Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Audial cues (voice stress changes), visual/mimetic cues, changes in breathing, olfactory (though this one is almost completely useless for human sense levels), changes in electric fields caused by changes in muscle tension (requires Field Sense, of course), changes in muscle tension detected visually or tactilely, choice of words, changes in rhythm of in which those words are said/signed/typed, correspondents between the unverified facts in the statement and the verified known facts the detector knows, and probably the most significant one of them all - the subconscious analysis of myriad cues that humans tend to call 'hunch'. Probably some more that I missed.

Thanks, I'll contemplate these and see if I can come up with a better system than the one I have already.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

But Detect Lies already grabs from Body Language, pretty officially. Just like Fast-Talk and Acting partially grab from each other. Skill intersection is normal; there are many things that can be done with more than one skill.
And it's not about doing anything to investigate the truth, it's about investigatory actions directly in pursuit of detecting lies and not other stuff.

There is a difference between skill intersection and Detect Lies being comprised of a bunch of stuff ripped from other skills like an Expert Skill.

The thing is that discovering contradictions in the things you have isn't really detecting lies. It's finding the truth, which allows you to conclude that someone is lying, but nothing about what you are doing involves actually finding a lie. Crucially it fails the "will this give me the wrong information if the subject is wrong" test.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm not sure I understand the 'could conclude . . . should not be able to avoid thinking' bit. Tactics should provide answers to the question 'is this tactic sound?'; Detect Lies should provide answers to the question 'do I think this is a lie?'; the character does the thinking with more data than the player, so a player cannot be expected to make the right decision by thinking, even if we assume they have same IQ and Per.

At some point players need to start making decisions. Certain kinds of strategy and general decision making need to be made by players even if they theoretically could be covered by a relevant skill. You can use Tactics to gain information and advice, but no amount of successful Tactics rolls will get the GM to just make all the combat decisions for you. Many investigations fundamentally revolve around whether someone is lying, but you don't get to sit down with a bunch of evidence and repeatedly hammer the Detect Lies button until the GM tells you whether they were or not.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

So your problem is not the ability to change caps, but the fact that they can change by the same value as the change in Attributes and Talents? I find that somewhat odd. It will result in more talented/attributed character being unable to get the same relative skill levels as their inept peers.
So let's say that you set the flat cap at 20, so that once you get to the special benefit of Diplomacy and Fast Talk, you can go no higher; you also invoke the Extreme Skill Maintenance for IQ10 untalented characters, but not for those with (IQ+Talent)>10.
But now you run into a problem. Caine* is talented and smart guy, he has Per 13, IQ14 and Empath Talent 4, and Diplomacy 20 [12]. Caine wants to perform Cutting Out (SE81). He floats his Diplomacy to Per, getting to roll against skill 19 (assume that the Technique is bought up to skill level for simplicity). He can never, ever have Cutting Out above 19, unless he raises Per to 14+ or buys Technique Mastery.
Now there's another guy, let's call him Abel for the irony, who has IQ10, Per12, no Talent, and Diplomacy 20 too [44], and Cutting Out maxed too. He wants to perform Cutting Out too, and suddenly he can roll against 22. That is not how it should be.


* == Character doesn't really have Diplomacy 20 yet, but I'm inclined to buy it for the final showdown of the campaign.

This is a preexisting flaw of the Attribute floating system. It's merely a different facet to how it fails the "I just want a 16 dude" test.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Sindri

There is a difference between skill intersection and Detect Lies being comprised of a bunch of stuff ripped from other skills like an Expert Skill.

The thing is that discovering contradictions in the things you have isn't really detecting lies. It's finding the truth, which allows you to conclude that someone is lying, but nothing about what you are doing involves actually finding a lie. Crucially it fails the "will this give me the wrong information if the subject is wrong" test.

The fact that Detect Lies content/context analysis works if the target lies but canonically doesn't if the target is just wrong but there are other cues that the statement is false - yeah, that is unfortunate. But that's an outcome of the fact that this is a skill of Detecting Lies, not detecting contradictions nor of detecting body language or voice cues nor of detecting any other specific subset of lie-cues. How this unpleasant line-draw is solved is a hard question, yes. Either you outright prohibit characters in detecting lies (and that means neither 'some partial subset of lies' nor 'lies and other stuff'), or you expand the skill to offer other stuff (including things like providing Defaults for certain other detections, such as Body Language), or you live with the line the way it is drawn.

