Unusable with IQ up to 13 and even with more I wouldn't use it. Even if I had 66% of success. At 80%... Eh, maybe.
3.) Well damn sometimes you are really not sure about something. You can't tell one way or another. How does it fit there? When someone lies to you, you either see through his lies or believe him completely according to your interpretation and the flawed rules. If something bothers your subject you either KNOW it or you are sure that NOTHING bothers him, you can't be unsure. Does it seem a good approximation of reality to you?
4.) If you are Sensitive at IQ 10 with your interpretation how can you conceptually HAVE those bonuses to Detect Lies etc. if you are wrong most of the time. Your logic that these things are divorced from each other is flawed.
1) You're suggesting that your character should act on knowledge they don't have. That is bad for gameplay.
2) Sure, up to you. Keep in mind that you've mentioned applying difficulty modifiers and I've also mentioned that before. With modifiers, the roll might be much more likely.
3) The GM should switch it up a bit. Nothing says they need to go with one answer all the time.
4) Detect Lies allows a contest. Empathy allows you to just roll for success. That's a pretty powerful (skill ignoring) feature.

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The only way I see it useful as is is trying to stack as many bonuses as you possibly can. But it would be still a crutch and not very interesting and still prone to most of those problems I listed.
That sounds a lot like saying guns suck because you have range, size, and other environmental penalties. Aiming, bracing, and bonuses would be the "crutch." Those aren't problems, those are how the system creates a bit of balance.

If you want to roll straight IQ, Empathy is available for 15 points. All I really see here is that you want more functionality, but don't want to pay more for the advantage, even though it does quite a bit for 5 or 15 points.
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Old 02-10-2019, 09:58 PM   #64
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Default Re: Empathy with low IQ

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Yes, which is strangely in line with what I've been putting in every single post. The GM can mislead you so you can't count on *failure* to learn information. If you can virtually count on a "you can't tell" being failure, you know to always treat it as a failure.
This is why we have critical failure. Or else I suggested a margin of failure before. Reread my earlier posts. And with that you would get: not knowing for sure if you succeeded (you still can roll critical miss or roll beyond margin of failure and get a flipped answer). You would be honestly uncertain some of the time. The thing that bothers you is that this honest uncertainty is too much. But you agree with GM sometimes saying "you can't tell". So difference is you would be ok to leave it at GM's discretion, and agree that you get the milder failure that you so vehemently oppose. You seem to forget about that. And you think that I want it to work like that:
1) 20% clear success 2) 80% you don't know.
Wrong!
What I would like:
1) 20% success 2) 70% you don't know for sure 3) 10% failure
With no way of knowing whether you got 1 or 3. Isn't it more interesting and lifelike? Also it's much less vague. How big the middle part should be is of course up to debate. And it is logically more sound. If IQ or the level of advantage tell you how sensitive you are when you improve those you both get more "sure" results and tilt the success chance in your favor.
I still stand on that you can't reroll this Empathy roll, you have to act on what you got the first time. To make it possible to reroll is muchkiny and I already discussed why it will backfire BAD. MAYBE I would allow 1 reroll with a heavy minus. But rerolling all you want? No. For guideline read up Intuition (I believe you still haven't done that). If you tell me that Empathy is more like an attack than more like Intuition, well I don't know what to say...
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That sounds a lot like saying guns suck because you have range, size, and other environmental penalties. Aiming, bracing, and bonuses would be the "crutch." Those aren't problems, those are how the system creates a bit of balance.
Ok, example with guns (attacks). Why it differs. I'll explain.
1.) You have a clear way of improving attack skill with 2 options: buying stat and buying skill levels, These options are pretty balanced. If you say something about reliant enhancement for Sensitive: 5% for +1 to IQ for this ability. You get +10 for only 50% the cost, or for just 3 points. Lol.
2.) Attack is inherently repeatable (B348).
3.) Attack has a clear indicator of success and failure (in almost all cases).
4.) Most of the time you get no penalty for miss except the missed opportunity to hit with an attack (yeah and you spend bullet, but for the love of god don't blow it out of proportion, it's very minor expenditure). It's almost the same as Do Nothing. You're not much worse than that for having missed. Compare to GM BSing you.
5.) Clear and more varied mechanisms for improving the odds of success.
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Old 02-11-2019, 08:01 AM   #65
naloth
 
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Default Re: Empathy with low IQ

Quote:
Originally Posted by Thamior View Post
This is why we have critical failure. Or else I suggested a margin of failure before. Reread my earlier posts.
You've moved the goal posts a bit but you have exactly the same problem that I've mentioned before. You've either made the answers so reliable that you can count on them (90% in your example) or you leave them unreliable enough that you can only count on your normal percent chance of success.

