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Old 08-02-2016, 06:37 AM   #16
Mailanka
 
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Default Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Physician and Physiology

Quote:
Originally Posted by Celti View Post
Sometimes — in the heat of battle, say, when you don't have the time to rack your brain for the exact anatomical details you've got to take him down right now right now take the <censored> shot already! — yes, you do need to roll. The out-of-combat situation is easily handled by a high TDM for a simple situation like you suggested, and a much lower one for more complicated uses.
You don't need a roll. Can you justify it? Sure. But why would you want to justify a whole bunch of rolls if they're not strictly necessary? Remember back in 3e when you could require people to roll their Language skill all the time, to make sure they could catch everything? Even if your comprehensions is far better than Broken, odd dialect or archaic words or sophisticated vocabulary might mean you lose some of the meaning! Did that sort of thing justify the rules from 3e? Sure! Does it mean that all those rolls are strictly necessary? Of course not! "You know it or you don't" is enough for 90% of situations and 90% of players.

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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