Originally Posted by Sindri

At some point players need to start making decisions. Certain kinds of strategy and general decision making need to be made by players even if they theoretically could be covered by a relevant skill. You can use Tactics to gain information and advice, but no amount of successful Tactics rolls will get the GM to just make all the combat decisions for you. Many investigations fundamentally revolve around whether someone is lying, but you don't get to sit down with a bunch of evidence and repeatedly hammer the Detect Lies button until the GM tells you whether they were or not.

OK, so I guess we're at another axiomatic disagreements. I see 'does this person lie' to be one of those things that stands in the same area for GM-provided answers as Expert Skills, Intuition, Empathy etc., i.e. stuff where an answer should be provided, and a boolean answer is generally OK.

Originally Posted by Sindri

This is a preexisting flaw of the Attribute floating system. It's merely a different facet to how it fails the "I just want a 16 dude" test.

Why the 'just want a 16 dude' an admirable objective? It produces results that a person uses the same skill level for radically different approaches/activities/etc. (and I don't mean TDMs for . . . task difficulty).
As much as we can criticise WoD and 7C and Age of Aquarius, one thing they have is skills divorced from attributes, and that way a skill level represents skill (experience) level, not other stuff.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The fact that Detect Lies content/context analysis works if the target lies but canonically doesn't if the target is just wrong but there are other cues that the statement is false - yeah, that is unfortunate. But that's an outcome of the fact that this is a skill of Detecting Lies, not detecting contradictions nor of detecting body language or voice cues nor of detecting any other specific subset of lie-cues. How this unpleasant line-draw is solved is a hard question, yes. Either you outright prohibit characters in detecting lies (and that means neither 'some partial subset of lies' nor 'lies and other stuff'), or you expand the skill to offer other stuff (including things like providing Defaults for certain other detections, such as Body Language), or you live with the line the way it is drawn.

I don't think it's unfortunate at all. Detect Lies has no business doing anything that fails the "will this give me the wrong information if the subject is wrong" test. It's a skill for detecting lies, not general investigation.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Why the 'just want a 16 dude' an admirable objective? It produces results that a person uses the same skill level for radically different approaches/activities/etc. (and I don't mean TDMs for . . . task difficulty).
As much as we can criticise WoD and 7C and Age of Aquarius, one thing they have is skills divorced from attributes, and that way a skill level represents skill (experience) level, not other stuff.

I consider it a general principle of game design that players should not be pushed to purchase more of something than they want. The "I just want a 16 dude" test (note that this is a test of whether someone can just get a 16, not whether people automatically just get a 16) uncovers a few violations. Not having an economical means of buying defaults up to a base skill, not having a way to improve your skill with lower attributes it might float to and things that operate out of points invested into a skill are all problems.

In this case we have someone who decides that they want a skill at 16 (that being the minimum for something you want to rely on in adventurer conditions). Now if they have 10s in their Attributes they can just buy that, no problem. If they have already raised it's base stat, then suddenly they aren't capable of buying that. If they want 16 normally, that won't give them 16 when it floats. If they want a 16 when it floats, they are being forced to purchase more skill than they want. That's unfun and also it's not unfun that's necessary to maintain realism.

If a surgeon can be called upon to make DX based rolls and skill improves both IQ based rolls and DX based rolls then skill is obviously training multiple areas. It's reasonable for someone to focus attention on the dexterity portion of surgery to bring that up to level of ability that they have in other areas of surgery.

If it's unfun and not necessary to maintain things like realism then it's a bad rule. Rules should not be judged because they shine light upon other bad rules.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Sindri

I don't think it's unfortunate at all. Detect Lies has no business doing anything that fails the "will this give me the wrong information if the subject is wrong" test. It's a skill for detecting lies, not general investigation.

You seem to be unhappy with it being the skill of investigating lies. You also seem to be unhappy about it being about investigating somethings that are not lies and not investigating some things that are lies.

I consider using Defaults to be a clean solution out of those available.

Originally Posted by Sindri

I consider it a general principle of game design that players should not be pushed to purchase more of something than they want. The "I just want a 16 dude" test (note that this is a test of whether someone can just get a 16, not whether people automatically just get a 16) uncovers a few violations. Not having an economical means of buying defaults up to a base skill, not having a way to improve your skill with lower attributes it might float to and things that operate out of points invested into a skill are all problems.