If you have a 50% chance of success now, you'll be right 50% and you could be misled 50%. Yes, that's a cointoss. The first alternative you've suggested means that 50% you'd be right, 49.5% you'd know you failed, and .5% you'd get a misleading answer. That means 99.5% of the time you get a useful answer. Changing it such that you only fail on a 15+ (11-14 give "I don't know") changes it to 50% certain, 40% certain you failed, 10% mislead.

If you're getting an impression of a dozen potential murderers, you can almost certainly eliminate half with either ability. Two characters could eliminate most suspects instantly (without even questioning them!) and detect lies over 75% of the time regardless of how good the lie is. Three characters would be better than Wonder Woman's lasso.


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1) 20% success 2) 70% you don't know for sure 3) 10% failure
Bellcurves don't make this a very likely progression, especially when +1 IQ either way will drastically improve or drastically reduce these numbers.

For example, if 8 or less is ~16%, 8-14 would be ~68%, 15+ 16%, then a simple +1 would change that to: 9- ~26%, 10-15 ~69%, 16+ ~5% which already reduces your misleading chances to very low. A +3 (basically where Sensitive -> full Empathy) gives you a 50% chance of success with critical failures less than half a percent of the time.

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Ok, example with guns (attacks). Why it differs. I'll explain.
1.) You have a clear way of improving attack skill with 2 options: buying stat and buying skill levels, These options are pretty balanced. If you say something about reliant enhancement for Sensitive: 5% for +1 to IQ for this ability. You get +10 for only 50% the cost, or for just 3 points. Lol.
2.) Attack is inherently repeatable (B348).
3.) Attack has a clear indicator of success and failure (in almost all cases).
4.) Most of the time you get no penalty for miss except the missed opportunity to hit with an attack (yeah and you spend bullet, but for the love of god don't blow it out of proportion, it's very minor expenditure). It's almost the same as Do Nothing. You're not much worse than that for having missed. Compare to GM BSing you.
5.) Clear and more varied mechanisms for improving the odds of success.
1) Sure, reliable is pretty cheap. Perhaps it should be restricted to talent or further modified by other factors.

2) Most things are, not just attacks. That's why Campaigns pretty well outlines that unless you're destroying the subject, you can try again. If you build something wrong, you can build it again. If you draw something wrong, you can draw it again. If you do a bad job making supper, you can make something else. If you clean something poorly, you can keep cleaning.

3) I actually agree here -> there should not be a clear indicator of success. That's why I likened this to a sense roll. Failure shouldn't give you warning that you need to dig deeper for an accurate answer.

4) Again, sure. This is an information roll. If you know the information isn't reliable it gives you a cue to get it a different way, have someone else try, re-use the skill, etc. Making it this reliable effectively lets you eliminate a lot of stuff and zero in on what you need to be checking out. It's not supposed to work that way.

5) I don't see what's unclear about using difficulty modifiers if you choose to use them.
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Old 02-11-2019, 01:05 PM   #66
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Default Re: Empathy with low IQ

