Scope of main and supporting abilities

[aplath]

Hello all,

Yesterday I ran a short Donjon game as a replacement for our regular Pool campaign since one of our players was missing.

It was a simple and very straight forward adventure set on a on-the-fly ancient japan/china meets D&D place.

The PC was a warrior monk who pursued Zen through martial arts, right out of a chinese kung-fu flick.

The game ran fine and was lots of fun, but we had a few doubts regarding the scope of two of his abilities. So here I am ... :-)

First, his main ability "Zen master martial artist" was meant for fighting and practicing and teaching Zen. The problem was that, in combat, it worked a bit too well and we were in doubt if it was meant to work that way.

Basically he used it for every roll in combat except initiative. He used it to attack, he used it to dodge, he used it to deal and soak damage and he even used it to intimidate his opponent by doing some fancy threatening moves while one action away.

We let it go like this through the game but both the PC's player and I felt that this wasn't quite right. The scope of the ability seemed a bit too broad. But we failed to find in the rules that we were doing something wrong.

Is there any rule (or guideline) that limits the scope of a main ability ? Has anyone experienced this kind of problem ?

We intend to limit it somehow before the next game, I just wanted to know if there is an "official" way to do it. :-)

Now to the second doubt...

The PC also had a supporting ability called "Jumping like a grasshopper from hell". Yesterday he used this ability only during combat as a movement ability.

He would use it to close in to his opponent or to back off and would always state facts like "He landed just behind the opponent" or "There is a fence on the road side and he landed on the other side of it" (three facts here).

It worked fine and we were very happy with the use of this ability. However, after the game, when discussing the rules, we found ourselves wondering if he would be able to use the same ability outside combat being it a supporting ability.

I mean, would he be able to jump over chasms, walls or the like in non-combat situations or, being it a supporting ability, it should be restricted as use only in combat ? Then it would probably read as "Jump like a grasshopper from hell in combat".

Other than that the system worked quite fine. Loads of fun.

thanks!

Andreas

[Isliffell]

Here's how my group chooses to interpret abilities:

* A supporting ability is one thing you can do, in one limiting context.

For example, Attacks (one thing you can do) With Swords (limiting context).  As played, the "Jumping like a grasshopper from hell" is Movement (one thing you can do) in Combat (limiting context), and is appropriate under the definition, but not when you allow other contexts (out of combat).  

Thus, the warrior monk is free to jump over chasms, but only while in combat, and only if it relates to combat (reaching an opponent in a movement test, for example).

* Continuing the definition, a main ability, then, is either:

(a) one thing you can do, in a number of limiting contexts (one/many); or

(b) a number of things you can do, in one limiting context (many/one).

Attack! would be an example of the former, Thievery would be an example of the latter.

As for "Zen master martial artist", I would venture that there are no problems as played, provided those many things (dodge, attack, damage, etc.) are limited to combat.  (and thus this is a many/one main ability)

As it is stated, however ("Zen master martial artist was meant for fighting and practicing and teaching Zen"), it means that the warrior monk can do these many things (dodge, attack, damage, etc.) in combat, AND can use the ability to do other stuff out of combat.  This is overbroad by the above definition, because it's a number of things you can do (Zen stuff), in a number of limiting contexts (while fighting OR practicing OR teaching) (many/many).

That said, we as a group enjoy nice rigid definitions.  Other groups, of course, may be more liberal in their interpretation.

- Kit

[Jason Puckett]

Is there any rule (or guideline) that limits the scope of a main ability?

There's this one from page 11:

A Main Ability should affect all of one type of roll - all attack rolls,
all damage rolls, all influence rolls, or all attempts to hide. A Supporting
Ability should be constrained so that it only works in specific
situations.

[aplath]

There's this one from page 11:

A Main Ability should affect all of one type of roll - all attack rolls,
all damage rolls, all influence rolls, or all attempts to hide. A Supporting
Ability should be constrained so that it only works in specific
situations.

Damn! How did I miss that ? Thanks!

[aplath]

Nice interpretation Kit! Thanks ... I like it a lot. It helps putting things into the right perspective.

Andreas

[Manxome]

It might be instructive to compare to some of the example primary abilities.

Attacking with all types of weapons is used as an example primary ability (adds only to attack, not to damage, but can be used when parrying since it's an attack roll).

Dodging all types of attacks is used as a primary ability.

Soaking all types of damage is used as a primary ability.

Adding to damage when attacking from behind is used as a secondary ability, so I assume adding to damage in all attacks would be a primary ability.

So that sounds like your combat uses alone of that Zen ability covered the ground of at least four primary abilities (I'd probably let a player try to intimidate someone with a weapon accuracy ability if the intimidation was done using the appropriate weapon).


Your leaping ability sounds highly similar to the "run and charge" example secondary ability, which was used both in movement checks and to make charging attacks.  Adding leaping over obstacles to that sounds questionable, but not completely unreasonable, and I'd say probably GM's disgression.