Active defenses as modifiers

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I didn't say it was useless, I said it was a false choice. An interesting choice involves a tradeoff, and telegraphic attack doesn't do that, it's either straight up superior (target has low or no defenses) or straight up inferior (target has high defenses) so the only interesting decision making is in guessing what category your target fits in to. The same problem exists for deceptive attack.

Ah, my apologies, I misunderstood you. But I still don't agree that it's a false choice. There is a trade-off involved with DA/TA, although mathematically there is indeed typically only one "right" choice - but in play a "wrong" choice can sometimes wind up better than the "right" choice. Mathematically, playing the lottery is a horrible idea... and yet people do win large sums of money from it from time to time. Not going overall-optimal can be a similar gamble (albeit one with much better odds). Sure, dropping skill down to 14 gives a better overall chance of hitting, but if you roll a 5, 6, 15, 16, or 17, you would have been better off keeping your skill at 16 (the above are Success, Success, Failure, Failure, and Critical Failure, respectively, with skill 14; they would be Critical Success, Critical Success, Success, Success, Failure with skill 16). Because it doesn't affect the chance of a Critical Success, Telegraphic Attack isn't quite as good when you go beyond optimal, although it would still improve the last three results by a step. Or compare with dropping your skill all the way down to 10 - you've got a higher chance of a whiff (and thus an overall lower chance of a connecting hit), but if you manage to roll a 10 or lower that additional -2 to defense may make the difference on if you hit or miss.