[Sorcerer] Quickie Rules Question
Paul T:
You know, a couple of people here mention things like "if the sorcerer wants to make his Will roll"...
Maybe this is a silly question, or something I missed, but why would you ever not want to try to make a Will roll to master yourself, as a sorcerer? What do you risk?
Peter Nordstrand:
Paul, in a game of SoY that we are playing, we had a duel where my characters intention was to get seriously injured while his opponent just wanted to disarm him. Things like this happens all the time, and I can think of a thousand reasons why someone wouldn't want to attempt a Will roll. However, all of them would be connected to specific game situations, not generic stuff like arguments that "there is no risk". Perhaps the player wants his character to lose. Perhaps the character wants to lose for whatever reason.
Cheers,
Ron Edwards:
Hi Paul,
Peter's right. You never know when someone might want to exercise that option, and it remains an option (in design terms), because Sorcerer is all about wide-open choices for how a character might deal with situations.
Or to look at it another way, the rules pretty much have to go by one of three options: you can't do it at all, you have to do it under XYZ conditions, or you can choose. Thematically, the third is the only viable option for this game.
I am reluctant to give examples, because I am afraid they will be misconstrued as tactical options and therefore, on a small scale, "obvious" or "of course." They don't represent such cases; they represent how someone played his or her character, which is a different thing. Here's one from play.
A character takes enough temporary damage to lose an action, as described in this thread, and as it happens, the situation of the fight is looking pretty bad in terms of the foe's ability to deal damage. "That guy/thing is tough!" In this particular round, the player doesn't opt for the Will roll, because he doesn't really see any point to trying to dust up with this foe any more. His character was knocked well away from things and is, as the foe sees it, out of commission and not an immediate problem. The player has notions about what to do next, but none of them involve staying in the fight, and the action he lost (his upcoming one this round) isn't important to him. Staying in therefore serves no immediate purpose (and here it is constructive to think wholly in character-centric terms, actually), and it'd be dangerous. So the character basically has just been knocked ass over teakettle and he stays that way, losing that action he'd previously launched.
Paul, I'm tuning this next point specifically for you: all of this has to do with experiencing play through and with the character firmly forward. This isn't about "for the story" (a phrase that doesn't apply to Sorcerer) nor about the obvious tactical option in a generalized, always-win-the-fight sense.
Let me know if that makes sense.
Best, Ron
Paul T:
Thanks.
That makes perfect sense (both your replies do).
Sometimes you just know it's time to give up the fight. Sometimes you realize you're better "playing dead" than getting your ass kicked even more. But when you want to, you can try to push through the pain.
Best,
Paul
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