Quote:
You've moved the goal posts a bit but you have exactly the same problem that I've mentioned before. You've either made the answers so reliable that you can count on them (90% in your example) or you leave them unreliable enough that you can only count on your normal percent chance of success.
Reliable in what way? If most of the time you don't know, you're no better than if you haven't attempted any Empathy roll. You don't get anything out of it. Count on what to do what exactly? That you don't know? How can you mix knowledge with absence of knowledge?
And beside that you have 20% vs 10% of right and wrong answers. 2/3 to 1/3. And it's still a gamble.
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For example, if 8 or less is ~16%, 8-14 would be ~68%, 15+ 16%, then a simple +1 would change that to: 9- ~26%, 10-15 ~69%, 16+ ~5% which already reduces your misleading chances to very low. A +3 (basically where Sensitive -> full Empathy) gives you a 50% chance of success with critical failures less than half a percent of the time.
Critical failure was a basic idea but it is too small a chance, yes. Need to use margin of failure then.
You've got to understand what I'm trying to achieve here. I want the whole of Sensitive advantage to be useful at least slightly at IQ 10 without further modifications. You see I may have 10 IQ and take Intuition and it will be useful, I would get more out of it if my IQ was higher but is still useful. All because of uncertainty results on usual failure. I dare you to find another advantage among those in Basic Set that you would not want to use at average attributes, hell even less than average attributes.
If you have 10 DX for example you would get a benefit from taking... I don't know... Brawling skill. Even if you had like 8-9 DX you would still benefit. Of course you are no big deal fighter but you would stand a slightly better chance of defending yourself, if need be.
With Sensitive and IQ 10... if only problem stopped at it being not useful. If only that... But getting reliably wrong results, misleading results 80% of the time... You ask GM if this person is lying and he tells you "no he's not lying" and you know that you are wrong 80% of the time... What would you, yes you specifically, do as a player in that situation? I don't need empathy to know that you're lying if you say "Well, I will act according to what GM said and not the opposite". That is why "no answer" and a little bit of misleading answers is the way to remedy this. Because that's how you create uncertainty and still make the ability a little bit useful.
Also 50-50 case. For some reason you think that first 50% are useful to you. But where is the success? You have no way of knowing if you are TRULY correct. GM rolls secretly, he doesn't tell you. You outsource your coin flipping to him. And then you act as if you would act without the whole Empathy thing. If you're a smart player you'll just ignore it because you will see how inconsequential it is. Unless you as a player want your agency taken away from you (like in the case of compulsion and whatnot) and act accordingly to this inconsequential coin toss.
I agree that math behind my idea needs some work (critical failure too low a chance). But the idea still stands.
Quote:
2) Most things are, not just attacks. That's why Campaigns pretty well outlines that unless you're destroying the subject, you can try again. If you build something wrong, you can build it again. If you draw something wrong, you can draw it again. If you do a bad job making supper, you can make something else. If you clean something poorly, you can keep cleaning.
If a failure causes no damage, let
them try again after a reasonable time,
but at -1 per repeated attempt – that is,
-1 on the second attempt, -2 on the
third, and so on – until they succeed or
give up.
Have you read this? And no, repeated attempts are not the norm for that task. It's not the same as making another go at cooking supper. What you get for repeated attempts at Empathy realistically is confusion. Since Empathy is not based on fact. It's just a feeling. Why did you have the feeling that this person is lying before and why do you have the opposite feeling now? And which one you should believe now? What to make of it?
If you know a good way how to deal with these problems I presented, better than mine. Well, let me know.
P.S. Don't forget that knowing in your heart of hearts that someone is lying is not the end of the story. It's not such a big advantage. Well you know that this suspect is lying and let's suppose you know for sure. You have to prove it. Imagine telling a fellow police officer "He's lying, I just know it" or "Release this suspect, it's not him. I just feel it".
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Old 02-11-2019, 03:33 PM   #67
naloth
 
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Default Re: Empathy with low IQ

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Originally Posted by Thamior View Post
Reliable in what way? If most of the time you don't know, you're no better than if you haven't attempted any Empathy roll. You don't get anything out of it. Count on what to do what exactly? That you don't know? How can you mix knowledge with absence of knowledge?
And beside that you have 20% vs 10% of right and wrong answers. 2/3 to 1/3. And it's still a gamble.
I haven't seen a proposal where the percentages work out even close to that. There's not much space on the bellcurve. Shifting from 25% failure to 9% is just a +2 after all and another +2 brings it down to half a percent.

First, you can treat any failure by assuming the worst. If you don't know you failed you can't do that. Given the statistically low chance of a false positive, you're really saying you either know or you know that you don't know, both of which are useful pieces of information.

Second, if you're looking for something in a pool (who is lying, who is the imposter, etc) virtual certainty either means you pick them out, or you can eliminate a great number of the suspects. It's not a X% chance just to detect the right one, it's X% you suddenly have reliable info on (either as the one or as not the one).

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You've got to understand what I'm trying to achieve here. I want the whole of Sensitive advantage to be useful at least slightly at IQ 10 without further modifications.
It already has about the functionality of a 5 point Talent and becomes much more useful with a higher IQ.

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You see I may have 10 IQ and take Intuition and it will be useful, I would get more out of it if my IQ was higher but is still useful.
Not really. If you have IQ 10, and trying to pick a murderer out of a room of 6 (roll vs 4, ~1.85% chance of success and only one shot), you'd have less chance than the guy with Empathy (~16.2% per person). The only balancing factor on Empathy is that will also get false positives.

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But where is the success? You have no way of knowing if you are TRULY correct. GM rolls secretly, he doesn't tell you.
Of course! Otherwise, the players to learn quite a bit by process of elimination.

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I agree that math behind my idea needs some work (critical failure too low a chance). But the idea still stands.
I'm open to reviewing, but as it stand it looks like a couple of unremarkable Empaths (sensitive) will be able to game your suggestions to be reliable even with IQ10.

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Have you read this? And no, repeated attempts are not the norm for that task.
I quoted an overview of what constitutes a repeated task above. Your example doesn't account for the fact that often interrogation is about asking the same questions to a subject over and over, with breaks, to see if the story is consistent. You get them to use different words. You phrase it differently. It's either a repeated task or one that benefits from extra time. Either way, your chance of success should be much higher than you're indicating.

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P.S. Don't forget that knowing in your heart of hearts that someone is lying is not the end of the story. It's not such a big advantage. Well you know that this suspect is lying and let's suppose you know for sure. You have to prove it. Imagine telling a fellow police officer "He's lying, I just know it" or "Release this suspect, it's not him. I just feel it".
You also could ask detectives how useful it is to cut the suspect pool in half just by glancing at a group of people.
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