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Old 08-12-2019, 07:36 AM   #26
Tomsdad
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
Default Re: A Question of Strength.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Extra Effort can be quite problematic for predicting performance. Professional athletes (and even serious amateurs) will usually not risk career-ending injuries and will almost always perform below their maximum capabilities. After all, winning one record or one event is usually not worthwhile if you destroy your chances at future events.
Generally speaking I agree with you, but when push comes to shove some have risked injury to pull of PBs under competition pressure*, and injuries in general do happen (not that every injury is due to trying to go too heavy)! But I also think that the EE system by itself might err on the more exciting/gameable end of the spectrum of realistic injury risk. Either way I think one solve it to allow proper equipment to mitigate injuries. e.g maybe it coverts an automatic injury into a HT check to avoid it.

There is also the question of what "maximum capabilities" means in RL. Is it your PB (but PBs can be weird), your max with no risk of injury, your max with an acceptable risk of injury etc (what's acceptable) And how that translates into game terms. In theory in GURPS game terms it's a roll of 3 on a EE/lifting roll, but yeah no chance of that ever being a consistent max! (but I like your idea below for this)


*lets face plenty of injuries happen in training without the extra competition pressure


Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
I generally figure that a conservative and safe estimate of Extra Effort (and related phenomena) would assume a roll of '12', so I calculate performance based on a result of '12' without forcing a roll as long as the individual has the appropriate trait at 16+. For example, a character with Lifting-20 could increase their BL by 40% without a roll or by 80% without a roll by spending 1 FP. It allows people with exceptional skill to perform exceptionally without unnecessary variability or risk.

I like the idea of 'taking 12'* , it certainly allows for more consistency of performance while also allowing skill and extra effort and all the things that implies. And in game terms gives an incentive to risk the roll if you need that little but more! Which I think is pretty in keeping to knowing your own comfortable limits and choosing to risk going beyond them.


*I used to do pretty much the same with a house rule for drawing bows using a ST based skill roll.
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Last edited by Tomsdad; 08-12-2019 at 07:55 AM.
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