[Poison'd] No soul, no consequences on bargains?

[Arturo G.]

After reading Poison'd something came to my mind.

If my Pirate is really a ruthless bastard with very low Soul and I keep on committing sins (which is easy) I can bring my Soul to zero quite fast. Then, I could not be able even to roll to Endure duress. But I could make any kind of bargain and ignore it, without risking any kind of consequences. With Soul zero no one can take any dice from my rolls.

Is this correct?

Also, if I reach Ambition zero mechanically my pirate cannot even try stealth or deceit. But she can risk herself as much as she want before a fight.
I know that these rolls are only important to get Xs for the fights, and it does not matter so much what ways do you use to get them. But still sounds strange. I was expecting the low limit to be 1 instead of zero.

Is this a trick to let the door open for really extreme behaviors if it is the player's desire?

[lumpley]

It's pretty easy to drive your soul to zero. Just do remember that you have to commit new sins, not the same sins again. Repeated, prolonged and unremorseful matters during character creation, not after play begins.

But yes. If your soul is zero, the people you've bargained with no longer have any hold over you. You can ignore your bargains freely and safely. Probably this means that nobody will bother bargaining with you ... which will mean that you can't ever expect them to do what you want them to. If that's cool with you it's cool with me.

About "she can risk herself as much as she want," that's an interesting thing.

First of all, the player doesn't have to lose a setup roll in order for there to be a fight, of course. If there's a fight, there's a fight. It's like this: winning a success roll lets the player pursue further success rolls, if there are any, before the fight. If the player loses the roll, or if she wins the roll and there are no further opportunities for success rolls before the fight, then here's the fight. Losing a success roll just allows the GM to cut through whatever else might intervene, whatever opportunities the pirate might otherwise have; sometimes a success roll takes you straight into fighting even if you win it.

With that in mind, think for a minute only of the game's fiction, not its mechanics; imagine events unfolding in a book or movie. There's this pirate and she's running around doing pirate things.

When she attacks somebody unsuspecting, usually she'll either take them out at once, or they'll survive the sneak attack, counterattack, and there'll be a fight right then. Even if she successfully attacks, as long as she doesn't kill the guy outright, she's probably still committing to the fight right now. I mean - she's stabbed him in the back, right? What's she going to do before they fight? She can't attack him unsuspecting again, of course. Is there any danger for her to go into, other than joining the fight? Any duress for her to endure? Any last opportunity for stealth? If there is, she can take it, but if there isn't, they're fighting now for sure.

When she goes into danger, usually it's to put herself into a better position to attack, so it's the same thing. She's running toward the governer's bodyguards instead of away from them; she's swinging on the chandelier to get behind them, she's charging her ship forward right into the harbor blockade. Most often, she's not going into danger to avoid or delay a fight, she's going into the fight. Usually, going into danger lets her fight on her favored terms, is all, not on theirs.

If what she wants is to avoid a fight, well, maybe there are some circumstances where she can keep going into danger until she's done it, but even if they exist they won't be the circumstances she generally finds herself in. Generally, if she wants to avoid a fight, she'll need to use stealth or treachery - approaching the harbor blockade in disguise as a legit merchantman, sneaking past the governer's bodyguard instead of charging them - or she'll need to suck up some punishment - punching through the blockade by surviving its intense cannonfire (but without returning fire), avoiding the governer's bodyguard by clinging all night to the cliffside below his window.

To sum up: this fictional pirate, in the book or the movie, if she attacks somebody or if she goes into danger, you can expect her to be fighting soon or right then. If on the other hand she doesn't want to fight, you can expect her generally to be sneaky in order to get around it, or to endure some kind of punishment in order to get out of it. Right?

So mechanically, now: the two stats that can go to zero, soul and ambition, are the two that you'll generally call upon to delay or avoid a fight. The two success rolls that you can set yourself up to always win, attacking someone and going into danger, are the two that'll usually dump you straight into the fight even when you win them.

So that's why those two stats can go to zero and it's not a problem. If devil and brutality could go to zero, you could pretty much avoid fighting as long as you wanted, until you had ONE MILLION Xs for the fight you did want. But if soul and ambition go to zero, you'll still be pretty much fighting all the time. Everything you do to get Xs will drive you toward fights, and you won't be able to avoid fights when you want to.

-Vincent

[Arturo G.]

Awesome! So simple.

You are right, I was only thinking on the mechanics, not if the fictional events during play. I should have wait to play it and see how it was working. But the thought was burning on my mind. It is perfectly clear now.