In this case we have someone who decides that they want a skill at 16 (that being the minimum for something you want to rely on in adventurer conditions). Now if they have 10s in their Attributes they can just buy that, no problem. If they have already raised it's base stat, then suddenly they aren't capable of buying that. If they want 16 normally, that won't give them 16 when it floats. If they want a 16 when it floats, they are being forced to purchase more skill than they want. That's unfun and also it's not unfun that's necessary to maintain realism.

If a surgeon can be called upon to make DX based rolls and skill improves both IQ based rolls and DX based rolls then skill is obviously training multiple areas. It's reasonable for someone to focus attention on the dexterity portion of surgery to bring that up to level of ability that they have in other areas of surgery.

If it's unfun and not necessary to maintain things like realism then it's a bad rule. Rules should not be judged because they shine light upon other bad rules.

Not having a nice way of increasing Defaulting skills is certainly a flaw, but it's a 'mathematical' flaw of the system, not a matter of reparcelling and recombining skills differently.

I find it totally counterintuitive, illogical and unrealistic to have someone be equally good shooting a gun and fixing it from routine malfunctions unless one has equal Attributes. Or detecting a trap, setting a trap, and disarming a fiddly dexterity-requiring trap. Now, this can be changed with special training - it's reasonable to allow Attribute Substitution that cancels out some skill/attribute floatings.
But it seems both absurd and unfun that a skinny genius weakling repair nerd will be as good at manhandling a ship's engine block as he is at finding malfunctions or administering repair plans.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

You seem to be unhappy with it being the skill of investigating lies. You also seem to be unhappy about it being about investigating somethings that are not lies and not investigating some things that are lies.

I consider using Defaults to be a clean solution out of those available.

I'm unhappy with Detect Lies being about investigating anything at all.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Not having a nice way of increasing Defaulting skills is certainly a flaw, but it's a 'mathematical' flaw of the system, not a matter of reparcelling and recombining skills differently.

However the point of bringing it up was not that it fit the thread per se but that a pointed out flaw was already part of the system rather than something introduced by having skill caps.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I find it totally counterintuitive, illogical and unrealistic to have someone be equally good shooting a gun and fixing it from routine malfunctions unless one has equal Attributes. Or detecting a trap, setting a trap, and disarming a fiddly dexterity-requiring trap. Now, this can be changed with special training - it's reasonable to allow Attribute Substitution that cancels out some skill/attribute floatings.
But it seems both absurd and unfun that a skinny genius weakling repair nerd will be as good at manhandling a ship's engine block as he is at finding malfunctions or administering repair plans.

Special training is what I'm talking about, though I would prefer if things worked out such that a technique was the best approach to handling it. Like I said this is a test of whether someone can just get a 16, not whether people automatically just get a 16. The hypothetical player is someone complaining about the system inability to just sell them what they want to buy, not someone complaining about floating attributes being a thing per se.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Sindri

I'm unhappy with Detect Lies being about investigating anything at all.

Well, some investigating ability is required for detecting lies. That's what you're doing when looking for facial cues or non-lining-up facts.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Special training is what I'm talking about, though I would prefer if things worked out such that a technique was the best approach to handling it. Like I said this is a test of whether someone can just get a 16, not whether people automatically just get a 16. The hypothetical player is someone complaining about the system inability to just sell them what they want to buy, not someone complaining about floating attributes being a thing per se.

Hmm. A Technique for raising a skill's uses when floated to a lower attribute seems to be too expensive no matter what you do. A Perk seems more balanced. Because there are many attributes, and many skills; you float many things to Per, and even each one of them costing [1] to fully raise the floated value to the DX (or whatever) value makes buying up Per more desirable quickly.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Well, some investigating ability is required for detecting lies. That's what you're doing when looking for facial cues or non-lining-up facts.

I wouldn't call looking for facial cues investigating. It's something that can feed into an investigation, but so can Astronomy in the right circumstances.

I would call looking for non-lining-up facts investigating, and that's kind of why I don't like it in my Detect Lies.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Hmm. A Technique for raising a skill's uses when floated to a lower attribute seems to be too expensive no matter what you do. A Perk seems more balanced. Because there are many attributes, and many skills; you float many things to Per, and even each one of them costing [1] to fully raise the floated value to the DX (or whatever) value makes buying up Per more desirable quickly.

I could see it being useful in the right circumstances, but I do mean that I'd prefer it if a technique was a reasonable approach. The current skill engine isn't up to satisfying a lot of my preferences.