Cunning OR lucky, but...

[hyphz]

Perusing the Elfs rules a bit, I noticed a slight concern: there appears to be no reason to ever give an Elf both Dumb Luck and Low Cunning at character generation.

You pay 1 Spunk for 2 of either Luck or Cunning.  So if you give your Elf 2 each in Luck and Cunning, then you've lost 2 Spunk, so you have Spunk 3, Luck 2, Cunning 2.  That means that when you manage to apply your Luck or Cunning bonus, you will get to roll 5 dice.  But if you had never taken the Luck or Cunning in the first place, you would have had 5 Spunk, and would have been rolling 5 dice anyway.  The bonus has cancelled out.

Equally, if you go to Spunk 2, Luck 4, Cunning 2, then when you apply your Cunning you will roll 4 dice, and when you apply your luck you will roll 6, and when you do neither you will roll 2.  But, if you had instead done Spunk 4, Luck 2, Cunning 0, you would still get to roll 6 dice when applying your luck and 4 when applying your cunning, but would also get to roll 4 when cunning did not apply.

Thus there's never any point assigning both Cunning and Luck at generation.  Was this the intent?  Or is a low score in cunning and/or luck meant to restrict your RP options somehow?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

A lot of Elfs character creation is about style, not strategy. Some people are better at playing their characters by being sneaky and lowbrow through Low Cunning; others are better at the Director stance trick of Dumb Luck.

Thus an elf with 5 Spunk rolls for the same target number as an elf with 3 Spunk and (say) 2 Dumb Luck, but the first elf's player never gets to do anything Director-wise - and that's actually more than "just" style, that's style with a punch during play.

Note too, that magic is a matter of Dumb Luck ...

Also, you have identified two points which (in the absence of the style consideration above) equal "no yield" for trading points around. However, consider how many other options do make a big difference.

If you take 4 Spunk and 2 in either Low Cunning or Dumb Luck, your roll when using your "specialty" is now 6 dice, not 5.

Similarly, if you take 3 Spunk and bulk up the 4 points in either Low Cunning or Dumb Luck, that's 7 dice when using the favored score.

Taking 2 Spunk is when things become way too much fun, even if you divide the resulting points equally - because now it's 5 dice either way, numerically the same as taking 5 Spunk but with all the Low Cunning and Dumb Luck benefits that one could ever want.

And to continue, taking it down to 1 or 2 Spunk and distributing the remaining points unevenly is a blast, because one gets gross target numbers in the favored venue.

Compare all three of the example characters, in terms of all the nuances of play instead of just target numbers, and you'll see why I provided those three elfs in particular instead of just divvying numbers up for no reason.

Best,
Ron

[hyphz]

Thanks very much for your reply, I will have another look at the sample characters.  

Just one thing, though: in your reply you said that a player whose Elf has zero Dumb Luck "never gets to do anything director-wise".  I did not realise this as the rules do say that "you can still use a score even if it is zero for some reason, it just doesn't add any bonus".  That suggested to me that a player with zero Dumb Luck could still perform director-stance actions but just wouldn't get a bonus.  Is this incorrect?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I looked in up.  on the bottom of bage 17.

"You may use a score even if it is at zero for one reason or another; it simply fails to add anything to whatever other score you are combining it with."

but then, if you didn't allocate anything to Dumb Luck, why bother using the director stance?

Personally, and this is my opinion please take it as such, Dumb Luck it the reason d'etre for the game.  Spunk is just standard RPG mechanics.  Low Cunning is "if the player has his character do something entertaining, they get a bonus to the roll," a mechanic I've seen in a couple other games.  Since these are in other game, why play Elfs? is a question that may be asked.  The answer is Dumb Luck which works differently from the above and helps the humor come about.  So it strikes me that playing Elfs without making use of Dumb Luck is cheating oneself of the defining trait of the game.  But not everyone is good at that sort of thing so allocating your traits is to a certain exstent a tactical strategy.  If you're good at director stance, dump points into Dumb Luck.  If you're just good at being sneaky or childish, go with Low Cunning.  If you suck at both keep Spunk as high as possible.  Then decide how spread out you want to be or if you want to put all of your eggs in one basket.

Or such is my take on it.

[hyphz]

I agree with all your views here and I appreciate that Elfs is more about style than the numbers.  I'm not really trying to attack the game here, just raise a bit of discussion about this anomaly in the way the numbers worked.

Your post implied that if you had zero Dumb Luck, there would be no point using Director Stance because you wouldn't get a bonus for doing so.  

Let's abbreviate this a little.  Spunk is S, Cunning is C, luck is L.  Now, all that really makes a difference is the *difference* between your C and L.  

Suppose that your C equals your L and that the value of both is x.  To get this way, you had to lose x/2 S to get the C up and x/2 S to get the L up, which means overall you have lost x S.  Since you can't use both C and L at once, the highest bonus you can get from doing this is equal to x, the number of points you lost to get the potential to get the bonus.  So the bonus is no bonus at all.

Now, yes, if your C does *not* equal your L, then whichever one is higher gives you a real bonus which is greater the higher the difference is.  But taking C = L,  doesn't really do anything other than lower your S.  Neither does taking both C and L greater than 0 because as mentioned above it's the difference the matters and doing that lowers the difference available.  Losing S is bad because S can be applied in other situations and affects damage taken, number of spells usable, etc.  

If you just want to do entertaining play or Director Stance for fun, you can still do it even if the appropriate stat value is zero, so why not? (This is the point I was originally intending to question)

As I say, I am not meaning to attack the game and I feel a bit silly making numeric system-based arguments about a narrative multistance system, I was just asking....

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I see your point, and have all along. It makes sense of my kicker point, which I decided to hold off on until checking out the text again. Get this.

Let's take one more thing into account: Damage. Damage takes down your Spunk, all the way to 0. To do things in that state, you need to use Low Cunning or Dumb Luck by themselves, and if they are 0, you collapse.

Thus if you stay at Spunk 5 and are taken to 0 Spunk, you collapse the moment you try to do anything. However, if you went with Spunk 3 (with LC and DL both at 2) and are taken to 0 Spunk, you still have a 2 to work with. If you went with uneven LC/DL scores, you have one score that's better than 2. Not bad, eh? Even with an "even" elf (LC = DL), moving those points out of Spunk is what gets you through taking damage.

Final point: I think a Narrativist multi-stance game definitely needs its numbers and rolls to be as powerful and elegant as possible, so this is a good discussion topic for me.

Best,
Ron

[Henry Fitch]

Hmm. I'm probably missing something obvious, as I don't actually own the game, but is their any real incentive to keep some of your Spunk?

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Hmm. I'm probably missing something obvious, as I don't actually own the game, but is their any real incentive to keep some of your Spunk?

Spunk functions as hit points, it determines how many coins you start with and I believe (i'd have to check the book) that it affects how many spells you start with.

And as Ron has said, if you don't wanna play an Elf that's sneaky and duplicitous (!) or stupid and lucky (!!!) then Spunk lets you do it and still remain effective.