Destiny!

[ulfhiden]

I have a question about Destiny. Do these dice get to be used in situations were the destiny might fail.
For instance lets say you have the Destiny become a king. And you are attacked by thugs if those thugs kill you your destiny wont come true so the act of survival goes along with the destiny. However if your in a street brawl or fighting someone you obviously outclass or using a skill under  most ciurcumstances then the dice cannot be used

[Mike Holmes]

I have a question about Destiny. Do these dice get to be used in situations were the destiny might fail.
For instance lets say you have the Destiny become a king. And you are attacked by thugs if those thugs kill you your destiny wont come true so the act of survival goes along with the destiny. However if your in a street brawl or fighting someone you obviously outclass or using a skill under  most ciurcumstances then the dice cannot be used

I had a character with a destiny like this in a game with Jake. He emphatically said no. If you do this, then all destinies fire all the time in all combats (you could die, and not meet your destiny). The act has to specifically impact your road to destiny in a direct way. It can still be negative, for instance you could be trying to stop your connection who's going to hook you up from dying. But there has to be some destiny specific element in the action in order for it to count.

Mike

[Stephen]

I'd say that the Destiny SA can be called upon in two kinds of fights: those directly related to accomplishing the Destiny (battling the evil tyrant holding the crown you're Destined to win, for example) and those utterly senseless fights which I'll call, for lack of a better word, "story-screwers" -- fights which the PC should not have lost.

You know the type of thing: you drop in a couple of low-power Gols to keep the action level up, and your hero manages to botch just as your Gol rolls five 9s and 0s.  I would allow a PC to retroactively apply his Destiny to those rolls, or possibly burn a point of Destiny in a manner similar to Luck, to save his life in that instance.

[Valamir]

The easiest way to think about this is to tack a "if you survive" clause on the end.

In other words "its your destiny to be King, if you survive".

That eliminates all of the wiggly attempts to justify adding it to everything.


I do like the option of burning it like Luck though, too.

[Lance D. Allen]

I'll say that I don't find the idea of burning Destiny a bad one.

However, a few things.. As has been frequently pointed out here on the boards, your characters shouldn't be getting in fights where nothing matters. Fights should never happen to "keep the action level up".

I'm best qualified to point this out because it's one of my own biggest failings as a Seneschal. I like the combat system, so I tend to drop potential conflicts in front of my players.. and they usually take them, because that's what you're supposed to do when the GM drops challenges in front of you.. 'sides, most players like the combat system too, or just combat in general.

Basically put, unless your players go out looking for random fights, they should extremely rarely be involved in a fight where their SAs don't apply.

::grins ruefully:: This can also include sparring matches...

[Lxndr]

Heh.  Sparring is the only stuff my character ever did, combat-wise, if I reckon it correctly.  I was more than happy to steer far far away from swinging my sword, for all that it was a Fine blade (-1 DTN).  Any challenges I tried to talk my way through... and even my social blunders were generally enough to keep me alive, if not comfortable.

Anyway, yes.  Please don't throw stuff at your players just to "keep the action level up."  In the game lance and I played, there were TWO near-death experiences just in the sparring-in-the-fields.